Jeevan Sidhu: Small Things Final Post

 

What I got out of this course

After finishing this studio, I feel that my skills have massively grown.  Technically, I feel a lot more competent compared to when we began this studio and that the projects I am working on are a lot more professional.  In particular, the mechanics and workings of a film-set was something that I had no clue about before this studio, but now I feel a lot more confident in a film-set environment.  A lot of the work that I have produced in this class is a lot more dynamic compared to the work I had previously done which was something that I wanted to achieve at the start of the course.  Similarly, I feel like the quality of what I am producing is of a much higher standard and quality. The final assignment in particular is far more professional than anything I had previously made.  Creatively, I feel like I have a better grasp on how to develop ideas from scratch as well as interpret ideas from other people in the class.

Development

Week 8.1

After the groups were announced, we all quickly decided that the best option for a story was Lorisa’s idea of two girls trapped on a shipping container as we believed that this plot had the most opportunity for being as creative as we could.  We figured that the lighting in the film could be very stylistic and interesting to manipulate due to the nature of the film. We also thought that sound would be very interesting in this film as we could develop a very interesting sound-scape.

Week 8.2

In the lighting intensive class, we rehearsed how we would light a particular part of the scene, with myself and Josh acting out the roles of the two protagonists.  While the script at this stage was not one hundred percent completed, we had an idea of what was going to happen in the film so we were able to plan the lighting for this part of the scene quite extensively.  We also assigned roles for each group member in this class. I nominated myself for the role of Camera operator.

Week 9.1

This class was the first pre-production intensive that we had as a group.  As we now had a script, we began to really delve into several aspects of pre-production.  I marked up the script with camera notes and started planning shots with Lorisa to make the film as dynamic as possible.

Lorisa also worked with Paul and Chloe to mark up the script for any sound and foley that we might need and they also began to source some material from the internet.  Alana began working on the casting call for StarNow.

Marking up the script for camera angles and movement as soon as we got the script was quite helpful for the group as we managed to also get the storyboard for the shoot finished on this day as well.  We also decided on a shoot day, we are filming on the 30th of September with a back-up shoot day planned on the 7th of October. The next thing that we needed to plan was the location. I remembered that my high-school had a shipping container that we were hoping to gain access to, however after contacting my school they said that because it was a weekend, they wouldn’t be able to open up the school for us.  So, Josh volunteered his basement as he said that it is dark and we can dress it up to look like a shipping container.

The final thing we planned on this day was the catering.  We all agreed to put in ten dollars each for pizza on the day of the shoot.

Week 9.2

This class was our consult with the industry guests.  Before the consult, we confirmed Josh’s basement as our location and finalised the costuming for our main characters.  In the three days since we posted the StarNow casting call, we had received twenty five applicants which was very hopeful.  After the actual consult, we have decided to change our script slightly so that it makes more narrative sense and we have decided that we’re also going to get exterior shots of the shipping container at the docks in Newport.

Week 10

During this week, we finalised all of our pre-production work.  On the Monday class, we finished off all of the paperwork and during the Thursday class we finalised our actors.  One fo the actors playing a guard decided to drop out, but since we had modified our script, we only required one guard for the shoot, so this worked in our favour.  However, we did run into a casting problem when one of our lead actors had dropped out of the film. As we were only days from the shoot, we figured that it was probably too late-notice to find another actor on StarNow, so I contacted an actor friend of mine, however she was also unavailable.  Fortunately, Lorisa also has a friend who is an actress who agreed to take part in the film. In this class, I also prepared a document outlining a plan for the day.

The Shoot

We did run into a few problems upon arriving at the shoot.  One of the three lights that we had booked wasn’t working so we had to adapt our plan for the lighting.  We were mostly able to overcome this issue, however there were some shots that didn’t turn out the way we planned as the lighting wasn’t as dynamic as we would have liked, but we believe that some of the shots that weren’t lit perfectly have some potential and we may be able to fix some of the lighting in post-production.  Unfortunately, our producer and first AD was unable to attend the shoot, so we had to do quite a lot of improvising on the day regarding some of our plans. For example we had to factor in time to go to Officeworks in order to reprint our paperwork before the actors arrived. Josh also agreed to step-in for the role of First AD and we all decided to pool our skills together in order to achieve the best film possible despite the fact that we were one group-member down.  Aside from these two issues, the shoot did run smoothly and we managed to get everything done ahead of schedule and for every shot that we were happy with, we also shot a back-up just in case we found anything wrong with it later.

Week 11

This week was an intensive editing session.  After we synced up the footage, we reviewed it and found that the sound from the boom mic was peaking in most shots, but the raw camera sound was fine as we were filming in a closed-off space.  Therefore we realised that in order to edit the film properly, we had to mainly just use the sound from the camera except fro one or two moments where the boom-mic sound doesn’t peak. Between this week and next week, we all agreed to work on our own edits and then come together on Monday in week 12 and nominate a rough edit to use as the basis of the final edit.

Week 12

After meeting with Paul on the Monday class in week 12, we decided to change the setting of the film from day to night as we felt that this gave the film as lot more dramatic potential and made the threat to the main protagonists more severe.  With the edit that I worked on prior to the Monday class, I decided to specifically focus on the opening shots of the film.

 

We had shot the character Tiff waking up on the shipping container from several different close-up angles so I decided to fade in and out between them to give the impression that she was very disoriented by her surroundings.  However, after actually experimenting with this and showing it to the rest of the group, it was agreed that it wasn’t working very well and the fade-to-black effect threw off the pacing. Between the Monday and Thursday classes, Josh went to the docks and shot some exterior shots for the film and on the Thursday class we began to experiment with colour grading to accommodate the change from day to night.  We also worked on colour grading and masking the interior shots of the film in order to make the film look like it was set in a shipping container rather than a basement with theatre blacks draped across the walls. Finally, we also decided as a group that Josh’s edit of the film was the one that we were going to use as the basis for the final edit of the film.

Before

After

Week 13

On the Monday of week 13, our group had another intensive edition session.  We all met up at 11am and carried on editing throughout the day and finished up at 7:30.  On this day, we spent the morning finalising the colour grade for the opening establishing shots of the film and making them appear as if it were nighttime.  We were able to use some of the shots that Josh had shot in the previous week, but some of the shots we had to source from the internet. Overall, I am pleased with how these shots looked.  Especially considering none of us had experience of creating entire shots of the film in the edit. One difficulty we had was making sure that the night-sky didn’t look to pretty as we wanted the setting to appear threatening, but we managed to solve this issue through continuous colour grading and by adding noise to the image.

Before

After

In the afternoon, we took Paul’s advice to repeat some of the opening establishing shots of the film and space them throughout the film in order to change the pacing.  We all really liked the effect this left on the film. Finally, in the evening, we worked on the shot of the film where the guards spies the two girls in the shipping container.  Originally, the guard was going to look through a crack in the wall, but we decided to change it to a sliding peep-hole as we fell that this made the film more threatening.

Before

After

LINK TO FILM: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HW-7PXv6nBwRK57priHQZhDobamYy9Fo

 

Collaboration

Throughout this semester the group work and the dynamics of each group I have been part of have, on the whole, been very positive.  During the first half of the semester, in the groups I was in we all meshed well together and collaborated well. Especially the groups that I worked with on the two-line scripts.  We all listened to each others ideas and none of us had any major disagreements. For any creative differences that we did have, generally we managed to sort things out. In the second half of the semester, we began working on the major group assignment.  Throughout this process, we all collaborated well for the most part. We did run into some communication issues, particularly in pre-production but whenever we would all be together in class, we managed to work well together. We did run into some difficulties on the day of the shoot where our producer and first AD was unable to attend and we also had some communication issues on the day so there was a period of time on the day where we weren’t sure if they were coming to the shoot or not.  Another issue we ran into as a group was again an issue of communication where our sound operator didn’t let us know that they were having trouble with peaking until after we had wrapped production. In post-production however, we all came together and worked well with each other, particularly when it came to the final editing session where myself, Lorisa, Josh and Chloe all worked together as a team to work on the final cut.