LOCATION PROBLEMS

This post illustrates some of the problems we faced regarding shooting. The problem came during after shooting so had to be corrected during the editing process. This post also looks at how we managed to rectify them.

After we had filmed and edited the school scenes we didn't feel that it flowed well with the rest of the sequence. The "school" stood out too much as it did look more like a park than an actual school.
How did we resolve this?
Initially we attempted to super impose a school name and logo onto the park wall. After spending around an hour on photoshop testing different signs we attempted to add it into the scene. This again didn't look right as it looked fake which wasn't the look we wanted.
FINAL CHANGE
In the end we had to reshoot the whole end in a different location. We use the Latymer School for ease and to clearly get across that we were walking into a school. A bonus to changing the location was that we were able to change the final shot. Whilst previously we all walked in together you weren't able to see the rivalry between my character and Zenia's character. Be re-shooting we were able to add in a 'bump' we clearly depicted tension between the two character's and allowed the audience to see an insight into the rest of the film

Original location

This incident made us realise that a lot more thought had to go into location planning and practice shots were necessary in seeing problems before it was too late.  

Location

This post shows our initial ideas regarding the location of filming as well as some of the potential struggles we would face.


There were 4 main locations that we used

LAUREN'S BEDROOM- my bedroom
This room was

• Bright
• Pink 
• Clean 
• Organised 
• Showed off her achievements 
• Girly

SCARLETT'S ROOM-Emily's Bedroom.
This room was

• Dark 
• Messy 
• Untidy
• Red
• Grown up 
• full of school brochures

BOTH ROOMS WERE USED TO REFLECT THE CHARACTERS PERSONALITY. As the intro was very short the rooms allowed the audience to see more of what the characters are like.

JOURNEY TO SCHOOL

This shots we to again show the contrasts between the characters. Lauren was going to be shown getting the bus with her friends. This showed how popular she was. Originally we were going to have a shot of Lauren meeting her friends on the bus however this idea was quickly scraped because of practical reasons. 

Scarlett's journey to school was going to be much different. Originally Scarlett was going to be shown waiting for a train at an empty train station to show isolation and reinforce that fact she is new and alone. However this idea had to be scraped as well because of practical reasons. Instead we decided to have her walking to school along side a reasonably empty road. 

SCHOOL 

This was the harder section to film as on a sunday all schools at closed. In order to get around this we decided to shoot at the local park. We chose an entrance that look grand- to fit the theme of the school. The location had a grand stone entrance and was wide enough to allow all 5 characters to walk in together.

From this exercise we learnt that a lot of detail needed to be taken when planning your location and some of the possible problems you would face to avoid and struggles during films.  

PROBLEMS FACED DURING SHOOTING

This post is to outline in detail the issues that we faced during filming as well as how we managed to correct them. 

Lighting
As previously mentioned lighting was one of the main problems we faced during our initial shoots however we soon managed to correct this by the use of peg lighting.
Weather and Outside Shots
During our main shoot we were originally meant to film our 'going to school' scenes however these shots we quickly rained off. We attempted to film these scenes in the rain however the dark and grey skies contradicted the bright and colourful atmosphere of our film.
Timing
Timing was another big constraint of ours. We had to film all of the inside scenes before we could film the school scenes because of the costume and make-up changes. However, we had to film the indoor shots quickly otherwise the lighting would be too dark giving away the fact that we didn't film in the morning.

Although all of the factors could have been planned out in advanced it was very much depending on the day and weather whether or not it would actually affect the shoot.

SHOOTING

During our meetings we needed to establish our shoot days. To further increase the productivity of our shoot we plan each shoot accordingly to plan time for reshoots. This post discusses the main aims of original shoot dates as well as any problems we faced.

During our initial planning meeting we had arranged 3 set days for filming

• Practice Shoot
• Main Shoot
• Re-Shoot

During our practice shoot we didn't actually record any raw footage. Instead we used this time to test out our storyboard and shot types. We used a Cannon DSLR as a camera recorder to test where the camera would have to be positioned for each shot. These pictures were then used for our animatic where we saw gaps in the storyline and framing of certain shots.

MAIN SHOOT

During our main shoot we only shot at one location-My house. This meant we were only filming half of the shots that we needed. One of the main problems that we faced that day was lighting. During the practice shoot the lighting was fine as we were only taking pictures and it was a sunny day. However, during the day of our main shoot the weather was a lot greyer and colder. This affected the amount of natural lighting that we got we affected the quality of our shots. As we reviewed the shots at school the day after we found many of them too be too dark to use or too grainy. To resolve this problem we then used Peg Lighting equipment for the rest of the shoots. 

RESHOOT

The time that we had changed location to Emily's house. Here is where were shot all the scenes that featured Zenia. This shoot ran effectively as we now used the official lighting instead of having to play around with different lights in order to get a brighter set.

RE-RESHOOT

In this shoot we had to re do the darker shots that were done at my house as well as the shots of the girls getting to school. This shoot also ran effectively as we knew the shots we needed and again it was now much easier as we had proper lighting. 

From this we learned that a lot more planning needs to go into the shooting days as well as the importance of planning for any problems that we may encounter during shooting.

Animatic and Reflections

During the planning process we completed an animatic in which we used still images to create a rough cut of our opening sequence.  This post talks about the benefits to the process and what we learnt from it.

Animatic
Benefits
There were many benefits to creating the Animatic before we began to shot the real sequence. After planning our storyboard the creation of the Animatic allowed us to see whether the shots flowed smoothly instead of jumping from long to CU (eg.)
It also allowed us to see where we were able to place our title-Pretty Popular- and to fit the other titles. Furthermore it also allowed to us see whether we needed to change any of the actions during the sequence.
In addition we were able to see whether our music choice fitted with our sequence. 

What we learnt from the animatic
After we produced our animatic we felt that the music didn't fit with our piece very well. This meant we had time to change it and find a more matching song. 
In addition we also realised that we needed to change the placing of our title. Originally we were going to zoom into the window where the title would appear however, from our animatic we realised that this wouldn't work so had to change its position in the sequence. 

How to improve our animatic
Our animatic used very rough pictures so it meant the angle and framing of the shots did not mirror what we wanted them to look like in our sequence. This made it much harder during filming as we didn't know exactly how to frame the individual shots.

Conclusion
I believe that this process was very useful as it allowed us to see a rough cut of our sequence before we started filming meaning that we could fix any immediate problems that we encountered. 

STUDIO CANAL

This blog post is about our research into our distributor 'Studio Canal'. It discusses the features of the company and why we chose them to distribute our film.

STUDIO CANAL

• Established in May 1999 Studio Canal is a UK film distributor.
• It is a subsidiary of the CANAL+ group.
• It is considered one of Europe's leading companies when it comes to co-producing, distibuting and international selling of the film
•  The ONLY studio operating simultaneously across 3 European bases- The UK, Germany and France.
• They distribute more than 50 films a year across Europe. 

Associated with Attack the Block, Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy and Sightseers.

WHY DID WE CHOSE STUDIO CANAL?

• With it being a British based company it had expertise in the field that we are producing for.
• A recognised household name 
• Previously distributed many successful films
• Fast Girls was distributed by Studio Canal. This Film is closely linked with ours. We share similar target audiences and a heavy focus on the 'British-ness' of our film. 
• It has companies in Germany to distribute the film in addition to uses the known conglomerates , Criterion, Rialto Pictures, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment, MGM and Universal Pictures, to distribute to the American market.

Fast Girls

Research into the latest British chick flick 


FAST GIRLS

Fast Girls is the latest British made chick flick. Released around the London 2012 games the style of the film was well received by UK audiences.
What was the film about?
'A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.'-IMDB
CAST

British cast-This helped to attract a British audience. 

Including   the actor Noel Clarke who was involved in previous British films such as 4,3,2,1 and TV shows such a Dr.Who. 

Development

There was a dilemma as to whether base the film around the upcoming 2012 London olympics however because of legal issues with the trademark of the Olympics as fictional event was created. Inspirtation was taken from 'Rocky'.

Promotion and Release

first launched at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011. The cast promoted the film at the Cannes film festival 2012 in an attempt to secure an international distributor. Studio Canal attained the rights for UK distribution. The film was premiered at Leicester Square in London a few weeks before the London Olympics. The red carpet had tracks marks on it to create synergy with the film's theme. The film when on general release 15th June 2012.

Reception

considered cheesy and felt it will never be considered a 'classic'  

However 'Fast Girls is at its best when dwelling on the ‘girl power’ aspect of the story, and the foursome who make up the core of the relay team.'

Music-British artists.

The characters are from different social background with different levels of wealth. We were able to link this idea with our film and use the idea of the two protagonists clashing as a main focus for our film. 

Furthermore there was also heavy focus on Britain. We also used this aspect in our film to  appeal more to our national audience. 

Looking back out our opening sequence we could have used more features from Fast Girls as it was the latest British chick flick and embodied all the features we wanted. However, we also wanted to create our own film with our own ideas so i feel our minimalistic references to this film worked in our favour. 

Official trailer.

Film Titles Analysis

Film Title Analysis 

We needed a title for our piece that would be eye catching and showed an insight into our film. In order to do this we looked at similar genre titles in order to see the connections and differences between them before deciding on our personal titles. This post looks at some of the titles we analysed and what we took from the names:

FAST GIRLS-Directed by Regan Hall

• A simple title
• Easily recognisable 
• Set up themes of the film
• Allows room to easily market the film
• Stand out title
• Connection with sports- audience appeal
• Sports-Olympics-current
• USP- connection with Olympics- a lot of free awareness of sport through the news, TV ect
• Fast- Popularity of sports has grown

MEAN GIRLS

• Simple title
• Easily recognisable 
• Suggest the on-running themes throughout the film 
• Colour-scheme--pink-connection with target audience, reinforces the 'girly' side of all the characters>which is then reinforced through the picture of the girls below.
• Emphasis on MEAN- Enigmatic  

Legally Blonde

• immediate reference to the two main themes of the film-'Legally' about her interest and role in law-'Blonde' reference to her physical appearance a key theme within the film.
• Again immediately attracts their target audience. 
• Allows room for clear branding 
• Eye catching name as well as meaning allows room for a clear marketing platform
•  The title doesn't close off their target market- but expands into primary and secondary audiences. 

St.Trinian's

• Clear reference to the school which is used in the film 
• Lacks interest- without the cover photo it subject
• Easy marketing- USP British boarding school, classic English Stereotypes
• Lacks insight into the film 
• Font and design is better for creating appeal as it suggest that it isn't a normal school
• Marketing and branded come from the school badge, logo at the top of the title. 

Wild Child

• Reference to the themes of the film- The 'Wild' behaviour of the girl 
• Enigmatic 
• Doesn't allow room to show the 'British' appeal of the film 
• No reference to the two biggest themes of the film- America Vs. UK
• however, allows room for this possibly in marketing and branding?
• No reference to the USP
• Colour schemes- gold and purple. Gold to represent her extravagant/'rich' life in america
• more of a focus on the 'american side' the colour scheme
•  

After many options we finally decided on pretty popular. We wanted the title to reference what our film was about and almost have a 'double meaning'. The focus of pretty is to represent one of the main themes throughout our film which was the focus on looks and appearance. Furthermore we also wanted to incorporate popular into the title to reference the change in the popularity structure within school when the new girl joins. We feel that this name suits our genre perfectly with it also being unique and allows room for clear marketing.