Days 3 and 4 on set

The last 2 days shooting were a little more difficult than the first due to people being ill or not able to turn up so there was a lack of hands on set. This meant I was on camera for most of the time, helping setting up the camera itself and tripod, helping with the framing and easing the work load of others. In-between takes I collaborated with Luke Hall, the sound recorder, making sure I knew what he was recording and ticking off things on the sound list.

We improvised a few shots due to the locations we were in as well as modifying the script a touch, with help from the actor’s improvisations but we loosely followed the sound list to our best intentions. Due to the location we were on however, we did write up a list of sounds that will be recorded off set along with some foley sounds at a later date.

Day 1 and 2 Shoot

The first day of the shoot was revolving around the first scene of the script in Encliffe Park. Our whole group was there with our actress Ellie (playing Abby) and we got to work straight away. Our producer, Ellen, had already visited the location earlier in the week and in combination with our director, Luke.F’s, shot list notes, we started filming straight away. However, due to the lack of dialogue in this particular scene, being on sound meant recording atmospheric sounds around the location with the sound recorder Luke.H. An issue we found was the wind was very strong that day so we couldn’t get a lot of good stereo recordings of the park, but we did get a few along with wildlife sounds (birds) and child’s laughter which I could use in sound design to portray happy emotions (like in the end scene). I will review these captured sounds with Luke later in the week in case we need to re-record some of them or get more sounds from that location at a later date.

The second day of filming was in the house and due to the time limit we had in there and the amount of shots we needed made the day a lot more hectic so I had to do a lot of the sound recording myself, as well as help out set up cameras, and carry equipment around. However we did numerous takes of the scenes we needed to get at different camera angles and compositions in which time I also recorded 3/4 sections of the same dialogue which will allow me to select the best one in post and use it with the in conjunction with the variety of shots. I also recorded a few non-diagetic sounds such as the door opening and closing, a bag being thrown on a table, and just the general sounds of the actors walking within the room’s atmos. I am currently review these sounds to check for quality, renaming the files on the Marantz and writing up a list of sounds we still may need to record referring to Luke’s sound list.

My role as sound desinger

My role within our drama production group is the sound designer. It will be my job to create foley sounds, do additional dialogue recordings, edit and process the recorded sounds and create the final soundtrack for our piece. This job will require me to work closely with the director, editor and sound recordist so I know exactly what sounds I am working with and what they want me to produce as the final cut. The director will be working with me frequently at sound design sessions to give his input into what they want the sounds to be like and where. This teamwork can be done through directors notes, my sound design notes and rough edits/rushes of the sound, however I believe if we work side by side we can always be on the same page and understand one another's ideas to minimalise the risk of something going wrong due to lack of communication. The sound recordist will give me a list of the sounds that have been recorded and we will collaborate to determine which ones need to be used as raw sound, ones that need to be edited in some way and also sounds that need to be created. Finally the editor and I will collaborate in regards to the narrative and sequencing of the soundtrack and making sure that it will link in well with the video, this will most likely be done through exchanging rough cuts with one another, as well as notes on timings in the sequence and syncing the audio/dialogue.

As our project is a drama piece most of the sound recorded will be in-sync with the video to keep the realistic convention apparent for the duration of the film which could potentially raise some issues with the levels (loudness) of some recordings over others. This will be one of my main jobs, to edit and adjust the levels of different sounds to create mood/atmosphere and attempt to manipulate the audiences emotion. I will do this by keeping the dialogue in the script at the standard audio level of -12/-6 (excluding specific circumstances e.g non-diegetic audio) with an underlying atmospheric track at about level -20/-30 and using diegtic sounds that occur within the scene to build up and peak as the loudest sounds to create atmosphere and drama within the scene.

I will also be looking into using the small Midi keyboard in conjunction with garage band and Logic Studio to create ambient and atmospheric backing tracks that will provoke emotion and set the mood for certain scenes which require it. Although we have only had one workshop involving the Midi keyboards, I will be using them in my own time to get acquainted with them so I can produce a clear and well composed piece of music. As I have no prior experience with keyboards or any musical instruments, this will be quite a challenge to make an outstanding piece of music, however I hope I will rise to the challenge and with help from the rest of the group, be able to create sounds that work in cohesion to the visuals to make a moving and outstanding drama film.

The 'Final' Script

After taking into consideration the feedback we got from the first reading of our script to our peers and the feedback Dom gave us in our group tutorial, we have devised the 'final' script we will use in our film. Although it is up for improvisation by the actors and the director on set if the group believes it will improve the quality of the film overall.

The main feedback we got was linked towards the strength of the narrative/script itself and how to not make it cliché or cheesy as our idea has been touched on in a lot of dramas prior to ours. We thought the best way of getting around this problem was to make the actors very aware of the script and the message we are trying to portray before they actually act it out, this is to get a genuine performance from them both and allow them to really get into character before we point the cameras at them. We didn't take this criticism to heart as we already know script writing is not our strong point and we want to maximise the strength of our piece by any means possible. We were also advised to really try and get a good performance out of our actors by being friendly and understanding towards them as our project relies heavily on the body language and realism the actors can portray.

Peep Show analysis

Peep show is a British comedy sitcom produced for channel 4 and follows the lives of two best friends, Mark and Jeremy through their day to day lives. The show has a heavy element of comedy within it and also a heavy element of drama as well which combines beautifully to create a brilliant blend of everyday situations interacting with the thoughts and personalities of the two characters. Although the series is a sitcom and not a drama specifically, the reason I want to analyse it is because of the techniques and conventions used in the series and how they affect the strength of portraying emotions and the popularity of the series overall.

The first thing that the series uses conventionally is the point of view shot (normally a head mounted camera) which is used to give a characters perspective on the situation. This gives the series a very realistic theme and gets the audience to really engage and empathise/relate to the character and situations brought up through the episode.  This is something that our drama project group may need to think about in our film if we need to get the audience to really believe the characters and events occurring within it.  It is also quite a powerful technique when combine with an atmos track or a backing track of music/ambient sounds because it really puts the audience in the place of the character and encourages them to be more active than passive which can get underlying messages and themes off well.

Another technique peep show uses frequently for strength and effect is the voiceover to convey a characters thoughts. Although in our film we will most likely not use a voiceover, it is interesting to see how they have done this in the series as it allows the actors to really express the emotions being portrayed solely through body language and expressions, instead of relying on the dialogue (much like that in Sign Language). The actors in this series do this exceptionally, however, as we will be using inexperienced and new actors, if we try and apply this technique to our film, we may not get as strong performance as we like, which will hinder the strength of our final piece.

The body language and expressional acting techniques used in both Peep Show and Sign Language, are very key in the structure of any solid drama film as it means the plot is not dialogue driven which will really help our project as none of us have any real experience in script writing. I also believe that combining this technique with the creative sound design I will attempt with ambient sounds to create mood and emotion in our film.

Sign Language

Sign Language is a short film that has one main character (the protagonist) called Ben who has a job of holding up a sign in the street as advertisement. The film follows him through documentary drama conventions as he looks into the camera and talks as if he is being interviewed even though the content is scripted and fictional. The film is about his last day on the job and how he interacts with the people he 'works' with, with the conclusion of the film being that he actually sums up the courage to talk to a girl who hands out leaflets.

I really liked this short drama piece as it doesn't follow the normal drama conventions and has a heavy weighting on using documentary themes in it which gives the film a unconventional and original edge to it. It also uses subtle comedic elements alongside moving and emotional ones which makes the film really play with the audiences feelings and engage deeper with the plot. The performance the main actor gives is also quite strong as he does a lot of acting with his eyes and through body language which means the strength of the film doesn't have to come from the dialogue.
The use of sound in the film really helps it as well because it uses, along side the atmosphere track of the road, a slow, acoustic piece of music in the background throughout which is very effective in pulling on the emotions of the audience and enabling them to empathise with the character more. As the sound designer on our project, I will attempt to replicate and adapt this style of backing track which can manipulate the emotions of our audience in order to portray characters persona's better and ultimately increase the strength of our film.

The things that I don't think worked very well in this film are some of the individual shots but mainly that the whole film was shot in hand held which I think didn't work for quite a lot of it. For example when introducing the characters location (Oxford Street in London) all the location establishing shots are shaky which makes the film hard to watch and the details hard to make out. The focus on a lot of the shots is also questionable as the film is clearly filmed on a DSLR meaning there is a heavy focus on depth of field and back-grounding and foregrounding which I believe was not taken into consideration during this film. There are shots when we can see the protagonist Ben setting up on the other side of the street to where the camera filming him is and the foreground is focused on a lamp post which draws are attention to that and not Ben's performance in the background. This is an example of the individual shots that I don't agree with as it seems as if it was just thrown into the mix just because it was filmed which suggests that there wasn't a clear storyboard or structure prior to the day of the shoot.

Overall I think the film as strong and weak points but is overall quite strong due to the actors non-verbal performance, the sound design, and the originality of the context of the film. I will try and take both negatives and positives on board when making our own drama piece to make sure we don't make the same mistakes made in this film, and also to apply

The Pitch - Our Drama Idea

After meeting up during the course of the week to collaborate ideas for our pitch on the Thursday, we brainstormed a number of different scenarios and characters which we merged with one another until we came up with a satisfactory narrative and structure to begin to work with. Everyone in the group had an input into the script and plot which will be improved on and edited up until we begin filming. As the brief instructs the film has to ‘convey a notion of Journey’ with only 3 characters and 3 locations being used, we planned the pitch and our film carefully around it, making sure the film would not lose effect and quality due to these limitations when considering the narrative. We also thought about how to show a journey within a short drama piece and how we could interpret a journey in a physical or symbolic sense and if this could put an original spin to our film.

Our final pitch and idea that we came up with, is a story which follows the lives of two siblings (a brother and a sister) with a specific focus on the girl called Abby who is a unconfident/lonely/depressed 19 year old and her emotional journey into getting over the loss of her parents. The antagonist in this film is her brother Alex, who is a confident 21 year old who attempts to fill the role of a father figure for Abby and in doing so upsets her and makes her confront her issues around the loss to get her to move on in life. This narrative shows our take on a journey and how we interoperated it as an emotional journey with a positive outcome rather than a physical journey of characters moving from one place or another. There are a few reasons we chose to do this; the first being that we believe it allows the actors to really express themselves emotionally and physically, rather than be so heavily reliant on the strength of the script which, as a group with little experience in that field, isn’t our strong point; secondly we thought it would stand out slightly more and be more exciting than if it was just filmed on a bus or someone walking, which would add strength to the narrative.

The first scene will introduce the character Abby in a park reading a book on a bench with her headphones in to show that she is in her own world and isn’t very sociable. This is when we will first introduce her parents with a note being left in the cover of the book reading ‘Love you From Mum and Dad’. We will then cut to the house where Alex is firstly introduced as wearing a funny/outrageous apron whilst doing the washing up or some cooking (to show is parental figure side in conjunction with his confident/outgoing side). There will be a conflict over something in the dialogue where Alex will try and be a parental figure and Abby will storm out to her room. We will introduce more pictures of her parents in this time in potentially the corridor and/or her room. Using non-diagetic ambient sound design here is crucial alongside a good performance from our actors to portray the emotions and themes we wish to in order to explain the narrative without the heavy use of dialogue. We will then cut to the next day in the kitchen where there will be another conflict between the two characters where a picture of them introduced earlier will be ruined. Alex will then attempt to rescue it and to make up for annoying Abbey, makes her a collage of pictures of them together and with their parents which he shows to Abbey on return and they embrace in the kitchen as the film ends.

We have already scouted out locations that we will hopefully be using which are Encliffe Park and the internal of a student house on Ecclesall Road for two main reasons. Firstly because the locations fit well with the narrative and convey imagery that we all agree is important and powerful for the theme of the film and secondly because of the ease of access for crew and actors to get to and from on our budget.

When we give our first reading of the fine-tuned script in a couple of days, we will take on board the comments made by our peers and Dom and incorporate them into the script, shot list, sound list etc. that we will be making after today.