Uni work, DRAMA! The idea, the group and the beginning!

Our lesson this week began with a recap of characters that we have observed over the week and developed into fictional characters with fictional backgrounds and futures. There were some great observations within the group, the narratives built around them were really inspirational. I now never think I will struggle for an idea for drama, all I have to do is watch what is around me and create something around it, there is a lot of material for inspiration out there!

I had a lot of ideas for my own, a 19year old student type who bought a box of paracetamol and some teabags. In my mind he was suffering from a hang over and this was his cure, from this I developed a character who perpetually got drunk to keep up a reputation. The story I had planned would reach a conclusion as his teabags run out, a final push that makes him snap and smash his teacup to the ground in anger. After this the story would end, who knows if he changed or not. I had a lot of cool visual ideas for it too and am still excited about it but as a personal project as we have something other planned for our 2 minute project.

Speaking of that project we built our groups this week, unfortunately many of the people I wanted to work with were already in full groups however I ended up with a few guys I have worked with before and a few I haven't. Our group is Producer: Robin Booker, Director: Jordan Deakin, Art Director: Christi Elkins, Camera: Joe Butterworth, Edit: Amy Jackson, Sound: Joel Danby-Irons. I have worked with Joe and Jordan before and I am sure they would agree that both of those project could have been better managed so I thought to save that problem in this project I would take on the production role myself to ensure we got things done efficiently, professionally and on time. In that vein I have jumped right in and made a schedule

04/02	06/02 or 09/02 Me, Joe + Jordan practice shoot. Proof of concept. Location Scouting
11/02	11/02 After lesson, casting 16/02 and 17/02 Shooting Start of Editing
18/02	18/02 Show Annie Rushes
25/02	26/02,27/02,02/03,03/03 Finish Shooting + Editing as we work
04/03	04/03 Present semi finished film to Annie 07/03 Picture locked
11/03	13/03 Hand in.

Obviously there is a lot of wiggle room and I have scheduled shooting early but hopefully this means any major disasters can be worked around. If nothing goes wrong then we will have loads of time to play with and ensure we get stuff right. I uploaded this to the facebook group I created for us and am posting lots of things on there to get our group started.

Jordan has already put a brief synopsis up for his idea, we discussed it in the lesson and would like to try it so here is the basic synopsis:
Working title: A Short Story in Brutality

Film Genre: Drama

Length: 2 minutes

Target Audience: 15+

Synopsis: Dean, a young man has grown suspicious of his girlfriend, Jenny, and fears that she is cheating on him. After walking her to the train station he hangs around to see if his doubts are true. He stalks her as she as she meets her lover, Tom, and follows them back to his apartment. After waiting outside for what seems an eternity for Dean he finally enters Tom’s home where his suspicions are confirmed. He savagely beats Tom in a fit of rage and frustration while Jenny can do no more than sit and watch in horror. After the attack Dean calmly steps up and begins washing the blood off his hands in the sink as if cleaning away his guilt.

Visual Style: this film is like no her dramas of its kind as the whole story is told in reverse, and we see Deans story unfold backwards. As the sound is non-sync then this is possible. The overall tone of the score should be atmospheric. The film will be converted to black and white in post production in a nod to classic film noir productions.

I quite like the idea and something he hasn't included that I am excited about is running the sound in order so that the sound and visuals run in opposite. However its a pretty scary and "out there" concept this is why I have planned an early practice shoot, we can use undressed and basic sets and actors to do a kind of "proof of concept" edit to settle my nerves and make sure that it makes some sense. That is scheduled for shooting this weekend, the camera and audio equipment is booked. I think we are going to use my house undressed and a few of my friends for the practice shoot but we will also be looking at the practicalities of the locations we do use and identifying what we actually want.

After our practice shoot, assuming everything goes okay, I will give the footage to Amy to do a quick reverse edit and we will discuss the project in better detail before casting on monday. Here we will nail down storyboards and a script for the start of shooting on the 16th just 9 short days away. I am being as active as possible in my research and will post my finding soon!

This lesson we also looked at a few films, specifically we watched films that create emotion through techniques other than sync sound. All of these were interesting especially when looking at small character actions that convey emotions. The visual ways you can show emotion will be important for us as without the sound from the same scene playing it will be difficult for us to convey the correct emotions. I have to talk to the director and sound guy about the timings for the film. As it is three scenes it would make sense if the First scene had the thirds audio. The audio will run in reverse chronology however for this to work well we will have to make the first and third scene the same length. Details to be sorted on monday along with a full script.