Video Blog

George, Ramtin and myself all had a free period on Friday afternoon, so we thought it would be a good idea to meet up in a quiet area and give you a brief run through on what we've been getting up to for the past month during the production process of Black Out.

Here's a short video blog..

2nd Draft Complete!

All of the clips we shot yesterday were brilliant and worked really well with the genre. The new added parts to the storyline seemed to fit in nicely with the overall plot and make the opening a lot more exciting for the viewer to watch. We managed to get all of the clips edited today, with the help of Ramtin, and have now produced the second draft to Black Out on our Youtube account. Some of the cuts still need sharpening, and music needs to be added to the second half along with the first half, but you'll be able to see the new shots we've included.

Enjoy...

Re-Shooting and New Location!

We wanted to make the blog as interactive as possible for our viewer to find out how we made Black Out and what we got up to during the filming process behind the scenes. As you saw in the last post, there was a short video that we quickly put together on Final Cut Express in our spare time of all of our out takes, here is another video that we made to show you the change of location for the toilet scenes of our film. Sam  done a quick POV shot of the area in the station with some other footage along the way..

Hope you enjoy it!

Re-Shooting

After going over our first draft of Black Out as a group and suggesting the idea of re-shooting the second half of the film with our teacher, we thought it would be best to get it done as soon as possible whilst the cameras and tripods were available for us. With this in mind, we emailed South West Trains on Tuesday asking them for permission to film at the station today (Thursday 31st March) which they said was absolutely fine! As a group we all went down the station and managed to film all of the shots we wanted, including our newly added mobile phone shot and a new ending to make it a bit more interesting as you'll see in the second draft which will be posted tomorrow!

Here is a short out takes video of what we got up to today, and our location..

1st Draft Of Black Out

This is our first rough cut of Black Out. We still need to sort out the sound and add music to the second half as its a bit bland at the moment. After speaking to Mr Titheridge about our first draft, we've decided to re-shoot the second half of it at the station again, using the South West Trains toilets instead of the school ones, as the light in there is much better and we will be able to achieve the camera angles and continuity of the whole piece much better. The story was also suggested to be changed by our teacher as well, as there seemed to be too many unanswered questions at the end of the 2 minutes...

The storyboards are coming out, and we're re-thinking the shots we are going to include.

Editing, editing, and more editing!

All of the clips are now slowly coming together and the final outcome is looking good. We managed to get the time lapse how we wanted it producing a great effect to the opening of the film. George and Ramtin are currently in the process of making an on screen tutorial of how they managed to do the time lapse so we can upload it to the blog to show you! Editing is such a long process, but day by day we can see the 2 minutes slowly forming together, making it quite exciting to see what the end product is going to be like. We're slightly worried about the toilet scene we filmed, as we used the school toilets with a different colour door breaking the continuity of the whole second half, however we'll have to see whats said in the marking of our first draft.

Editing Black Out

As Ramtin and George are both very experienced when it comes to editing due to them producing videos on Youtube in they're spare time outside of school we decided it would be best to let them lead us through the editing process. As a group we thought it would be better to use Sony Vegas on George's laptop instead of Final Cut Express on the school Mac systems. It would save us time having to get to know the software and we have all the plug-ins we need on Vegas to make sure we get the best opening possible for our target audience. All of the clips were transferred off the camera on to George's laptop allowing other groups to take the camera and tripod whilst we started editing. The time lapse we're finding quite difficult to do, as we want to make sure it looks as good as possible, however once complete we will upload a short tutorial on how we did it! :)

Slowly but surely we're working our way to the final outcome!

Editing Software..

We have now reached the point in the production process where we need to start editing all of the footage we have  gathered over the past couple of days into our first draft, which we aim to submit as soon as possible so we can gain some feedback and class comments into what we can improve.

Sam and myself aren't very experienced at editing, as we are new to the Media subject this year. However George and Ramtin seem to know what they are doing when it comes to putting footage together on a computer system. At school we are advised to use Final Cut Express which is installed on the schools MacBook Pro laptops. Although this would be convenient for us as we'd have access to the work all the time at school, we thought we'd go with what Ramtin and George think is best, and therefore use George's own personal laptop to edit our opening.

George and Ramtin are experienced with editing programs such as Sony Vegas and Adobe After Effects (AE), this meant that they could work together along with the basic ideas from Sam and myself to experiment with different effects so that the first draft we produce is of a high standard.

We are going to start editing the 1st draft on George's laptop in the next media lesson we have together in school!

We want to create a timelapse effect using AE which we can then simply edit together using Sony Vegas.

Filming at WBS Toilets

Today we managed to get together in our free periods to shoot the toilet scene of our opening to 'Black Out'. The location seemed to be ok to use other than the bright light which was giving us a lens flare through the camera which was difficult to resolve so we had to go with it. The camera shots and variety of angles we managed to shoot today worked really well with the effect we're going for, as we managed to include a CCTV shot of Sam walking into the toilet, and a shot of him as if he was looking into a mirror, which looked effective. As we were working in a relatively small space, we couldn't all be in the toilet at once, therefore George stayed outside keeping an eye out for any students which may pop in and interrupt a shot.

Overall the filming went really well!

Filming At Riverside!

After successfully gaining permission to film at the station, we were able to commence filming on the set date of the 28th February 2011. We needed a small set of equipment on the day, such as a tripod to keep the camera steady when filming stable shots, and one small hand held HD camera. Sam, Ramtin, George and myself went to Windsor & Eton Riverside after school on Monday to film all of the clips we needed whilst referring back to our recent storyboarding. When we started to film each scene, we found that maybe some of the shots we drew up on the storyboard didn't look as good as we planned, therefore we chose some more interesting angles to demonstrate our skills with the camera! Overall the filming went really well.. We managed to film all of the shots we needed in one evening, and the location worked perfectly for the setting we were aiming at our target audience for 'Black Out'.

Sam also managed to earn some money busking which was quite interesting...

Shooting Schedule!

Here are the shooting schedules we put together to allow us to plan the amount of time we give for each scene and how we are going to structure the filming process to make editing as easy as we can! We all sat down deciding on which scenes would be best to film first and how many days we were planning to allow to film over before heading towards the editing stages. As you can see there are two seperate shooting schdules.. One for us to use at the station, and one to follow when filming in the school toilets. If all goes to plan, filming should be a simple process....I hope... :

Flicka films Shooting Schedule

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Location 2 - WBS Toilets

Our second location we chose to film at was our school toilets. We wanted to find a location which was run down and a bit grubby to match the image of our main character (A tramp), as we have already asked enough of South West Trains for permission to film at their station, we thought it was best to film back on sight, so if we have to do any re-shooting, we have easy access to the location.

As you can see in the images below, the toilets are in quite a state. Graffiti on the mirror and damaged sinks all links in with the overall theme we are aiming our final piece at!

Location 2 WBS Toilets

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Risk Assessment

When we decided to film at Windsor And Eton Riverside Station, there are many different risks and hazards that we had to consider when working in the area. We wanted to make sure that we would be safe to film on the platform, and the manager of the station would guarantee that we wouldnt cause danger or produce risk to any of their customers.

Before we went to film, we filled out this risk assesment sheet which is showed to our teacher to allow us to proceed filming our ideas in a safe environment.

Permission To Film At Windsor & Eton Riverside!

Ramtin delivered the letter by hand to the station on Monday 14th February on his way home from school, therefore leaving us waiting for an apply during half term. Luckily today the manager of the Windsor and Eton Riverside emailed us back on our Google Mail account with a clear reply saying that its fine for us to film at the station, and they'll organise staff to assist us whilst working on the platform.

I have to ring F Roberts on the morning of filming, to organise the times just as a reminder and to break the ice in our relationship between us and South West Trains.

This is great, as we can now start to film on the 28th! (:

Emailing To Confirm Location!

Click on the images above to see some parts of the conversation we had with the South West Trains Manager to gain permission to film at the station on the dates we wanted to after delivering our letter to them. I thought I'd include some of the emails we sent as this was one of the main parts of the opening to Black Out, and we worked hard trying to be granted permission to use our equipment in such a brilliant location!

Location 1 - Windsor & Eton Riverside Station

We are planning on filming the first couple of scenes in Windsor & Eton Riverside Station, as this illustrates the tramp is always on the move, with no real aim in life other than trying to earn enough money to survive each day through busking. As the station is a public place, and one of the main areas of transport for tourists in Windsor along with Central Station, we need to get permission from the manager of South West Trains to film on the platforms inside the station. I have taken a couple of pictures of the station, to show the area we are going to be filming in, so you can get an idea of what the opening is going to be like..

As you can see, there are two platforms to the station, allowing the time lapse to work effectively by having trains both enter and leave the station throughout the time we plan on filming. The platforms are also quite wide, allowing us to fit Sam against the wall with a clear distance for passengers to enter and exit the train without being disturbed.

The entrance to the station is very wide, with relatively large gates which will enable us to have a tracking shot of Sam entering the toilets just to the right of the image above. As you can see, the toilets are clearly visible through the blue arch allowing the audience to understand the plot clearly.

As the group have decided we definitely want to use Windsor & Eton Riverside Station as our opening location, we need to construct a formal letter to send to the station to gain us permission to film on the set date of Monday 28th February 2011, giving us 4 weeks to then edit the film and evaluate it before the final hand in.

South West Trains Letter

After a quick brainstorm to think about certain information we were going to include into the letter, we wrote the final piece in Monday mornings lesson with Miss Oddy, to hopefully gain us a response over the half term which means we can then start to film on the first Monday back after the school break.

The letter we sent is as follows...

                                                                                                                                 Windsor Boys School,

1 Maidenhead Road,

Windsor,

Berkshire.

SL4 5EH

South West Trains,

Windsor & Eton Riverside Station,

Datchet Road,

Windsor,

Berkshire.

SL4 1QG

14^th February 2011

Dear, Sir/Madam

We are Flicka Films, a production company from The Windsor Boys’ School currently studying Media Studies for the first year of our A-Levels. For our year 12 project we would like to shoot a partial part of our film in your Windsor & Eton Riverside Station. The filming would include two actors (school boys) between the times of 3-5:30pm on Monday 28th February 2011.

We would like to film our two actors on the train platform – we wouldn’t require them to actually go onto any of the trains on this day, but may require some footage of them walking off the train later on in our project if that’s possible. We wont be anticipating any direct contact or involvement with the train customers.

Our film crew is very small, involving one small handheld camera, no lights and no cables.

If you have any questions, please contact us on flickafilms@gmail.com or *********** to discuss any further information you may need. We would be really grateful if you could reply to us within the next week, allowing us to commence filming on the date set.

Many thanks for your time,

Jamie Calder, Sam Correa, Ramtin Totonchi, and George Holgate

Flicka Films

The Windsor Boys School.

Actors, Props & Location

The next step of planning for filming our final piece was to put together all of our actors, props and locations to allow us to be fully prepared for starting to film. We put together a sheet of A4 paper with all the details on that we needed to include on the day of filming. These were broke down in to three different sections as you can see in the image below...

As you can see, we don't have that much information and detail about the props, actors and location, as we are trying to keep the opening simple and based in one main area. We wanted to make sure that we had all of this information down on paper before going to look at each location, so we could get a rough idea of what types of props we need to make the film look realistic. Now we have finished this, and decided that we want to film at Windsor and Eton Riverside Station, we need to construct a letter to South West Trains (The running train company from Riverside) asking for permission to film at their station and if its within safety regulations.. Hopefully this should be ok!

Storyboards!

After deciding on our plot, and completing the shot list, we were able to start drawing up our storyboards. This took a while because none of us in the group are very good at drawing, so we tried our best to illustrate our thoughts through the use of a pencil! Altogether we drew up 5 storyboard sheets, all with detailed information on them about each shot we are going to film including the sound and the dialogue. As it was me drawing, I had to do a few stickmen to show the character in a crowded area, this isn't the best way to do a storyboard, but it shows our thoughts of each shot in the clearest way possible..

As you can see, the storyboard matches the shot list, and shows exactly what each shot angle of the character is going to be like, and how we're going to do it.

Below is another slideshow presentation I have put together showing you our complete storyboards which we can use when it comes to filming the final piece, giving us a clear outline of what we have to do before we get to the location...

Flicka Films Storyboards

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Idea Generation & Shot List.

After many hours of thinking and brainstorming different ideas, we now have one which we think is perfect to fit in with the psychological thriller! The first idea we were thinking of doing was something involving Sam's band, Sephiroth. However we thought this wasn't necessary and came up with the idea of a day in the life of tramp, with a twist at the end. We were going to include a part where the tramp goes to meet a drug dealer and then enters the toilets, takes the drugs and starts to panic, which ends up with him passing out on the floor. After discussing the idea with our teacher, we decided to remove the drug deal, and include another character which over looks the tramp, and ends up locking him in the toilet at the end, however the audience don't know who it is. We're trying to make the opening play on the mind as much as possible, whilst keeping it relatively simple.

The plot to the opening is as follows:

• The Tramp (Sam, Main character) is walking through train and gets off at Windsor and Eton Riverside Station.

• Once he's on the platform, he sets up his busking equipment and starts to play the guitar.

• Whilst he's playing the guitar, another character (Me) is looking over at him, constantly watching what he's doing.

• Whilst the tramps busking, there will be a background time lapse of the station moving fast as time passes by, making a nice effect showing the tramp trying to earn money.

• Once the day turns to night, the tramp packs up enters the Windsor and Eton Riverside toilets to do his business.

• Whilst in there, the other character (Me) locks the door.

• The tramp then tries to leave and realises he's locked in.

• He then starts to panic and time is passing by quickly, with different camera angles of him around the room showing him trying to escape, we show this as it is a natural reaction of a human to panic when locked in a confined space.

• The tramp then starts to become really hot and agitated, making him become angry and feel faint.

• He slips and blacks out on the toilet floor.

So we now have our plot complete, and have also finished our shot list and storyboards! Below is a presentation of our shot list, showing you what we have come up with!

Flicka Films Shot List

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