Final Report - My Film Roles (Behind The Scenes and Set Design)

Director -
Define: "The director is the creative head for the entire production unit. He or she provides the artistic vision of the production and translates the screenplay or teleplay into the movie or television show." (Gordon, 2002: 36)

This particular role involved me making sure all of the shots and actor direction was my top priority. In terms of collaboration I had to work quite closely with my D.O.P to insure each of my shots were what I wanted.

What I found most challenging about my role was that I had to work with a couple of young and reasonably new talent. I had to make sure that they brought each and every one of their characters out and to show how they were represented in my idea.


'One of the most important attributes of the successful director is PATIENCE. The desire to get what you want, to see it immediately, is like the addict's need for a drug and is equally destructive to the process.  Actors work gradually, adding a layer at a time. Pushing them to deliver or show you a finished character before the preparation has been completed will most often give you a one-dimensional result that is flat and unsatisfying.' (DeKoven, 2013: 167)


Attributes for a good director to use:

• Patience
• A clear vision of what you want to see in your film
• Positive communication Skills between crew and actors so they know what you want
• Peroration, the more you understand and know about the film the more you can visualise and interact more professionally towards your crew and actors

Behind The Scenes

The challenge was to make sure I could use as much of my location I could possibly use. The basement for instance for Agnus's scene was a lucky find as it brought a lot of Angus's gothic nature out. Combined with her obsession with skulls and death symbolisms, with help of my set designer we managed to transform this empty basement into a gothic scary bedroom for my most threatening character.

• Skull to boost the gothic persona  of Agnus's character
• Terry Pratte books in terms of his character Death

• Agnus played by Rhiannon Occhini
• Agnus is a threatening character thats why Rhiannon had a knife with her on set at all times to get into her character.
• Her costume represents Wednesday Addams, a character from the popular gothic show 'The Addams Family'.

• A bloody picture of Trump with a desk made from a stool clovers with a red fabric and decorated with an old victorian clock, eye glass inspired with 'The Series of Unfortunate Events', a word from Harry Potter, and a grail.

• Jesus and the cross to symbolise both the Jehovah's Witness religion and the Christian religion
• The reason for this was to find a way to scare Henry the Jehovah's Witness and to get him uncomfortable.
• The Jehovah's Witness religion does not believe in the cross, so all the more reason why this would make the main character scared or unsettled.

Writer - 
Define: The writer is constructing the story itself, making the script that the whole film or production will follow to shape out and create the film.

This for me was the hardest part as I have a language disorder and so find it difficult to express what I want to say within written form. I often find myself lost in my own thoughts while writing and occasionally loose track of the main point that I want to establish.

For example my first draft script came to an astonishing 30 pages, the majority of it was completely dialogue and had no connection to the genre I was trying to tackle. It was more of a drama than a funny comedy. So I had to sit down and look into what I had to accomplish by looking at writing styles in connection to comedy writer, Ben Elton, one of the writers of my inspiration for this film 'The Young Ones'. Ben Elton is also responsible for writing comedies such as Blackadder which had a somewhat dark and sarcastic way to telling stories from historic periods of England. Yet the satiric comedy element still remained the same.



Editor - 
Define:

What I found challenging was that I was planning on using Adobe Premier Pro, a professional piece of editing software. But due to time constraints I thought I would be more convenient to use Final Cut Pro X.  Not only because it is the piece of editing software that I particularly grown more fond of, however I also had the same software back where I lived so I could work from home if I had to in order to conserve time. Because of this decision I made I knew I had to work on at least one more film for another one of my class mates and just finding time to come into the studio and logging onto a computer that already be occupied by first or second years.

I just couldn't deal with all that so I decided to try and focus at home rather then trying to make it an everyday battle in order to use a software I haven't got much experience with in the first place.


Effects used?

• Flashing effect to give of the sense of lightning in the panic scene.
• Flashback effect to give the right transition to engage a flashback involving the main character's childhood.
• Dry Heat and Focus effects on the flashback to give a sense of the past experience of a person in film.
• The Drop In Transition effect was used in the main sequence to give a comedic and animated effect to the introduction as well as giving off the comedic feel of the film.