First Diploma Session - Director Don.

Today was actually quite interesting, I was introduced to our director that we will be working with for the next couple of weeks. Although, he was involved with a previous project which took place in June which involved the filming of a performance in the BFI project - which was a success. I feel as if I have accomplished and acknowledged a lot today. I learnt a lot of advanced physical work based on film, cast and lighting. First of all, I was shown how to put up a tripod and expand the three tripod legs. Which took me approx 5 minutes.




REGULAR UN-EXTENDED TRIPOD 






A Tripod as small as this could extend out to a tripod as tall as this..

Now can you tell the difference from an extended tripod to an un-extended one?








I also learnt what all of the technical names are for film casting whilst the camera was on role (filming) such as:

• Tilt: The camera lens are moved up or down whilst the horizontal axis is still constant.

• Zoom: The focus of the camera lens are changed, it can be tightened too make the view appear smaller or loosened to make view appear larger. Some camera's have different speeds than others! Beware!

• Pan: Moving the camera from one side to the other e.g from left to right, then right to left.

• Pedestal: Moving the camera up and down without changed the vertical/horizontal axis of the camera. Imagine as if the tripod is a body and the camera is the head, and you are just nodding the camera head up and down.

• Dolly: Stepping towards the target of the scene whilst keeping the zoom the same at all times.

• Truck: Similar to panning but rather than moving from one way to another, this hand-held technique most likely e.g trucks to the left and constantly follows the women down the road. 

It might seem like a lot but seriously its not that far to figure out. Although, all of the above are hand-held techniques. But to make any of the footage look  good the tripod and the camera must be screwed on properly and in a good maintainable stand. Don (Our Director) taught us how to use the controls on the 3.2 Mega Pixel camera.

Heres some of the other equipment we used

3.2 MEGA PIXEL CAMERA "16 ZOOM

• This camera is the highlight of our equipment - we use this enable to capture the footage of the film.
• Our camera was a typical 3.2 mega pixel, but 
• the molecules in the camera was highly clear.

RODE Directional Video Condenser Microphone (DVCM)

• This little handy tool is used to capture audio sound clearly without all the disturbances within the working space. Hence the reason why most films sound proffesional

Using this tool was actually quite interesting, because when the diploma team was testing it out. We chanted "bloody Mary" into the microphone and we attached it to the headphones and it sounded really spooky!

NORMAL SLR 3.2 MEGA PIXEL CAMERA

• This type of camera is specified to capture imagines and most likely does not have a sling fitted to it as it is hand-held most of the time but for some safety issues it may be necessary to attach it.

• We used this enable to capture images around the school of the diploma teams exploring places in which we could start filming in.

We came across places such as:

DEAD END OR NO WAY OUT SCENE

TRAPPED IN THE CUPBOARD SCENE

This spot in the maths room looks perfect for the scenes when the various of students are poisoned in the cupboards by the smell of roses and are surprised by the soundtrack to ring-a-ring-a-roses.

RUNNING SCENES 

This is a running shot and could be used for when a student is running away from danger and is in shock. This particular picture would also look good for a high angle shot.

STAFF ROOM SCENE

These two rooms would be really good for the staff room scene, especially with all of the draws and filing cabinets as the two rebel bullies could ramage through peoples files and look for thing to blackmail people and use their personal info to commit practical jokes on them.

OTHER LOCATIONS THAT COULD BE USED

Locations:

• Balcony outside the headteachers office
• SLC room (Staffroom)
• Detention room (RM 401/402)
• Maths storage room on top floor (*needs cleaning out)
• Corridors: Top science floor, Hall at bottom floor 
• House on off site/on site

We also rehearsed through our scenes and we decided that our horror film is going to be based on improvisational and not a script. Plus it will be more enthusiastic that way because lines and facial expressions will come without practise and it makes us look professional.

Here are the Characters: 

(*cast list)

Character name	Character traits	Year	Played by
Courtney White	Good Girl	2011	Aaliyah Bell
Tammy	Bad bully	2011	Deme Bekir
Dawn	Funny bully	2011	Shenell Poorman
Kimberley	Believer bully (emo)	2011	Jessica-Lily Ellis
Teacher	Ms Graham	2011	Actor
Teacher as child	Bella Graham	1991	Shyanne Watson
Cynthia Walters	Murder victim (unseen)	1971	-
Caroline Warren	ditto	1991	Naomi Mwakamowo

Because, I play a much more logical character, I like to play a lot of mind games. We rehearsed the first scene when Tammy (Deme) and Dawn(Shenell) are the two cheeky bullys. Whilst Kimberley (Me) and Courtney (Aaliyah) are just thinking that they are such immature idiotic attention seekers in detention. This scene went well and I think we got through a lot, although I found trying to find my characters overall personality difficult to create. But then again the character is 
what you make it! 

There was a bit of a hard decision deciding who should take the place as the main character, Courtney (the nerd). They both had to improvise for a mini-audience as to how Courtneys reactions would be locked in a cupboard. I was amazed with Aaliyah's acting skills, she just blew me away with her facial expressions and tone of voice. With the standard of her audition, personally I would have believed that; that was practised before. Because, it was that enthusiastic and great. She is very advanced when it comes to drama, she did not even hesitate to laugh with is quite hard to do with the maturity levels of our generation age group.


Demi's mini audition went well aswell, she was very enthusiastic, but she needs practise with repetitive lines. She kept saying "Oh my gosh!" and "Oh my god!" too many times, which looked unprofessional - that is probably why she did not get the part.


We also played a game where we would have to pass the bottle around and say the months of the year - This is 
practise for us to be able to let one person speak at a time.




Photo of the game:







Here is another photo of Me, Naomi and Demi testing with the camera and looking away for effect:

Today was great and I got a great experience

BYE! THNX 4 READING ;)