Kitchen Sink Drink – Mop-Up

I found the post-production on this project to be the most stressful I’ve ever had to work with. My plan was to add music and touch up certain shots to make them look a lot sharper; however, there were numerous factors as to why I feel that it could have gone a lot better which I will list below.

Strengths

There were several shots that I had never used or attempted before and it was good to see what it was like taking them from an idea to reality. Also I found that whilst filming I was able to think of new shot ideas such as a shot where it shows a close up of myself but in between my arm and my body my mums hand can be seen poisoning the water. This experimental shot was risky but I think it actually worked so its definitely important to consider new shot ideas for the future.

Weaknesses

The main thing that I found to be an issue was the editing software that is available on android. It meant there was a large watermark at the bottom of the screen and there was a lack of functionality, for example you are unable to add sound effects or colour grade competently so you mostly have to use the raw footage taken. Other examples of how it’s inadequate for video editing are that there is a lack of volume control, transitions and to make it even harder, you can’t turn the app landscape so cutting clips is extremely difficult. One of the clearest annoyances is the watermark that has been left at the bottom right hand corner of the film.

If I had to do this again I would change a few things: I would use final cut pro as it was impossible to edit on an app; I would be more aware of the lighting and i would minimise the amount of shots i make in order to create a smoother workflow.

Also, I would have liked to take some more time considering music choices as I don’t think they fit as well as I would have hoped. Next time i plan to make sure that i have all the necessary equipment with me to improve the appearance of the film such as my camera, lighting, tripod and editing on adobe premiere pro.

Kitchen Sink Drink – Location Scout and Floor Plan

To help me plan my shots I created a storyboard on paper.

I did a location scout as part of the pre- production process in order to work out whether my idea would fit the scale of the kitchen. I found that there was some issue with my ideas so I was forced to change some shots and there were several continuity errors which were unfortunately necessary as there was a lack of space.

Kitchen Sink Drink – Filming

Following the instructions given, i used my phone to shoot the film, using mostly static shots with a select few tracking shots at key moments. I was restricted by the capability of my phone and had to rely on my mum for certain shots who had no previous filming experience. This is one of the main reasons i used a lot of static shots but also because the kitchen is very small so certain shots couldn’t be achieved in such a confined space. My character was responsible for making the drink whilst my mum was the one drinking. I decided to use clear glasses so the poison in the liquid would be indistinguishable between both glasses. The lighting in the kitchen is unfortunately very weak in certain areas but was also often too harsh when filming.

I used a small tube so that it would fit in someones pocket and decided to use a radio to change the music from being digetic and non-digetic to give it context.

When filming, I found that there was several things that went wrong. Firstly, the already poor lighting was made worse when one of the bulbs went out mid-shoot. Also my tripod broke during filming so most shots looked shaky and unprofessional.

Kitchen Sink Drink – Screenplay

Kitchen Sink Drink – Treatment

Shona stands over the pots and pans, flustered and wearily stirring the large wooden spoon to prevent the already sorrowful looking substance from boiling over. She isn’t fazed by the sudden appearance of her son, Aaron, who makes it his business to move sharply past her, exchanging a mere glance that would to a stranger show no affection in the form of a mother to her son. He leans over to pour a drink from the silver tap and slowly turns around beginning to drink from the cup. A soft melody gently that quietly plays in the background gradually becomes more noticeable to Aaron as he drinks the last remains of the ice cold water. His eyes shift focus towards the lapping music which he has become increasingly aware of, moving forward without any urgency, he thrusts his finger down to a button on the radio, sharply halting the sound from its speakers, leaving a silent and eerie pause before Shona turns briskly towards Aaron. Steadily, she has moved from the dismal attempt at cooking to place herself where she can reach for a number of old plates and mislaid cups at her disposal. She draws her breath, exclaiming sarcastically “Oh, its nice to see you got me a drink too”, unfazed and uncaring he gives a swift effortless shrug, showing no sign of retort “And i see you turned off my music”. Aaron slowly raises his head, knowing that he must surely speak if he desires no further aggravation. Naturally, he is neither capable of being pleasant or considerate, returning her comment with an undaunted look of disgust, stating “If we have to listen to music at least make it good, d’ya know how many times iv’e had to listen to this crap?”, his tone has raised now as he begins to show his aggression. Shona, looking slightly bewildered, begins to bring up the courage to respond, doing so in a defensive manner whilst being taken back by the insult at her choice of entertainment “Well, i um, i think that…” she’s interrupted by the loud bellowing voice of Aaron who unleashes a wild barrage of fury “I don’t care what you think and why should I?”. They both stand silent, staring at one another until Aaron breaks the silence, “Alright” he conceded reluctantly, “How’s about the drink?” as his eyes appear to scowl at her. Aaron turns towards the sink quickly and begins to pour the water into the tall clear glass. Shona, taking a great stride to reach the half empty mug sitting neatly on the table, reveals a small glass vile that she had concealed in her right pocket. Oblivious and unaware, Aaron turns around to hand a full cup of ice clear water, slightly shaking and spilling a small amount of the liquid over the edge. Shona takes a large gulp of water and places it down beside her as Aaron reaches for his own drink and begins to take a small sip from the cup. Suddenly, he begins to violently choke until he is left coughing and spluttering on the ground, gasping at every opportunity for air without success. Heavy footed and looking over the cold and lifeless body of Aaron wasting away on the damp and dark floor, she paces without urgency over him, forcefully flicking the radio on to once again play a calm and soothing melody and stand with admiration, looking across to the countryside view and taking a considerable drink from her cup before setting it beside her. The room remains cold and harsh as the night closes in on them, Aaron now as lifeless as the icy moon, slowly but surely shuts his eyes in the knowledge of his imminent and unavoidable eternal sleep.

Kitchen Sink Drink – Introduction

The task that we must complete is to plan, film, edit and upload a sequence that features two characters in a kitchen, during which a drink is offered and accepted but something is secretly added to it. We must document all the stages of production and embed the finished sequence.

Treatment- A treatment is a as a “novelized” version of your screenplay. Instead of writing in traditional screenplay format, you’re relaying the narrative as a sort of short story or novel.

An example of this would be that in your screenplay it would look like this:

Ewan stands over the body of his dead mother with her necklace in his hands, slowly looking up to the sky in the pouring rain. He’s sobbing.

Ewan

What have you done!

Whereas in a treatment it would look like this:

Ewan stands over the body of his dead mother with her necklace in his hands, slowly looking up to the sky in the pouring rain. He’s sobbing. Drawing all his strength he exclaims “What have you done!”.

Reservoir Dogs

Our production process was far smoother than what i would have expected, nonetheless there was still a few minor complications. We were given 50 minutes to film both the short cafe scene and the longer walking scene outside. Preparations contributed to roughly 10 minutes of our time which restricted a lot of the shooting time we had available. This is why i feel that we wouldn’t have had to compromise on some of the shots, specifically the side- on tracking shot. To improve next time, i believe we shouldn’t have rushed some of our shots and focused more on getting the best shot possible.

We shot the scene outside first, focusing on getting the side- on tracking shot perfected, although with the pressured time constraints, we found that we weren’t satisfied with the finished shot, causing the shoot to move location to somewhere similar. This resulted in a group of bins being present in the final shot which moderately ruined the continuity of the film, however; the shot used was much better than the original so the sacrifice was justified. The front on close- up shots were filmed individually focusing on one character at a time. This was chosen because we wanted to focus on what the character was doing and felt we wouldn’t be able to organise everyone with the limited time, feeling it was more important to show their actions.

For the cafe scene, we filmed it in one shot using a wide shot to show some detail to the setting of the scene and to show the characters movements and actions as the scene progresses. The non-digetic sound of the narrator can be heard in the background during the altercation between certain characters which then fades into a black screen as the titles begin to roll. The narrator can still be heard in the background as music begins to play and cuts to a slow motion side on shot of several members of the cast. The final take wasn’t the original take we wanted to use but we felt our first shot wasn’t high enough in quality, however; we were forced to move location due to time constraints meaning the continuity was lost but we found it wasn’t as noticeable as we first thought when editing. Our plan was to line the cast so that it matched the original reservoir dogs front on close-up shots but we found that due to limited time, it would be easier to have one character walk towards the camera one at a time, meaning that unlike the original, characters talking to each other or walking alongside side one another couldn’t be seen. Later in the edit we were able to slow character movements and replay each shot of a character with a shot of them walking one after the other to create the impression that they’re all walking together. The final shot was probably the easiest. Someone operated the camera while all the cast walked towards the traffic using a wide shot, which was later slowed down and the title ‘Reservoir Dogs’ scrolls on the screen and stops just as the backing music begins to sing ‘turn to the left’ and fading away at the end of ‘turn to the right’, creating as much fluency as possible. The shot then cuts to black and the credits continue to roll, finishing the scene.

Knock – Knock (2)

After our first short film attempt, we were set the task of repeating it with a few changes. Instead of just entering a room and telling the joke, we now had to show the two characters departing this time, along with the fact that we now had a new group to work alongside with. We were given storyboards as an aid for planning, but found we weren’t as dependent on it as we had been previously, whilst still shooting the film, sound recording, and responsible for editing.

My partner was Daisy Samra, who was responsible for sound recording the film, except for the final shot, where Daisy took on the role of the cinematographer and i worked on sound recording. The plan this time was to do something far more simplistic than last time, in order to get the best looking shoot possible that didn’t contain any major complications, but managed to meet the revised success criteria that we take into account the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot, and match on action, which was all completed successfully. I filmed in the light and decided to show more than just the room that we were filming in so that the audience have a better sense of the surrounding, this was shown when one character opened the door on the outside and then switched to a shot on the inside of the room. Also, my match on action shot was filmed with two varying shots, the first was a close – up shot that was chosen to clearly show what the action was, and the second was a wide shot, chosen to show the new location that the character had just entered.

The shooting process was seamless and worked extremely effectively. I found that my knowledge of how to use the camera has improved dramatically, from simply changing the camera modes, to being able to focus the shot. There were however still a few challenges that I felt were difficult to overcome. For example, I still need to work on my skills with setting up the equipment, as while I know how to shoot the video, my skills in getting the sound and camera ready needs some work. Also, I found that when editing, I was still unfamiliar with many of the tools which increased the time taken, although, I could definitely notice that I had improved.

During this project, I learnt how to use the sound recording device as I had never used it before because I was working with the camera so it was completely new to me. One thing that I would do differently next time is to try and explore a range of new shots to use in order to enhance my abilities and give a more pleasant viewing experience.

One aim that I have set myself Is to learn more about the camera and hot to focus the shot more effectively.

Knock – Knock

During class, we were set the task of creating a short film based an around a character entering a room and telling a knock knock joke, then departing. This had to be filmed twice in each group in 50 minutes to be edited later on. We were responsible for planning through the use of a storyboard, shooting the film, recording it and then editing it.

I was partnered with Andrew Elton for our film and the idea was to use the joke out of The Office US as all other jokes we saw were hopelessly unfunny. I decided I wanted to put my own twist on it. In the show it’s used in a very light hearted tone in one continuous medium shot so my ideas was to make the atmosphere seem more intense whilst still maintaining part of the humorous tone despite the thrill factor. The joke I decided to go with went as follows.

Midway through planning i decided to change the setting of the film and change the storyboard to show it changing from two students bumping into each other in a corridor to an interrogation type scene.

The shooting process was extremely stressful and looking back there are many aspects I would have liked to change. One major challenge i found was that my inexperience with the equipment meant that the already tight time constraints were restricted even more as i had to get an understanding for certain camera controls and how to correctly setup the sound recording. Another difficulty was that the script was written very quickly on demand meaning it wasn’t as fluent as I would have liked it to be and the actors, Daisy and Jay weren’t prepared enough to give the compelling performance that might have been capable with more time.

There are some clear things that I have learnt not to do in the future when filmmaking and what I could have done to improve it due to the work on this project. The decision to film in the dark is an effect I have seen utilised many times and whilst the concept of the idea seemed effective, the application of it was less so because the camera equipment was not up to a high enough standard to shoot in the dark without there being glare present on the screen and out of focus. Another problem came with my partner who through no fault of his own, lacked experience when controlling the sound recorder so the recording were often corrupted, not stopped or not filmed at all which meant when it came to editing, some words were missing and had to be used on the cameras sound rather than the microphone.

Prior to filming, we had a lack of knowledge about certain shot types and the 180 degree rule which meant could have looked better, that is if it could be seen at all!

Reverse shot used in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013, Scorsese)

I chose to use an over the shoulder reverse shot when filming the conversation between the two characters which may not have been clear in the dark, but I know that if it was filmed in a better location and setting, the shot would have greatly improved the look of the film. Also, the editing was a great challenge to me as I have often edited different films on my phone with much less sophisticated software, so moving to Final Cut Pro meant I had to learn everything from scratch which took up a lot of editing time. I havent fully been able to understand the full capability of the software yet which is why I am making it one of my main aims to learn if in my own time to create better films.

After I had completed editing the short film with the limited amount of sound files, I uploaded it to YouTube: