Unit 12 Journals

Wednesday 24th-26th February Online lessons

This week was dedicated to introducing our class to unit 12. The unit is to research and critically examine the influence of historical and contemporary contexts on the development of ideas and how this informs our own practice. We are supposed to make a documentary about an off Hollywood film movement, after the silent film era. After some consideration i decided to focus on The french new wave movement because i really wanted to learn more how it began after watching a Godard film called, 'A woman is a woman'.

Our tutor gave us a task, which was to create a documentary plan about a director that he would individually give us. I was given Andrei Tarkovsky, the famous russian soviet director. After gathering some of my own individual research we were put into groups were i created a shared google doc and woked with my group to create a simple documentary plan and gather facts about Tarkovsky. We spoke about having a logline, and discussed some ideas "Tarkovsky, one of cinemas true masters" or "Tarkovsky, sculpting in time".

We also went over the basic pre production required when creating a documentary. This whole exercise essentially prepares us for unit 12 and what it requires.

Logline- Two to three sentences that introduce the documentary or film. It grabs the readers attention and works in the same way as an advertising tag line. its usually mysterious, controversial or a fact.

Synopsis- An overveiw of what your story is about and how you are going to present it. It is the first section of your proposal.

Treatment- A summary of the essential parts of your story. It's almost like a script that details the exact scenes, characters and story structure. It gives people a look at your perspective, it's a roadmap for how your project is going to develop and who is going to be involved and why. Scriptwriters create treatments to give to agencies and investors.

The treatment body- is generally a list of participants and details their journey, struggles, what makes these important. The body also outlines where interviews take place.

Pre shoot- a pre shoot script is like a more detailed version of a screenplay, that is used for television, documentaries or films, they follow scene numbers and technical details that the crew has to understand.

Our Thursday and Friday lesson exercise was to create a presentation about a given person or documentary that was impactful. This was mainly for our class to use our presenting and pitching skills that will be helpful for our unit 12 and FMP, but to also understand that presenting is in a way a part of storytelling. You're gathering various elements and facts to present them in the correct structure, to then have an impact on your audience by letting them learn and take something away from the presentation.

My group was told to research Cecily Tyson, a famous actress.

Wednesday 10th-12th Online Lessons March

• This week's focus was on finishing unit 10. We had to arrange time slots to use the television studio in our college to film our talk show. My group had two time slots, one to learn how to use the control room for the studio and the second was to actually film our talk show. We also had various lectures about our final major project where our other tutor spoke to us about what was required and how to achieve a good grade. We were encouraged to begin considering our project plan and the timescale in which we would have to carry out our FMP.

• Going off of our research last week we did have a lesson on mise en scene and what goes into it. Our tutor spoke to us about lighting, costumes and cameras, how all of these affected mise en scene.

Mise en scène is essentially everything that is in a scene, it is the set design and arrangement of actors for theatre or a film production. In french it translates to "setting the stage" but it is easiest to remeber as everything that is in front of a camera, whihc includes the set design, the lighting and the actors and actor blocking (the arrangment of actors in a frame/scene) and the shot composition. Our tutor would ask us questions about how we would make a film of a certain genre and what would change in the mise en scene, for example if you were making a period piece the actors would have to wear specific costumes that are linked to the time the film is set. If you're filming a dark victorian drama the lighting would have to match, it would be moodier and darker.

When talking about mise en scène i want to mention film director Wes Anderson. He is infamous for his colourful films and strict use of shot compositions. His set designs are very intricate and are a good definition for mise en scène, for example a characters room is a physical representation of the character, so it is important for a director to work with a production designer to build the world of the film. Mise en scène goes hand in hand with cinematography, which is simply the capturing of images, depending on the type of lighting, camera or shot composition, a cinematographer is in charge of the visual look of a film. The important link between cinematography and mise en scène is shot composition. One thing you notice when watching a Wes Anderson film is how symmetrical all of his shots are, he likes balance, the colourfulness of his films make us feel like we are looking into a dollhouse, I find this interesting because his stories are usually centred around dysfunctional families, even though everything onscreen seems perfectly placed and balanced, the lives of his characters are not.

Wednesday 24th-26th March

Wednesday

The blogs for this week are all about the unit 10 Talk show Unit and how we filmed it. These blogs will be a part of this unit and my unit 10 on this website, due to the corona virus lockdown, my class was not able to film any of their talk shows using the colleges film studio and facilities because we had to wait to come back to college. On Wednesday the 24th our first day back since 2020, my groups objective was to film the musical band performance for our talk show. After asking permission to use a live room to record and film the performance we waited for the band to set up and rehearse before filming (the band is called 'Shed' they are friends with my group and happily volunteered to perform). We made sure to record the audio of the band on our phones because we could not find any microphones that could be attached to our dslr cameras. Another thing we had to consider was to begin recording on our phones and cameras and then clap so we could match up the audio in post. We overcame technical challenges by thinking beforehand about about the problems that could arise if we didn't remember certain technical details.

During the second half of the day we headed to the tv studio to meet our tutor who would explain how to use the studio control room. When In the control room we listened to our tutor explain how to preveiw the cameras, how to cut to each camera, fade from black, talk to the people on set, and how to manipulate the lights, all using a big numbered control panel/keyboard. We were preparing for our filming day on friday and had to familiarise ourselves with how everything worked. There are three cameras in the studio, when in the studio controll room, you press on one of the numbers on the panel to preveiw a camera and press the numbers again for the cameras to switch between each other on screen and be recorded. My tutor quickly went over colour temperatures and kelvins (all of the cameras are set to 3200k tungsten lights) and showed us the knobs and switches that adjusted the lights, it was as simple enough as pushing the switches up all the way to illuminate the whole set and pushing them all down for it to go darker or black.

We handled the audio equipment needed for our filming day which included, earpieces and lapel microphones which would be attached to our clothing on the day. So we could communicate and give instructions to each other from the control room, to the people being filmed, and camera crew volunteers to ensure smooth production. The people in the control can communicate to the camera crew who are wearing headphones, by speaking into a mic. Whoever is behind the camera can also speak back by pressing a button on the camera.

Thursday

Friday

Friday was the long awaited filming day. We got to the studio in the morning and began setting up all of the set props for our talk show and asked some volunteers to help out with cameras and the teleprompter. I was acting as a celebrity interviewee on our talk show, i got changed and we began rehearsing after attaching all of the lapel microphones and ear pieces. We first did a test run which wasn't recorded, we did a run through of our script and our show host got comfortable reading from the teleprompter. we had some last minute preparation with writing the various cameras and shots on the script that the members of the group in the controll room would use for guidance, and then i wrote down random words that had to be used for the game segment of our show called 'Word sneak'. However we still carried out production in an organised manner, with me and the host remembering our lines and sometimes improvising when there were difficulties with the speed of the teleprompter.

We began recording after one rehearsal. The first take was relatively good, we remembered our lines but the shots could have been focused on us when we were speaking a bit quicker, and the teleprompter was not fast enough so we had to improvise which caused difficulties with the people in the control room who had to preview and change the camera shots in time and also improvise. Everyone had to use their own innitiative to solve this and at times we filmed smaller parts of the guest interview or the introduction of the show, then we would cut and start filming the next part. Overall filmign went smoothly and quickly, and we finsihed jsut in time (we were only allowed to film for an hour and a half so we had to get everything done as efficiently as possible) and we demonstrated effective communication between all members of the crew, when guiding the crew members through earpieces and informing our host about what he had to do and say.