Auditions & Rehearsals

Rhys being the producer, managed to acquire some females to audition for the daughter role. We held the auditions in EMB and they were highly successful, unfortunately I could only stay for two out of the four auditionees due to work, however I was pleased to hear we went for Fiona, as she met the image I had in my mind. One in which could portray vulnerability, innocence and fragility.

Luckily, a couple of days after, we met our male actor James for the first time, and we had a rehearsal session with our actress and actor, a few days prior to going out and shooting on location. Everything went well, the emotions were clear, and the way we wanted to put forward the emotion was all sorted.

Father Synopsis

Being assigned as the director, I created a quick sample of how our father could be.

1. What do you know about this character now that s/he doesn’t yet know? *UNKNOWN*
2. What is this character’s greatest flaw? Being mentally unstable, being diagnosed with bi-polar
3. What do you know about this character that s/he would never admit? He misses his wife who passed away
4. What is this character’s greatest asset? Smoking
5. If this character could choose a different identity, who would s/he be? *UNKNOWN*
6. What music does this character sing to when no one else is around? Classical
7. In what or whom does this character have the greatest faith? God
8. What is this character’s favourite movie? *UNKNOWN*
9. Does this character have a favourite article of clothing? Favourite shoes? Polishing his shoes
10. Does this character have a vice? Name it. Picture of his wife
11. Name this character’s favourite person (living or dead). His daughter? Or wife?
12. What is this character’s secret wish? To try and provide a better life for his daughter – what he missed out on
13. What is this character’s proudest achievement? Becoming a father
14. Describe this character’s most embarrassing moment. *UNKNOWN*
15. What is this character’s deepest regret? *UNKNOWN*
16. What is this character’s greatest fear? Not fulfilling a good life for his daughter
17. Describe this character’s most devastating moment. Taking a knife to his daughter’s throat
18. What is this character’s greatest achievement? *UNKNOWN*
19. What is this character’s greatest hope? *UNKNOWN*
20. Does this character have an obsession? Name it. Smoking
21. What is this character’s greatest disappointment? His bi-polar disorder
22. What is this character’s worst nightmare? Delving into complete insanity
23. Whom does this character most wish to please? Why? His daughter, because his disorder is affecting both him and his daughter mentally and sometimes psychically
24. Describe this character’s mother. Unfortunately she has passed away
25. Describe this character’s father. Not applicable
26. If s/he had to choose, with whom would this character prefer to live? Where he is now, with his daughter, who takes care of him
27. Where does this character fall in birth order? What effect does this have? Not applicable
28. Describe this character’s siblings or other close relatives. Daughter – Caring, withdrawn from the outside because of the almost constant care of his father, neglected, occasionally shown affection from her father, perhaps frightened?
29. Describe this character’s bedroom. Include three cherished items. A pair of polished black shoes, a picture of his wife, a chain, or ring of some sort?
30. What is this character’s birth date? How does this character manifest traits of his/her astrological sign? NOT APPLICABLE
31. If this character had to live in seclusion for six months, what six items would s/he bring? His shoes, his picture, a chain or ring…?
32. Why is this character angry? His life is being torn apart by his bi-polar disorder, and is affecting his daughter
33. What calms this character? Silence, solitude
34. Describe a recurring dream or nightmare this character might have. An evening with his wife and daughter, in which he lost control and hit them both, screams and shouts occurred, and unfortunately that’s the last time he spoke to his wife before she passed away – regret, guilt.
35. List the choices (not circumstances) that led this character to his/her current predicament. *UNKNOWN*
36. List the circumstances over which this character has no control. His bi-polar disorder, changing from extreme to another
37. What wakes this character in the middle of the night? Nightmares
38. How would a stranger describe this character? Distraught, unpredictable
39. What does this character resolve to do differently every morning? NOT APPLICABLE?
40. Who depends on this character? Why? His daughter, because her father is the only person she has in her life
41. If this character knew s/he had exactly one month to live, what would s/he do? Go somewhere by himself, or perhaps with his daughter, wear his shoes, and just sit there, gazing across the landscape
42. How would a dear friend or relative describe this character? *UNKNOWN*
43. What is this character’s most noticeable physical attribute? *UNKNOWN*
44. What is this character hiding from him/herself? Hiding from his disorder?
45. Write one additional thing about your character. *UNKNOWN*

DRAMA PROJECT

We've been assigned to create a drama piece, consisting of no more than 3 characters, and this time 6 members.. so we've produced a synopsis for our piece we're going to create.

Drama Assignment Plotline

START:

·      Daughter lying on floor in tears camera tracking out on top of character her eyeline follows father as he stands there for a few secs then walks out of door (audible click) and cuts to flashback.

·      A single wide static shot in living room of dad showing all different emotions of bipolar depression: Angry-ecstatic, happy-sad. (Dancing on his own happily and then dancing the waltz sadly with his wife as she fades away. Cutting from jumping up and down in the air to curled in a ball

·      Tracking left to right or right to left looking at pictures of family happy. Tracks over to father in bedroom taking pills looking extremely warn out and sad.

·      Scene of father who has made dinner for daughter sitting at table as daughter walks in- He is ecstatic, very happy but taking pills. Daughter sits at table with a fake smile asking how he is feeling stressing about how he is.

·      Scene of father in car time-lapse as it becomes dark.

·      Scene next day- daughter walking into house and dad is sat smoking with dinner on table- she walks in says hi and he looks up angry and starts argument questioning ‘where have you been?’ very over the top. She tells him to calm down and to take his pills- he hits the pills from her hand and blames her for her mother’s death whilst pushing her to the floor.

·      He stands there for a second looking slightly shocked and guilty- he walks out of the house and we see the daughter lying there putting her hands over her face and crying.

·      Cuts to the father walking up to the side of a bridge standing at the edge and lighting a fag, he bursts into tears.

·      His mobile rings and he answers it, his daughter sobbing says please come home dad.

·      He replies I’m sorry for everything that has happened and hangs up the phone.

·      He takes out his wallet looking at a photo of his wife and daughter and still sobbing flicks his cigarette over the bridge and steps up to the edge of it looking down. After a few seconds he looks up slowly to the camera.

CUTS TO BLACK

The basic plotline for our drama piece features a father and a daughter, and their relationship with one another that is strained by the father's bi-polar disorder. The mother, who died at some point in the past, is still a part of their life.

We aim to portray various sides to the father's conditions, from one extreme to another.. the mood or impact on the audience what we're aiming for, is one of sorrow and remorse. We want to create a piece that is poignant, moving and emotional.

'About A Girl' Analysis

The short drama we watched in the seminar entitled 'About A Girl', directed by Brian Percival, is about a girl discussing her ordinary teenage life, and uncomfortable of sadness underpins the main narrative, and not until the end, does the audience witness the disturbing truth.

The fast-paced editing makes the piece seem longer than it actually was. The scenes of her walking along the canal (in present time) talking to the audience was shot hand-held, whereas the flashbacks we see of her life are fixed on a tripod. This create an up-tempo sense of urgency and encourages the audience to remain engaged with the piece. The editing compliments/parallels the girl and her character; a sense of urgency, not afraid so say what she thinks.

The narrative builds up slowly throughout the piece as we learn more about her life. The girl loves her father, however the father himself rarely shows affection towards the girl. For example there is a scene in-which the girl is sat outside a pub on her own as her father is indoors drinking, and watching football with his friends. The sense of a disjointed connection is strongly portrayed here.

The shock at the end of the piece, reveals the girl throwing a plastic bang into the canal. As the bag makes contact with the water, a new-born baby is revealed to the audience. I think this baby stands as a strong symbol for her life, or perhaps some people's lives in reality, who are lower-working class, and don't earn much income.

In conclusion, the piece is strong and sets out a pace that keeps the audience engaged throughout. The balances between fast-paced editing and more 'laid-back' scenes are well constructed, and add to the overall feel of the film.

Liverpool Documentary - Analysis

The edit is finally finished and I feel we've produced a fairly strong piece that gets it's message across effectively. We spent a while deciding on the title of our piece but concluded on calling it 'Music of the Streets'.. indicating how the streets of music are full of life and vibrancy from the street performers they hold.

In the end, we reared away from the proposed council legislation action they were planning on putting forward onto the streets of Liverpool, and instead focused more on the buskers/performers themselves; where they came from, how did they get into what they do now, what motivates them, their reactions from the public, and how they generally feel they contribute to the community.

The reactions we got from the public were of great interest, most, if not all of the interviews we got were all in favour to the street performers, however unfortunately, we talked to one of the members of public, and she described how one of the 'brass bands' played continuously throughout the afternoon in the same spot, right outside her office of work. This proved annoying for her and said they were meant to move on after 40 minutes or so... however she didn't want to be on camera so we lost her opinion on the 'busking scene'. Perhaps we could have interpreted what she said on-screen via narration or titles, but then again I don't think this would have fit properly at all with the feel we were going for.

As you can see, we managed to collect more than a few of the public's opinions on the performers.

It is also worth mentioning now that we suffered from some severe grain throughout most of our shots.. we checked the camera and thought it was all fine, however we couldn't tell on viewfinder, and then until we were back in Sheffield, that in fact the gain was not adjusted properly. This was one of those things that we just had to deal with, and will be corrected for next time. Unfortunately I've never had the proper hands-on experience myself with the camera as I've usually starred in the films myself, so i was unsure to whether i had adjusted all the settings correctly. But we checked, thought it was okay, but unfortunately not. Despite the graininess, i don't think it deters you away from the shots and what's happening on-screen.

Johnny Walker, the busker we found and arranged an interview/meeting time with, provided to be a success, as we were able to gather every shot we wanted, from close-ups of the guitar case, to his performances and interview. Throughout our piece we decided to keep referring back to Johnny Walker and what he had to say, this is also apparent to the band of three we interviewed. By doing this, we were able to shuffle around the interviews we had, with the cutaways and performances, and then refer back to the interviewees instead of having a 2-minute straight interview on-screen.

Another aim of our piece, was to portray the buskers as more 'human', rather than people who are lifeless, playing day in day out without communicating with the people personally. I feel we achieved this successfully by the responses we got from the interviews, and perhaps most of all, some of the natural shots I managed to collect whilst filming.. this ranges from one of the buskers looking at his bag of sandwiches, to one of the guys fiddling around with his guitar strings. These proved to be personal, interesting but subtle shots that add a sense of 'charm' to the piece.

The cons of our final piece I believe could include the following -

- Our piece perhaps gets to a stage where it drags on for a while (around the 3:30-5:00) mark; after a good start, with the music in the background, and the relatively steady-fast paced editing, the piece slows down and lacks density. If we were to do it again, I would have taken Esther's advice and gathered more 'up close and personal' shots, rather than the amount of shots I got that were perhaps too far away from the subject. However, saying that, the director (or lack of) never decided what shots to have, and instead left it down to us to decide.

- The obvious grain on more than half of the shots.

The pros of our piece I feel include -

- The vast amount of footage we gathered from the days we were in Liverpool, we are also going to make a longer version of our documentary to send it to Johnny.

- The interviews themselves from the buskers and public, who provided us with more than enough content to create an interesting piece.

- The combination of long to more up-close shots, with the cut-aways and time-lapses we have on-screen.

Overall I feel we created a fairly strong piece that is interesting enough to keep the audiences entertained and informed.

Liverpool Documentary - Editing

Here are some shots of the editing process we went through to achieve our final piece.

In this shot, we had to alter the sound levels by finding the 'base' sound, lowering it and applying it to the whole of the sequence; this cut out any unwanted background noises and made the foreground noises easier to hear.

This is one of the shots i really like; the way he sat against a blank wall. I positioned the camera in a way that expresses and perhaps shows connotations of loneliness and solitude. - How the performer is against the blank slate, it provides signs of how perhaps some of these performers are lonely, it's a lonely lifestyle to life?.. combining these images with ones of a band who are willing to talk for ages, we can create different views/opinions on how street performers are portrayed.

Liverpool shot list

I created a brief shot list for Liverpool before we went, however deciding on the day to what other shots we needed proved much easier and effective.