Learning InDesign - Megan

As our review has to be in the style of a Little White Lies review, today we learnt how to use InDesign to design the layout of our review page. This version uses an image that we took for our poster the other day, though we may change this to another image or maybe a still from our film.

Researching film posters by James

As we have nearly finished our short film we are now looking into ideas about or film poster. 

The film posters above all have similar features: 

• They all consist of the main characters. In our short film it is vital that we show Sam and Amy in the poster.
• They feature elements of the films plot. iRobot poster has Will Smith positioned in front of the robots, the films narrative center's around Will Smith trying to defeat the robot. 
• The font reflect the films narrative, "The Last Song" suggests love, "iRobot's" type face reflects technology. 
• They have post effects added on to the shots, both posture feature various colour fades and gradients. It adds depth to the poster and engages the audience. in our we could use fading to represent Amy as a dark character.
• Both have small snippets of text to add more information about the film. "iRobot" uses a strapline. 
• Both use text at the bottom to outline the starts, the directors, the production company. We would need to do this in ours.
• Overall both film posters engage audiences, they make you ask questions about the film, producers want it's audience to seek more information about the film and also wants to make them want to see their films. 

Shot possibilities:

This shot creates an eerie feel, it features both of the main characters but it may give too much away to the audience.

We could retake a shot with Amy in the background. This would again be eerie, it would also draw attention to the bruise on Marks face.

Hospital Filming

Today we filmed the final sequence of our short film at the Audrey Emerton building in Brighton. We were able to use props such as a hospital bed, a drip and a heart monitor which made the scene much more realistic in terms of mise en scene. We filmed many different endings for our film as we want to receive feedback on different edits before we choose one to be our final decision for the ending.

After various comments about how realistic the bruise on Mark's face Megan talks through how she has taken the comments on board to create a more realistic bruise.




Interview with Kate Rogers, a nurse within the county. We also had the privilege of speaking to Kate Rogers, the nurse who kindly gave us the permission to film in the training centre for medical students. We felt it would be useful for us to gauge a feel of how domestic abuse cases are encountered in real life. We began by asking her just how common domestic violence cases are on hospital wards.

Check out more videos on our #BTB page, offering you more video, images and content from Behind The Blog. 

Above is an image we took of a screen which said which rooms were booked and who by, as you can see we are the "College Students filming"

Friday's Filming Summary

Friday's filming turned out to be quite successful as we finished all the scenes we needed to film in Laura's house. We now only have to film the college scene which we will be doing on Monday, and the hospital scene which we will be doing on Thursday. Then we plan on going over all of our footage and putting together a few more test scenes to see if we need to re-film anything. We have also filmed a few different versions of some scenes that we will edit together and then ask for feedback on which ones work best for our film.

We share our thoughts on finishing the inside sequences.

Megan talks to James about the days' filming.
  Mark talks to Laura about camera shots, angles and lighting decisions.

Its just another freezing Thursday

We had an extremely productive filming session on Thursday 13th December, we completed various sequences including the third flashback where Sam and Amy bump into Laura resulting in confrontation, the sequence which leads up to Sam ringing up for help and we also touched up on some exterior shots of Sam getting in the car.

As ever we were there with our phones and have created a series of vlogs to give you an insight into the days' filming.


  Our thoughts at the end of the day.

After spending an hour and half outside in the cold we warm up and reflect on the filming.
We reflect half way through the day on our progress.

Character Vlogs To establish a sense of what our actors felt about playing our characters we have recorded two further vlogs which allow Megan and mark to add their comment on how they portray their characters. Megan's Vlog playing Amy
Mark's vlog playing Sam

Character profiles - Laura & Mark

Sam's character profile...

Dialogue:

• During the scene of the second flashback, we thought carefully about Sam's dialogue. He has used repetition of the sentence :"I do like it". This shows he does not know what else to say, and that he is perhaps intimidated by her. The body language furthers this as we see he flinches throughout this scene, once when he is being hit by the pillow, another when she does not actually go to hurt him, but she pulls her arm back. This also shows his scared feelings, and the fact that it is repeated allows the audience to infer that it has now become a natural reaction for him to flinch from her, suggesting her abusive nature. We will have him flinching throughout the later flashbacks to reiterate this. 

Body Language: 

• He shows confident body language when he is with his friends, as well as in the dialogue, as they often call each other "mate" showing comradery. But also with the way they say they will "go out on the pull", this suggests that they are stereotypical 'lads' who go out with each other, 'picking up girls'. He even appears confident at home, when he is by himself, as he shows independence with the way he is staying at home by himself, cooking dinner. This is even shown with the way he says "cheers mum", he is showing a close family relationship. This confident body language reflects his confident characteristic and also shapes the way the audience feel about him. We  

Amy's character profile...

Dialogue:

• When filming we thought carefully about her dialogue, an example is the first flashback, when Amy walks in after texting her mum. Originally we had her say "I've asked my mum if I can stay late", we then wanted to shorten this sentence as it wasn't important, so we then had her say "mum said I can stay late". However after analysing the lexis in this sentence, we realised there is no powerful language to show Amy's dominance. In the end we changed this part of the script and reshot the scene, with Amy saying "I've told mum I'll be home late". This an assertive declarative showing her dominance, even in her family life, not just in their relationship. The contractions used throughout the script also reiterate the social group we are representing: teenagers. This is because contractions are perceived as an element of informalisation which is predominant amongst teen slang. This will contrast with the language that the news presenters use because as part of their occupation they need to use formal language. 

Shot Ideas - Megan and Mark

We decided to do a couple of test scenes using the shots that we have so far. This one uses shots from various angles in the second flashback of Sam and Amy.

This shot shows a rough version of the transition we will be using from the cupboard upstairs to the fridge downstairs.

Problems with filming so far... - Laura

Here is a prezi showing all of the problems we have encountered whilst filming so far... http://prezi.com/jpv_5xnkpew0/filming-problems/?kw=view-jpv_5xnkpew0&rc=ref-26484195

Another problem we faced was during the flashback scene between Sam and Amy. We had to fold the LCD screen into the camera so that we could move it as if from Sam's point of view without having it reflect in the photo frame. This caused some issues for us, as we are able to see here. We were unable to see exactly where the camera was pointing so we ended up with a shot of the room rather than a shot of the photo frame. However, this ended up being quite useful as we realised that our equipment was visible in the frame of the rest of our shots.

When reviewing our footage so far, today, we noticed a few more problems. Two of which are errors that cannot be changed, so we will either have to reshoot or crop the image. Firstly, when doing a tracking shot of Sam walking to his car, we were so concerned about people being in the background that we actually left the tripod, which we weren't using as part of handheld tracking, in the shot. Sam actually walks past it at one point, so we're not quite sure how no one realised it! Luckily it wasn't in the whole of the frame so it can easily be cropped, or if we get time we will reshoot, next time making sure our equipment is entirely out of view. Secondly, we were using our actor who play's Sam, Mark's car. In his car there are two small license plates that say 'Mark', now we remembered to take the one in the rear window out as we started with the shots of the back of the car. However, there is still one in the back of the car. We assumed this would be alright as you only see the front of the car, yet there is one shot we had where Sam was driving, so we can see over his shouldher into the back, where the plate comes into the frame. This only happened in one part of the shot so we can always cut the shot down, or we can always crop or reshoot. This is most definitely unuseable though as it completely contradicts the identity of our main character.  

Second Day of Filming

Today we managed to film the following scenes: 

• Sam in his car when he is going to college, coming back and also driving 
• Where Sam makes his dinner then leads to the first flashback
• The beginning of the first flashback where we first see Amy - but unfortunately we ran out of time

Filming will continue next Thursday (13th)

Here we discuss our thoughts from Friday's filming session.
James and Laura talk about our driving scenes.

First day of filming

We have now filmed various sequences for our opening. We spent much of Thursday afternoon and evening building up a character for Sam by applying costume and make up to show signs of domestic abuse. We will now continue filming throughout Friday to get more of the film completed.

Below are a series of images and videos that show us working towards some of the shots that we produced yesterday. You can view all of our shots and images as well as posts taking you behind the scenes on our dedicated page here.

We give our thoughts on the days' filming.

Mark and Megan prepare for one of the flashbacks.

James and Mark set up the Tripod.
Laura, Mark and Megan prepare the lighting equipment.
   Megan and Laura begin to build Sam's character.
James sets up lighting.

Laura and Mark prepare for a shot taken through the shower.
We prepare to setup the cupboard shot.
Continuing to prepare the cupboard shot.