Production Day Five

Harriet did this shoot by herself as we did not feel that both of us were needed. It allowed me time to check that we had all of our written work done and that our blogs were up to date. In this shoot Harret used a digital camera to take still pictures of our title display, we intended to have some flowers growing around the film's name 'Olivia'. To create the feel that flowers are growing Harriet took still shots each time more of the flower would show. This was possibly one of the most challenging and time consuming shoots. Harriet added that she isn't overly artistic and it took a few attempts to get it right. I think looking at the photos that she did great and I can't wait to see it once animated.

Production Day Four

Today in leson time we uploaded our fim into a programme called 'imovie'. We made a start on editing our photo montage sequence. We didn't really do an awful lot as we only had limited time. We played it through numerous times to make sure everything we had filmed was on the computer and to check we didn't need to re-film any parts as we breifly edited it, which have didn't need to do.

Our Script - Olivia

To begin with we were not going to have much dialog just have our soundtrack playing over over scenes while the prodution team names came into the shots. However we have now changed our minds after recieving our feedback from some of our audience members. Also we have noticed that during the opening of most of the drama films we have analysised there is a single character explaining what is going on, e.g: The Bucket List, My Sister's Keeper and The Blind Side.

Here is what we plan to voice over as our film begins.

"It's November 27th, the day after my 16th birthday. I received the worst present anyone could get. (PAUSE). I found out that I was adopted. See this letter here it's from my mum, my birth mum. All she keeps saying is how sorry she is and how it was never her choice to give me up. All my life they have been lying to me, never telling me the truth. How. Just how could they keep this from me. My parents, wait. I guess my adopted parents keep telling me I wasn't ready before but they think I'm ready now, how can I be ready now. I may be 16 but I'm still a child, I'm too young for this, this heart break. How would they have felt at my age? I guess it's not their fault they were just trying to protect me. But she's out there somewhere, my mum. My birth mum."

Production Day Three

Today we focused on the photo montage which didn't go quite to plan at the start however we managed to sort this problem out. We did a lot of takes of this to enable us to find the right one - one take had to stand out from the rest. However the problem that arose was a problem with lighting as when I dropped the photos in you could see my shadow which we didn't want as it would distract the audience. We also had to be careful when filming to ensure that no part of my hands/fingers were in shot as this would completely ruin the feel of the sequence. We talked to our teacher about this and asked her what we could do to overcome this problem. She suggested we get a lamp to light up underneath the camera to combat this. So that is what we did. We borrowed the lamp from the science department and were impressed with the results. We still had a little shadow but now it was behind the photograghs as they fell into shot. We thought this could had extra mise-en-scene showing that there is a dark secret hidden from our character.

Our Feedback of Our Progress - Olivia

We presented our treatment to our class to see what they thought of our storyline and to ask for their opinions and comments on our chosen theme, adoption. We were both very hesitant to begin with as we did not know what to expect and how our class would react to our idea however we received a great response and they really seemed to like it. This was a great relief. One thing they did mention though was that we had little dialog so we would have to make sure the storyline was very clear by the props we decide to use to help the audience understand what is going on.

Our Progress Presentation To The Class

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmbr6Bv3QPI

This here is the link to our presentation to the class about are production of the project. We gave the class our feedback on how things had gone so far for us. We explained how we had used our textual analysis' of several films to help reflect the genre of our sequence, this acted as our inspiration, we also read out our blurb, talked about our target audience, why we have given it the certificate of 15 and also about our production day and how smoothly things went for us.

Hope you enjoy watching this - sorry about our bristolian accents.

Production Day One

Today was our first shooting session. A little later than planned due to the January snow and travelling to my friend's house over the Christmas break. However despite the complication we believe to of have a very successful shooting day. We have managed to shoot a majority of our film already. All that is left now is the title sequence and our recreation of the photo montage which we will set a date for a little later on. Today Harriet took charge of the camera while I did my best at acting. We really focused on three main aspects to the film; the lighting; the props we used and we tried to add in more mise-en-scene to our sequence. We touched upon the lighting as Harriet had movable spot lights in her room which we used to our advantage. We experimented with the angles of them and decided to have one shining directly towards our actor (me). We thought this would emphasise the importance of the character and the visible enlightenment the audience can see of the situation that she is in. We also focused on the props for additional messages and mise-en-scene. Harriet's room is pink - instant girlie colour, we are of a similar age as the character so we didn't have to do an awful lot to make the age of 'Olivia' known. Things like mobile phones, jewellery, make up, etc.. played part. We also tried to add some stereotypical teenage attitude to the character to emphasise the character's age. One big thing we liked was the panda teddy bear that our character cuddles. This represents the character's innocence. Little things like this, we think, really helps with the mise-en-scene with our opening sequence. We enjoyed our filming day today and thought it went very well hopefully the rest of our production will run just as smoothly.