The audience- Unit 2

Its funny, but not much thought has been given to the audience of our short film. It is probably around the same age group as us. It probably includes the LGBT community considering the films going in that direction. Hopefully though it’s a broad target audience as it is a stock story. It’s only going to be 2-3 minutes, so it can be for everyone who has a couple of minutes in their lives.

Jeune et Jolie- Review

Director- Francois Ozan
2013

A young girl decides to become a prostitute in Paris after a summer fling, however once a client dies during sex she gets outed.
I went to see this in the cinema with a friend, and I was not impressed. Despite a generally pretty aesthetic, a story line that ran without a hitch and a concise script that never overstated anything, but neither did it leave us guessing, I found the film hard to enjoy.
My first problem is that despite being a film with a female main character, we hardly saw her opinions or understood her actions. It felt to me that that the film was more sympathetic to her clients and thought more about their opinions than hers. The interactions with her mother met the same problem. The main character was 2D with her motives for becoming a prostitute never fully explained.
Because of this, the film felt almost pornographic. We were watching this underage girl be a prostitute, with little exploration of her own feelings. It was an exploitative experience.
The final straw with me was that the film started to suggest at the end that every girl secretly wants to be a prostitute with a little encounter with the dead clients wife. I am not someone who needs morals in every film, but the main character appears to be hardly effected by her experience. She talks to a psychiatrist a bit and has a moment of distrust in the family, but mainly there seem to be no effects on her. In fact the experience is almost shown as positive.
All in all this felt like a sleazy film about a mans fantasy of what women are like. It is not exactly on my watch again list.

Friday the 29th of November- Unit 2

We met in the café. I got a hot chocolate as I felt we couldn’t just sit there are use their wfi. Everyone turned up nearly on time, which was great as it prevented me from being a ball of nerves.

The meeting was a little stressful, but less so than I expected which was a bonus. We had a mini fiasco when we found out our lead wouldn’t work with the supporting actress. That was sorted though, another actor was drafted last minute by the director, for which I will be eternally grateful.

We decided on Oskar Shusters Sneewland as our music and the scipt was agreed on. The director got a good look at our location, and relised his shot list would need to be slightly revised, but everyone seems to like it. I now need to go and organise the dolly for tomorrow though.

By the way I emailed the council to ask if we could use the ampitheter. They havn’t got back so I am just going to go for it.

Here is my communication with the lead.

Saturday the 30th of November- Unit 2

That was easier than expected.

Getting up to the location was fine. All the crew and cast were there on time. The actors were all great and really patient, and there was a lot of standing around and little I needed to do, which I suppose shows that the planning worked. We were loose for time until the dolly arrived after which everything seemed to speed up, and suddenly we were attempting to pull it apart as the other group asked for it. Afterwards, suddenly it turned out we had loads to quickly sort out, like doing a background sound and that kind of loose end stuff. Fillers were also all done in about 15 minutes.

If I was to do this again I would:

• ·         Make sure every actor had read the script before hand
• ·         Print more scripts
• ·         Leave all bags not essential behind
• ·         Take photos of the location before hand to help planning
• ·         Make sure everyone was tip top on the whole story
• ·         Have a definite storyboard and shotlist and a more organised plan on when taking all the shots.
• ·         Bring cards

But apart from that it was a lot better than expected.
Here are some photos on set.

By the way, I did a risk assessment. Here it is:

Saturday the 16th of November- Unit 2

Today we learnt about cinematography. To be perfectly honest I was bowled over by a lot of the technical aspects, at one point we appeared to be looking at lists of numbers and letters. Luckily the cinematographer and the editor seemed to understand what was told to us perfectly so I can ask them as questions arise and hopefully everything will fall into place.

The cinematographer got a good play with the camera, looking at us and zooming in and out of us. I think he may be dead set on using a dolly now which will have to be arranged.

We also looked at sound which was fun. I think that we will need to take background sound. Luckily at this time there appears to be little dialogue in our script so I doubt that will be our biggest problem. We also need to consider music, which I didn’t consider. We will be actively browsing the free music archive from now on I imagine.

I was excited to look at the script. In a scared sort of way. I was right to be. It’s changed dramatically, but I can deal with it. It is now about a gay characters first date. The script originally contained a hell of a lot of locations and people, so I attacked it with my pen and brutally slashed through them. Hopefully we can work and make this work with minimal people. I would like it to be simple.

I listed what everyone needs to do. So far it all looks fine, I am sorting location, schedule and dietary requirements (looks like I am the only one who eats anything in my group).The scriptwriter has the script (obviously, sorry) and to look out actors, the director is doing the storyboard and the shot list. Sound is the cinematographer’s job this time. The editor is sort of dipping in and out, with a lot of input in the shot list.

It feels slightly stressful, but I think we can sort it all.

Is the Project going well?- Unit 2

The biggest way I am going to measure the success of this project is the ability to stick to deadlines. Being super organised would be a bonus. When we don't know what we are doing and if the communication don't work well it goes downhill. The length of our production meetings is probably a good way to judge. If we run out of things to say there is probably a problem, if we over run dramatically it means there are disputes that aren't getting solved.

Apart from that I will probably measure our success from the outcome, i.e the film.

Saturday the 9th of November- Unit 2

I am now the producer in a group of 5. We had a talk on producers which is food as I didn’t really know what a producer did. As the lecturer kept saying the producer is boss. I feel production will be a great way to find out about all the different jobs in film are, as I am supposed to oversee all of them.

As the Producer I am aiming to coordinate people and in the meantime find out more about the different roles. Organisation is one of my strong points most of the time, but it is interesting to try to manage a whole group of people. After a talk by Mike Knowles on Producing and finding out that time consuming bits for this project (funding) dose not not apply this time as the BFI will be funding and providing stuff this time.

We discussed film ideas after a presentation on the History of Film. We ended up deciding on a film about agoraphobia or a lack of confidence. Showing a simple task from that point of view. We are making the film roughly 2 to three minutes. If we get it to 2 minutes 20 seconds that would be great as we could then submit it to Virgin Media Shorts, but we wont edit it to that length if its not natural.

Everyone had a lot of ideas which was good. I was scared that I would be in a un-opinionated group which could lead to such troubles, such as not managing to get anything done and having to drag every one along. The opinions were fine, if anything we all had too many ideas so closing in on one idea was nearly impossible. We just about managed though.

That’s good, I can work with choosing ideas, not just pulling everyone.