Stella's Film Blog

Doing Good 2

For our final project for Film production Workflow we were tasked with recreating a 2 minute film scene. My group (group 15) decided to recreate a scene from girl interrupted. In this Scene two characters, Susanna and Lisa, comfort their upset friend polly by singing to her. Girl Interrupted is about a group of girls in a psychiatric institution.

Here is the original scene:

And here is our recreation:

Shan-Shan (the cinematographer) and I did multiple different location recces for this scene. Neither of us are from Edinburgh, so finding locations in or near the city was a challenge, as we don't know that many places. We also did a location recce with our producer Shristi and Shan-Shan did a recce by herself at Napier's Sighthill campus.

The film is shot in a psychiatric asylum, unfortunately we don't know anywhere that looks similar in Edinburgh that would give us permission to film. Also older buildings present many safety and practicality issues. We settled on a Merchiston hallway because it was wide enough to shoot in, had white walls like the scene, had plugs, available to shoot in the evenings and had lights that could be turned off. So many of the hallways that we considered had automatic lights, which would make it impossible to get similar lighting to the original scene. We also wanted a location that would allow us to film in the evening, since the scene is set in the evening.

This project didn't turn out the way that I had hoped. It has more weaknesses than strengths. I did learn a lot during the creation of this scene though.

Strengths

The location worked quite well. I was very worried about the final choice because we didn't have access to an older building but it actually worked quite well on camera. Also if we had filmed in an older location we would have really struggled to have enough space in the corridor for our equipment and actors.

I think we managed to get the lighting as similar to the original as we could manage with the equipment and time constraints that we had.

Shan-Shan did an amazing job at getting similar looking actors to the original cast and I think they all did a great job.

The costumes were all similar to the original.

Weaknesses

We didn't have long enough on set, so to get the whole scene shot we had accept imperfect takes where actors would say the wrong line or have incorrect pacing.

The tripod we booked out wouldn't go very low so we couldn't use it for most of the shots in the scene. There also wasn't enough space between Shan-Shan and the wall in most shots for a rig to be used. This meant that many of the shots ended up being shaky.

We had such limited time on set that we couldn't watch all the takes back, we just had to hope that they were as decent as it seemed in person. This is never a good situation to be in as a filmmaker and our final project definitely suffered as a result.

We didn't give the actress a guitar pick.

Shan-Shan did an amazing job as Dop under the limited time conditions but we just didn't have enough time to perfectly match camera movements, framing, lighting ect. Also with there being very limited lighting equipment shared between 4 years of students, we only had the lights on the day we were shooting and couldn't go practice the setup beforehand. We had 4 and a half hours access to our location (we found out the day before an hour and a half of when we thought we could shoot wasn't allowed) so we had really limited time to get the lighting as close as possible.

We didn't get background actors.

The light being in shot isn't something we realised until in post production. The light is to emulate the lights in the original corridor. The cable being in frame really takes you out of the scene and reminds you that you are watching a student film.

We did our best to use similar lenses to the original but the lenses that we were able to book out weren't exactly the same as in the film.

For this project I was the Director. This was my first time directing a group 15 project. I choose the location of our shoot after a number of location recces. I directed the actors and informed them of missing/wrong lines (although we had such a limited time on set that we didn't get perfect lines). I was involved in a lot of the pre-production too. I organised meetings, kept our group on track for deadlines, helped create the kit list, planned the shoot, was involved in the casting process and deciding & scouring costumes and props. We found out the day before our shoot that we needed to refill out the risk assessment and unusual events form, so I filled them out again based upon Shan-Shan's initial risk assessment. I also helped with setting up and putting away the kit.

Organising this shoot was big challenge as we had two sick team members - Thomas F being in recovery from a serious Illness and Thomas H falling ill during production. When we began pre-production Thomas F was soo ill he had gone back and was a few hours away from Edinburgh so getting the whole group together in person was impossible. Shristi was also often traveling back home, making arranging group meetings challenging. We had to find ways to work around all these issues - like making Thomas F our editor so that if he was too unwell on the day of filming, we could shoot without him. We also had more discussion about our project via message than in person, so that everybody could be part of the conversation.

Meetings I was involved in

Meeting 1 - Shan-Shan, Thomas H and I had an initial brainstorming meeting. We went through our ideas for scenes and narrowed it down to a shortlist, started discussing potential locations and roles within our team. We set out some deadlines for ourselves as a group.

Meeting 2 - Shan-Shan and I caught Shristi up with our previous meeting. We went through our shortlist and decided on our scene - from girl interrupted and decided on a backup idea - lost in translation. We started thinking about actors and props.

Location Scouting - Shan-Shan and I visited a number of possible locations. While visiting locations we discussed the scene in more detail. Shristi (our producer) came with us to scout at Craiglockhart.

Meeting with Ewan - Shan-Shan, Shristi and I had a meeting with Ewan to discuss our ideas for the scene recreation and he gave us some really helpful advice. Both of the Thomas's in our group were unwell and couldn't attend.

Meeting 3 - We finally had a full group meeting. Thomas F has been recovering from a serious illness during all of pre-production and Thomas H fell ill in the middle of it, which is why we had never had the full group present until later on in prodution.

Contacting Security - Shan-Shan and I spoke with the head of Merchiston security to let him know that we were filming and all the details that he needed to know.

Meeting 4 - As director (me) and dop (Shan-Shan) we had a meeting to discuss shooting in more detail.

I had the amazing opportunity to visit Pinewood studios for their futures festival with the Scottish youth film foundation. Futures festival is the Uk's biggest free Tv and Film careers event. It was incredible to get to visit the studios where so many iconic films have been created. There were so many different organisations present and I got a much deeper insight into starting a career within film and television.

We also had a talk with Terry Bamber who has been an AD on over 100 films, a production manager on over 30 and even had a short acting career. Terry has worked on multiple James Bond films, he now does educational work on the side of his filmmaking to try bring more young people into the industry.

While we were in London we also visited Eon productions office and watched Napoleon in Screen 1 at Lester Square Odeon. It was so exciting to visit such an iconic and fancy cinema.

Here's the behind the scenes from our scene recreation project for film production workflow 1.

Here's some behind the scenes from our final Film Narrative 1 project.

I love Notion I organise so many elements of my life with the app. I find it really helpful to have a central place to keep all my film related notes, ideas, contacts ect.

Contact Log

I keep a record of all my contacts on notion. I give each contact different tags like camera operator, the company they work for ect, so it is a lot easier to sort through my contacts when I am looking to contact people about projects.

Idea Log

I keep all of my ideas for future and current projects in my idea log. It's really helpful to have them all in one place so that I don't forget my ideas, I often have an idea while working on other projects or ideas that I don't yet have the resources to make. I tag all of my ideas so that it is easier to sort through for future work, if I had to make a film on climate change for example I could look through all my previous ideas. I also have some ideas for documentaries I would like to make in other countries, so I tag them by the country so that if I ever get the opportunity to visit I can look through my ideas.

Work Experince Log

I have a log of all my work experience, this is really helpful for when I apply to things as I can filter through my experience to find relevant projects I have worked on in the past.

Project Organising

I find notion really helpful for organising film projects. Each projects notion page looks a bit different but I often have ; next steps, shot ideas, relevant b-roll, shoot plans, research, scripts and people to contact.

Project Backburner

I keep a project back burner on notion for film related tasks that aren't high priority (or I don't have the resources for). It is really handy to have these tasks written down in one place so that I don't forget about them.

Action Planner

At the top of my filmmaking notion page I have an action planner, this is my current film related to-do list. It is great to be reminded often of my high priority tasks.

For Film Narrative 1, we had to submit a 2 page script about conflict. This was my first time writing a script for an acted piece, so I am very new to scriptwriting.

I found creative writing really difficult in secondary school, so this was definitely out of my comfort zone. It was a really good challenge for me and I actually really surprised myself by writing something better than I expected.

I liked the software celtx, I found it really straightforward. Also it congratulated me whenever I wrote a lot in one day, and has a feature that shows you how long you've been writing vs thinking.

I have been wanting to experiment with doing Foley for a while now. It is the most intriguing part of sound to me.

For our project we decided to use Foley because we wanted a contrast between the images on screen and the audio to emphasise the sadness of growing up.

I really enjoyed recording the sound on this project. We had to get really creative to make sounds that sounded like the park equipment. The swings didn't make any noise, so we had to find another piece of equipment that made a squeaky noise, we timed the squeaks to someone on the swings. The trampoline was really difficult, we took so many different takes. It had been raining so it was hard to get jumping that sounded like a trampoline while avoiding the squelch sound.

We had a really interesting lecture on the history of Hollywood from David in Film Narrative 1. I am very excited to dive more into similar topics next term when we have film history.

In Film Production Workflow we had a Crit for our 8 shot location films. It was really interesting to see what the other groups came up with, and helpful to have a greater knowledge of possible locations for future projects. It was also really interesting to see places I have visited represented in different ways, it is amazing how a good cinematographer can give a place a totally different mood on screen compared to real life. Hearing all the feedback for our film and other films was really helpful.

I missed my lighting class in week 9 but luckily was able to catch up this week with another group. It was really investing to get a more in-depth look at how lighting impacts the mood of a shot. It was really handy to see some of the lighting equipment available at the university.

We had 2 films due this week one for Film Narrative 1 on Monday and one for Film Production Workflow on Friday.

This is my groups film for Film Narrative 1

And this is our Film for Film Production Workflow:

In Film Narrative 1 we had our first crit on one of our films. It was scary but it was really helpful to hear the feedback on our film and other groups films. It was really interesting to see what films everyone else made too.

We also had another sound class with Dylan. This time we were learning about proper boom technique - for optimal sound and looking after your body. We were given scenes to act out so that we could practice working out how to position the boom when you have multiple actors - you have to consider how loud each actor is.