Climate Strike Review.

Today around the world children and young adults walked out of schools, colleges and universities to march for their future. They felt they had to do this as not enough is being done. They are scared for the future at what will be the biggest problem humanity will have ever faced: Climate Change. Science has proven we are running out of time before it is too late. I went along with other activists from the college to photograph this unusual event. Thousands of children were out worried for their planet. To see the photos and research I did on the march go to Campaign/Photos.

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FMP Weekly Reviews.

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Week 1.

Starting my FMP "FORSAKEN" a short film Drama/Sci-fi about a boy who wakes up to find he has been left alone.

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The main plan to get the FMP up and running was to complete the pre production and everything needed for production so that we could start filming as soon as possible. This was because the idea was going to be a challenge with the practical side taking much longer. I wanted to allow enough time for solving problems if they where to come up, for example difficulty filming in certain locations to get the empty effect because of crowds. I made a Gantt chart to plan the timing of my tasks. 

 

The Pre Production plan  

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-Project Proposal

-Mood Boards

-Pitch/power point presentation

- Treatment

- Production Schedule 

- Production Call sheets

-Release form

-Mechanical Copyright protection

-Story Board 

-Script

- Risk Assessment 

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Basically I need to complete 3 of these tasks each week for the next 3 weeks  then upload my work to the pre production page, as I go along.

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Week 2

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-Project Proposal

-Mood Board

-Pitch/power point presentation.  

 

this week I made mood boards and powerpoint covering the proposal and pitched it at college to my class.

Slide 1 Pitch

this included target audience, introduction covering the story behind the idea of the film, the format and the genre and the duration.  Also where it is set and where and when I am filming.  The 1 actor needed and the 3 in the crew ie Director, assistant and camera operator.  

Slide 2 is synopsis, brief description of storyline

Slide 3 Feasibility and rationale - this includes how I am going to complete the film, and why I want to tell this story- ie I've always wondered about what this would be like to be all alone on the planet.  I can do this with help from a small team, on a low budget.

Slide 4 Advertising covers how FORSAKEN will be advertised ie on You tube and Vimeo and advertised across all the usual social medias.

Slide 5 is the Mood Board when creating this I really wanted to capture the look I wanted for the film.  Got pics of the filming locations, used urban colours and got a good idea of the look I wanted.

Slide 6 was for questions.  Presentation went well.  I was asked a bit more about the target audience and the mood boards because I have a large target audience 16-29 but I still feel this is right because the genre and idea will interest a lot of people. Was also asked about the fact that the pics on the mood board were mostly black and white and I said that the film being black and white is an option but I put these mostly because of the filming locations and sets being those colours.  I'm not sure yet.

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Week 3 

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- Treatment

- Production Schedule 

- Production Call sheets

-Release form

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-Treatment was pretty similar to what was needed in the presentation pitch.  I had to cover synopsis, target audience, rationale, and the feasibility but just in more detail.

-Production schedule and call sheets showing filming dates, locations, time when filming would begin and end.  The Call sheets just showed what time I will need by crew and actor to be at the two filming locations.  These sheets also include the nearest stations and transport, nearest hospital and police station and toilets and refreshments were not on site but I identified a nearby McDonalds for emergencies!

-The release form was a general sheet to hand out to cast and crew for them to sign saying that they would do what I need and all footage would be owned by me and could be used by me however I need to.

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Week 4

-Story Board 

The storyboard ie rough drawings of the scenes that I want to film.  I have decided to have 3 parts each containing several different scenes.

-Script This is mainly description as I want very little dialogue and am using Lucas my actor's improvisation skills.  After filming I will add any dialogue which develops, into the script.

-Music planning I am thinking of several possibilities with the music but want to wait until the editing to decide what feels right.  I may be using some original music so won't need copyright. Mechanical Copyright Protection

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Week 5

Day 1.

The whole crew woke up at 4.30am ready to start the first day of filming but then the heavens opened, it was raining so heavily and unpredictably I was left to make the difficult decision of cancelling the opening day of filming. The weather had let us down unexpectedly however this was all in the plan and I had prepared for this. The problem was solved with the filming starting a day late. This went better then planned with the next mornings weather being just right and a Sunday being even less busy. The original plans were to film the more emptiness effect reliant scenes on the Saturday however this wouldn't of worked as well and the heavy rain on the first day luckily was a blessing in disguise.

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Day 2.

Crew woke up at 4:30am and weather looked OK.  Met at Old St 5:15am.  Walked to first filming location Barbican Estate.  Arrived on set and set up just in time for sunrise.  We filmed 3 or 4 different shots of Lucas walking along the streets of the Barbican, the emergency phone scene and Lucas stressing out scene.  We then packed up and moved to location 2 Tottenham Court Road.  We then again filmed quite a few different takes of Lucas walking around the different empty streets.  We had managed to get a substantial amount of footage in the time we had available before people started arriving in the area.  We decided to stop at 8:30am as we were tired from the early start and felt that we had enough for the day.  Also there were too many people around.

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Day 3 Just after things had started so well and we had planned to film the weekend after, this started to become unlikely with the news of Covid 19 beginning to come out.  Suddenly we heard that one of the crew was in isolation.  We still hoped to film that weekend without the extra crew member however 2 nights before, the Prime Minister announced the UK was on lockdown due to the virus.  

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The next couple of days were a right off as we all struggled to process and absorb what was going on.

 

LOCKDOWN media work diary

 

Week 6  23rd - 30th March

 

The possibilities were to wait it out and complete filming after lockdown had ended however this option looked more and more unlikely to be possible before the end of my course.  I spoke to my tutor Simon about other options on completing filming for my FMP.  One option was completing the filming remotely in poor quality.  I talked it through with my actor by phone but he did not feel confident about this and I feel it would not have matched the existing footage nearly enough for the film to look good.   

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These new unusual times had unsettled me and I'm sure did for my classmates and tutors as well on how the course would be marked and completed. 

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We finally found out that we will have access to Adobe Package and I have managed to download it.  

 

Week 7 31st March-April 7th

My plan was to complete all the work needed, do as much research as I could and work with what I've got to make an unfinished film for my FMP with the footage I had already filmed before all of this began.

It was all quite uncertain and I was also doing some other creative things for example someone contacted me from USA who had seen some of my graphic design work from my Instagram account and they wanted a single cover for a new song.  I spoke to them by phone and they said they liked Neon colours.  They sent me a couple of photos and they were not that great so it took me a while to come up with something good but I am pleased with the result.   

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Week 8 8th April-15th April

Started some editing on the bits of filming that I did get done before lockdown.  I have left this a while because part of me was hoping we would somehow get to do some more filming.  I loaded all the footage into premier and have started to play around with it and add in some audio

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Week 9 16th April-23rd April

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We have been told that the FMP will definitely not be formally assessed by UAL so I have spent more time looking over my previous projects and making some improvements in the notes.  This is hard as it feels like going back a lot as these projects were a while ago.  I want to finish this work on my old projects this week and then go back to editing the bits of filming that I did manage to do on the FMP next week.

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Weeks 10-15 April 24th-May 26th

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Over the last 4 weeks I have managed to continue editing and cutting down the pre lockdown footage to a length I am happy with using my laptop and Premier Pro at home.  I attempted to improve the sound (there is a lot of disruptive wind sound) however I have had problems with this.  It seems I need to remove more of the sound than I thought and I need some help with this at college.  I've been unable to move forward much with the sound track much without support so have for now, put the footage up on my site as it is, just to give an impression of what the film would have been like as I am waiting to hear when our work is being evaluated and wanted to at least show some of the footage, even tough it is far from completed.

I have made a poster for the film and written an evaluation for where the project is at the moment.

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