News Report Filming

First of we met our actor Johnny who was going to play the news anchor and then collected the equipment from stores. The camera we used we were able to place LED green lights around the front of the lens which allowed us to place a chroma key fabric circle behind Johnny which reflected the green lights so when in editing we can edit out the background. Myself and Heather Hall also went and filmed the train station and Park Hill as the deep background from the showroom for a news broadcast background to put behind Johnny after we had filmed the green screen process. We also used a three light set up to light the anchor so there was barely any shadow left around the desk or Johnny himself. Johnny was good for the part as his acting was very much real and he read the lines exactly how we would have wanted him to acting and sounding like a news anchor. 

News Report Script

The first draft of our news report script

Updated News Script

News Anchor 

Yesterday Russian state media declared the region Donetsk as part of Novorossiya as they held another referendum that has been condemned by the international community. This news comes just after members of the previous Crimian parliament claimed they were forced to sign the first of Putin’s referendum’s in March. In retaliation to this, President Barack Obama gave a speech outside the White House stating that the US will continue to place further sanctions on prominent citizens of Russia who are linked with this gross breech of civil rights .

There has still been no sightings of Pavlo Petrenko, Ukraines Justice minister, for over three weeks now, he is missing presumed dead. His family haven’t been seen since the 5th of June and police are appealing to anyone with information to come forward.In other news, when David Cameron was questioned in Paliment earlier today whether the UK would support Kiev with troops after Oleksandr Turchynov's appeal for the international community for help he stated 'the US and UK will intervene with this attack on the freedom of Ukrainan Citizens and that G7 summit  taking place in Spain tomorrow will discuss what further action to take to support Kiev.

Russia has officially been removed from the international bodies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. George Osborne has expressed fears over the £11.5 billion  Russia is in dept to the UK but said the EU's sanctions were a necessary measure . Geramnys finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble seconded Osborns opinion but expressed Germanys economy would take a considerable hit as many companies terminate their exportation contracts with Russia. 

Pitch and Feedback Session

We presented the Idea to Dom and the class and overall they seemed impressed with the idea but there was a few room for improvement. One of the comments is that they just wanted more clarification of the narrative other than the war situation between Ukraine and Russia. So having looked back upon this in the next meeting we wanted the firing scene between Larry and his boss. We started with writing the script and seeing where we would get to in the story and having written the first scene we came across the boss scene that had been the topic in the crit session, We all decided it would be more effective if there was no sound of the dialogue in it but instead a ambient sound that would play over the top of the scene and this would be much more effective, the audience would understand what was going on as well as it being quite uncomfortable to watch or letting them feel emotion towards Larry.

Some of the positives that did come out of the session tho was this contradiction and juxta-position between the two stories and having one of them playing in the background as a news report we could create a whole different effect.

So just clearing up the narrative was the main point we got from the crit session as well as making the most of the chance we have to use the news story as an effective and emotional tool.

Russia and Ukraine Situation

Our plan was to have a news broadcast that would have been shown in the near future (i.e. a couple of years). What we didn't expect was things to happen so fast in the politics so having written the script for the news broadcast a lot of what we had written about was happening at the time. Its not the end of the world but we had imagined things to happen slower so we could have this film made before the situation got worse. We also wanted this to affect the characters in the film with the emerging situation.  Despite this we decided to go ahead with the idea. Russia was however forcing pressure upon Ukraine.
The images above taken from the Guardian newspaper explains the situation and the link is below.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/06/ukraine-claims-30-pro-russia-separatists-killed

Second Meeting

In the second meeting with the team we started coming up with concepts for a narrative idea. We started of all agreeing seeing as we were only allowed limited amounts of characters we would have a strong lead or 2 lead roles that would dictate the piece. We then decided that the 2 main characters would know each other and started coming up with their back stories as well as what they are like as a person and their names...

Lola - Mid 20's, she stands up for herself as well as other people and is a confident well of person that also cared for others but would sometimes overlook the small maters in life.

Larry - Again Mid 20's has a full time job but then has a normal life, goes to the guy a few times a week. He likes his job but isn't hugely confident and has to rely on Lola for support and help on his issues.

Both are good friends but have no romantic link and both like playing around having a laugh if its sarcastic or not and tend to do most things together even tho they do not live together.

As far as the story goes the group was quite keen with a political approach. I'm not hugely into politics but was more than happy to find some research and look into the recent issues between Russia and Ukraine as this is what the group was interested in and talking about. We wanted this story to be in the background of our film as sort of the near future and almost as if its the start of the 3rd world war or something to that existent was going to happen and we could have subtle hints from the two main characters about it as well as the story going on.

Developing the story we ended up deciding the event that would occur between the 2 characters and that Larry would be fired from his job due to expenses and on occasion steeling the odd silly thing such as a pencil for which Lola had asked for. So in order of scenes, scene one would consist of before the office scene where Larry would get fired and would occur in Lola's house where Larry had gone to she how she was and have a joke around. After this scene would be the office scene where Larry looses his job and the 3rd scene would be back in Lola's house and Lola would have to comfort Larry sticking up for him. The final scene would then develop into the park hill location and be talking about the future as well as the news of Russia and Ukraine.

We then decided that the best way to get the Russia and Ukraine situation across to the audience would be through a news report. Seeing as we were only allowed 3 locations what we decided as a team that we could do was to film the news report and the put it on a disk to the be played on the television in Lola's house.

Park Hill Filming

Having started looking at the brief I was inspired to go out and film something Drama related or even looking as I wanted some practice before we got to do the drama project. I just wanted a place to go filming that looked good or had something about it that would look good on camera. Heather Hall had also asked me of if would be possible to practice using my camera seeing as she was the Cinematographer for the project. I also wanted to think about how I would come about editing such a piece. So I decided to look up locations around Sheffield and came across the abandoned flats at Park Hill in Sheffield so asked if Heather wanted to go up there and film a piece for some practice and she seemed up for it. The film link is below, it does't really have a narrative structure but I found out a little about the history of the place and then added some text to the film that was shot by myself and Heather Hall. I also found that you could put a really nice colour correction on the clips to create a mood for the viewer. 

Drama Brief and First Meeting

The brief

The brief explains we are allowed a maximum of three locations and a maximum of three characters. Myself and Heather Hall had worked together before so we decided to start a group and try and find a few more people. We found that Heather Kelland had a group of 3 with herself, Billy Jackson and Tom Noonan. Luke McKnight then later joined our group to make a 6. 

In the first meeting we decided to sort out job roles for the group and having done cinematography in the last project I wanted to try another one of my strengths and was really interested in being editor for the piece and everyone seemed okay with it so my role was assigned. 

The roles were assigned as follows...

Director - Heather Kelland

Producer - Billy Jackson

Sound Editor - Tom Noonan

Sound recordist - Luke McKnight 

Camera - Heather Hall

Editor - Alex Kentfield

The roles assigned I think will work to our strengths as no one was left with a role they didn't want and I think people have their own strengths which they can apply in their own roles.