R+P Post 16: Casting

Our cast was made up of people from our friendship group as we knew they would all be willing to help us film and would cooperate with us keenly and effectively. We also know their fashion and so could ask them to wear certain clothes to suit each character's aesthetic.

We looked at social media belonging to members of our cast and noticed that they had the right make up look and fashion sense that we wanted for our film

We didn't have specific characters except for the protagonist (Lola) and her boyfriend (Marlon) as in our opening sequence the rest of the group are just there to fill up the party and none of  their story lines come into yet. Because of this, we asked the cast to just act how they would in a real party situation and not feel conscious of the camera on them.

R+P Post 15: Our planned filming location, set design and props

The filming location we chose was Flo's house (a crew member) as it is accessible by most bus routes, allowing easy travelling for the cast. It also has a nice living room/kitchen and outdoor space which is essential to our montage sequence as many of shots take place in these two areas.

Flo's dining room/kitchen

For our set design, we just used a spacious living room with one sofa and two chairs to allow for different levels of the characters and to make the set seem homely and casual. We used one light which we positioned in the corner of the room in order to illuminate character's faces and remove graininess from our shots, whilst keeping the room fairly dark to make it seem like a party atmosphere.

The main props we used were rolling products and alcohol bottles to set the scene and highlight the use of these substances. Along with these, we also used tables and chairs to situate character's around the room and make the shots appear busier and therefore more interesting.

This is the props list we typed up to bring to the shoot with us

R+P Post 14: Our Production Schedule (call sheet)

Our call sheet:

A section of our call sheet

This was handed out to each cast member so that they were aware of how the day would be structured and important timings (e.g start/finish and breaks in between).

Each crew member also had one so that we could keep to the structure and organise everyone accordingly.

R+P Post 13: Our Shoot-Board

We created a shootboard which enabled us to put our shots in a logical order, meaning not all the actors would have to be there waiting around for their time on camera. We put the continuity sequence of myself (Lola) first so that we could get this done using just the three people in my group (one actor, one director and one camera person) and the extras we required could come later to the shoot.

It allowed for us to be organised in our time management so that we were aware of whether we were running over and consequently would end up being late, which we wanted to avoid doing. The images of our storyboard helped encourage us to stick as closely as we could to our original idea, changing only a few things along the way.

For our main shoot, we decided that using a shoot-board wasn't going to be particularly helpful as we had decided to change parts of our montage and continuity sequence (took out some of the speech and shots). Instead, we created a list of necessary shots that were essential to making our opening flow and make sense, and we brought this with us to the shoot so that we could tick off the shots once we'd taken them. Our main aim was just to take as many shots as possible so that we could edit the montage sequence with a fast pace.

R+P Post 12: Our Animatic

Following on from our storyboard, we created an animatic, which enabled us to put together the shots on our storyboard in a moving sequence, along with music and any sound effects that we wanted. We used lesson time to find a suitable location in school and actually took pictures based on our storyboard shots, using ourselves as characters, so that they were more accurate than simple stick-man sketches.

It helped refresh our memory on how to use the editing software, and forced us to think about whether the music track we had chosen fitted our sequence. It was at this stage that we realised the original music we were going to use didn't fit very well and so we had to find a new track which was better suited. Also, we didn't intend on using any sound effects but after we experimented a little bit, we soon all came to the same conclusion that a blurred out music and talking sound effect for the end of our sequence fits nicely and is actually quite necessary for our continuity.

R+P Post 11: Our Storyboard

To start of the pre-production process we decided to create a storyboard in order to show the different shots that would be used and to give us a visual representation of how our final opening sequence would appear (although it is unlikely that they will match up completely). Before creating our storyboard we made a rough timeline of 2 minutes (stretching across two A3 sheets of paper), marking 10 second intervals throughout, to allow us to jot down some main ideas and shots that we would like to use, whilst bearing in mind the time allocation given in our specification.

Our storyboard was then made on an A3 sheet of paper, using post-it notes to sketch the shots we came up with so that we could move them around if need be. We colour-coded them (yellow-titles, purple-close up, green-mid shot, blue-long shot) so that visually, we could see how it would look using a variety of shot types. However, upon finishing our story board and then creating our animatic off of it, we discovered that some of the shots didn't work in sequence with each other (for example, the story wasn't clear because we jumped from location to location - inside to outside to inside), so we went back to our storyboard and moved some of the shots around as well as adding some new ones in.

R+P Post 10: Reflections so far / looking ahead

So far, I feel we have worked very well as a group to come up with and follow through with our idea - teenagers navigating their lives, with many downfalls along the way. We managed to create a solid platform from where we are able to now move on and start thinking about creating a shot list and actually shooting our opening sequence. We have successfully chosen the main characters and thought a little about costumes (party clothes - skirts, dresses, makeup) and props (bottles of spirits, cigarettes), although this still needs to be discussed further. Looking forward, I feel we need to think in more detail about the type of shots that we will use (tracking, pans, etc.), where these will fit in and how we will put these together when it comes to editing.