Minutes

03/09/15

Today we received the brief of a 2 minute film trailer, along with two ancillary texts being a film poster and magazine cover. Cassie, Beth, Ollie and I have started coming up with a few brief ideas of our genre but our main priority to start with will be our audience. Soon we will start to deconstruct some films and do some research into our genre.

10/09/15

Today our group started watching quite a few trailers which helped us with our creative thinking process. We’re aiming to try and establish some inspiration films to help us with our plot & shot ideas for the trailer.

17/09/15

Unfortunately, due to imbalanced groups, today we lost Cassie to another group. What we have to do now is work even harder within our group of three to make a good a product as possible. Beth, Ollie and I are receiving the deadlines for our project very soon but in the meantime we will be advancing with starting the surveys and more deconstructions for our posters.

02/10/15

Today our group are discussing the plot in more depth. We are aiming to include a stalker element within our narrative including a guy following and harassing a young girl. We want to mislead the audience within the trailer to the paranormal theory but in fact the narrative is fully realistic. We will develop this more lesson. In the meantime, we have managed to complete a total of 3 Horror poster deconstructions and 3 general poster deconstructions as well as the mood-board for our target audience. We only have one trailer deconstruction but I am starting on another one this weekend. We have also started to assemble our focus group which we will complete by Wednesday.

07/10/15

For today we had a folder check to prepare our files for. In the meantime, we have managed to complete 3 trailer deconstructions and we aim to complete one more by the end of the week. I have managed to gather our focus group members successfully and I’m happy with our choices. Oliver has completed the surveys which he has started to distribute on a wide scale. We are all updating our blogs and continuing our research in the features of our genre and a general trailer.

14/10/15

Within the last week, we have uploaded a number of things onto our blogs. I have managed to research the features of a trailer and created a PowerPoint revolved around the different parts that make them interesting. Oliver has started to analyse the survey responses we have received along with completing another trailer deconstruction. Today we were all given the task to research some inspiration film theorists using another version of technology. I will be using SlideShare to research Barthes whilst Oliver and Beth will be researching Todorov and Levi-Strauss.

16/10/15

I have completed my Roland Barthes research and have uploaded it to my blog. Beth and Oliver will be completing their theorist research over the weekend.  Today we also set aside quite a few individual tasks for each of us. I will be taking the lead role in our casting process although we will all be pitching in. Oliver will be doing a few parts of Mise-En-Scene (Lighting and locations) and he will also be writing the first draft of the script. Beth will be completing more deconstructions for magazines and trailers on top of her theorist research. She will also make a start on props and costumes as we discussed further today different parts of our film.

Our main concern at the moment is our casting and storyboards. We have quite a few ideas but its just about putting those ideas down on paper and getting on with it. We have now all agreed to set more time every day for media coursework ensuring that we meet our deadlines and complete our work to the best of our abilities.

23/10/15

We have managed to narrow casting down to a few more people. We will discuss auditioning them in the following days.

26/10/15

Today we experienced yet another setback as Gus is unfortunately not available for half-term.  We all have also struggled to find time over half term to get a full filming day as well but instead we will focus on more detailed research and planning and ancillary tasks research.

02/11/15

We have returned from half-term and we have only really completed a lot of research, which is still good, but we were aiming to get going with our production. Dylan we are still wanting for the main role but his availability is the only problem due to work. Therefore, it will be difficult to get him on a weekday to do poster photos. So we are going to have to do his picture when we are in fact filming as he will be in his costume and the appropriate make up.

09/11/15

Today we started to work more on posters in lessons. We have still not fully decided on what photos we fully want so for the time being we are going to use sample images from Google just to get an idea of what kind of outlook we want for our posters.

In the meantime, we are struggling with our casting still as the availability of our actors are limited. This has got us thinking that we should maybe change our actors. Esther is the main one causing us a problem so we may need to reconsider our main actress. I will look into auditioning others within the next week.

13/11/15

We made some good progress today as our draft storyboards have been finished. This enabled us to edit our script a bit further. Initially we had already uploaded a draft and a final draft but the draft was not in script format and as we all saw improvements to be made, we decided to make the final draft our first draft so subsequently we can have both of them in the right format. Also, we will show how we improved more clearly.

16/11/15 

We continued with posters today and each of us gained a bit more technical ability with Photoshop. On the side, we have all started getting on with more magazine deconstructions. This is not our priority however, we are hoping to schedule our filming very soon so we will check for availability of cameras, tripods and so forth.

23/11/15

We have now decided on filming dates being next Monday when we have no school and the weekend after. Additionally, we have chosen our main female role as Amy McKeown. She has very good Drama credentials of GCSE and A-Level B grade. We also thought that she matches the description of the role very well.

We will complete our auditions within the week hopefully depending on availability of Amy and Angus, being the supportive protagonist male role. In lessons, we are continuing with our sample posters and with more pre-production improvement.

30/11/15

We have experienced yet another setback in our filming process. Amy McKeown, whilst being a very good fit for our film, is very tied up with work and revision on weekends so we believe it would be best that we find somebody else. We are in the process of doing this at the moment.

07/12/15

Today we managed to narrow down to more actor possibilities. As we had previously discussed, we don’t necessarily need Gus for filming as we just wanted to focus on the two key characters, Natalie and Damien. Leila Sabbati we are considering for our main role as she has very good Theatre Studies credentials and she couldn’t be more obliging to be in the film. Because of this change of actor once more, we have had to unfortunately reschedule our filming once again. This is becoming a problem but it just means we are going to have to be dedicated and give up some social time to make sure our filming is completed as quickly as possible.

Our priority in the week ahead of us will be to find an actor for our main male antagonist, Damien.

14/12/15

Thankfully, we have made some great progress within the past week. Our main priority to find an actor to fit our antagonist role has been successful. We have chosen Dylan Ellis who received an A grade in GCSE Drama and seems to have quite a lot of free time which is always helpful for us. In fact, we have set a date with our actors on Friday night (19th December) to film two separate scenes of our trailer.

As well as that, we have completed a full script along with draft storyboards. We want to consider them as final storyboards but the likelihood is that there will be a few shot variations on the day so we will keep them as drafts at this moment of time. Until Friday, we are just going to focus on our individual posters for the time being.

17/12/15

Today we made more progress with our posters. However, we did receive some bad news. Leila will be unable to attend the filming day on Friday due to unforeseen circumstances. We will therefore delay the filming day to the weekend which is still not fully confirmed with everyone so it may unfortunately be till after Christmas.

18/12/15

Today, we made a very wise group decision. After discussing with Mr Abedin, we have decided to film tomorrow anyway without Leila. Even though she will be unable to attend, we think that we could still film one scene without her. This will take place in my friend Charlie’s house as he has very kindly allowed us to film there. Until tomorrow, we will plan what shots we need as well as making sure Dylan has the correct costumes we need.

19/12/15

I can gladly say that today was very successful. We nearly encountered a big problem when we needed a dolly for one of our panning shots but didn’t have the tools available. However, we utilized the shape of a baby walker by placing the tripod there instead so the shot turned out fine after all. We managed to film quite a range of diverse angles as well which really is good for when we have to choose what shots should go into the trailer depending on their strength.

For now, as the term is over, we are going to leave filming until we come back and hopefully get it all done within the next month so we can swiftly move onto editing making more time for evaluation. Over the holidays, we shall be working on our ancillary tasks more as well as making sure all of our deconstructions are on our blogs as well as any other pre-production tasks.

04/01/16

We are now back from holiday and our first lesson back we had a very productive meeting. We discussed the possibility of a filming date very soon, possibly even this weekend which we will discuss with our actors tomorrow. As we were planning to film at Albert’s cafe, I shall be sending a message of permission to make sure that we are allowed to film a scene in their location. Beth is going to be start creating a shot list as well as making sure if there’s any changes we want to make to the storyboards which we will discuss in more detail tomorrow. Ollie is going to start creating a risk assessment as well for future filming days.

07/01/16

Unfortunately, we will be unable to film this weekend as Dylan cannot attend due to a short holiday. Therefore, we will individually take this time to focus more on our ancillary tasks. I believe we’re now all close to completing our posters but as a group we are actually quite struggling with our magazine covers. So we will be working on them in the meantime whilst trying to sort out another filming day.

12/01/16

It has been rather frustrating for us the past few days due to the availability of our actors. Of course we cannot be angry at them as they are doing us favours and all we can do is hope that that they can be available soon. Whilst this does hinder us slightly, we are now instead using lesson time to make sure all our pre-production is up to scratch. Beth is in charge of one side of the mise-en-scene including costumes and props whereas Ollie is going to be describing the locations in more detail on his blog. I am going to be helping Ollie with the script as well in the next few days just to get it more fitted to the genre.

22/01/16

Luckily we have managed to secure another filming day with both of our actors. We shall be filming next Saturday which will be the 30th January. So now we are going to update the filming schedule as well as plan specifically what shots we are going to do on the day.

30/01/16

We had yet another successful filming day today where we managed to get a good number of shots done. This time both our actors were with us and we filmed round Beth’s house. We managed to produce the main shots we aimed to complete, a number of them being just general shots of Natalie showing her stress with her boyfriend and how she actually felt like there was an apparition affecting her. I believe that we can now in fact possibly start editing just to get a good outlook on what we have and what else we might need to film before filming once more.

06/02/16

Over the past few week we have mainly been focusing on ancillary tasks but Beth has started to do some editing. What she fed back to the group was that despite we have a number of attractive shots within the film there is really not a clear narrative being portrayed yet and whilst we want the trailer to be rather mysterious, our focus group has already told us that they want an idea of the story before viewing the film. I think that this was a very good point and therefore, I shall yet again try and organise another filming date to get more narrative shots done for the trailer.

17/02/16

Regrettably, I believe the group has been spending a lot of time on ancillary tasks lately but I think we have made great progress. I think all of us have now submitted our posters to Ms and she will mark them and let us know of any improvements. Similarly, our magazine front covers are nearly finished and we will be hoping to finalise them in the near future. In terms of trailer, I am going to attempt to set another filming day with the actors tonight and will hopefully have a date tomorrow.

18/02/16

Today we successfully secured another filming day which will be two days from now. We will aim for this to be the last time we film so we can focus on editing and getting our first draft done as soon as possible. Both of our actors have agreed to meet on this day so there shouldn’t be any complications.

20/02/16

I’m really glad to say that today was our last filming day. We approximately spent 5-6 hours doing the shots we wanted and whilst it was a lot of hard work we managed to get it all done. We will now come to finish our first draft in full with no missing shots so we can get some key feedback from a chosen focus group and our teacher.

27/02/16

Over the past week, Beth has taken over the editing for our first draft. We managed to make enough tweaks to publish a first draft onto our blog and show it to a focus group. We received some very valuable feedback that led us to have another group meeting and discuss possible changes that we want to make to the trailer. As Beth has worked very hard over this the past week, me and Oliver will now spend some time making some changes that we think would be effective as well as working off the feedback we received from our small focus group.

05/03/16

Today, after a lot of editing work, I managed to publish a second draft onto our blog. I showed it to our teacher and gladly it was received very well by her and fellow students. I believe that me and Oliver really got it towards that trailer format and conventional structure to make it appear as a natural and professional film production. There are only a few minor tweaks now to be done which me and Beth will focus on for the next week whereas Oliver will place his focus on the final shot list and final script for our film as we realised there were a few changes during our filming.

13/03/16

We believe that we have finally finished our film for the good. The few slight improvements that our teachers and our peers wanted to be amended we have successfully done. I’m particularly proud of the sound in our film now as we have really worked on the coordination with the filming overall to make it more smooth  and just more effective overall. Oliver has also completed the final drafts of the shot list and the script so now I believe that everything has been completed.

Now we will all move on to our evaluations. Overall, I’ve been really pleased with all of our combined efforts within this year’s coursework. I think we worked very effectively as a group and took our time with each other even when the filming days and the casting crisis’ were both in full effect. I’m very pleased with the overall outcome of our coursework and we hope that the examiner’s board enjoys it too.