Major Project Research (Character Development)

Continuing the research dedicated to my main character Henry for my short film. He is a Jehovah Witness and to make sure there is no mistake and controversy I wanted to make sure that some of the facts about them are true.

• They don't accept blood transfusions.  Imagine you're in a car accident and you're taken to the hospital. They need to give you blood. Devout Witnesses won't accept it.     

• If you commit what the church views as a serious sin, and you're deemed unrepentant by a committee of elders, you will be disfellowshipped.  Not just kicked out of the church... but disfellowshipped. Which means no one in the church can ever speak with you again.    

• They believe the world's ending soon and only they will be saved.   

• They don't celebrate birthdays. They believe your death day is way more important than your birthday.  

• They don't celebrate other Holidays.   

• They are currently governed by seven dudes.   The Governing Body formulates doctrine for all Witnesses everywhere.   Women aren't allowed.   They don't have any special qualifications despite being able to set policy for millions of followers.   And they're appointed for life.  

• Jehovah's Witnesses are discouraged from getting higher education   Preaching is supposed to be your true calling. College would just get in the way of that. So while you might get away with learning a trade, Church Elders actively discourage you from going to a university.   

• They must read watch tower often and deliver it to doors as they knock on people's doors. They also go around people's house in pairs and is very rare to see one Jehovah's Witness my themselves.

Bibliography:

Watchtower.net, Examining 101 Strange Beliefs and Practices of Jehovah Witnesses. (2016) At:http://www.watchthetower.net/reasons.html

Major Project update - Location and other possibilities

With my production in the shadows in terms of location, I thought I would do a quick update on the location situation.

I needed a student residence house, 4 rooms at least. I was researching where I could find a place to put my delinquents in.  The only location that came to mind that would not only serve me the place and budget was to share my friends Alex and Plamen's house in Maidstone where is was easily accessible and had 4 rooms as well as interesting props to use.


The inside of the house is tight and most of the location would be hard to move about with the camera if the time came to use big equipment such as sound. Up stairs however as 5 rooms, I can imagine turning 2 of them into student rooms matching their characteristics. Some such as Agnus and Robert.

The inside of the house still needs to be further examined and studied for the health and safety forms. As for the outside it reminded me of the outside of the house of the Young Ones. Bricked, old, not particular perfect, but at the same time it is part of the story and feeling of the characters. Dirty, lazy, horrid, and messy.


What the outside looks like:

Inspiration from "The Young Ones":

Major Project update - Character Profiles

In this post I will describing the characters and how I will perceive and view them.


Henry Javerson (Main)

• 32 Years old
• Comes from a religious upbringing 
• Polite and socially awkward attitude
• Worst Jehovah's Witness ever!
• Tried to have an authentic rebellious life when he was young but parents wouldn't let him.

Kevin Bucket

• 22 years old
• Big and Strong
• Plays metal music
• Cool yet rebellious attitude
• Bully

Derek Damons

• 21 years old
• Gamer/ Geek
• laid back, rude attitude
• Kevin's best friend
• Primarily applied to uni to get away from his parents and to be with Kevin.

Robert Sadler

• 20 Years old (Youngest)
• Reader, Schooler
• Softy, sarcastic, and smart attitude
• His only friend around the house is his teddy bear named Gary
• Constantly being bullied by the other housemates.

Agnus McBurns

• 23 years old
• Artest
• Gothic and depressing attitude
• Blank expression
• Paints art on how she sees the world, mostly dull, destructive and horrible.

Major Project Pre Production update (Mood Board)

I decided to update my treatment by making a mood board for my film. This shows what I intend the film to looks and feel as well as some of the inspirations it took to make it.  I opened photoshop and got to work:

From what I have done I tried to show that:

• Is brutally religious.
• It's dark yet funny.
• The characters are messy and rude.
• Each of the characters has a quirk to them that brings out their individualities. E.g. Games controller, Electric guitar, and painting.

With the next presentation coming up I decided to import my mood board into my powerpoint presentation and fill in some colours and weeks to improve it.

The colours represent the mood of the film from start to finish with the main character (The Jehovah's Witness) in mind.

• The light and sandy yellows represent the mood of the main character, he is filled with religious warmth and light but since he is the worst Jehovah's Witness ever not only does he keep on being rejected from every household but they keep bringing down his confidence.

With the other two colours they represent the section when he meet the delinquents.

• Sick green shows how the house deflect on the main character but yet he is changing his outlook on life.
• The black shows that he gives up, he is now going to try and live an authentic life the way he wants to and is going out of control and being just like the delinquents.

P.A.L Productions update (Can each of our films be achieved?)

In our latest meeting we needed to discuss the most important issue, are our films going to be achievable to make and edit within the time frame we got?

We made a detail plan about what we needed and a hypothetical plan on how long our films where going to take to film.

We planed a 3 week chart on how achievable each of the films where going to take to film. From there we even specified on what resources we could share in order to help each other on making our films.

From what we discussed and planned:

Plamen -

• 1 Female lead actress and 1 male supporting actor
• 1 Main location curtesy of Alex
• 1 Secondary location (House in Maidstone)

Alex -

• 1 Male lead actor, 3 male supporting actors and 1 female supporting
• 1 Main location (Roadside) and 1 secondary location (Country road)
• Props include, lorry and police car

Lawrence -

• 1 Male lead actor, 3 male supporting actors and 1 female supporting character
• 1 Main location cutesy of Alex and Plamen
• 3 Secondary locations cutesy of other actors.

The hypothetical schedule:

• 1 Week dedicated to working on Alex's film.
• 2nd Week dedicated to working on Plamen's film.
• 3rd Week dedicated to working on Lawrence's film.

Alex:

We determined that Since Alex was only going to need 3 days to shoot his intro and the scenes with the police officers the rest can be reshoots and making sure his film looked as perfect as it can be.

Plamen:

For the first 2 days, Plamen was going to use them to shoot the intro within his first location. The rest was primarily within the second location and would use the remainder of the week.

Lawrence:

This film was going to take the longest for me to shoot. I planned out having to use Plamen and Alex's house as part of my main location for the house of the delinquents. Since it had more then 4 rooms I could use cleaver camera techniques to move from one location to another. Because I didn't want to use most of Plamen's and Alex's rooms I came up with a cleaver idea that would show the most of my actor's worlds and characteristics on screen. 

I was going to use my own actor's rooms as most of the actors I chose where based on the characters I visualised. It might take a lost of risk assessments but if organised properly I can use the most of all locations to their fullest potentials.

Even though we used the white board to schedule our films out, Alex used an app on his computer to schedule out our films in a more cleaner fashion:

With our hypothetical plan in motion, we have determined that each of our films are in fact achievable. Most of my film takes place in the evening, if organised cleverly and if my actors comply, I can make it so I can film on days we are filming Plamen's film and some days on Alex's film so my film can be done at the same time.

The remaining months with be editing and re shoots if we need to. With the amount of footage that will be gathered, we will have enough footage to submit and draft edit to show Simon our tutor by the day he needs it.

Major Project Research - Directing and Story Telling

Books:
Making Sort Films (The complete Guide From Script to Screen) by Clifford Thurlow.

Directing the Story (Professional Storytelling and Storyboarding Techniques for Live Action and Animation). by Francis Glebas.

The job of any director in the media industry is taking control of the production and crafting it in his or her image. Though the requires a lot more then just merely telling people what to do that is only some of the many tasks that this profession has to offer.

'The director, whatever his modus operandi, will invariably work on the script and his name often finds its way on to the writing credits, something Hitchcock grandly renounced.' Thurlow (2005: 31).

The director is a visionary, and must be a team player if anything goes wrong.  This person is the heart of the whole production, if the director panics them the whole cast and crew will panic and the production will go out of control and will not get completed within the deadline set.

Also what is very important for a director to do is to work with different actors. Some actor maybe ask for requests or other things to have on set at all times in order to work. Even with a likelihood of that happening there are some actors out there who with give you are hard time.

'Actors develop and refine this art; the director like a hypnotist will draw out the appropriate memories to bring a scene to life.' Thurlow (2005: 33).

From the start the director focuses on the script, whenever your idea is created focus on getting as much out of your script as possible. Make sure also that whoever is in your team (most importantly your actors) understands the material as well as the story they will be focusing on throughout the production. To some of them, it is their bible and their guide through the process of a successful completion of another piece of art to be viewed by all who want to see it.

Is there a secret to telling the perfect story? Are there technics and methods to use while constructing a perfect tale? According to writer Francis Glebas, the secret of storytelling is story-delaying as detailed within a book he wrote with a chapter of the same name. He tells of Scheherazade, a legendary queen and storyteller, writer of One Thousand and One Nights.

'Scheherazade used exciting cliffhangers to prolong her life from one night to the next. There's a whole repertoire of story-delying techniques based on the control of the flow of information of who gets to know what, when, and how.' Francis Glebas (2009: 19).


Technique number 1 - Cliff hangers
Within storying telling that is a very useful tool especially for television. When working on a series of episodes some require cliff hangers to keep the audience engaged and tuned in next week to see what happens next. For films it can be tricky, unless some films are based on books which some might require a cliff hanger to introduce the next book and film in the series. For single films with a cliff hanger at the end would require very cleaver writing. Like Inception, the cliff hanger shows the spinning top still spinning indicating that the main protagonist is still in the dream. This confused yet hooked the audience as they quest on questioning either the protagonist made it out of the dream or is still lost in it.

P.A.L Productions update - Working together as a unit

As a production unit, me, Plamen and Alex have to pull together in order achieve each of our films within certain times that we are shooting all together.

So far we have each discussed each other's ideas and plans for our films and had given each other feedback on what could be done to achieve them. We put our heads together and gave each other advice on our stories and how we could improve them. Even if we showed each other youtube clips from shows that describe how we want it to look and feel, we would all understand, like when I showed Alex and Plamen an example of the 'The Young Ones' of when they enter their new house for the first time and the two characters Rick and Vivian fight over who gets the better bedroom.  They can imagine what type of characters I need and what I want them to do within each situation they are in.

We still need to show our ideas better in terms of where we are at now. The last few meetings we have had where by means of helping each other structure and find our stories. Other meetings we engaged with who is going to be doing what on our projects. Who is going to be our DOPs or our Sound? Who are the other members of our crew?

The pictures bellow show how we have developed our ideas and where we are at in terms of our pre production unit and major project construction.

• Roles and things to conceder to input into the Pre Production Package.
• What crew would be needed for my film?

• Showing what my characters where going to be and described.
• To the left shows where we are at in terms of our pre production.

•  In this 3rd meeting we are discussing and planning our equipment.
• Bellow shows my story development and Plamen and Alex are helping me to structure it better from when i last had originally.
• To the left is again where are in terms of the pre production packages.

The Plan:

Our action plan is sorting out who is doing what on the production but each week we will discuss and input feedback on where we are meant to be each week so that way we are on track and accomplish what we need to do within the time that we have now.

Here is a rough template on what I have made for the group so we know hat we have to do and how we can help each other in the process.