PLANNING: SHOT LIST

Shot List

My partner and I, have created a shot list in order to help with organising and planning each scene so its as productive as possible. I believe this is a key stage of planning and is vital is making sure you produce the best and clearest piece of film.

RESEARCH: OCR EXAMINER REPORT

Examiner report

As I am planning and starting the construction of my own short film, I have researched previous examiner reports in order to produce the best possible piece of work and also see where previous work has strengthened and weakened, in order to learn from this.

After finding this, I am now a little more confident I will be able to produce a clear short film in which the examiner will be able to see that I have tried to use a number of camera angles and perfected my editing.

PLANNING: DAISY

Character profiling: Daisy 

In our short film, we have made sure that Daisy's face is only revealed at the end, in order to encode to the audience that something isn't quite right and to help build climax. Because of this, it is even more important for the clothing of the character as it  helps the audience to decode more about her personality. We dressed Daisy, in a short denim skirt with black tights, and a collared white top, as at the beginning she is seen as young, happy and in many ways a stereo typical teenager who wears the latest fashion. 

However ;she is an example of strength and courage which is beyond her years, because she has decided to channel her illness in a positive and as possible normal life while maintaining her scrapbook.The audience do not find out that Daisy is ill until the end, and by doing this we inject a huge pathos into the film.

An audience seeing our central character Daisy, wearing a hospital gown and seated on a wheel chair with drips attached to her body would mean the audience would encode this as though she is a very ill girl with a serious illness. The preferred reading of our representation is that the audience feel sympathy for her as the have decoded the messages in the way in which we have intended. For Stuart Hall, Reception Theory, involves audiences coming to there own conclusions about meaning in text, however I believe this text is likely to underpin melancholic emotions.

PLANNING: TREATMENT

Treatment Dreaming Daisy

 Daisy is a typical 17-year-old girl, happy, bouncy, determined and full of life. Like every other teenager, she has ambitions, plans and hopes. One day, she knows that she will fall in love, have her first proper kiss, have a make-over, own her own pet puppy, dare to skinny dip, have a wild slumber party with her friends...all of the dreams of a girl who lives life to the full and whose imagination, warmth of spirit and gutsiness will make her dreams come true.

Daisy carries out each of these activities, such as falling in love and and going to the beach. This always shows her strength and growth of relationship with her best friend Elli, who becomes Daisy's companion. 

However, the audience does not know one key fact: that Daisy has recently been diagnosed with cancer and informed that she only has limited time to live. Daisy challenges the cancer and starts her own personal scrapbook, filled with little things she hopes to achieve before she enters hospital for good. 

As Daisy fulfils each of her dreams, turning the pages of her bucket list scrapbook, so the pages turn and the days in her life draw towards a close, making the finishing of the scrapbook a metaphor symbolising the drawing of her life towards its end.

It is only in the final moments of the film that earlier hints and intimations of the seriousness of her fatal condition make sense to the audience who realises suddenly that for Daisy, time is running out.

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

Filming- BEACH SCENE

My partner and I, took a whole day aside in order to go to the beach to film a very important scene. We bought the tripod and camera with us, and took the equipment to my beach hut, which was perfect for not only insuring all the equipment was safe, but also gave a personal touch to some of the shots filmed.

In this scene we wanted to make sure that we saw a daring side of Daisy yet also contrast this with calming. The agenda of the day was to shot the "skinny dipping" scene, which was a key aspect of the scrapbook. Within this short action we managed to shoot different shot types such as a close up. We were extremely happy with how it came out, and through editing it gives the connotation of Daisy being free.

We also made sure we filmed different aspects of a trip to the beach, such as the birds, boats and beach huts; all creating a calming vibe. We also featured Eli in the filming process, Daisy's best friend who comes with her on a majority of her scrapbook, which again helped to add the atmosphere.

The only problem we had when filming, was the wind. We managed to overcome this as the footage is now on mute with the audio music in the background.

I have made a GIF to display some of the photos I took on set.

PLANNING: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS ON NARRATIVE

LEVI STRAUSS:

Drama is about conflict. opposites can be equally powerfull-creates the tension the interest of the powerful forces that clash all naratives could be reduced down to binary opposites hero vs villainconflict propels all narrative conflict can only end with resolution.

This applies to us in our film as there is the conflict between who is the nice guy and who deserves the beautiful girl. Although we do not directly have the 'nice guy' and the 'player', have direct conflict with one another, but the clash is highlighted upon with the 'player' taking credit for the 'nice guys' notes, as well as him changing his personality on the date with the 'princess' and becoming rude.  

As we have to come to a conclusion of this conflict, the reveal of the true and worthy 'nice guy' is revealed, to both the audience and the girl herself.

VLADIMIR PROPPS 

 Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analysed the basic plotcomponents of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.

Propp suggested that every narrative has eight different character types, such as:

The Villain - Fights the hero

The dispatcher –one who sends the hero out, and makes the villain’s evil known

The (magical) helper –the sidekick who accompanies and helps out the hero

The Princess or the prize – the reward for the hero, what he is trying to save or acquire, usually to the villains dismay.  

Her father – gives the task to the hero and identifies the false hero.

The donor – prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object

The hero or victim/seeker hero – reacts to the donor, weds the princess.

False hero – takes credit for the hero’s actions, or try’s to marry the princess. 

 Where short films differ from full-length feature films, obviously in the length but also they have a twist so characters are not always who you think they are there roles may shift in the course or the narrative a hero might turn out to be a villain or vice versa. This is true in our film as the characters are not what they seem at first. 

There are likely to be a short range of characters in a short film like mine and so it’s unlikely to find the range of characters, as in Propps complex plots. My short film for example has four: the hero, the Villain, the princess/prize and the false hero. 

Propps theory  is useful to us, as we have clearly have distinguished character profiles. Although in our film we reverse the roles in the audiences eyes making the original hero into the Villain. At first the audience see "the player", appearing to leave love notes scattered around a library for 'the princess', attempting to lure her in, but this is soon exposed as false when the reveal of the real hero. This play on roles is effective in a short film as the audience do not have long enough to form a connection to a character. 

The main advantage of having very clear cut roles in a short film is that audiences need to grasp the character very quickly within the first minute but they characterscannot afford to be over simplistic because that might mean sacrificing the chance for enigma or the twist.

ROLAND BARTHES

Has created five different code, but I have looked into two that have links and parallels that would work with my short film and short films in genural. 

 Hermeneutic code- CSI solving idea getting clues hasn't been explain fully needs solving resolving all links all loose ends need tying up mystery unraveled to makesatisfied audience. What drives narrative our desire to see the mystery explained. 

Proairetic code- domino effect this leads on to this which causes this. Explains plots which are a series of linked events where an action leads to another action.  The audience is curious about the result of each event what is going to happen as a result of what just happened. 

 Our film has a proairetic code, as each scene effects what happens in the next. It does this in terms of character relationship, setting and how the audience feelabout a certain idea or character.

TODOROV

Equilibrium status quo things as they are stable 

then something happens- dis equilibrium unbalance someone corrupts something else state of confusion.

have to deal with the problem- acknowledgment

resolve the problem -Resolution

 New equilibrium 

PLANN: ELLI

Character profiling: ELLI

When character profiling Elli, it was important to show her as Daisy's companion, and her main qualities needed to be shown through action and visual.

As Daisy's face is not seen throughout the short film, its important that we feel emotions through Elli. One key scene featuring 

PLANNING: AUDIENCE RESEARCH

Audience Research

My partner and I have researched our target audience using pinterest. We believe our audience will be teenage girls, and using pinterest we have been able to use different qualities to build up our audience profile.

CONSTRUCTION: SOUNDTRACK

Soundtrack

All our music is original and written specifically as soundtrack for our short film. Two songs with fitting lyrics anchors the films meaning moving from joy to pathos. 

Jess sings into the recorder and we laid the track in iMovie.
Jessica is in the sixth form of our school and we commissioned her to do our singing. She has also posted this on her instagram below posted.

Lyrics:
She didn't want it all, 
Because she never had it,
Though her dreams stood tall,
She'd never have it,
And she knew too well,
That it was just a dream. 

Chords:

C, G, A, F

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

Filming- FINAL SCENE

Today we filmed the final scene in the short film. It was important to make the footage as realistic as possible, and as it is a sensitive subject approach it respectively.  


There were a few problems we approached when filming, such as making our surrounding look hospital like, as we were unable to obviously film in a real one. We used our schools gym, which had a plain wooden floor. We also had a problem with the cameras focus for close ups which were vital pieces of filming.

After uploading the footage we discovered we were unhappy with the footage, and are now  hoping too refilm. We have now decided we are going to have to insert footage of the outside of a hospital to help with the narration, but also use a different camera which specialises in close ups. We have treated todays filming as a learning curve, and are defiantly going to learn from mistakes in the future.