Location Hunting

We have been location hunting this week and are now all set for filming having decided where each part of the film will take place. We have chosen to shoot the entire film around Windsor town centre as it is the most practical place for us to film and we can all get there easily from school.

Jack made this video explaining some of our location choices.

A Brief Synopsis

Here is a brief synopsis of "Apple" to give you a further idea of the story and how it unfolds.

Apple

We have decided on our new idea, its called "Apple" and involves the journey of an apple from being bought in a supermarket to eventually saving someones life through luck and a random sequence of events. Below is a basic rundown of how the story unfolds.

An apple is bought in a supermarket by a lady doing her shopping, she travels through town before crossing a bridge. Two school kids are messing about and one of them ends up knocking into the lady, the apple then falls out her shopping bag and into a cyclists basket down below.
The cyclist then rides ot the top of town before realising she has the apple in her basket, confused when she sees it she throws it on to a nearby bench before cycling away. It remains there until a young girl walking with her mum walks past and sees it, the little girl picks it up and draws a smiley face on it before being told to put it down, she does so but on a different bench slightly further along the street.
The apple stays on that bench overnight where three drunk lads who have been out in the town come across it, puzzled by its smiley face one of the group asks for his mates to pose for a photo with the apple before they leave. In the morning a jogger comes past and sits on the bench to tie his laces, noticing the strange looking apple, he then picks it up and walks a short way with it before throwing it down a stairway. A dog then puts it in its mouth and runs off, mistaking the apple for a tennis ball the owner of the dog had thown. The owner eventuall catches up with the dog and gets the ball out its mouth before thowing it away.
The apple next rolls into the path of a drunken tramp who picks it up and walks across the street with it but as he, in his drunken state, stumbles and falls over he throws the apple further down the path. A fruit vendor walking out of an establisment then sees the apple lying on the floor and assumes its part of his shipment so picks it up and hops into the van with it as the next drop off is only round the corner at the train stations. On arriving at the train station the vendor trips up and the smiley faced apple falls out his crate, landing at the side of the road. At the same time a man is walking from his train and exiting the station, not concentrating as he is on the phone the man steps on the apple and squashes it. However the consequences could have been far worse as when the man steps on the aplle it prevents him from walking into an oncoming car.. There the apple and this random sequence of events have helped save the mans life

Change of Idea..

We began filming and have been doing so for about 3 weeks now, after putting a quick draft of our film together we decided we weren't happy with it. It was a strong idea but to get it perfect would have been extremely difficult for us with its complex storyline and amount of time we had left to complete it in.. However we are currently working on a new idea, its still a short film though. We'll keep you updated on our progress.

Location Hunting

At the end of last week and on Saturday we went location hunting. We needed an office, a bedroom, a kitchen and a coffee shop, we will also be shooting a couple of scenes at school. We went to FM Global in Windsor on friday and took the following photos, we couldn't get any interior shots but here are some of the courtyard area which we may be using for a few exterior shots.




For the Bedroom we have decided to yours either mine or Jack's.
My room:




Jack's room:




We are more likely to be using Jack's roon as it hase more space to film in, but Jack is moving house next month so it will depend if we can get all of the Bedroom sequence completed by then.

Textual Analysis of a short film

The short film I have chosen to analyse is called “Snap”, I found it on YouTube. It is an original idea by director Manolo Celi. In the movie, the photographer (Roberto Lequeux) travels through a swarm of unexpected twists and turns living a life altering rollercoaster ride which will forever change his life. The short film "Snap" is an exhilarating and entertaining short film produced for the contest "The Florida Industry Incubator". In this competition teams have only 30 days from when a subject to follow is revealed to them. In this short time they must write, shoot, edit and deliver a 5 min short film.



As it is only a short film it does not follow a typical genre you would associate with a feature length film, it all seems a bit random. In short, the storyline revolves around a guy who steals someone’s camera. The man whose camera it was then chases the thief for the majority of the 4 minute film, throughout the chase sequence the thief takes countless photos of the chase until it concludes with the camera running out of film.

It begins with a couple of establishing shots showing the surrounding area and then show the main character (photographer) sitting at a café drinking coffee, it then cuts to a point of view shot and he is looking over at a family taking photos of one another, the eye-line match that follows signals that the guy in the café has spotted some sort of opportunity. He walks across the street to the family and takes a couple of photos; a medium shot shows the family posing for a couple to be taken. As the man goes to take his camera back, the thief asks for one more and the man reluctantly agrees, as he does this a quick pan of the camera shows the thief begin to run with the camera and this is where the chase sequence begins. High tempo non-diegetic music kicks in at this point to signal the start of the chase and various tracking shots show the two guys running down the street. After this point is where the film starts to become a bit random, as the chase continues the thief runs round the corner and the man who comes round after chasing him is a different guy, this continues to happen on two more occasions and the thief’s clothes also change. Low angled shots show the chase continuing and there is a close up of the thief smiling, showing that he seems to be enjoying what he is doing.

One memorable shot in this sequence is where the guy chasing gets water chucked over him, seemingly from nowhere and the thief turns round, jumps in the air, during this the film is in slow-mo and manages to take a photo just as the water hits the guy chasing. Again there is a close up of the camera thief smiling, as one finally low angled shot shows him running in to a dead end, the music becomes slower and the audience sense he is about to be caught. The guy who runs round the corner is back to the original family man whose camera it was and a close up shot of him shows him to be really angry, a reverse shot then shows the thief give the man a sympathetic look and say “I’ve run out of film”. With the audience left not knowing what is going to happen the film cuts to some sort of art gallery where members of the public are looking at lots of photos on the wall, it turns out that all the photos are the ones taken during the chase. This gives the impression that the guy who stole the camera isn’t actually a thief and was doing this whole stunt for some sort of art project.

In conclusion “Snap” is a very cleverly shot film but the sequence of events that take place during have very little or no meaning, its all very random and I don’t think it has enough to it to become a feature length film.

ManFlick are back..

After the success at AS level, we are all back and ready to start our A2 Media Studies coursework. We plan on making a short film and I will again use this blog to show our progress throughout planning and filming. Lets hope we are as successful as last year..