Sat dressing for cpr

We had to do some of the set dressing for our Creative project today, our aim is basically to create a girls bedroom with a mirror in. So we set about turning two blank walls that create a corner of a set into an actual space. After basic wallpapering we began by adding a fireplace making one wall a feature wall for our all important mirror. We also cut a whole behind our mirror for the hand through the mirror shot.

We only had limited resources so the wallpaper wasn't very girly, so Joeley Beckett, our art director, started to cut out bits from other wallpaper to decorate the wall with decoupage flowers. My first job was to black out the back of the fireplace, without any black pain I resorted to using black sheets and staples. This may actually work better as it doesn't reflect any light. I helped with sticking down some decoupage whilst the wallpapering was finished and then began to hang drapes. This again is to make the room feel more like a lived in girls room, it also hides some of the dodgier bits of wallpapering. We made sure we were only dressing the relevant parts of the set, keeping in mind buts of the wall will be covered by the bed and some bits wont be in the film at all. I then worked on the curtains, as we had no curtain rail or curtains I impovised some semi closed curtains with a staple gun and some pink material, the challenging part of this was making the sheet look like curtains, I used blue tack to help me shape them a little before letting Aaron finish off the job by covering them with gold netting per out art directors instructions.



Here is a pic of the set before half done
 

and this is it near completion

 

again nearly finished but with the lights off



I then began to shot list our film, we have a full audio visual description but were told we can only use 3-5 shots so have altered our vision a little. Here is our shot list for next week:

Fingers crossed it goes well!

Doc filming, Day 1

The first day of shooting went quite well, it was a hard day, light conditions were
 pretty poor but we got to work at about 11 and spent the first 30mins getting 
settled. Me and our director, Steve went off with the camera to get working, we 
noted down which shots would work for each section of our poetic. Unfortunately
 our Urbexers were not available until 1500 ish so by then the light conditions had
 gone drastically down hill but we were there so we tried to get everything we could. 
I also had a lot of opportunities to use the dolly which was great fun and looked brilliant.

This clip shows brief bits of the kind of footage we got:

Here are a few of my own personal comments on the work that will effect our next
shoot and inform our future shot lists.
The first (practice shot) is good enough by itself. So get it without people in it
Graffiti would be good to get in the context of the room, not just abstract.
Expose for outside and inside on most shots.
Get peacock lighter
More 1 point perspective.
tracking shots work really well!
Chair reflections in better light.
Bathroom with more light
More of the urbexers doing their recording, it looks really nice.

Although that isnt all of the footage that gives a good idea of what we got,
a lot of it is a little dark unfortunately but we are hoping to film more soon!
I will be thinking of more shots and things over the next few days.

Forward Unto Dawn

Halo 4 Forward Unto Dawn is the Live action prequel story of Thomas Lasky of the UNSC Infinity and his first encounter with the epic hero of the halo franchise Master Chief. Fanboys and girls have loved the live action trailers for H3 ODST and Reach but were let down when a potential Halo film was shelved for district 9 (which is awesome anyway). Now finally the prayers have been answered and the result is the 5 part webseries (also shown in film form) that utilises excellent CGI and awesome young talent to tell the story of one of the very first covenant attacks.

The series is set on Circinius IV at the Corbulo Academy where the Hastadi squad train. In this squad is cadet Lasky, suffering with burns from cryogenic training and disobeying orders Lasky is given the chance to leave the academy due to illness. However that would mean leaving his maybe maybe not lover Cadet Chyler Silva played by Narnia star Anna Popplewell. Along with a few other interesting cast members the cadets are training to fight against insurrectionists that fight against the UNSC little do they know the year... 2525, the year mankind comes into contact with the covenant. Crazed religious extremists the covenant come from planets far beyond and are searching for artefacts that they believe to be left behind by gods (Forerunners). The Covenant attack Circinius IV, the cadets are unprepared and so are the tutors, thousands die in seconds as the space elevator evacuating cadets is shot down. After a tense scene lifted more from horror films than from the action genre the pinned down Hastadi squad are about to fall prey to an energy sword wielding elite when Master Chief, one of the last Spartan II's steps in to save them. One of the most brilliant things about the series is the cadets dont have a clue what the Covenant or the Spartans are therefore any noob viewers get to learn along with the cadets!

More stuff happens in the last few issues and there are a lot of little hinted subplots for fans, books, games and all sorts of spin off media to fixate on but if you want to know more I suggest you watch the damn thing, I promise you will enjoy it thoroughly.

I know practically nothing about Machinima Prime except that this cinematic venture is awesome, their, and 343's, attention to the detail in sticking to the games will keep the fans happy and gave the opportunity for some awesome visuals. The covenant weaponry is some of what amazed me most, the needler, plasma pistol and energy sword all looked perfect and deadly, you really feel like you are with Lasky, a vulnerable cadet unlike the games in which you are near invincible Spartans. Not that there is anything wrong with the Spartans, Chief lives up to his epic reputation head shotting jackals left right and centre with his magnum in a true display of Halo genius. Finally we come to the cadets themselves and principally Thomas Lasky, what a legend! Its brilliant to see him set up as he features in Halo 4 as an NPC in such a way that the title expects you to know why Chief and him are so familiar and if you dont its not hard to discover. Lasky is one of the coolest human characters of the Halo series so far and is for sure one of the less over the top, he is believable, realistic and heroic... no wait Legendary.

One of my very small gripes with the series, apart from it not lasting forever, is the music, I really love the track towards the end but feel like it could have been delicately woven in earlier on to give it more impact at the end. I can't really fault it for much else, it is well paced and balanced episode by episode, well acted, well shot and is true to the Halo legend. It is a true success for Halo, 343, Machinima Prime and all those involved. It is to be released on DVD and I will be buying it. If you have any taste or Halo fandom PLEASE buy it too. Its my hope that with enough support and profit this kind of thing can happen more often, and who wouldnt want that?
9.5/10
AXIOS

Research for Stanley tools urbexing Documentary

I have been looking at our location for the Urbexing documentary. The Stanley Tools building is an excellent location to start with and even though it would be great to get some more locations I have been looking into the location and the layout on some Urbexing sites. There are some amazing photographs around that highlight some beautifully desolate parts of the building that we will definitely search for on our reccie and when shooting.

After looking through photographs on multiple sites I found some interesting motifs and visuals to take advantage of in our poetic and final piece.

Firstly the amount of square imagery is staggering, here are a few photographs to show my point.

The floor panels, wall tiles and roofing are all square or rectangles and often have grid like appearances, I plan to use these squares as a visual motif throughout the Doc to make it visually interesting and use them to frame more important subjects.

As far as interesting things to frame are concerned the building is full of interesting bits of old office materials and things used by the company years ago. These items are awesome to look at but for us the most interesting things to shoot will be the Urbexers interactions with the items. Here are some of the things I mean

 Another inspiring photograph I found was this:

To me this rabbit hole kind of perspective is really cool, it would be great to get a shot of our urbexers coming down this staircase as though the audience watching are following them down the rabbit hole into another world filled with abandonment and decay.

It is also nice to take a look at the outside of the building, this image shows that even on the outside the square imagery is inescapable, it would be silly not to use it.

There are also a lot of images of the city of Sheffield from the roof of the stanley tools building and its easy to see why, it looks amazing

I talked to Steve (our director) about the views from ontop of the building and we decided it would be best to capture it in a time lapse so that we see all the lights in the city come on. Although its a little bit irrelevant to our urbexing theme it is one of the most common pictures on the urbexing sites and is therefore important. 

This final photograph is not of or related to Urbexing however it is an illustration of an idea I have for solving one of our shooting problems. Our contributors  the urbexers, would rather not be fully on camera, we can get around this mainly by using selective focus, shadowing and quick cuts however I had another idea....

To shoot the Urbexers with their cameras in front of their faces, this solves the issue of identity but also adds meaning to the urbexers, it shows that they are seeing things through their cameras eye. They are here to photograph and that is how they see the locations and therefore to us they are photographers  the cameras in 

front of their faces is a nice visual representation of this. 

These are the majority of the ideas I will be talking about in my pitch, I will have a section to myself in which I talk specifically about the imagery and camerawork I'm planning!

Photograph sources:

http://1000fights.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/man-taking-photo-.jpg

http://projectsheffield.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/stanley-tools-sheffield-the-roof/

http://www.urbexforums.com/showthread.php/17053-Stanley-Tools-Sheffield-June-2012

http://talkurbex.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3375

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/70906-Stanley-Tools-Sheffield-May-2012

Documentary Idea Conception

We had a lot of ideas for our doc based on our personal interests and friends.
We aimed to think of 2 ideas each so that we would have a lot to chose from
and discuss. My contributions were a doc based around comic books and to
do something reflective about documentary.

In the end we chose the Urban Exploring idea with the Gaveyard idea for a
backup. This is because we think they are the most interesting and would
provoke some nice visuals. We think the Urbexing doc will be more unique
 so that is our first choice. Not only that but we already have a location for
the Urbexing as well as contributors! Time to start researching the pastime
 and looking for some photographs of the location.

MK, Han Solo, World War Z, SHIELD, BSG B&C.

Lots of little news stories for you today!
Warner Bros Announces Mortal Kombat RebootPretty cool to hear MK is coming back to the big screen, it will be led by Kevin Tancharoen who made the online series so it seems to be in good hands. With Assassins Creed, Battleship and Metal Gear Solid all getting films of their own its nice to see a classic Film game coming back!

Han Solo "Open" to Star Wars VII

Apparently sources close to Harrison Ford have said that he is open to doing more star wars films as are all three of them (Mark Hammil and Carrie Fischer) so the whole gang might be back... minus George Lucas. I like that they will appear, it will give the story nice coherence however I hope we aren't getting tiny stories about VII for the next 3years.

World War Z

The first preview of World War Z with Brad Pitt is to be shown soon, the preview for the preview makes it look insane, the fastest and most dangerous zombies ever in a film I can only describe as looking like Die Hard with Zombies... YAY... maybe

SHIELD

Tiny bit of news, shooting begins in January... thats it.

Battlestar Galactica Blood and Chrome

Blood and Chrome is coming in three days!!! Oddly it will be aired as a webseries on Machinima Prime. The series will be in 15 minute parts released over I think 4 weeks before being aired as a film on Syfy and released as a DVD. Its an odd way to release a series but at least we get to see it!

The amazing spiderman 2 news

The Amazing Spiderman 2
There are a few new details and rumours for all you Andrew Gaarfield loving Amazing Spiderfans! Firstly Electro has been confirmed as a villain, which is pretty sweet, secondly Jamie Foxx may play him... unusual but ok, finally there will be a new suit which will be shown of in the 3rd Dimension.... 3D. So pretty cool spidey news all round, I cant help but wonder what the new suit will be, will it be a mechanical stealth suit like the recent comics? Or will it just be a redesign, because we all know how fashion conscious this new emospidey is!