*Tutorial with Neil

Neil Tom and I discussed where we were currently at with the pre production work for the semester one brief. I had also previously sent Neil the Shot List and Script that we had, then we talked about the Major Project as Neil hadn't seen the pitch and only had the treatment to go off as a starting point.
After we had talked it through he gave us some pointers that would help with character and story development as well as topics we could look at for research...

Look at characters that occupy space with face, such as Mads Mikkelson who plays the titular character on Hannibal (2013)

Location for theatre space in Sheffield
-Lantern Theatre and Merlin Theatre (No pictures available)

I like the look of the Lantern Theatre because it look Moulin Rouge theatrical and it is small enough that we could fill seats with a small audience without it looking forced, also a smaller space feels more claustrophobic and daunting. It's just a matter of whether we can use the space and going on a recee up there.


Lastly Neil suggested looking at actors who embody their characters.... how they get into the role and their methods.
Jack Nicholson for example switches his charcter on and off with the camera whereas

Daniel Day Lewis will be charcter from the moment he signs on to the point the director yells That's a rap. 

By then exploring these methods it will help us paint a better picture of how Ridley may behave.

Malcom McDowell on A Clockwork Orange is also an interesting character to explore as there is something about his face before you even know that he is a bad guy that puts you off.

Group Meeting (29/10/13)

We went over the script and discussed specific elements with each role.

Producer: When is the actor/all of us free? Is there a space booked?

Camera: What camera would you be using and is it available? What types of lighting do we need?

Sound: What equipment that he would need on the day and anything additional that he would need to create.
Editor: Days that she was free to edit (As she is working on two projects) and in turn the days that I would want to see progress by.

Art Direction: As we do not have one we talked about the props taht we would need and who could bring in what to make the space look more realistic
Unfortunately we then later found out that the camera that the cinematographer wanted to use wasn't available so we postponed filmming to the second week prescribed.

Tutorial With Annie

The tutorial took place during the last week of the pre production stage.

I had left my Directors Notebook at home but I had explained the concept to Annie
-A list of props (As we didn't have an art director)
-A time frame and the aim of how much I wanted shot
-A clear lunch break and restarting time
-A page for things that may have needed to change in comparison to what the shot list/storyboard says.

I didn't have a chance to catch up with Chris for him to hand over the Storyboard but they had been completed.

What I did have to show was the marked up script and the shotlist.

The Making Of Ridley Marked Up Script.docx
Web Link: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/183377772/The-Making-Of-Ridley-Marked-Up-Script-docx]

Shot List for The Making Of Ridley.docx

Web Link: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/183377764/Shot-List-for-The-Making-Of-Ridley-docx]

So far everything was on track for filming next week.

Stylistic Development

I found it hard to search for films that used video blogging aside from the ones that I had personally watched (Avatar and Easy A ), and so I turned to the best resource hub, YouTube. I looked at a range of video blogs on YouTube, from fiction to non fiction some of which I have heard about and some of which I used to watch; The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and LonelyGirl15 to JacksGap and AlexDay as 











Visual Style
I wanted the shots to be really tight, only having a few scenes of looking at the space as a whole through an establishing shot, as you can see from the vlog clips above they a much wider framing than what I have in mind.

Post Production Visual Style

The biggest difference between the blogs that I have researched on YouTube and the one that I want to create is that the character isn't 'Editing' his entries, it is as it is. I chose to use this method because although I could have had a lot more flexibility in being able to play with the characters deteriorating sense of reality I felt that it would have seem to 'Staged' if the audience was then led to this analysis through the cutting.

Audio Style
This was hard to define as the piece is so simple and as it is essentially a conversation between character and audience, albeit a one sided conversation I felt that adding to much non dietetic sound would take away from the realistic I wanted to portray. As well as that from what I have seen from a range of the video blogs that I have watched music isn't really a key element, it's used as an intro or outro, if anything sound effects are used to emphasise points or as a form of humour.


Throughout this process I had this one image in my head to sort of help me keep focus...

For me this picture says that the character is both suspicious and paranoid, he holds these feeling in but he is very close to breaking point. He almost has a nervous calm about him which makes you feel uneasy. This is some of the characteristics I feel needs to be embodied by the character and what I am going to try and push for during the filming process

Group Meeting (24/10/13)

Today was our first group meeting, we had been communication for a while on the facebook group that Tom had set up for the project but today was an opportunity to discuss how we would be moving forward with the project as well as what everyones free days were for when it came to filmming and editing.

Also as I had yet to write the script I spitballed a few of my ideas to the group and listed to their suggestions. The one that I responded to the most was the idea of using an Online Diary, this would be a  way to portray the character and allow the audince to be engaged with them.

Development Process

Ideas and development for the semester one brief.

-A man acting to camera reading a script. This is unknown to the audience. In his monologue he talks about how when he was a young child he was bullied and how he allowed the rage he felt to build up inside himself until one day he does something drastic.
The character is seeing parallels with his own life and the character changes words in the monologue which is scrolling across the screen next to him.

-A day in the life sort. Actor has a "Regular" day and we see them trying to inhibit their character

-Done as a set of four vlogs as he gets ito the head of his character as he is doing a character study, changing from talking in the third person of "Ridley" to the first person "I" it can be spread over a period of time "Rehearsal" phase of the play
[Consider: Is it a new character vlogging about playing Ridley or is it about Ridley playing his character in the play for the major project]
Location could be a black space like a "Big Brother" type style of room, making the audience feel claustrophobic or use a normal room, either bedroom or living room.

Challenges faced.
-Righting this in the way that I originally wanted it to be written became incredibly difficult as it started to feel like I was writing the script for the major project
- As there is only one character it will be difficult to try and keep the audience engaged

Working With Actors.....On Low Budget

Today we used Her Big Chance (pg.103) of Alan Bennet's Talking Heads for an exercise, an actress named Rachel played the lead role of Lesley.
The exercise was Rachel acting as an actress reading the lines of Lesely in Her Big Chance. We started by having her do her bit and having Chris play the role of a director. The aim was to watch Chris and say "stop" if we though that that he was doing something wrong, or had forgotten too mention something to the "actress".
A few of us then took the position of director using the same premise.
The exercise was beneficial as it allowed us to make mistakes and ask questions and understand things from the actors perspective.
Some things that came up included over telling the actions to the actor, which is what Mamet had mentioned previously. The less you tell the better, but at the same time be direct.

Chris also gave us a few pointers to consider during the exercise.
-The final performance doesn't take place on set. It happens in the edit.
What he meant by this is that we have time and there's no need to rush, as long as we feel that we have everything that need.

Rachel also let us know a few things
-Make the actor feel important
-After being used to acting in a "safe space" with a lot of encouragement and praise, they will feel odd not to have that anymore, so let them know taht the work that they are doing is good.
-Give the actors a space of their own on set to have fun//let loose and practice.
-Don't tell them to "improvise" they need some kind of guidance, or direction/starting point.
-Don't tell them "Read it like this" and proceed to read it like you want it to be heard, because this will never work and you'll never hear what you want to hear and it feels as though you're telling them how to do their job.

Quick Word With Neil

Having not yet had an official tutorial with Neil I went and found him in his office for a quick chat about where we were so far with Pre production, and with a crew etc and he advised me to send everything to him so that he could have a read through, and we arranged to meet for a proper tutorial next week with Tom being present as well.

The crew list is now
Dirctor: Jen Francis
Producer: Tom Hesford
Cinematographer: Chris Slater and Shaoteng Zhu
Editor: Jess Ingleby
Sound: Owen Feltham
Art Director: ?????

Neil suggested using two cinematographers as one could be in change of the camera while the other deals with lighting.
Also as the Art Directors on the course were scarce and in high demand, we decided that we would do without and just ask ourselves during each meeting "What about Art Direction?" as both Tom and I did the Creative Project Realisation module last year. As well as that we could easily ask any of the art director for advice and suggestions if we were unsure about anything.

Research: Directors Notebook

I was researching Directors notebooks to try and get a more rounded view of what they were to contain, as I only had the one in session example to work off of. What I found is that it's not the easiest thing to find which makes sense as in a way it a directors personal diary that probably won't always be understood by the masses.

The Twilight directors notebook is the only hard copy that I was able to find online, except for that a lot of them seem to be in a computerised form using a software programme.
I cannot see myself having a computerised version, (In the future as the one that needs to be submitted has to be a hard copy) as I would want something I could have at hand to write random words and thoughts that may come to mind. That being said I thought that the Twilight one was too detailed, I understand that it was probably constructed that way on purpose for publication reasons, but it felt more like an annotated storyboard.
Thinking of these two examples and the in session on, what is in a directors notebook is ultimately down to the director and their specific needs and how they work best creatively. I think mine will have more notes and lists than annotated pictures. But I cannot say for definite as it's all down to what happens in the moment.

First Session

Now that ideas had been picked and pitched and decided it was time to start the teach phase.
In the first Directing session we looked at David Mamet: On Directing Film. We looked at Chapter 4: The tasks of the Director: What to tell the actors and where to put the camera.

We discussed his methods on simplicity in acting and how you direct your actors.
An example of the simplicity discussed is the difference between telling your actor to
Walk in to a room
and
Walk into a room with feeling

Mamet also talked about how much you're shooting; If you don't know what you want, how do you know when you're done? If you know what you want, shoot it and sit down. (pg.67) As a director I need a clear vision of what I want my audience to see, and in order for that to happen I myself need a connection with the piece I am directing. This really applies to me because although I am really invested in the idea of Ridley, as it is not my script//idea then it can be easy for me to loose focus.

We also looked at Film Directing Fundamentals: See Your Film Before Shooting by Nicholas Proferes

Chapter 9: Marking shooting scripts with camera setups which showed how to match the script with the shot list. The purpose of this is; To make it easy to see schematically what coverage we have during the different sections of the script (pg.116) The is a good way to then allow you to if one section only has one camera angle covering it, meaning you can explore other options on the day of filming or to make sure you get a good few shots to choose from as there is no alternative angle option. The majority of the section then shows an example of a marked up script. The section ends in talking about "Beats" moments of interest//significance that can be prolonged and taking a step back from the work and making sure all boxes have been ticked.

We would be having a tutorial in a couple of weeks and to that as a director I had to bring along a Marked Up Script, Shot List, Storyboard and Directors Notebook.

Lastly we were give Chapter 10: Working With Actors to read in preparation for the session next week

Semester One Brief

The briefs we received were to help individual groups address issues that they may later face when it got to the major project. This was ours...

Whilst we were developing an idea for this we also had to find ourselves a crew

Pitching Process...

First Pitch (2nd of October)

Our first pitch was with Ron and Chrissie

Which went well as far as I could tell, we explained the concept of the film and inclusive elements such as dance and exploration of theatre space. Locations, Characters. Ron also mentioned that a few similar shows/films had also come to his mind as well as mentioned a few others to look into: Mulholland Drive and Barbarian Sound Studio.

 

They then gave us a few things to consider for the next pitch:
How can we show serial killings in the space of 10 minutes as well as all the other elements.
How//Will we be showing the killings?

Tone: Think about a style or a strong sense of representations; The drama
Sexual elements: Look at Peeping Tom, develop relationship between female and male leads (Is perception of her feelings delusions?) Exploit relationship between theatre space and internal space of characters and the close space between the two characters.

Second Pitch (9th of October)

After the first pitch I went a way and broke down the film into sections and thought about what I wanted to see and or explore in each one.

Main Character: Ridley; a sexually frustrated failing actor who succumbs to his insecurities and finds a new outlet for his frustration

Theme: Limits of human nature, sexuality, mental deterioration, delusions

Tone: Bleak, filled with dread in a raw and stylistic way. Hiding harsh realities beneath exaggerated and fluffy "acting" Orchestra Crescendo 

Other Characters:
-Woman who teases Ridley and spreads rumours about him and end up dead
-Director of the play; Ladies man type.
-Perhaps a woman who actually like him that he doesn't notice.
-A costume designer,
-Dancers
-Choreographer?

Visual: Circus close ups, bold colours of the amateur theatre juxtaposed with the plain and naturalistic real world outside of that. Fluctuating between hot and cold

-Hannibal Clarity
-Dexter Harshness
-Black Swan stylings and grey confusion
-Jack the Ripper reality

I went through all my thoughts with Tom and we talked about some other points such as

Ridley characteristics: Out of place attitude, looks weird
Use of Shadows within the theatre space: He becomes part of the shadows, signifying loneliness and disconnection. Half his face in shadow (Jekyll and Hyde)

In order to show the serial killings we could mirror what is in the play with reality and cut straight to the point after showing the first for a lengthened time frame.
Play with narrative structure by cutting back and forth between the preparation for opening night and the events that led up to it.
Show Ridley alone in the theatre space....mirroring the characteristics of Peeping Tom

All the above mentioned basically made up the structure of our second pitch to Susannah and Chrissie, they made a few comments and suggestions and now all that was left to do was wait.

Talking Things Through Pre Pitch

After a lengthy talk with Tom after the picking process he went through his aims, his idea and what he wanted from the piece. I also asked a few questions and drilled him for answers that I thought might come up during the pitch that he had not considered such as; What was "The Play" that Ridley was in actually about? It may seem minor but it would allow us to perhaps use it as a form of foreshadowing, and give us an idea about the look of the set, plus our actors needed something to pretend to "Rehearse." What kind of character did you want the audience to see? Are we supposed to sympathise with him or are we supposed to love to hate him? We also talked about location, and other possible characters and story arcs.
He was also open to a few changes and tweaks here and there that I suggested, one of which was incorporating a "dance" sequence into the film, that we could use to really be theatrical and create another dimension as well as allowing us something to help build up to the "Final Kill" as it were, also giving the film an experimental feel which allows us to stretch some boundaries and restrictions.

We also talked about similar films//shows, which is a good way to get us both on the same page in terms of style and asethetics. These are the ones that came to my mind while we talked things through: 

Jack the Ripper, Black Swan, The Secret Window, The Shinning, Do No Harm, Hannibal, Dexter

 

I explained some of the ones that Tom hadn't seen and he saw why I thought they were similar and had no qualms, he also mentioned that a film called Peeping Tom as a point of similarity.

Treatment

The Treatment that Tom sent me about Ridley

Ridley- treatment.docx

Web Link: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/183541968/Ridley-treatment-docx]

Finding a project...

I was going to direct a project as directing is something that I want to pursue. Unfortunately over the summer although I had a million and one ideas I couldn't develop any of them enough or scale some of them back to be Major Project worthy. So I went to the selection night optimistic that even though a lot of the people there were directors with their own scripts someone would be a producer or a scriptwriter looking for someone to direct. I found two that I was really interested in.

Tom: Who's idea focused on a man who took method acting too far and started to re-enact the killings of his on stage character in real life.

This was my first choice and I was upfront from the beginning expressing that I only wanted to direct, nothing else and would settle for Assistant Director only. Tom did not mind as he was happy to Produce. I really liked this idea because it explored theatre space and had a Jekyll and Hyde element that I thought would be really interesting to explore.

Cass: Who was looking for a Director as she had done all the production work on a script about a detective that was searching for a mysterious woman in a mask.
What appealed to me about this one is that as I heard her explain the idea I had a Film Noir 1940's aesthetic pop into my head, that and I have always liked masks. Which sounds like an odd thing but there are so many connotations that can be associated with them. Unfortunately someone else had already put themselves down to be Director so I offered my as an Assistant Director in case Toms one fell through.

So I put my name down for those two projects and hoped that one if not both would go through.