Lesson 4- First Studio lesson

Today we looked at set building and put it into practice. This was a huge learning curve for me as we literally started with a blank canvas. We learnt how to build the sets including the stands and weighting to secure them. This process was extremely simple but something that was extremely useful to learn for the future. I had never worked on a set nevermind made one so I was learning throughout every step of the way. We had to make sure the set walls were in tact and fix them if they werent with a simple screwdriver or hammer and nail. After all of this we began painting the set with was very satisfying as it felt a lot more complete when we looked back on it. As you can see we ended up creating a pretty good looking set. Unfortunately this isn't ours instead ours will just be a green screen which we will have to measure and create a room from by just visualising it. This brings a lot more difficult challenge during the pre production stages however I am looking forward to having a lot to play with and learn in the post production stages. I am already trying to get photos of George's basement so we can use it as the backdrop in the final edit.

Lesson 3- Workshop Tutorial

This lesson was entirely based around learning how to use the tools and what tolls are the correct ones in different situations. We were inducted in the basement of Sheaf and learnt how to use a drill, electric saw and other vital tools. However the most interesting part has to be the use of the most simple tools and how effective they are in building a set. The tools were simple to use and the session was very useful in teaching me how to build a set. 

Also as a group we worked on our idea and changed it slightly to create a more 'uncanny' film idea. This involved using the doll house Suzannah had and making the entire film within a room in the dolls house. This was an interesting idea as we would have to use green screen. I am excited about this idea as I have never used green screen and do not know how to use it. I am excited to see how this will turn out!

Inspiration for Major Research Project- Skyfall (2012, Mendes)

After watching Skyfall at the cinema on it's release day I thought it was definitely an initial bit of inspiration to help me begin my Creative Project Realisation Major Project Research. Directed by Sam Mendes this film has a certain detachment from the bond we are used to. However as the film itself this is a great Thriller/Action that has helped me to gain an insight into the kind of film I want to look into.

The film is a spy thriller. It has specific elements of a thriller and is unique because of the character and the spy feel to it. Bond is really the developing film collection that has introduced the way spy thrillers are made now. For examle the use of high tech gadgets have become widely used in spy thrillers such as Mission Impossible (1996). This shows how films develop there own element of sub genre and we as an audience can quickly find out what sort of film we are watching just from the distinctive parts in the film such as music, lighting, mise-en scene and props, editing and more. I will be careful when using this in my own major research project.

CPR- Major Project Outline and First Thoughts

For our Major Project Research we will be looking into a specific path within a genre we are inspired from. At first glance this seems a little difficult. Susannah has told us the work load will be huge and that we will have to put a lot of research into our work. So far I have almost froze on this side of the work, although I have borrowed: 'Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond' (Langford), 'Film Genre: from iconography to ideology' (Keith Grant) and 'Thrillers' (Rubin). I hope that these books can inspire inspiration. Although I have looked at different genres such as musicals and dramas I feel that I should really stay away from these as I am creating a musical for my final drama piece and afraid that I may get caught up in the same style of musicals in both modules. I think my best bet is Thrillers as this is a genre that I am most interested in as well as the genre with most history, therefore there is bound to be some sort of specific path that I can take within this side of film. I hope to go into films like Crime thrillers as this is somwthing that I enjoy especially with a twist at the end. I have recently watched skyfall and thought this was a good inspiration within the thriller genre. I will be looking into this more.

Uncanny Practice film- Prop list

Our Proplist so far:
- Empty Gas Canister
- Chair with arms
- Duct Tape
- Long Table
- Torture Tools - Hammer, Spanner, Knife, Drill, Saw
- Light
- Red Dress
- Tattered White Shirt
- Some jeans slightly ripped and worn out
- Fake blood
- Make up (purple, browns and reds)

I expect we may have probelms with some of these items however I hope that this will stay relatively the same for the final shoot.

Moodboard for Uncanny practice film

This is the moodboard I created. As you can see this is a rough draft that I pulled together from images from the internet but I have managed to combine them into the image we are looking for. I have also managed to pull up a list of props that we will need in the final shoot of this piece.

Lesson 2- Photoshop

Today was a photoshop based lesson. I am not very familiar with photoshop and have only ever used it when enhancing the look of my photographs for my photography portfolio, so this was quite a big learning curve for me. Since writing the plotline of the practice idea I hadn't given much thought into the look of what we would have within the scene of it and photoshop gave us a perfect opportunity to look at the style and image of the scene. We learnt how to create a moodboard looking at how tools on photoshop could be used to create a good looking moodboard as well as combine separate images together. I went to the extreme of combining images and tried to create what the scene would look like with images I found across the internet. This was a great way of teaching yourself the image you want and I felt a lot more confident about the look I was trying to grasp with the moodboard to back me up. I decided to compare mine after I had created it with Mark who is also in my group. We looked at the similarities and differences that we had and discussed them thinking about what we would rather have it looking like in the final shoot. This definitely taught me something about directing and art directing. Firstly is there are a million different ways of seeing the same scene and everyone sees it differently so mood boards are a great way to show exactly the image as well as the style you are looking for. I also found out on the directing side of production that presenting your image and style to your production team is so important for them understanding what you want out of the shoot. Just a simple discussion between myself and Mark meant that we now know what we want from this shoot and near enough what it should look like. Even if we can't get the exact image we want. I will be using the moodboard as a way to express to people what I want in future productions to help inform the team instead of just telling them.