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TASK 2

Todorov's Narrative Theory

5 stages how to tell a story

  • Equilibrium – Sets scene, shows normality

  • Disruption of Equilibrium – Often chaotic

  • Recognition of Equilibrium – Character recognises change needs to happen to fix disruption

  • Attempt to repair the equilibrium – The attempt to put things back to normal

  • New Equilibrium – Resolution of disruption. Everything is fixed, some sort of normality returns but the characters normally change (Like how Luke in Star Wars sees things in a different way and now is a different person.

 

 

FMP Idea Narrative Theory

  • Equilibrium – Teen photographer is taking photos

  • Disruption – Finds a vintage camera

  • Recognition of Disruption – Finds out it has a magical power

  • Repearing Disruption – Uses the camera to his advantage

       New Equilibrium – Enjoys using it after he finds out about the magical power

Green Screening / Keying

As part of learning film, what every film student should be taught and should know to some extent as well as have some experience using it, is green screening. Most films today have some sort of Green Screening involved so it's important to know how to use it correctly and know how it works.

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Lighting is also very vital when green screening, because you don't want any shadows behind your subject, otherwise to key out the green screen is a lot harder when the green almost turns to black behind the subject, making that part of the clip unusable unless you mask that part out, which is what you don't want to do. The best and most simple way to eliminate any shadows is to use three sources of very bright lights facing the subjects. One light straight on, and one on each side also facing the subject so in total you have three lights.

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The other gear you need is a tripod to put the camera on so the camera is stationary and doesn't move, other wise the green screen will not work properly and will look like the background is fixed on the camera and not natural behind the subject. Another very important thing apart from the three things I have said already, are clamps. Without clamps to clamp down the green screen, it'll make the green screen very creased as it's not stretched out, causing unwanted shadows. By using these clamps, it stretches out the green screen and makes sure there aren't any shadows visible, or to the point where if they are still there, it doesn't matter because they're not to dark to not use.

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We set all the equipment up together, then proceeded to shoot some stuff in front of it to then try and key out later in Adobe After Effects. Here is one of the shots I got of Leah which I chose to then edit...

Editing:

Behind the Scenes:

(ALL PICTURES KAI TOOK)

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Equipment

Equipment when making a film is obviously one of the main things that makes up making a film. The choice of equipment and how you use it can change the outcome of your end film drastically depending on how you do it.

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When choosing the equipment that I was going to use, it was pretty simple as I chose to use my own camera with lenses and microphones. Lighting was the only thing that I don't have much access to, and because I didn't want to borrow some really big lights from the college and bring them all home, I decided to use some smaller very bright industrial lights to get some of the lighting that would have been through windows so I could get nice and bright natural light when outside was very cloudy and dark. I didn't want to use a stabiliser for any of my shots throughout the film, as I prefer the natural slightly shaky hand look from a camera instead of a robotic smooth look.

The equipment list is as of follows:

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​Camera: Canon 750d

Lenses : 18-55mm and 55-250mm

Lights: Industrial Flood Lights

Microphone: Rode VideoMic Pro+

Editing Software: Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop

Greenscreen

Neewer Tripod

Primary Research

Primary Research is one of the most important parts of doing research for your film, which is why it was necessary to do some for my own film. I sent out a questionnaire to 17 people and they all responded equally and fairly to the 7 questions that I had on the questionnaire. Here are some of the screen shots as well as the answers that I got from those 17 people. The results from this would determine some of the aspects that I want to put into my film, for example, if an idea I had wasn't popular, I would know the answer before I go ahead with production.

So from the results, I can see exactly what the target audience might be, as well as what they want from a short film when talking about one similar to what mine will be. I found that 12/17 people like to have some sort of dialogue in a short film, so because of this result, I had to change my film and script a little bit so more dialogue was used, as my original idea was just going to be music and sound effects without any dialogue. Another 12/17 people also said that they preferred short films to be around 8-12 minutes, so that is something to keep in mind when writing the scripts and making up the storyboards and shot lists. The 6th question being "How would you want to feel after watching a short film?" was one that was very important towards me so I knew how to end my short film on a note where the majority of the audience would be happy about how it ended. Although only 7/17 people voted for the ending to be empathetic, 5 said Happy and 5 said Joyful, so I will have to include some of those within the ending, but mainly be empathetic as that was the leading vote in that question.

Location Scouting

Having my film be about someone who was going on a sort of small adventure taking photos, using different locations is very important and something to always think about when making my film. I found that the best place to go and do the main shooting that wasn't at my house, was down by the Garrison due to there being a lot of green-land making it very photogenic which is what I liked. Different locations other than the Garrison was my own house,  being mostly my own room, kitchen and living room, as well as the storage room in the back. Below you can see the different locations I decided to use in my film (these pictures are actually the ones that I used in the film itself as I liked them a lot).

Scripts and Shot Lists

My script for the film is mostly a lot of directions and actions for the actor to do as there isn't much dialogue for the actors to say. The reason for this is because I wanted to bring emotion to the audience without too much voice action and more visual action instead.

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The shot lists I want to do in a way where I could see straight away what is meant to be happening in the current scene so when I come to shoot that scene, I know what is meant to happen and from there, I can choose what angles I want to do, without having to follow my own guide lines from where I might have put the camera to get a certain angle I already wrote down before. 

Song Choices / Research

From the questionnaire, I found that almost everyone said that music was important to tell a story within a short film. So from there I knew that I had to put music in it, and either way I was going to anyway because most of my film originally was going to have it so it's kind of a win-win situation. For my film I wanted to find something that wasn't too fast paced or too slow placed, and wanted it to fit the mood right. Searching through many songs and playlists, I had written down a few songs that I could've used; "Right Back Where We Started From - Maxine Nightingale", "Mr Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra" and "Photograph - Ed Sheeran". I then was searching through some of the Carpenters songs as I accidently came across one of their songs called 'Heather' and it had the right kind of pace and feel I was looking for but wasn't quite right. So, after searching through quite a few of their songs, I came across "(They Long To Be) Close To You" which was the right pace and feel that I was going for which will bring the audience into the film and gain their attention, as well as make them feel what the actor is feeling.

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