Welcome

Welcome moderator!

CHRISTINA TAYLOR
CANDIDATE NUMBER 1899

CLAREMONT FAN COURT SCHOOL

Welcome to my blog!

I worked entirely independently and took on the majority of the work, casting actors from my school and the Rose Youth Theatre, a professional company I belong to outside of school.

My brief was to make a 2 minute long film opening, and I made a romantic comedy opening called Fallen, which can be seen below.

All of my RESEARCH and PLANNING can be found on this blog clearly marked, and listed within the sidebar within the calendar organiser. I completed these tasks despite a change in actor during the editing stage, forcing me to refilm, and even re story board my film opening.

EDITING

The majority of editing was completed on Final Cut Pro X. I used this software when I filmed my final piece, as it was much easier to change exposure and colours on the Final Cut Pro X software. For my Preliminary Exercises, I used YouCut Pictures on my phone.

DIRECTING

As someone who has experience in directing and acting, I had to choose whether I would act in the film or direct. Because I had several friends who were willing to act for free in Fallen, I took a directorial role, and wrote the script as well. I found it easier to implement the ideas I had as a director, as I was also acting as cameraman, allowing me to only shoot clips I thought would work well in my film. As I have acting experience, I helped my actors by demonstrating how they should act and asked them to repeat the way I performed the lines.

CAMERA WORK

I acted as camera man for all the clips, and I used a Canon camera. This gave me easy access to high quality shots, especially as I had not filmed anything more than a short clip on my phone before this project. For the preliminary exercises I used my phone again, as I was simply practicing.

FINAL PRODUCT

 My final product was uploaded to YouTube with the permission of the actors. 

CONSTRUCTION: SOUND

I knew that for my film, it needed to fit a particular sound, like with most rom-coms. After looking at several rom-coms, I decided to look at love songs that were at a medium tempo that were relatively upbeat even if the lyrics weren't as upbeat. I chose Michael Buble's Just Haven't Met You Yet as I felt it resonated with the main character, Katie's problems. However, due to copyright, I decided to ask my friend to cover it, with her buying the rights to cover it and then buying the covered track off her. This worked out well because I was able to change bits of the melody to better suit the film, than if I was to use the original track.

I didn't need too much more sound over this track as I knew I wanted it to keep playing over the top of every shot, with changes in volume to suit whether there was dialogue or not. I added a cafe background track to create the hustle and bustle feel of a real cafe, and then added a text notification to accompany a photo on screen.

After this I was okay with how it sounded but I felt it was missing something. I added a voice over from my actor playing Katie, and was happy with the new effect as the story line was more clean too.

CONSTRUCTION: SOCIAL MEDIA

In order to promote Fallen, I looked at many other websites for official films and decided to create social media for my production company. I chose Instagram and Twitter as my audience demographic showed that they were the main platforms fans of my film would use.

TWITTER:

https://mobile.twitter.com/acorn_theatre

I chose Twitter to upload character based promotions as it is largely used for mainly text posts. It is easy to create tag lines and big questions on Twitter s was ideal for my film opening.

INSTAGRAM

https://www.instagram.com/acorn.theatre.productions/?hl=en

I largely prefer Instagram for promoting films as it focuses on the visuals, and is more for image sharing. This suited Fallen as I felt I could draw people in through varied posts within the account.

PLANNING: CHARACTERS

I have already cast my three main characters, but upon discussing the direction they also wanted the characters to go, we came up with three clear character profiles.

CUPID:

Cupid is traditionally from Mount Olympus, and has the status of God. His moral standing is that he is a pacifist, and believes everyone will find happiness, even if he and his friends have to assist slightly. He has an average age of 300 but on the outside looks 18, or even younger. He is easy going and funny, but is very serious when it comes to his duty. He never thinks about himself and his life, preferring to make everyone around him happy first. Out of all the Gods back on Mount Olympus, he is particularly close with Venus as she saw the potential in him, and is a supportive mother.

KATIE PARKER:

Katie Parker is originally from Earth, and is a mortal in the eyes of the God. She can be feisty but she is mostly sweet and sensitive. She has given up on love as her last relationship turned abusive and she lost all trust in men. She wants to be better with relationships but it never works out. She longs for the perfect guy but doesn't recognise that maybe there is someone just next to her who could give her everything and more.

VENUS:

Venus, another god, and Cupid's mother, is feisty and knows what she wants. She is very assertive but has a sweet spot in her heart for Cupid. She wants the best for her son. She appears much younger than she is as she is also the Goddess of love. She will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

CONSTRUCTION: BBFC CERTIFICATE

Our brief for this part of coursework was to create a film opening. Part of this meant that I had to choose and create a BBFC certificate. I chose the rating PG for my film as it is a light hearted rom-com. This means there is no violence, or nudity. There is the possible 'mild emotional peril' scene but it is not unsuitable for kids over 8.

Once I chose the rating, I took a pg BBFC certificate into photoshop to put my film name in it. This will be inserted into my film before the scenes start.

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

After complications with my main actor, I decided to recast Cupid as a talent from my school. Unfortunately this meant refilming the entire title sequence. However, upon reviewing my first edit, I found I hadn't been able to produce the overall aesthetic of a rom-com and decided to come up with a new concept for the title sequence.

I took the initiative of contacting my female love interest talent to film some scenes at Claremont Fan Court School, as two of my actors are based there, as well as the equipment required. I also took the opportunity of casting a new character, Venus, with another female talent, as she is also a media student, allowing for easy filming scheduling.

I used several shots, such as an arc pan, an extreme close up and a tracking shot. This will make the film very protagonist based as it is entirely focused on Cupid and Katie.

Below are some photos of the talent as Cupid while I am filming.