Ancillary Task: Film Review

Audience Feedback

We had our 2nd screening of our film 'Prodigy' and we gained some feedback from our class peers on how they think we improved from the previous screening and how we can develop it further.  

Please feel free to make comments on our short film the following questions are just guide lines.

What would you change?


Who do you think our target audience is?


Where do you think you would watch this film? (arthouse etc)

Can you follow the narrative?


What do you think of the actor's performances?

Thank you very much

Colour Solution with Regards to Real Media

As previously stated on the blog, we have had various issues with the colour of our footage. Our main location for our film showed up much darker than anticipated to the extent where the characters features were hard to define. After thoroughly searching the Internet for a resolution we trialled colour correction, negative tone and having the film in sepia.

However, none of these helped the mood of the film, so we turned to our original inspiration, Shane Meadows. Through secondary research, we found that his first feature length film TwentyFourSeven was in black and white and also shared the same genre are Prodigy.

 Although not formally stated, it can be argued that he did this to pay homage to Martin Scorsese' Raging Bulls. However, We have another reason for using this stylistic technique. In this day and age, black and white not only has themes of nostalgia attached to it but also anachronism. As our film passes through several states, past,present, future and even conditional he chosen color scheme goes hand in hand with the subject matter.

Parental Consent Form

This is what we asked both of our young actors to sign as to allow them to appear in our short film.

Parental Consent for Photographic/Film Use of Children under 18 years of age I, (adult’s name) ____________________________________________________________________
of (address)________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
being the child/children’s parent or legal guardian, hereby give permission for
Zapp Production Company to take and use publicity photographs/film of
(child/children’s name/s) _________________________________ Age of child__________________
______________________________________________________ Age of child _________________
______________________________________________________ Age of child _________________
for upload to Dunraven Blogger and youtube channel where they may be viewed by the public.
I also consent to use of the photos for publicity, marketing, and advertising for Zapp Productions, for publicity, marketing, and advertising.
I agree that the photos/film may be combined with other images, text and graphics and
be cropped, altered or modified in any way which Zapp Productions deems appropriate.
I consent to the provision of this form and the details within it to be stored on Zapp Productions’ private database.
I understand that the child’s/children’s name/s will not be given to press or public without my consent. I also understand that I may cancel this permission in writing, and that Zapp Productions will take all reasonable steps to ensure that the photograph/film is withdrawn from future use.
I further understand that I shall receive no remuneration for this assistance.
Signed: ___________________________________________
Date: _________________

Narrative structure problem and solution

After a second unofficial rough cut, i found that audience members still didn't grasp the story even with all the footage. I found, common in infamous films, that the original concept of the film had changed, and therefore the original ending didn't tie up as many ends as thought it would. Originally, we were to have the brother portrayed as a christian chauvinist, trapped in a 17 year old body, but this didn't come across on camera. In order to correct this, I felt only two doors were open:

1. adjust the script to tell the story rather than show it
2. subtly, through the use mise-en-scene (a crucifix around his neck) show that Stan is a practising Christian

However, as time was against me and the actors were reluctant the film I came to the conclusion of finding a third door. This opened to the world of editing. As Stan wore earphones in the scenes, I will add gospel music over the footage, as if diagetic, which will connote his religion. If this does not work, as plan b i will have a stand in for the character of Stan holding on his crucifix around his neck. This is commonly done in feature length movies, which has once again acted as an inspiration for Prodigy.

PENSIVE FLASHBACK

Initially, the flashback scenes were to be of both actors in a previous time, enjoying the each others company. However, with the help of real media, I thought it would be a better idea, and a easier concept to grasp for the audience, if the flashback was to consist of the characters when they were younger.

Generally, film, television and even video game flashback troupes are that to a younger self of the present character onscreen after reflection in the mirror or a dream. This essentially transfers memories from one character to another allowing them to see from their own point of view. Evidence of this can be seen in such shows as

• Mad Men,  in the first episode of season three where Dan flashes back to how he was born/adopted-although not his own memories as he is called, " a prostitute's worst fear"
• A rather interesting case occurs in Final Fantasy VII as a crucial part of game's story. The heroine Tifa enters the catatonic hero Cloud's mind and helps him sort through his muddled memories. Together, she and Cloud (his subconsciousness, really) go over experiences they shared in the past to determine what memories were real, which were invented, and which were implanted.
• the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In order to achieve this, i had to cast new characters that were quite young. The difficulties surrounding this would of course be parental consent for which i drew up forms for their parents to sign.

After, some deliberation, a drama teacher and i decided on the following actors.

Jacob Payre, 11 younger Stan

And

Junior Kisombe, 11 younger Mitch



Actor problem and solution

Unfortunately, the actor who played Mitch felt uncomfortable with the Islamic attire of the Dish Dasha that I wanted him to wear for the flashback scene. The original narrative, had the character of Mitch wearing the dish-Dasha half way home then changing into jeans wear his brother spotted him, hence sparking off the argument in the pub.

however, I was unable to go through with this plan and came up with the idea of his brother spotting him with a Muslim girl near his house. This way the visuals are kept as close to the script's meaning as possible and the reasons for Stan's tension can be left slightly more open to audience interpretation. i think that this slight problem has helped me with regards to creativity, as i was able to incorporate another actor which allowed me the chance to experiment with multiple shot types that were closed off to me in the conversation scene between the brothers.

The actor playing the Muslim girl is Fatima Mohammad

She is 17 years old and is a practising Muslim. this helped a lot as she was able to give her opinion as to the character of Mitch which has helped with validity of his persona. Not only this but with her being the same age as Shola, the actor, the audience can experience a sense of identification and hopefully even ship for them to be together.

Production Logo Ideas

For our production logo, we related to real media conventions. Firstly, as our genre was social realism, we sort inspiration from Warp Films best known for This is England.

We loved the simplicity of the colours scheme juxtaposed with the complex image. Something like this is a great reference for our final outcome. The use of an onomatopoeia makes the production company easy to remember and manages to keep the genre of films created by the company broad, which is something we need to out a lot of thought into to not single out audience members. However, it is very rare that they show their logo at the beginning of a film, which gives them a sense of mystery that we want to steer away from.

Another logo we were inspired by was Spyglass Entertainment.


The visuals are very clean cut, which in turn positions the audience to feel likethey are going to watch aclean cut film. To do this, we will need to master After Effects through the use of online tutorials to achieve the finish we want.

Editing: Colour Correction

After our first day of filming, we started to capture and edit straight away. We liked the ambient lighting that the street light created within the pub, but it gave the interior a purple tone on camera. To try and resolve this problem I used color correction in Final Cut, as to fade down the harsh shades of blue and red.

Problems and Solution

After finding our new actors, we were initially due to film straight away, however, due to unexpected snowfall, school was closed and the pipes at the pub had frozen, which set us back a few days. We are now scheduled to film all the scenes in the pub this week and this weekend all the scenes in the house. Therefore our target will be to have all our footage by the 13th December.

New Script

As we changed the character's relationship and location, I had to adapt the script. Were going to give the audience a sense of dramatic irony, as any good drama does, as we will know that the younger brother is muslim, but when it comes to the conversation scene in the pub, we find that he is trying to shield is identity from his brother.
here is a sample:
The pub is a little dirty and run down, if there is ever a cleaner, he is not there now. We can almost smell the odour of the footballs fan's beers. As we pan through the pub we see that is quite busy. MITCH is awkwardly sitting alone on a small table. STAN effortlessly glides through the pub with two pints of beers in his hands. His eyes are focused on his, 'golden- boy' and the camera follows him to his seat. MITCH begins to become less stiff.

STAN

Here we are, get that down ya.

MITCH

Cheers (muffled)

STAN begins to gulp down the beer instantly before MITCH even replies. MITCH strokes the beer gently, contemplating whether to drink it or not. STAN glances over the top of his already half empty glass at MITCH and realises something is wrong.



STAN

I know what you’re thinking.  Listen Mitch, mum/

MITCH

I'm not thinking about her Stan

STAN

She would of wanted us to keep on going as if/

MITCH

 Stan can you please stop I've I've just...well I've decided to give up the drink. (Quietly) that's all

There’s an awkward silence. STAN looks confused

STAN

Ey? What’s brought this on then? We did jus' win MITCH...go on Mitch, its Cors, light beer

He winks

MITCH

I'm not on a bloody diet I just don't feel like drinking anymore dad, not now, not ever.

STAN

Alright then, more for me.

Filming: Solution

Our solution to this problem was to tweak our storyline and script slightly, so instead of presenting a Father-son relationship, we would show the relationship between brothers. We already had a strong knowledge of what we were looking for when it came to the portrayal of the characters. Such films as Dead Man's Shoes.

This film  Showed how brothers are rarely presented as having the same personality types. This concept put us in the right direction, casting wise. We will then be able to cast around our age group from people within our Sixth Form, which will give us the stability we need to shoot. We have also accessed in such films as Brothers, that it is almost a cinema trait to have "brother", not related. This will be able to visually aid our storyline, as we can highlight the cultural clash, if the brothers are foster brothers or one is adopted, bringing in themes of social stigma.

Although we might have been set back location and timing wise, It has been a eye-opener to the world of short films. As they are usually short in only one or two locations, our initial ideas didn't really follow the conventions of one. Now, we will shoot primarily at our Pub location, who signed a filming contract, and perhaps have a flashback to other location and time. This will eliminate any issues of the audience not connecting with the characters. 

We will, of course, have to work harder to show that the other brother has higher status, but this will all be shown through the body codes of our actor and the new script.

Presentation: Prodigy Short Film

This is video of our Presentation.

How did it go?

Overall we think that our presentation went well, in relation to sayingthat we felt we highlighted key points within our idea and the portrayla of our film. Although due to actors availability, we were unable to present our final shooting schedule. We were also unable to play our animatic due to it being on lock which was a technical error and so we didnt tend to this problem till after our presentation. We were able to give our audience an overview into the play and what it was focused on.Fortunately, everything else is organised including the weather forecast and sunset times for the next two weeks, this way when the actors tell us their days of availability, we will be able to just slide them into the schedule.

We were both slightly nervous when presenting our final idea, but because we think that our outcome will be strong, we were able to articulate our ideas clearly

Any Improvements?

The things we could improve on in the future is getting to the point much quikcer and also ensuring that we are more organied when presenting our pitch. we do think we could have extended on many aspects of our play such as the animatic and audience research and how it helped us get the idea that we have. We will ensure next time to have the presentations on one slide rather than two separate slideshows as this proved to be a difficult transition.

Presentation Part 1 & 2

We created our Presentations separately. In this we mean that Channan had parts that she would be talking about and Vivienne had parts she would be talking about. Due to time limitations we chose to create our presentations in this way and then combine them both once we have finished each of ours individually. 

Here is Vivienne's:

Prodigy prezi

View more presentations from viviee.

Here is Channan's Presentation:

Prodigy Presentation

View more presentations from Chanz Darlin.

Shooting Schedule

When coming up with locations for the house scene, we found it very differcult as none of the crew had 'boy-like' bedrooms. so to resolve this, we are going to use two houses for Stan and Mitch's house, both mine and one of the actor's, to make it look more authentic.

Saturday 20th November -

2pm

Vivienne's house

Run through of script with actors


Monday 22nd November -


3:45pm


Harvey and Rusell pick up at Streatham Station


4:00pm


White Lion Pub introductions and icebreaker


4:04pm


Sunset
trial run through of pub scene with lighting


Friday 26th November -

3:00pm

Harvey and Russell pick up from Streatham Station

3:15pm

48 minutes before sunset
 Pub scene filming


Saturday 27th November -

2pm reshoot day

120 minutes of sunlight
Pub scene

 Sunday 28th November -

1pm

Crystal palace Stadium scene
light scattered showers


Tuesday 30th November -

5:00pm

outside of Russell's house


Saturday 4th December -

 12pm

Harvey and Russell pick up from Oval Station

12:15pm

Mitch's bedroom (Vivienne's house)


Sunday 5th December -

1pm

Stan and Mitch house scene (Russell's kitchen and bathroom)

Filming on Location Contract

I drew up the contract between us and the Pub managers, as through my secondary research I found that if we didn't have permission, we could create an awkward situation and be escorted off the premises.

There were a couple of disadvantages that we had to take into consideration before finding the perfect pub such as:

• lack of control over the environment- people in the background trying to get in the shot
• finding a real-world location which matches the requirements of the script

As our filming equipment isn't very discreet, and through good practice, we went location scouting although getting permission was very hard to find, but we eventually found a great pub, The White Lion, as pictured, which we through had the best look for what we are trying to achieve.

We were very lucky to escape paying a fee as we have a very small filming crew.

Here is the contract that permits us film on location:

Shot List

As a group we came up with a shot list with broke down the complex story narrative into simple breaks to see how it would plan out.

Weather Forecast

Although we did want to portray London iconography, and we wanted the British audience to identify with our film, we didn't want there to be to much rain as it is that season.  We also didnt want any unexpected weather outbreaks that might put a halt to our filming and progression. The weather could affect the continuity of our film if we were to film in different weather conditions.

So we are planning on filming around the rain showers. In order to do this, we had to get the weather forecast and match them with our actors availability.

Naming Our Film..

We have decided to name our film Prodigy.Coming up with the perfect title is crucial so we deliberated over it for sometime. It had to role off the tongue but have meaning. When considering appropriate titles, we thought about:

• Father and Son
• The Prodigy
• Prodigy

we thought that "Prodigy", touched upon both themes that we will be trying to present in our film as well as simplistic. The definition of Prodigy, (referenced by wikipedia, dictionary.com): an unusually gifted person who excites admiration, religious or spiritual themes are usually connected.

Mitch is the centre of Stan's world, and holds all of his affection. Although not particularly gifted, in the sense of the tangible, he can be seen to have a spiritual gift; as being such a young person yet striving for a difference in his personal and spiritual life. As well as this, the word itself is a noun, so unlike our other options, can be directly linked to our protagonist as a personal name.

Our Short Film Prodigy

This is Our Animatic of our Short Film: 

Prodigy 

.

This is our animatic version of our short film, Prodigy. We made this in order to help us have an idea of final outcome and what would work and what wouldn't.