Pre-poduction location testing

Myself and Blaine did a small 30 second short clip of one of the shots that we want to include within our film. It is just a quick test of the location and sourroundings to see what the noise levels were and natural lighting that was avalible. It was extremal cold so my hands were shaking like mad but we can over come these factors by having professional equipment when the real production is filmed for example a tri-pod, some gloves and a better camera will all be vital equipment we will use when the clapper board snaps for scene one take one of our short film as well as estensive planning on behalf of myself and Blaine and professional acting. (Sorry blaine)

Pre-poduction testing from Tom palmer on Vimeo.

Scene 1 location and potential camera shots

Most writers, film directors and script developers have a preference for one style of writing over another. Some writers are more interested in developing complex, interesting, and quirky characters. Others indulge in eye catching visual effects or heart pumping action.
Myself and Blaine are very interested in very complex narrative based films which are predominantly character driven and this is to a certain extent what our short film will consist of. We have taken inspiration from many films that follow this style. Blaine's posts on sources of inspiration and Directorial techniques to consider as well my posts, Inspiration for our short film, True leaders of film and Three inspirational films from our teacher extensive DVD collection show our interest in this style and how we were inspired by these films and their unique styles.

Our film will strongly focus on the emotional development of the main protagonist and due to this being our main focus we want the cinematography to be very minimalistic, giving off a great sense of realism but also to accentuate that the main protagonist is just a real man in the real world, any over elaborate visual effects will digress from this sense of realism as well as the over attention to detail as it would then not portray the real world but an idealised version. This links with the postmodern theorists that we are learning about throughout the A2 course and how they believe the media portray an idealised world to us and this is another post-modern asset that our film includes, we want to portray the real world.
Both Blaine and myself have discussed the visual style of our film in great detail and my fellow director has written a post on cinematography: the look of our film which gives an overview of our discussions as well as some great examples for you to look at.
Above is just a very simple picture of a location which could be used within our first scene, it would be the place were the main protagonist wakes up, the protagonist would be centralised within the shot on the path laying down.

These four shots give you an example of the overall location that we want to use. The graveyard will be the opening location and because it is a very morbid but surreal place it will add to the ambiguity of why the main protagonist is their. The shots above are some examples of some establishing shots we could use before you see the protagonist on the floor, these establishing shots will set the mood of the film as well as providing a picture the audience can paint of the general surroundings that the main protagonist is in. Like myself and Blaine said the shots we used will still be thought about and look great making sure we portray the message that we want they will just not be overly visually stunning due to the realism we want to create.


Another idea that we had was to have a two shot of a couple of graves, one of them being rendered down a little and he other either relatively new with some flowers next to it. This shot will juxtapose the two types of graves showing that one is frequently visited with fresh flowers placed upon it and generally being clean, but this will then be emphasised by the rendered grave or grave with no flowers signifying the difference between them. we want to then use a close up shot of the rendered grave making sure that the name is in focus and centralised within the shot, this will mean nothing at the time but it will be referenced later within the film.
We also played around with the shadows around the graveyard which made the visual look of the shot very aesthetically pleasing, this part of the location could be used for the protagonist to walk through, he would also create a shadow and with the glare from the sun there would be minimal detail on him so he would look basically like a shadow. we wanted to uses this part of the grave yard because it has no path and this would be a great place to bring in the theory of semiotics that Blaine was deconstructing for one of our ancillary products. We want the protagonist to walk on the grass but respectfully not walk at the heads of the grave stones where many people would create a visual outline of where the body is. This would show and act as a sign of respect and would correspond to the protagonists selflessness nature. This would be a very simple way to incorporate semiotics within our short film but it would show that we are thinking about the production of our film in great detail.
This is a picture of the road just outside the graveyard. We managed to create a very good image on camera incorporating the light of the sun that beams down onto the road where the protagonist will walk. The darkness at the side will emphasise the beam of light that the protagonist appears to be walking towards. the outline of the protagonist will only be visible as he walks down the road to end the first scene. When taking this picture I thought about our underlying style that we wanted to include, film noir, which will also be portrayed within the flashbacks of the protagonist. This then meant that we had to think about the chiaroscuro within some shots to conform with the conventions of film noir.

Within this picture I was trying to re-create the glare from the sun that blinds you if you look towards it, so I faced the camera towards the sun just over the trees to reconstructed the visual image of the protagonist opening his eyes to be blinded by the sun. This did work to a certain extent but the image is not bright enough to re-create the effect on screen but I think we will have to create some artificial light to help create this effect on camera or we could add an effect on within the post production process.


Whilst we were walking around we came across an archway of trees which created a very mysterious walkway which we could try and use within our film. I thought about this later on in the day and I realised that if we did use this archway then it wouldn't be conforming to the minimalism that we want the cinematography to portray.

Over all after taking these location shots it has boosted my confidence within our chosen choice of location, first of all because we acquired permission to film within the graveyard. But whilst looking around and taking pictures I began to create the movie within my head, planning out every shot and detail that we would include and it all started to piece together.

Our choice to use the graveyard for our first scene I think will create the first enigma within the audiences mind. 'well why is this man here, on the floor?' I think it will give the correct ambience that we are looking for, which is to have a familiar location that the audience can relate to because this will add to the realism but they will have no idea why the man has woken up their and due to the overall mysterious and spooky feel that a graveyard includes it will add to the ambiguity of the whole film and can create many questions that the audience are left with still un-answered which corresponds to the postmodern active consumer that our film is aimed at.

These images are just locations shots and do not convery any of the camera shots and angles that we want to use within our film. This will be done within our pre-production testing with the main protaganist within the film and this will be filmed , uploded and analysed shortly afterwards.

Follow the link below to view this post:

Pre-production testing scene one, graveyard.

Production Log 2

Our second production log can be seen on my Co-director, Blaine Kenneally's blog as he kindly uploaded the second instalment to our ongoing production log/research/analogy/evaluation videos.
In my opinion this is a very good way for us to track our progression throughout the course and it is working great so far. Our teachers also like the frequent updates to.

Bellow is a link to the critical/analytical/amusing second video:

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/production-log-2.html

Cinematography within our film presented by Blaine Kenneally

Cinematography is the art of making sure lighting and camera angles, shots and movement all portray the same feeling within the audience that the director wants and when recording photographic images for the cinema perfect continuty is present.
My self and Blaine want to have a minimalistic style of cinematography within our short film this is because we want our audience to feel that they are watching a real story and inorder to create this feeling or to at least help emphasise it we will use simple camera shots, movement to creat the realsim within tghe audience that we want.
For more information on the cinematography within our film and some inspirational film directors with their own distinct cinematic style follow the link below:

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/cinematography-look-of-our-film.html

"Writing a treatment" - Blaine Kenneally

After the discussion to finalise the narrative of our film which took place at my house for a couple of hours we then rewarded ourselves with pizza and an amazing film 'fight club'. Blaine then finished drawing up the plans at home scene by scene which you can see in his post as well as the treatment that he constructed for our short film.
A treatment is a step between basic ideas for scenes and the first screenplay. We wanted to do a treatment because it is a very professional process and it clearly lays out the scenes and many important features.
To view the treatment that Blaine constructed follow the link to his blog below:
http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/writing-treatment.html

"poster for a short film: Semiotics" - Blaine Kenneally

The preparatory research for both of our ancillary products is under way, I have done some research into three different film magazines that we could aim our film review to be a feature in. All three film magazines have different tones to their reviews so I will be analysing them in a future post to then decide the writing style of our review. follow the link here to view this post: Film review analysis

Blaine Kenneally has done some great intial research into film poster's as this is the other ancillary product that we chose to create. To view his post follow the link below:
http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/poster-for-short-film-semiotics.html
After reading his post, we talked together and came up with a couple of initial ideas for a poster but we need to do more research into the target audience of our short film first because then we can carry out some primary research but at the correct target audience. We could construct a questionnaire or carry out some face to face interviews asking the potential consumers some questions and oppinions on some existing posters to find out what they would expect to see on a poster aswell as what they would find interesting and eye catching.

My week of work experience at the 'Theatre Royal Norwich'

For the past week I have been at a work experience placement at the Theatre Royal Norwich. During the placement I was working closely with the backstage technical department which involved:
-putting up the lighting for the touring show.
-focusing it.
-Applying a rig check before each show.
-Placing various mics and speakers around the stage then connecting them to the sound board.

I then watched the first performance of 'Agatha Christies, witness for the prosecution' within the lighting gallery and 'Nick Monk' the lighting manager ran the first show, whilst explaining the process and what each button meant, I also had a pair of cans (headphones) which he was using to communicate with the touring manager back stage which enabled me to hear everything that was going on which was very fast paced and exciting.

The next day I got to do some of the ques, I would listen for the Lx cue and the number then I would reply by stating the cue and add standing by to show I was ready, unless it was a snap cue which then I had to complete upon the go ahead.
For the next three days I got to run the lighting for the whole show which was both very exciting as well as scary. The whole week was very exciting and I'm very excited about returning to help with the Christmas pantomime which they invited me back to. Above is the lighting plan which we had to follow, in all honesty this is a pretty simple plan with minimal lighting but I got the chance to look at some extremely big productions such as a nine hour Greek play called Tantalus which was a touring show with over a million pounds of lighting to give multiple effects such as the ripple on the sea. Bellow is a picture of the lighting plan for this show it was very interesting learning about all the different lights they used and got to see most of them from the Theatre Royal's collection.

Production log

Today we filmed our first production log of many to come as this is a great way to monitor progress and tell you what we plan to do in the future, report if this was completed and then set new goals for the following weeks. Bellow is the link to Blaine Kenneally's blog as he kindly uploaded and edited the video:

http://blainekenneallya2media.blogspot.com/2010/11/production-log-1.html