Technical Skills

WRITING THE SCRIPT

After we had all agreed to proceed with the idea of 'The Bus Stop,' I was told to go off and write the script. I was a little fearful of writing it alone as it would likely be completely different from how the others wanted and expected it to be. However, I was still confident that I would be able to write something that, at the very least, I liked.

I began by jotting down ideas that came to me and small pieces of dialogue that we had previously discussed. I knew that we wouldn't exactly have Oscar-worthy actors and so I attempted to make the dialogue sound almost sketch-like, and satirical so that it would accentuate the comedic aspect of the film, therefore further conveying the meaning of the film.

I looked at clips of films and sketches that I thought I may be able to use as inspiration. I looked at sketches by Monty Python and The Two Ronnies to see if it would help me but this just made me realise that they didn't solely rely on dialogue bu also had the story concept to help, which we didn't have. I began reading film and play scripts by Martin McDonagh and Harold Pinter in the hopes that I could attempt to replicate the witty theatre-like, back-and-forth dialogue. I couldn't.

Although, perhaps a little dramatic, I believe the above image shows how frustrating this cycle became.

After multiple attempts at restarting, I tried to make it clear that the story was far too weak to write a script from. We discussed it but ultimately failed to improve it further. This led to the cycle of me restarting the script, realising that I hated it, and then restarting again which became extremely frustrating. This process continued until the group finally realised what I was saying and we finally gave in, hardly a few weeks before we were expected to begin filming.

EXCERPT OF DRAFT SCRIPT

STORYBOARDS

NOTE: Product change - Judgement

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

The topic of each set of questions differ for each of our interview subjects. These topics are: Ethnicity, Religion, and LGBT, as well as a set of quesions surrounding Mental Health to see how each of them have been affected by the way they are treated because of their differences.

JUDGEMENT STORYBOARD

RISK ASSESSMENT

LOCATION RECCE

NOTE: Project change - Walking Corpses

RECORDING NARRATION

Now that I had thought of the idea for my individual project, I began with the recording of my narration. I decided to work on this first as I knew that the audio would be the main focus of the video as the visuals would likely be mediocre without any motivation or guidance as I would be filming alone.

As I said previously, I decided against scripting or extensively planning what it was that I intended to say as I wanted to be genuine, and I knew that a rehearsed monologue most likely wouldn't fit with my intention and I didn't have a single, definite message that I wanted to get across. Before I began, I also considered audio quality. As I do not possess a microphone of any great quality, my phone microphone and the microphone built into my headphones were going to be my only choices. However, even if I did own a great quality microphone, I don't believe I would've ended up using it as the rough, non-consistent audio recorded by my devices was something that I strived for as I wanted it to sound impromptu as if it had been cut from a casual conversation.

When it came to recording my narration, I found it extremely difficult to speak naturally without subconsciously altering the pitch of my voice which I found strange as it only occurred the second I clicked record. To defeat this, I started reading random things to try and get used to speaking naturally. Eventually, it worked and I began talking about the topics I wanted to.

The recording that I ended up with consisted mostly of short pauses, frustrated sighs at my inability to express my thoughts, and the occasionally well-put statement. I didn't mind this as I would have to cut the recording later to fit with the visuals which would allow me to remove all of the unnecessary elements.

EQUIPMENT & SOFTWARE LIST

FILMING PROCESS

Filming Day l -

The first time I went out filming, I essentially set out with the camcorder and wandered around my village with only a rough plan of what I wanted to film. I was driven mostly by a desire to make the most of the weather which had become freezing and foggy as I knew the fields and village roads would look amazing coated in ice. I also hoped that the inability to see a great distance as a result of this weather would help me better convey the feeling of isolation that I hoped to.

When I began, I felt extremely awkward every time I lifted the camcorder to film. I soon became used to this and began to care less about how strange I looked out filming trees and fields in the freezing cold morning. When I first ventured out, the only images I had in my mind was that of the locked gate and a bird flying away. These were two contrasting images that I originally intended to use as the opening and closing shots of the film but, as I knew from the beginning, my final product was never going to be entirely loyal to the planning I had done and I knew the project was, in some ways, going to shape itself.

At the beginning of my venture, I couldn't resist being extremely trigger-happy every time the slightest thing caught my attention. As a result of this, I wasted a great chunk of the camcorder's battery life filming birds and trees. I also spent a great deal of time recording a fox that I had spotted which I knew wouldn't likely make it into the film. However, once I had cured my itchy trigger finger, I started focusing on filming what I thought could be useful to my project.

Although the weather gave the footage I filmed the dull, gloomy tone that I wanted, it may have been more detrimental than beneficial to the quality of footage as I spent roughly an hour out in the freezing cold and something that was plainly obvious when looking back through my footage was that the steadiness of each shot fell dramatically the further into the venture I was. This meant that the most steady frames were those that were filmed very early on when I was unable to restrain my itchy trigger finger with the camcorder and so I got some very steady shots of birds and trees but the shots that were vital for conveying what I wanted, such as the passing cars and the locked gate, were very unsteady and jarring.

Filming Day 2 -

Once I had looked through all of the footage that I got, something became extremely obvious to me and that was that the footage and the narration were, in some ways, completely opposite. Whereas the footage was entirely objective and static, the narration had shown a point of view that was subjective and personal. This was something that I knew would be difficult as showing a subjective view when filming alone isn't easy. All I could think of was to film forwards as I walked through the street without caring too much for steadiness and, in some ways, striving for the opposite as the teetering motion of the camera averted the unintentional omniscience and better complimented the personal narration.

With the footage that I collected during this day of filming, I was able to piece together the large amount of static footage that I had previously collected with new footage that was slightly more dynamic.