Draft of 'The Encounter'

This is the draft that I made while in the Edit Workshop. Editing a little draft first helped a lot as it made me realise what shots I had to re-film. When editing I realised that when Sam throws the books at Bailey and she falls to the floor, there's no shot of her falling to the floor. She just goes from getting up to on the floor. In between these two shots we decided to film shots of the books falling instead of her falling, we decided on this as it would be hard to get everything in the same place and have the character wear everything the same.

I have next week to continue editing and it must be finished by Sunday. I still need to perfect it and add the additional shots we filmed. I also need to make sure to add the music in the beginning when we see Bailey walking.

Continuity Editing Intro

We started by looking at the brief to think of ideas for our sequence. The brief was quite loose, we were told that we had to include a character opening a door, they cross a room and sit down opposite another character and then exchange some lines of dialogue. We also had to include; match-on-action, shot reverse shot and 180 degree rule. Additionally, Simran and I also included some cross cut shots. 

We then brain stormed ideas and eventually Simran came up with the idea of having this interview with a really camp male and we both developed that idea and we ended up with the camp male - Sam,  interviewing the small town country girl - Bailey for a fashion editor job. The idea was inspired by 'Ugly Betty' an American comedy-drama television series, where Betty is a girl that doesn't have much sense of style and looks like the typical 'geek', with braces and thick rim glasses, but she gets a job at 'Mode' - a high end fashion magazine. We used this idea as we wanted to have some element of comedy and we thought we could make it funny by having Sam make fun of Bailey for her slight lisp and the way she walks. 

Betty Suarez from 'Ugly Betty' - the character Bailey was inspired by.

Marc St James - the character Sam was inspired from. 

The different camera techniques we will include are; shot reverse shot, 180 degree rule, high/low angles rule of thirds,  mid shots, close ups, establishing shot and a long shot. All these techniques will be used for a purpose, solely to make sure that the audience understand what is going on. 
 - Shot reverse shot: this will be used to show Sam's reaction when Bailey walks in dressed horribly. We will use a shot reverse shot so the audience can see Sam's eyes before she walks in and after she walks in. Before his eyes will be normal and after she walks in, he rolls his eyes, connoting to the audience that he didn't like her outfit or thought she was annoying.

A low angle - the person looks more dominant

- 180 degree rule: this will be used in shots where there is conversation between Sam and Bailey. We will use this shot so that it is easy for the audience to see that it is a genuine conversation.

- high/low angles: these two types of angles will be used when Sam and Bailey are talking. When Sam tells Bailey that her outfit is 'trash', I will shoot him from a low angle as it makes him look more mean, it will connote him as the villain. Where as when I will shoot Bailey replying to his comment, I will shoot her from a high angle so she will be connoted as the protagonist. By doing this, it makes it easier for the audience to see who they would sympathise with. 

A high angle - the person looks like a victim

Rule of thirds - this technique will be used through the whole time we will be filming. The rule of thirds is when you divide your shot into three horizontal areas. When filming a landscape, two thirds of the ground should show and one third of the sky, but when filming the sky, two thirds of the sky should show and one third of the ground. Rule of thirds is also used when filming people. When there is a shot of a person, their eyes should always be on the top line, no matter what type of shot it is. When filming we will make sure that our characters eye are always on the top line. 

Rule of thirds -his eyes are on the top third.
 Also, the restaurant in the background takes up two thirds.

Different types of shots.

- Mid shot/close up/establishing shot/long shot - these different types of shots are going to be used so that the sequence doesn't look boring. We don't want it to be the same shot every single second. At the beginning we will have an establishing shot, so that the audience know where it is set. In some shots we will use mid shots, these are used when the camera focuses on the individuals top half, so you can see their hand movements and the facial expressions at the same time. Similarly, long shots are used to see the individuals whole body language - like when Bailey walks into the office. Close ups are used when we want the audience to focus on something, they will draw their attention to that detail. An example of when we will use  a close up is when Bailey puts on her lipstick but she gets it on her teeth - it shows how she's clumsy and not that experienced in the beauty department. 

As well as camera techniques, we will use different editing techniques such as; match-on-action editing and cross-cut editing. Cross-cut editing will be used at the start of the sequence when we show Bailey arriving to Sam's office. It starts off with her walking, then a shot of Sam, than one of her putting on lipstick and finally another of Sam looking impatient. We will use this type of editing as it builds up to what the character (Bailey) would be like instead of going straight into it, it builds up some excitement as to who she could be.  We will also include match-on-action editing which is when you take two different shots but have one action in both of them that is parallel. For our match-on-action shot we will do Sam turning a paper, first we will shoot him turning the paper from the front, then film him turning the same paper from the side. We will then edit it to make it look like the page continued turning in the next shot. 

An example of match-on-action.

Storyboard - The Encounter

Pre-production included making a storyboard, so that me and my partner, would know what order the shots were going in, this would help the filming run as smoothly as possible. Before actually making the storyboard, we made a list of the shots we wanted to film and then allocated these to be drawn up on paper. I storyboarded the first half of the shots and Simran did the second half. Storyboarding was easy as in GCSE Media Studies we used storyboards when we filmed our horror trailer. 

Edit Workshop - Week Two

This week we filmed our sequence called 'The Encounter', we only had this week to film, so it was a tight schedule to get everything filmed and done on time. We also had to find music and make any props we required. 

On Monday's lesson we showed our completed storyboard to Mr Phillipson and he gave us the idea that we could have some cut away shots of Bailey as she walks up to Sam's office, so we went away and came up with shots. We decided we would do a track of her walking funnily in her heels and a shot of her putting on bright lipstick, but she gets it on her teeth. 

In Wednesday's lesson, the first thing Simran and I did was find the music. We wanted some music for the establishing shot of the office, to show that it was on busy city road, so we went on YouTube and found a 30 second sound clip of some busy traffic. We then went on to find a type of 'geeky' music that we could play when we see Bailey walking up to Sam's office, to connote that she was an odd character. We had a bit of trouble trying to find this first, but then we found the instrumental of 'Geek In the Pink' by Jason Mraz. I think this music is perfect for the type of character that Bailey is as it's very funky and different, which goes with the type of clothing she wears in the scene as well. 

We then made the props we needed. Simran made the desk tag for Sam and I made the sign for the door. We had these to connote to the audience that it was an office. The characters also needed props so we asked Naveed, who played Sam, to wear a smart black blazer with a white t-shirt and we then made that more fashionable by making him wear lots of rings on each hand and a heavy gold chain, to emphasise he was a fashion director. For Simi, who played Bailey, we asked her to bring in heels, bright lipstick and neon leg warmers. This gave her a unique fashion style. We asked her to bring to the heels so that we could film shots of her walking and tripping over. 

The look we were going for with Sam.

After school on Wednesday, we started to film. We followed the storyboard shot by shot, making sure we also added the extra cross cut shots of Bailey we had written in. In filming, we included different techniques like; match-on-action, shot reverse shot, rule of thirds, the 180 degree rule and cross-cut shots. We also had different camera angles and shots, we included most of the different shots; close up, extreme close up, two shot, over the shoulder, establishing, long shot and mid shot. We included all three angles as well; straight on, high and low. We looked for a shot that could have a cantered angle, but it didn't make sense for the scene we were filming. 

Filming shots and including the rule of thirds and 180 degree rule were fairly simple as we had learnt to do that when filming for GCSE Media Studies. Where as when it came to filming the match-on-action shot, it become slightly difficult as we hadn't done this before. Our match-on-action shot was of Sam turning a paper that would be carried on through to the next shot. We found it hard as in editing we wanted Bailey to be speaking over both the shots, so we didn't know how to film her speaking in both shots but make the audio run smoothly over both. In the end we figured it out by not filming Baileys face in the second shot, we just filmed her hand gestures and had the focus on Sam's reaction. 

While filming, I made sure to count down from 5 to 1, before the characters would actually do anything, this was to make sure when editing we would have enough footage to cut that it would not be jumpy. I took the responsibility to make sure we had a range of clips to choose from for one shot when editing as you can never have too much footage. 
Next week we started editing all the footage to create our final piece. 

Edit Workshop - Week One

This week we were given a task to create a short scene called 'The Encounter'. We were told that we would storyboard, stage and film the scene together, but edit it individually.  

Somewhere in this scene there must be; a character opening a door, they cross a room and then sit down across from another character and exchange some dialogue. It should also demonstrate knowledge and understanding of match on action, shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule. This must be between 30 to 60 seconds long.

First we (Simran Bhatti and myself) had to think of what would be the storyline that centres the scene. We wanted the scene to be funny, so we decided to make it a fashion interview, where the interviewer is a self-centred camp male who exaggerates his actions and the interviewee is a geeky small town girl who thinks she knows a lot about fashion. During the course of the interview, he makes fun of her and she just sits there nervously. It ends with him dumping lots of fashion magazines on her. 

After we came up with the idea, we were given a sheet to plan everything. We had to write down our idea in 25 words or less, how we will include shot reverse shot, the 180 degree rule and the rule of thirds. The short reverse shot will be shown by his reaction of her when she walks into the room, the 180 degree rule will be shown during conversation and the rule of thirds will be implemented through out. Then we had to write where we would film - Mrs Lowndes office, who will we cast - Naveed Rahman as the interviewer and Simi Mahil as the small town girl. We decided to name the interviewer - Sam, it's a typical name, but he pronounces it 'Sahme' as he exaggerates everything. We named the small town girl, Bailey as it's a typical farm girl name. We then had to discuss what props and costumes we would need. For Naveed we suggested he would have lots of rings and a bandana. To give Simi the geeky small town girl look, we decided she would wear a button up shirt and thick rim glasses and have her hair in pigtails. On the walls of the office we will place lots of pictures of Naveed, to fit in with the image that he is self-centred. 

The next lesson we started to plan out the shots for our storyboard. We wrote down the shot number, the shot type and angle, how long it would be on screen and a brief description of it, e.g 'over the shoulder - straight on - Bailey knocking on door, see Sam inside - 2 seconds.' In the end we had 19 shots, so we divided them in half and I took the responsibility of storyboarding the first half and Simran storyboarded the other half.

When I started the storyboard, I also had to write down what type of lighting it would be (Natural/Artificial and High Key/Low Key), what type of sound we would have the background and the location of the shot. The sound was either music, SFX or what dialogue would be spoken. The location of the shot is where the shot would be on screen, for example we're shooting the scene in Mrs Lowndes Office, but for location we would write 'Sam's Office'. 

Below is the completed storyboard, the first three are mine and the following three are Simrans.

Next week we will start to film and the following week we will be editing.