Unit G324-Short Film-Script and Storyboard

 

Media Textbook - Storyboard







I have started working on the script, while I'm writing the script I will create the storyboard. I am creating the script and storyboard like this as I think it'll save time, rather than waiting for the script to be completed I am conducting two tasks at once which means they will be done at the same time, this will leave plenty of time to get the rest of the research finished. I also looked at a media text book that demonstrated how to create an effective storyboard, this will make filming easier as the storyboard will be well constructed. I drew the storyboards and added all the written detail such as camera angle, editing technique, sound and setting or background. I made sure the storyboard was very detailed as it helped to create an effective shooting script.

I printed the script off in stages as I found it easier to re-draft and make improvements on paper rather than on the computer. I re-drafted two or three times before i completed it.



Shooting Script from the Pre-production booklet

 Vikki and I created the shooting script together using both the script and the storyboard to construct it. We're going to take it into filming, we sectioned the page in two with Audio and Visual columns like the sheet we looked at from the Pre-production booklet, (above). We created the shooting script on paper as we found it easier to cut up the existing script rather than copy it all out again, we will then scan in the shooting script and print off the finished copy for filming helping us to set up camera angles easily and coordinate everything well.


Shooting Script (Images 1-7)

Aesthetica: The art and culture magazine, Issue 37, October/November 2010



Cotume and Set Ideas

Storyboards (Images 1-3)

Unit G324 - Short Film - Questionnaire

Vikki created a questionnaire so we could determine who our audience would be by asking about age, gender, film preferences and so on. This helps us to create a more effective finished product as we know who to aim it at. We handed out 20 questionnaires to get a good representative sample, the sample consisted of males and females ranging in age from around 16-18. We also asked about house style preferences and if they had actually heard of the genre mockumentary. We then created graphs for all the results to determine which of each choice was the most popular, from there we worked out what would be practical to create but would still interest our audience. From the questionnaire results we decided to create a landscape poster as this seemed to be an unusual choice for film posters, however in practice this didn't work so we reverted to one of the secondary choices which was a portrait poster of the film Hot Fuzz.

Unit G324 - Short Film - Film review examples

CONFETTI
A bright and breezy British comedy which is frequently very amusing, Confetti borrows from the mockumentary style developed by Christopher Guest (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman), but actually manages to be a lot funnier than his last effort A Mighty Wind. It also benefits from using a cast largely familiar from recent TV comedies, who all make an impressive leap on to the big screen.

Writer/director Debbie Isitt shows great confidence in a genre that could so easily provide plenty of pitfalls. This is sharp, well-observed and infectious stuff which surprisingly pulls at the heartstrings and deserves to be a commercial success.

It's a relatively simple plot that is explained very quickly at the beginning: the owner of Confetti magazine (an obnoxious Jimmy Carr) decides on a competition to find the Most Original Wedding of the Year. He and his editor (Felicity Montagu, best known as Alan Partridge's long-suffering assistant Lynn) choose the three couples who will contest the final and the rest of the film charts their progress as they attempt to win their dream marriage.

Couple one (Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson) are intent on an old-fashioned musical wedding, despite the fact that neither of them show much prowess in that department. Couple two (Stephen Mangan and Meredith Macneill) are competitive tennis freaks who insist on a centre court wedding (complete with Cliff Richard lookalike). Finally, Robert Webb and Olivia Colman (two of the stars of the excellent Peep Show) play a pair of naturists, and bravely wander around for ninety minutes in the buff.

Most of the preparations for the weddings prove to be very funny, but best of all are the two wedding organisers Heron and Hough (Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins). A camp postmodern Gilbert and George, they are the comedic highlight of the affair and hold it all together, without diminishing the impact of the main three couples.

Confetti won't change the world, and doesn't even have a big message to make. It sets out to entertain, and more than does so. It looks like it was a lot of fun to make, and it's certainly a lot of fun to watch.

Paul Hurley
-(talktalk.co.uk)

If you're still bemoaning the end of The Office there's salvation to be found in this mirthful mockumentary that's a cross between Four Weddings and Best In Show, via Wernham Hogg. Focusing on a competition set up by wedding mag Confetti to find the most original nuptials, we follow three couples as they try to organise their big day. There's the tennis-mad, competitive duo (Stephen Mangan and Meredith MacNeill) who want a Wimbledon affair, the sweet naturists (Peep Show's Olivia Colman and Robert Webb) yearning for a nude ceremony and the musicals fans (Martin Freeman and Spaced star Jessica Stevenson) who dream of a Fred and Ginger extravaganza. Largely improvised, Confetti relies heavily on the considerable talents of its Brit TV stars, whose inventiveness make for a beguiling mixture of moving moments, sniggers and excruciating silences.
-(totalfilm.com)

Plot
Bridal magazine Confetti offers a luxury home for the couple with the most original wedding of the year. The finalists — whose nuptial themes are a Broadway musical, a tennis match and a nudist rite — find that pre-marital jitters and family tensions are exacerbated by competitive pressures.
Review
Here’s a cute, silly affair that may be just the ticket if you are in need of visual aid to deter a crazed intended from plotting wedding overkill. A hundred-odd minutes of the ludicrous matrimonial mania on show here makes a quick, quiet little registry office ceremony look like the height of taste and class.

Confetti owes most of its laughs (the tone here suggests a conscious effort to progress from the ‘niceness’ of Working Title’s genre dominance) to a seasoned company of ‘cringe comedians’ that enfolds stand-ups and British TV comedy sparks, many of them familiar from Peep Show, The Office, Spaced, Alan Partridge, Green Wing et al, as well as improvisational veteran Alison Steadman in its ensemble.

And who doesn’t get a kick out of a kooky mockumentary? But ever since This Is Spinal Tap nailed the rock documentary, the bar has been mighty high for faux fly-on-the-wall parody, with Christopher Guest still pre-eminent in the field. Whereas Guest’s documentary-like structures and improvs foster sharp but fundamentally affectionate observations of real human behaviour, however absurdly extreme, director Debbie ‘Nasty Neighbours’ Isitt is having more of a satirical crack at the unreality of TV-type ‘reality’ — from the surreal Bridezilla series on down.

The trigger is conniving publishing folk (Jimmy Carr, Felicity Montagu) who need a stunt to boost their bridal-style mag, and duly interview a string of ridiculous couples. The three pliant pairs they settle on are pretty lame themselves. Most believable are couple number one, Matt and Sam (Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson). These two are sweeties who love musicals and want to play Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on their big day — if they can nudge mother-of-the-bride Steadman and Sam’s pushy cruise entertainer sister out of the spotlight for once.

Couple number two, jealous, controlling Josef and put-upon Isabelle (Stephen Mangan and Meredith MacNeill), are highly-strung, aggressive tennis enthusiasts whose ceremony on a mocked-up court with ball boy attendants and an umpire celebrant involves rather a lot of puns about balls. Mangan shines as the most unpleasant contender and delivers the best petulant outbursts: “Please get it into your thick head how much I respect you!”

Couple number three, Michael and Joanna (Robert Webb and Olivia Colman, who deserve some kind of a prize for letting it all hang out with such seeming nonchalance), are dippy naturists whose hopes for a dignified and spiritual experience au naturel seem doomed the minute Confetti’s editor realises that nudes on the cover sell mags of the upper-rack variety, but not one pushing satin Cinderella gowns and out-of-control consumerism.

Upstaging all of them are the squealing, wildly enthusiastic wedding planners, Gregory and Archie (Jason Watkins and Vincent Franklin), a dandy duo who appear to have been styled sartorially on eccentric artists Gilbert and George but as characters are very much in the queenie panto tradition of the two camp dudes that Martin Short and B. D. Wong played in the Steve Martin Father Of The Bride. That they are fairly hilarious is probably something we should be heartily ashamed of, since swishy cinematic wedding planners/interior decorators/choreographers are as stereotypical as the fey hamsters in that bizarro credit card advert. But hey, satire and sensitivity, not a good match.

The expected highlight — the actual weddings, performed one after another before judges — falls a little short since the clearly modest budget delivers something closer to a school revue than parodic spectacle. It also dawdles long enough to set you wondering about details, like, “Why don’t the tennis players have any friends?” and, “How is it that when performing her vows, Sam suddenly has a pair of pipes like Ruthie Henshall when she was previously tone deaf?” We’d argue that their efforts would be funnier if the singing and dancing were more toe-curling — like Round One of X Factor auditions. In this respect, Confetti doesn’t quite manage to keep up the courage of its convictions.

Apparently, having established the concept and situations, Isitt had the cast improvise all the dialogue; now we know why Mike Leigh improvises before shooting but has a script down cold when the cameras actually roll. The actors riffing here are funny up to a point; their body language and expressions are more eloquent than the dialogue. A wordsmith honing the better ideas would have trimmed the flab, and since Isitt is a playwright one would have hoped for tighter content, more pointed and more consistent in tone. Still, it’s cheerfully daft enough to be good fun, and even if you won’t be quoting it the next day, it’ll keep you laughing from start to finish.
Verdict
he performances of the chiefly Brit-com cast remain spot-on, but for nails-on-blackboard brilliance, top honours go to Alison Steadman; best pain in the arse mother-in-law ever.
-(empireonline.com)

BORAT

Sacha Baron Cohen looks set to have an even bigger success with his second film than he did with Ali G Indahouse. Borat (full title: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan) is the year's funniest film. Most viewers are probably going to want to watch it at least twice, as their laughter the first time around is likely to obscure much of the soundtrack.

From the opening scenes which show us Borat's supposed village in Kazakhstan (highlights include his sister, the country's fourth-best prostitute) to his trip across the Atlantic with his ursine producer Bagatov (Ken Davitian) in order to make a 'reporting' about the United States, the movie rarely fails to be anything less than spectacularly hysterical.

Baron Cohen takes a major swipe at the US in every scene and it's astonishing that he comes out alive. His initial attempts to make friends in a subway train are met with hostility bordering on physical aggression (Borat being Borat, he decides to calm the situation by releasing his pet cockerel in the carriage). He naively asks a group of street youths for fashion advice, attempts a bizarre version of the Star Spangled Banner in front of a rodeo crowd who boo him off the stage, and manages to convince a bunch of fervent evangelists that he is not only saved but speaking in tongues.

Everywhere he goes, calamity follows, not least if his bedraggled producer is in tow: their naked wrestling match proving to be the film's comic highlight. Even Pamela Anderson gets in on the act as the object of his cross-country affections.

Right wing evangelical Americans will be mortified and outraged: exactly the response Baron Cohen is looking for (and deserves). One can only hope that the more tolerant sections of the biggest power on earth may just realize that although most of this is largely exaggerated, their country faces becoming the butt of the rest of the world's jokes.

The film's slim running time, not usually a great sign, is also one of its strengths: it's hard to laugh non-stop for ninety minutes. With regular Curb Your Enthusiasm director Larry Charles at the helm it's not only a masterpiece of character comedy, but of comic timing.

Paul Hurley
-(talktalk.co.uk)

Plot
Kazakhstani TV presenter Borat Sagdiyev is commissioned to travel to New York to learn about American culture. While there he goes rogue, setting off for LA to follow his dream of making nice sexytime with Pamela Anderson…
Review
If you were ever partial to a bit of Ali G, you can be forgiven any trepidation you may feel towards Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest small-to-big-screen translation. With his juvenile observations and clueless gangsta-isms, Ali G was an amusing enough creation, but what made him work satirically was seeing him interact with real people. It wasn’t so much that he was a ludicrous ‘yoof’ TV presenter, but that his unsuspecting interviewees thought he was a ‘yoof’ TV presenter. So when Cohen took him out of that context and placed him in his own fictional world, the result wasn’t quite the comedy riot it could have been. You might have slapped an ASBO on it for indecent exposure, but it was certainly no riot…

With the Borat movie, Cohen’s learned his lesson. Like Ali G, Borat — who made his debut on Da Ali G Show, instantly becoming the funniest thing on it — works by being thrown in front of real people who, somehow, think he’s for real. So Cohen’s simply taken the format of the Borat sketches on the show and expanded them into episodes on a sorta-mockumentary East-to-West Coast road trip.

Perhaps it’s easy for us to say this, being in on the joke from the start, but Borat’s such an inherently funny character, it’s hard to believe that anyone could think he’s bona fide. Still, he is constructed with astounding precision. Clad in cheap grey suit, with grey tie and two-tone grey striped shirt, he walks in awkward little steps, his body language stuttering uncomfortable deference as an apologetic smile beams out from beneath his heavy ’tache. The accent drawls and lilts erratically, the broken English dribbling out plenty of catchphrases (“Jagshemash,” “naiiiice”, “haigh faive!”) and some gobsmackingly offensive comments.

Because, yes, as amiable as Borat is, he’s also sexist, deeply anti-Semitic and has an irrational hatred of gypsies. The film doesn’t exactly ease you into this gently: early on we see a depiction of his village’s traditional ‘Running Of The Jew’, in which we witness children playfully stamping on a huge egg laid by a “she-Jew”, encouraged by their elders to smash it before it hatches. To know that Cohen himself is Jewish may not, for some, be enough to excuse such outrageous humour, but this is all part of the set-up: the outrageousness isn’t so much in Borat’s prejudices, but in how those prejudices go unchallenged by his American interviewees.

Example: Borat walks into a gun shop. “Which gun is best for killing Jew?” he asks. The salesman doesn’t bat an eyelid. “That’d be a 9mm or .38,” comes the unhesitant reply. Cohen has impressively scant regard for his own well-being, but he’s sharp enough to know when to keep Borat schtum, too; in one instance he lets an ageing Texan cowboy hang himself with his own lariat, nodding silently as the objectionable old bigot lectures Borat on how he should shave off his moustache because it makes him look like a Muslim. (Borat, it should be noted, isn’t actually a Muslim; “In Kazakhstan, we worship hawk,” he solemnly tells the rodeo guy). Such ignorance provides very rich fuel for Cohen, and it keeps the comedy powerful — both in the strength of the laughs and the shock of the disbelief — throughout.

This isn’t just a few smirks and chuckles. Instead, it’s rib-crackingly, face-hurtingly, endorphin-flushingly hilarious. Empire laughed so hard we had a full-blown asthma attack. They should slap a health warning on this movie. And, all the while, you’re getting a very disturbing insight into the casual prejudices of the average American (although we recognise that Cohen was hardly going to include footage of those people who lambasted Borat for his views, or rumbled the ruse).

It’s tough to fault. One or two of the ‘sketches’ are admittedly reworks of wind-ups Cohen performed as Borat for Da Ali G Show here in the UK, while some of his interviews do feel either a tad clipped or too crowbarred into the coast-to-coast format. But you can’t ignore the force or the regularity of those laughs. This is Sacha Baron Cohen’s finest hour, a cult comedy that will likely endure and mature like an Airplane! or a This Is Spinal Tap. Just don’t go along if you’re easily offended…
Verdict
Absurd, outrageous, gross, disturbing, insightful, and so funny it’ll burst half the blood vessels in your face.
-(empireonline.com)

DROP DEAD GORGEOUS

When boiled down to that old idea of high concept, Drop Dead Gorgeous is Happiness meets There's Something About Mary - - a slightly uneasy blend of indie irony and adolescent shock comedy.
And bizarrely, it works as a deliciously mean-spirited satire that sinks its teeth into the soft underbelly of Middle America. But the flag-waving, God-fearing patriotism of the pageant industry is an easy target, so the movie also plays the gross-out card, gaining mileage from a series of horribly graphic visual gags.
It's hard to think of a more self-consciously unpleasant flick since veteran sicko John Waters was at his most outrageous. Anorexics, amputees, burn victims, Jesus and, most of all, the good ol' US of A fall prey to the less than gentle attentions of writer Lona Williams, who was herself a Minnesota pageant queen. But any potential offence is disarmed (well, some of it) by the use of the documentary crew to tell the story. As a result, crude shock tactics become self-referential parody.
Despite all this, Drop Dead Gorgeous could well earn prime chick-flick status. Hollywood `laws' tell us that girls like to watch dewy, hormonal tear-jerkers, preferably with a baby thrown in somewhere. Not so. The kind of pics women really enjoy have nasty, bitchy cat-fights with sick jokes at the expense of... Well, everything really. And beauty queens coming to horrible and violent ends rates highly.
The cast is almost entirely female; the men are either perverts, retards, creeps or corpses. Both Dunst and Richards are excellent as the duelling teen princesses, but their mothers grab most of the best lines. Alley is in her element as the mendacious pageant co-ordinator with ambitions for her daughter and Barkin is equally entertaining as the beer-swilling, trailer-dwelling Annette Atkins, with an admirable sidekick in the form of wise-cracking, man-hungry Loretta (Janney).
The fast-paced narrative climaxes, naturally, with the talent competition, boasting a hugely funny song-and- dance routine from Richards. The only problem is that the competition happens a good 30 minutes before the end of the movie, and what follows is the only real indication that neither writer nor director have any previous experience in feature films.
It's not that the denouement is disastrous, as the script is still extremely funny; rather that the storyline ends up losing its way in an effort to be too many things to too many people. Consequently, Drop Dead Gorgeous isn't entirely successful all of the time. That aside, however, it is a blissfully malicious attack on everything cloying and sentimental.
Verdict:
At times it is painfully funny; occasionally it's just painful. But mostly, Drop Dead Gorgeous is a thoroughly enjoyable movie about the lengths to which a nice Lutheran girl will go in her quest for beauty, fame and the American dream.
-(totalfilm.com)

In the guise of sending up beauty pageants (now there's a new one!) ''Drop Dead Gorgeous'' manages to load up on stereotypes, sneer smugly at Minnesota, stage a scene in which beauty contestants vomit en masse and make its audience wince through what may be a record number of miserably unfunny jokes. Under these circumstances, putting the words ''drop dead'' in the title really is tempting fate.
Pausing briefly in theaters before it sends home video enthusiasts reaching for the rewind button, this would-be comedy takes the form of a bogus documentary, one that seems patently fake even by bogus documentary standards. It purports to look behind the scenes at a small-town beauty pageant that is run by a cosmetics company. With Kirstie Alley bulldozing her way through the role of a pushy pageant organizer, the film trots out a series of contestants who have each been allotted precisely one personality trait.
There is a nyphomaniac. There's somebody threatening to sing and dance to ''New York, New York.'' There are smiling, dimpled Kirsten Dunst as the nice girl from a trailer park and exotic, sultry Denise Richards as the spoiled rich girl who looks like a shoo-in. (After all, the pageant organizer is her mother.) These actresses are conspicuously more appealing than their roles. The same might be said for Ellen Barkin, who plays Ms. Dunst's boozy mother, if she didn't sink so enthusiastically to the lame level of these proceedings. She is last seen here opening a beer can with a hook. As her best friend, Allison Janney is one of the few players in the film to emerge reasonably unscathed.
With highlights including a masturbating pageant judge who is nicknamed ''the retard'' and a scene making fun of not one but two maimed characters in wheelchairs, ''Drop Dead Gorgeous'' need not fear accusations of being politically correct. Nor need it worry about being accused of undue wit, what with lines like: ''The family's steamin' like a cow pat in July.'' The screenplay is by Lona Williams, who was once a beauty contestant herself and clearly knows how they feel about Diane Sawyer. As directed by Michael Patrick Jann of various commercials and the MTV comedy ''The State,'' the film seems to have been a shade or two funnier on the page than it is limping across the screen.

One of the first directors to fully realize the possibilities of the mock-documentary was Rob Reiner in the classic This Is Spinal Tap. Since then, audiences have had an onslaught of variations on the form, including the decent Drop Dead Gorgeous. This reckless little film was brought forth from the sarcastic pen of Lona Williams, who previously had written and produced for The Drew Carey Show. Williams' attention to detail should come as no surprise: she had been first runner-up in the national Junior Miss competition. Her over-the-top satire may be too much for some audience members -- some of the jokes seem to be beaten to death. But Kirsten Dunst is convincing as golden girl Amber Atkins, strutting around her trailer park practicing her talent routines, and Denise_Richards adds a quiet honesty to the role of Becky Leeman. In fact, these two actresses take the script and run with it, making it their own. It's ultimately a pretty good laugh. Laura Abraham, All Movie Guide
-(starpulse.com)

Unit G324 - Short Film - Mockumentary Analysis

I will analyse Drop Dead Gorgeous while Vikki will analyse an episode of The Office, I'm going to look at Sound, Mise en Scene, Editing and Camera. I think i will have to look closely at camera as the use of camera in both documentaries and therefore mockumentaries are different to conventional films which use the fourth wall, characters are talking to the camera and the camera will catch things (which of course in a mockumentary will be scripted) and zoom or move in an unplanned way. This adds a sense of realism to the film and includes the audience which is important in this genre of film. Editing is crucial as the film must look like a professional documentary which would include unforeseen events and a large amount of film that would have to be discarded for entertainment purposes so the characters pieces to camera aren't in their entirety rather than a film with a linear dialogue and plot. Mockumentaries also use a certain type of sound, as it's meant to be filming people without knowing what's going to happen there's little or no use of incidental music, generally these films are more about the dialogue in the sound department. For mise en scene i will be looking at costume, lighting, acting, make-up, props and setting, this will have to be quite naturalistic for a mockumentary but i will also have to make sure that the setting and props fit with the musical establishment and instruments that would be included in a Battle of the Bands scenario. Costume and make-up will also be fairly naturalistic yet i need to make sure that the costumes match the genre of music and the personalities that will be wearing them.

This is spinal tap, A mighty wind and Best in show are all films by Christopher Guest, these were suggested for Vikki and I to watch as they are all mockumentaries and This is spinal tap is based around a rock band so it's very close to our idea. Anvil was also suggested to us, this film is a comical look at a metal band in the mockumentary style.

Unit G324 - Short Film - Film Review Research

To create a successful short film in the style of a mockumentary i need to read reviews of both Mockumentary films and television programmes. Reading and researching reviews of mockumentary films will also be useful when it comes to writing a film review ourselves. I'm going to look at both solely online reviews and online magazine reviews so i can gain a varied and impartial view on mockumentaries in the eyes of reviewers. I'm going to look at reviews for Confetti, Drop Dead Gorgeous and The Office. I'm going to read at least two different reviews for each film or TV programme, I'll be using websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Then to get a nicely varied collection of reviews I'll look at online film magazines such as Empire online and Totalfilm.

Instead of reading reviews on The Office i chose Borat instead as it's a film and the reviews were easier to find and compare. After reading reviews for each of the three films i found that the thing that really made the mockumentary was the cringe factor, it's huge in Confetti and in Borat but not so much in Drop Dead Gorgeous, which gained the worst reviews. Although, one good point made about Drop Dead Gorgeous was that it did self-reflection and self-parody very well, as this was the environment the writer had been around and grown up in she was very accurate in her parodies, i think i'll be able to take this point and use it to my advantage as i'm around the "band environment" a lot. One point that reviewers generally didn't like was the improvisation involved in Confetti, this is why i'm writing a script, i think improvisation would be interesting to try but you end up doing a lot of filming and a lot more editing which isn't practical for this film, however we will let the cast improvise a little to add realism to the film but I will have the script as a base to the film.

Unit G324 - Short Film - Band research

Vikki began researching interviews with arrogant bands as we want the interviews to be as realistic and comical as possible, she resarched Noel Gallagher and Johnny Borrell as they were well known arrogant musicians with many famous quotes and opinions. I researched mockumentary film posters which inlcuded Borat, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Confetti. These films were also comedies and two of the films included a competition element much like our film. I then researched band posters as our film is based around musicians and is promoting the musicians. I looked at two posters of young, arrogant bands which were the Killers and Razorlight, I then looked at posters of older bands that took themselves a little less seriously, these bands were Red Hot Chilli Peppers and The Presidents of the United States of America, I wanted to look at these bands as they perfectly illustrate the types of bands I want to feature. we are going to analyse both the band posters and the film posters both for the benefit of the film and for the poster.
I also researched interviews with RHCP and PUSA, I wanted to find statements from these bands that showed they took things a little less seriously. I also wanted to get a different perspective on being in a band, what they get out of it and the way they talk about being famous and making music. In an interview with PUSA I found a quote that separated them from the fame hungry, selfish views of Oasis or Razorlight;

S!: Your new album, These Are Good Times People, was just released on March 17th. Do you feel it portrays what kind of band PUSA is now and will always be?
The Presidents: We sure hope so! To us it fits in really well with the rest of the catalog, and so far the fan feedback has been great. We spent a lot of time and energy recording and mixing this record, and it was a very natural and comfortable process. Lots of extra effort went in to writing and pre-production, yet during the recording process we made lots of tweaks and changes improve the tunes even more. We’re proud of it, and we’re having a great time playing the tracks live.
I also found a quote from an interview with RHCP, this quote shows that they play as they enjoy playing rather than for material gain or for fame and selfishness. It really sets apart the musicians we've looked at and helps me to create my characters and how they will see their music and therefore their outlook on life and personality.

The music industry, I've never been concerned with. I've been very fortunate that it has taken care of me.

Quoted from Guitar Center Flea Interview

Unit G324 - Short Film - Initial Planning

We began the project with an introductory power point presentation detailing which topics we would be interested in working on. We narrowed down the choices to a short film, poster and film review or a teaser trailer, magazine cover and a poster or a music promotion video, magazine advert and a cover for it's release. We finally chose the short film as we both have previous filming experience from both GCSE and BTEC media, consequently we have editing experience. We've also analysed film posters which will help us to produce an effective film poster and an interest in writing will bring enthusiasm to both the film review and in writing the script, of which i have a keen interest in. We preferred the short film brief as it was quite open and so we could come up with plenty of ideas and choose a genre which is best suited to us, this will therefore help us to keep focused and on task.

We created a spider diagram and came up with numerous ideas for the short film, we then narrowed down our ideas to two options which we then expanded on by adding more story detail, to do list and a contingency plan.
The first idea we expanded on was a mockumentary style film, we chose to focus on a battle of the bands competition and interview each of the bands, through this we will end up with comical, smug, catty musicians in competition with each other. We would also include clips of live performances although we would only use short clips as we want the main focus to be on the interviews and observation of the band, dialogue is the main focus of this film.

The second idea we came up with was a horror parody/comedy yet we felt that this idea wasn't as original as the mockumentary and we couldn't do as much with it. It would have also been difficult to film as we wanted to film outside at night which is just not possible with the equipment we have available to us. interviews filmed there is a need for extras in the background and for musicians on stage.

In our contingency plan we raised issues such as access to location, we have to make sure we can secure a pub or club early on and figure out when exactly we can film in there etc. If we lose the pub or club setting we could make the film look more studio based yet i feel this would impact on the quality and feel of the film. Also access to musical equipment needs to be secured, i personally have some musical equipment but when the bands turn up to be filmed i need to make sure that it's clear that they are providing their own instruments. Also we need to make sure everyone can be present on the days we are filming, taking note of prior engagements such as jobs and so on. Continuity may also be an issue as the film takes place over one day however the filming will most likely take longer so we will need to make sure that everyone keeps continuity in mind and wears the same clothes, doesn't do anything radical with their hair etc. We'll also have to keep in mind that it will be a busy set and keeping everybody in line and making sure everything is going to plan could be hard work.

In our to do list we identified that we would need to research mockumentaries including programmes like The Office and films like Drop Dead Gorgeous. We would also need to secure a performance area such as a pub or a club and we would need to secure musical equipment. We would also need to research real music/band interviews to make sure the terminology and feel of the interviews are correct. The main thing that we need to make sure happens is that all the actors and musicians turn up as there will probably be a large number of people to be filmed, although there won't be many interviews filmed there is a need for extras in the background and for musicians on stage.


Contingency Plan