LO3: Task 4 - Evidence of carrying out a specific production role for a chosen media production

My Contribution to a Production

Roles and Responsibilities

Throughout the production of our Short Film Trailer for WARP Films in Unit 46, I assumed the role of overseeing and managing the film crew as the Director. This involved undertaking and contributing somewhat to every operation throughout each phase of production but mostly making sure that the production team consisting of Will Hewitt, Lewis Leversidge and Alex Raynes were working on their respective responsibilities on schedule.

Contribution to media product

Taking on this commitment meant I had to manage the other members of our production crew, making sure that their individual tasks were fulfilled. We began this project with production meetings, creating initial concepts, ideas and potential story-lines as evidenced on these pages below. The production for 'In Static' began on the 3rd of March 2014 and was completed by May 2014. The Production GANTT Chart below gives a representation of the timescale of making this film, however some deadlines were amended and the editing phase was extended until the start of May. 

Below is the Film Trailers Treatment, combining individual contributions from members of the production team (e.g Risk Assessment created by Lewis) along with my own created pre-production assets. An overview of "In Static"'s story, as a followup to the first document we created within this project, a rough copy of mind-mapped ideas which can be found below as well as the legal and ethical considerations required.

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Pre-Production Film Trailer Treatment and Concept

Production Team

·      Jake Dungworth – Director/Cinematography

·      Alex Raynes – Producer/Writer

·      Will Hewitt – Producer/Writer/Cinematography

·      Lewis Leversidge – Post Production/Health and Safety Manager

Characters/Actors

Connor Wright – Mike Davies

Ronnie – Luke Goddard

Mr. Shipman (Boss) – James Scanlan

Connor’s Mate – Mitch Morton

Connor’s Mate #2 – Dominic Duerden

Policeman – Mick Heard

Locations

Derelict Building - UTC Sheffield College Basement (111, Matilda Street, Sheffield, S1 4QF) – Monday 17^th 9:30am – 12:30pm

Office – Sheffield Live! (15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX) – Wednesday 19^th 9:15 – 11:00

Flat (6, Stanwell Avenue, Wincobank, Sheffield) – Saturday 15th 10:00am

Concept

In the trailer of Static Reality we touch on the ideas of schizophrenia, human conscience, drug use and the ‘groundhog day’ esque style of film where the days repeat themselves from our main character’s point of view.

Essentially it follows the life of a single man, Connor Wright who normally lives a ‘regular’ life, where he goes to work at the accounting office of Willow Pharmaceuticals, but is also a drug addict. He and his friend Ronnie are obsessed with drugs, their lives are going nowhere and this how they prefer to spend their time. At the beginning of the trailer, Connor awakes in a derelict building next to a dead body. A static radio noise plays in the background. Mysteriously the corpse doesn’t faze him and he knows he has to get rid of the body but is unsure why, as if he’s in fear that if he doesn’t do it bad things will happen. Our character suffers from blackouts, which are sequentially followed by these instances where he awakes in the room. Basically he believes he has a different life purpose on these different days.  However, the character’s memory is erased after these days and he has no knowledge of either day.  Until one day, his boss at work catches on to his mysterious absences; our character looks bewildered at the boss insistent that he never misses a day at work. Following this, he wakes up next to his boss who is dead. The character thinks this is just another body to dispose of, unbeknown to the fact it’s his boss. Waking up on the next day he goes to work to discover his boss is missing, yet there is police involved. He overhears the police enquiring a co-worker, who replies that he hasn’t be seen for 2 weeks. During this scene, the camera focuses on our characters face that increasingly looks confused as to what might have happened. He walks over to his desk to find an envelope with his name on. He opens the envelope to find a needle; a message from someone who knows. The trailer cuts to several clips of other scenes in the film, an action scene, a clip of our character running etc. while ‘Feel Good Hit of the summer’ by Queens of the Stone Age plays.

Audience

Broadcast for a 15+ Audience

Purpose

The trailer for Static Reality has been created for Warp Films as a competition.

        

Equipment (Provided free by UTC Sheffield College)

Camera – Sony Pro HD P100E, Canon 650D DSLR

Mounts – Tripod, Steadicam, Fig Rig

Lighting

Props, Costumes and Models

Wheelbarrow

Bin Liner

Imitation of Drugs

Radio

·      Connor Wright – Suit/Casual Clothes

·      Mr. Shipman – Suit

·      Ronnie – Casual

·      Policeman – Uniform

Health and Safety Considerations

Risk Assessment

Legal and Ethical Considerations

Static Reality will feature the use of drugs and violence, so must adhere to the British Board of Film Classification’s regulations for 15 rated films.

Drugs
Drug taking may be shown but the work as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse
(for example, through instructional detail). The misuse of easily accessible and highly dangerous substances (for example, aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable.
The use of drugs in Static Reality is brief and intends to showcase the characters’ dependence and addiction. It does not promote the use of it and portrays the negative effects of using it, depression, schizophrenia, impairment etc.
Violence
Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic violence is also unlikely to be acceptable. There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violence but the depiction of sexual violence must be discreet and justified by context.
There will be a clip of a fight scene, that won’t show injury. The corpse won’t have any external injury and will just appear dead. This does not breach the regulations of the BBFC.

We will also be using a copyrighted music track, Feel Good Hit of The Summer by Queen of the Stone Age, so the proper legal action must be carried out to request it for use in our trailer. Alex has filed a request to Kobalt; the legal owners of Queens of the Stone Age to allow the use of the track in Static Reality. Other tracks used in the trailer are sourced from Incompetech, provided royalty free and licensed by a Creative Commons license.
We will assure that before entering or taking photos of an individual’s private property, permission is granted from the owner.

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Interaction within my team (Verbal and Written Communication)

The communication between a Director and his team is vital for getting across his ideas for the film. I ensured that I kept a tab on each of my teams’ progress on their responsibilities and assisted where I could. Primarily, this role relied on me to provide direction to the actors in scenes; referring to our storyboards as well as extra shots based on spontaneous decisions by either myself or one of the production team utilizing our environment. To the left is evidence of a storyboard scene compared with the first 30 seconds of our trailer. As you can see, the conceptual plans were retained while extra clips were added to coincide with our chosen music, which accelerated the tension. This was decided upon by myself.

An excellent example of this was during the filming of In Static (below), a short film trailer production created last year by myself, Will Hewitt, Lewis Leversidge and Alex Raynes. The scene at 2:09 where the protagonist raises the gun was completely improvised, directed by me. At the beginning of this unit, pre-production implicated several meetings; concepting, initial storyboarding and scripts were drafted.  For example, a large segment of Post-Production such as editing was carried out by Will Hewitt while I gave feedback on the ordering of clips, which to use and the application of music; selecting the variety of score for use in the trailer to convey particular emotions. I used the website below; the audio network to source and select the variety of overtones that we placed in the trailer. With the exception of the final song, Feel Good Hit of the Summer by the Queens of the Stone Age; the other 5 music tracks (Dark Star, Ice Clouds, Challenge , Twilight Shadows and Desolate) were all obtained copyright free via the website below, scoped out by myself and William Hewitt. "In Static's title theme, The Feel Good Hit of The Summer was obtained via request by Alexander Raynes who applied for the use of the track in our film.

 

Development of skills

Doing this role has provided the opportunity to gain and develop certain qualities that a Director must possess to deliver a quality piece of film. Performing this job requires you to possess excellent communication skills, as it is imperative you maintain contact with each region of the production team in order to keep the idea of the film going. I have had to delegate and communicate to each of the actors on how I wanted them to perform in order to fulfill their character role. I've had experience of leadership through being a corporal in Air Cadets which was why I decided to put myself forward for this role at the beginning of this project. The qualities which I gained through being a corporal, enveloped and developed throughout the entire process of production. Being able to get your voice heard and adapt and resolve creative differences within a film production team is essential and I think that these are the greatest skill developmens I have taken from this experience.

Undertaking of Additional Tasks
Throughout the process of making the WARP Films Inspired Film Trailer, Unit 46, I further made contribution to each production role to make sure that the production adhered to my specification; filming scenes, assisting with editing and planning a concept and narrative to our piece. I applied myself to fulfill these responsibilities because I had a prominent vision of how I wanted the film to look and sound. Aside from the responsibilities of being a director, I believe I made the greatest contribution in my extra duties, to post production working alongside Lead Editor, Will to hone initial rushes and edits into the final fledged trailer.

LO 2: Task 3 - Understanding Skills needed to fulfill the role of a Director

I will be looking at the personality, qualities and skills possessed by a Film Director comprehensively, specifically their physical contribution to the production and the variety of communication between this individual and the production team they run.

Written Communication

The materials employed by the Director primarily during pre-production include Treatments,  storyboards and scripting. Communicative skills are obviously vital, translating their initial ideas onto paper which is later made into it's physical form. Throughout the Digital Media course I undertook at UTC Sheffield, I have had plenty of experience creating industry standard planning materials and primarily during Unit 46; creating a short film trailer, myself along with 3 others created the pre-production documents that formed a key phase of the film's production. Acting as the Film's Director, I managed this communication by holding concepting sessions in which pre-production were created and delegated for future creation. I checked that the plans gave a strong representation of the initial concepts of 'In Static', the name of our project. This implies that for this role, the ability to give criticism and feedback on these materials is required to ensure the concept of the film is displayed effectively.

Verbal Communication

Co-operation, between all members on set during a shoot is of the utmost importance; and the director is the individual that ultimately co-ordinates all the elements of the production team. 
In my experiences, throughout recording sessions for our Short Film; I have been able to present my verbal communication effectively, addressing each individual on their duties before filming can begin. The presence of a Director requires the respect of their production team and the quality of leadership. While I was in the Air Training Corps, I was promoted to Senior Corporal; which must have meant they saw that I had the communicative and leadership talents in order to fulfil a position of authority. 

Practical Production

The extended responsibility of Directors is to contribute to all phases of production in order to ensure that their 'vision' is maintained; this includes everything from camera positioning to ordering of clips during editing. As part of a smaller production team, my roles as Director also meant I had to act as cameraman, assistant editor and sound mixer. This means I had to have and improve my technological knowledge of how to operate the Canon 650D DSLRs' used to record our film and Adobe Premiere, the software used to edit the footage. 

Creativity

Directors inherit a 'vision' for their project which emerges through their contributions and delegations within the film. I believe that I could present my flair and communicate my own ideas for this project by undertaking extra roles and providing my own creative input. 

Areas for further Development - Skill Gaps and Action Plan

Reviewing my performance as a Director, I can identify aspects that I could improve in order to increase the efficiency of completing my duties next time I take on this role. In evaluation, I think that I could do better by preparing in greater extent during the pre-production phase. There was always some element of improvisation at every film shoot due to lack of story-boarding for every scene; it has to be said that occasionally even I didn't know what we should be doing, let alone the rest of my team. One of our main setbacks as a whole throughout this project were group disagreements; primarily about who should be doing what and what choice of music we should have. However, based on my views of the final product, I believe the whole team did an amazing job in creating a very professional looking trailer. In order to improve upon these skills, I will be undertaking an additional project in film making as part of the Media Course in which the team for 'In Static' will continue to improve upon their experiences by taking the feedback and evaluation made for our previous film and utilising it to improve upon our weaknesses and ensure that the new film's process runs more smoothly and with less problems. The best way to gain experience in filmmaking is to actually do it; practice makes perfect and just using the camera and adapting to a preferred style and improving your technical skills. I think have particular gaps in my knowledge of full camera operation; throughout filming in Static, we just used DSLR's and I had little experience using the professional Sony CE1000 Film Camera while fulfilling additional responsibilities other than Directing. Specifically, understanding and applying the entire camera hardware in order to create intended filming effects. I think also that their are aspects of my communication that needs working on such as confidence and pro-activity; a director ultimately has 'reign' over a production team and needs to be able to be in contact with every aspect of production and be confident while communicating with the people involved. I felt that on occassions I lacked the confidence to get across my ideas to the actors and contacting for permission of use of locations. I need to work on improving my 'presence' on set as well as behind the scenes, organising of pre-production meetings and negotiations between external parties for when I hopefully join a production team for a real film (actors, location managers, catering companies, producers etc)

In order to gain a greater understanding of camera operation, professional editing and talent in directing; my action plan is as follows:

• Participate in the 2Weeks2MakeIt project associated with the SYFN (South Yorkshire Filmmaker Network) throughout March 2015. This most importantly unlocks networking opportunities between film makers who I hope to stay in contact with. It will provide valuable experience of all phases of film production within a very limited time period.
• Study a BA degree in Film and Media Production at the University of Sheffield following my media course at UTC Sheffield -  Starts September 2015. The experience of film and TV production at college in Units' 43, 46 and 41 has inspired me to continue onto higher education. The networking opportunities provided while studying at UTC Sheffield has put me in contact with Sheffield based film making institutions; such as WARP Films, Steel City Media and the SYFN. 
• Once I have completed a 3 year degree in film production and potentially throughout my studies, from 2015 to 2018 I plan to move onto introducing myself into the industry by securing an apprenticeship or volunteering for work with the aforementioned companies.