Reflective Essay
Effy Mitchell
In this essay I will reflect on my production work throughout semester one discussing how these tasks alongside wider reading helped me to develop my production skills and wider understanding of working on film and television projects.
‘Location scouting involves finding the best location, all things considered – and there is a lot to consider’ – Maier (1994, xii). Choosing and acquiring access to a location is a process of elimination based on various factors which I will discuss in this section of the essay (Maier, 1994) . Accessibility is a vital part of choosing a location. Shooting locally can save travel costs and prevent the crew being tired out from long hours spent driving to locations (Rahmel, 1994). Both locations I chose, the Hawthorn Leslie and Pelaw train tracks were local to me as I do not live in York and this personally meant low travel costs and easy access for location photos. The level of exterior accessibility you need will be dependent on the size of the production for example a large scale film like Fight club would need a lot of space around the location as well as the location itself. I took this into consideration and with both locations being in fairly quiet and cordoned off abandoned places there’s a lot of space around them for parking. ‘ Governments can make film crews jump through seemingly unnecessary hoops ‘ – shoot factory, 2015. This as well means that we do not have to inform anyone who lives close by, local councils or re direct traffic which will save budget as we won’t have to pay for any permits or for anyone to re-direct traffic.
Sound conditions internally and externally are something to consider as a microphone can pick up much more than the human ear (Rahmel, 1994). The Hawthorn Leslie has no power and is the only structure on its side of the street backing onto a river. The Pelaw train tracks back onto countryside and go on for a couple of miles which means noise pollution internal and external in both locations will be minimal as there won’t be noise disruption from traffic or from things like air conditioning.
‘This process must start early and happen quickly because it can be a long and intensive one ‘ – Rizzo ( 2013,P43). Building a relationship with the people who own the location is important and this is the key to being able to access any location, but business owners tend to be most concerned with liability (Maier, 1994) so you must have an appropriate approach depending on who you are working with. Leading with risk assessments and your safety procedures is a good idea with business owners especially with a derelict site. Arranging a deal with the owners of the sites will probably take time to establish so being in contact with them early on in the process is probably a good idea and is why location scouts are brought on so early in the process ( Chegg, 2017).
As I have visited both locations before I was already aware of some the potential health and safety issues prior to scouting these are something to keep at the forefront of your mind. ‘The way to stay safe is to look at each shooting set up or location individually and think of what exactly could go wrong ‘ – Moving Image Education ( 2018). Issues can be identified with risk assessing, SWOT analysis and with help from the owners of the site (in our case A&P construction company) to ensure everyone’s safety which is vital.
The location also needs to be appropriate for the story ( McDowell, 2017 ) for instance, the paper street house needs to be large enough to accommodate for the fact that at one point there are supposedly 20+ people living and have enough exists so that the narrator and Tyler can never be in the same room in front of Marla. Being aware of what specific creative details a location needs a film has based on what the director wants ( Maier, 2018) is integral part of being able to find an appropriate location that can then accommodate those need.
‘Creating a script breakdown is about identifying various elements in a scene to better understand its shooting requirements’ – Studio Binder (2016). I chose a section of script from the film Lady Bird to work on, I chose this film because I was familiar with it and it had a variety of interesting but not overly complicated scenes for me to work on including in my script and storyboard.
Through this task I learnt that there are many different processes to prep a script one of which is colour coding which can be useful for all members of the crew. You have to through each page looking for elements that are important ( Renee, 2016) for example I used purple to point out any object which was prominent in the scene or used by an actor which is useful to the art department, camera department and the cast. One scene had a stunt in it which consisted of Lady Bird rolling out of a moving car which required an orange highlight which is important for the whole crew to know about. Colour coding can let everyone know quickly and efficiently what each part of the script requires without covering it in wordy notes or memorising it.
Script tramlines are used so that at a quick glance the crew can see what has and hasn’t been shot, How each scene is being shot, who is in each scene and how the script relates to their job on set. Lined scripts can also be useful for editors to give them a quick view of all available coverage at a glance ( Clarke, 2016). In summary tramlines can be useful to everyone in the production process to help everyone can make quicker decisions and for things to run smoother on set. Script tramlines are vertical lines usually drawn in red ink which correspond with camera shot information. At first I ran into some difficulties as there are many camera shots for each piece of dialogue in the script but after some research and trial and error I figured it out. On reflection I understand how they would be useful for the camera department who could then look at the script to be able to follow how they should be shooting each part of the action as oppose to having a separate shot lit solely to work off of.
A storyboard is at the basis of any good production. It helps string the scenes and the story together. It is a visualisation on paper. – Woodsman (2016). Storyboarding was challenging for me as I am not a very good artist, so I focused on the story board being simplistic and easily readable as it would have to be understood by many members of the crew. I was aiming for a ‘shooting board’ which as the title suggests reflects the camera angles that are suitable for the cinematographer to use as reference ( Jew, 2013). Story boards can be elaborate or as minimal as the film calls for but long as the layout of the location, camera angle and positioning of cast is correct the story board is usable.
‘Light will enhance or diminish the efforts of the all the people who create sets, the costumes and the make up’ – Malkiewicz (2012 p2). This was a group task where we shot a scripted scene in the studio. My role was lighting assistant. I discovered that the relationship with the director and other crew members is important since my role mainly involved collaborating with the other people to achieve the directors vision. Since we worked so closely with the director during the pre-production process the filming process ran quite smoothly and there were no discrepancies that got in the way of filming. Although there were some minor issues on the day I will discuss later.
Bauman when interviewed by O’falt ( 2018) talks about how when working on Phantom Thread due to the low levels of light there had to be a longer experimentation period which we also encountered. We began by setting up many different kinds of lighting around the set using different filters, kinds of lights and positioning of lights to trial various ideas our director had. One of the methods we tried was creating our own filters for the blind effects but I found this very difficult as it was hard to mimic the clean lines that the shadow of the blinds create by hand. However it was still a useful technique to learn. Malkiewicz (2012) describes lights as paints in a painter’s pallet since lighting can completely change the tone or mood of a story. We wanted to do low key lighting to make the atmosphere cold and dark creating lots of shadows to fit with the tone of the story.
An issue we faced was forgetting to note down the order in which the gels where on the light and the exact colours we used which cost us time on the second day of filming and could have caused continuity errors. Reflecting on this I learnt that balancing the creative elements and the technical elements like properly recording how each light was set up is important to remember.
”what you do not see is as important as what you do see’ Malkiewicz (2012 p2). Throughout filming we had to make further adjustments because of things like the lights being directly in the actors in eyelines, shadows on faces and lights being able to be seen on camera. There was a light behind the door for instance which was accidently in shot that we had to move because it meant the actors could not open the door properly without it being scene. I worked alongside the production designer to solve these issues and find out the set and lights would affect one another.
Being a Gaffer requires strong technical knowledge as well as a creative mind for how the lights will be set and adjusted and which ones are most appropriate for what the director wants (Brinkhaus, 2010). We worked with the techs to develop our technical knowledge and to help us make decisions on what kinds of lights we should use based on our requirements. We worked on doing as this safely as we were using high powered lights that can get incredibly hot and a heavy light falling into a set or crew member could be disastrous. One of the safety issues we had was the gels staying on the lights as we had multiple layers of gels on one light to achieve a specific shade of orange. We solved this by using clips instead of tape as they were sturdier.
For the group live task we got the opportunity to film a live performance at the York theatre royal. My role in the group was assistant floor manager. The floor manager essentially liaisons between director and crew members and manages what happens on the floor (Newby, 1997) so effective communication is key. Since we were working a big space and spread out two were required for the filming of the event. It was useful to have multiple people to oversee the area so tasks can be carried out quickly rather than one person running around between everyone especially on bigger productions. The director having briefed everyone beforehand meant that everyone knew what was expected of them on the night and we knew how the filming was supposed to run. However during filming the director and producer often can’t see all aspects of the studio from the gallery so it’s the responsibility is that of the floor manager to keep the them informed to enable them to make quick decisions when needed ( Utterback, 2016).
You need to have a full overview of how everything is supposed to run and the skills to understand everyone in your crew and their cues coming through the intercom system in order to keep things running smoothly ( Utterback, 2016). On the night we ran into the issue of the walkie talkies not working. Which meant during half time we had to go in person during half time to communicate with the crew. I learnt from this that effective communication is vital during a live task as when the walkie talkies cut out this meant the producer and floor manager couldn’t do their job effectively. The floor manager in many cases is also responsible for health and safety during filming (Utterback, 2016) as they have a full overview of what’s going on, every member of our crew had to be briefed on health and safety before filming at the theatre royal however it would be my responsibility to inform everyone if something were to go wrong.
A floor manager can have large range of tasks that varies depending on the kind of production, but they usually work with the crew and in some cases the talent ( Carr, 2016). My main task was to collect and label the memory cards for the camera operator at the end of the night, I had to label the cards A & B so that the editor knew which footage would be on each card. In order for a live filming event to run smoothly everyone has to do their job correctly so it doesn’t create a knock on effect for example mislabelling the cards would of created confusion for the editor. There was some minor issues on the night such as one of the cameras briefly cutting out but this was quickly dealt with the help of the tech’s. Overall the filming went well and everyone worked effectively as a team and filming a live event was a good opportunity for everyone to work on a real event and gain some experience.
For this task I wrote an Essay on the short film MasoKissed which is a film produced by second year students for the 48 hour film challenge. I evaluated the film whilst taking into consideration its form and production criteria which consisted of the 48 hour time limit and the two genre’s which had to be implemented which were comedy and horror.
To evaluate the film fairly I researched the short film form to better understand what makes a good short film and what their structure is like compared to feature film. I did this by reading interviews by with established short film makers from SXSW ( O’falt 2016) and watching some short films such as I love Sarah Jane . This research then gave me something to compare Masokissed too and helped me understand why they made certain decisions. For instance putting the audience right in the centre of the story with no introductions (O’falt 2016) is a good idea because ‘You never have enough time to tell your entire story ‘ – Hodge interviewed by O’falt ( 2016). Which I discovered makes the audience ask a lot of questions and continue watching whilst also saving screen time .
I think you’re on the wrong track if you don’t choose a story that you have some personal connection with’ – Munroe (2009, P8). I had to find out what makes a bad short film so it gave me some idea of the criteria I was marking this film up against. According to Jollard (2016) some short film cliché’s include writing none personal stories that have been told many times. Authenticity seems to be an important part of a short film as they only have a short amount of time to make an emotional connection to the audience.
‘ Horror abounds with pragmatic aesthetics’ – Sipos (2010, P28. )I then had to look at the technical choices the team made like lighting choices, camera angles and use of location and how they related to their story and genre. I mainly used wider reading into the horror genre and the short form itself to give depth to my analysis of Masokissed. An issue I encountered was having to make a lot of assumptions based on what I saw on screen as I was not involved in the production. The consequence of which are that some of my points may not be entirely accurate for instance I assumed that using members of crew as actors was due to the time constraints when it could have been a more conscious choice as they may have acting experience. This however gave me an impartial point of view which made my evaluation quite fair. Overall with this essay I attempted to use research and evidence from the film to make informed opinions about the film this group produced.
‘ I would view sound design more as the process of creating new sounds either from scratch or by heavily manipulating existing sounds’ – Langford (2014, P3). In this assignment we were tasked with creating the sound for one of a few selected video clips. By either creating our own foley or using sound clips from online sound libraries like ‘ Freesfx.co.uk ‘. I ended up using mostly hard effects from these libraries for things such as the dropping of objects in the supermarket. I have very little experiencing editing at all so I found this task particularly challenging however I did complete the task and now know my editing skills are an area I need to improve upon.
I chose a clip from Go (1999) because I hadn’t seen the film before and thought it was quite funny. I tried to emulate this humour with my choice of music ( Shut Me up by M.S.I) that was kind of ridiculous and exaggerated like the whole scene itself. The music also contrasted against the clip and which I think is similar to how the characters actions contradict their very mundane appearances and environment. I chose the music to drive the scene as too many sonic elements could be confusing ( Fougner, 2013) and too much when paired with the action on screen. I used ambience to create the soundscape of the supermarket and had to think about what kind of noises you would here there like the checkouts and other customers.
A challenge I encountered was finding sound clips to match the noise of things being taken off of the shelves and put into the girl’s pockets as there were no specific noises for that as well as things falling onto the floor out of frame as I had to guess when they would hit the floor and hope it seemed realistic. Creating my own sounds could have been a solution for this. However, I ended up using things that sounded right even if they weren’t accurate for example I used the sound of leaves falling for the sound of the green beans being thrown up into the air. I did struggle with the volumes of each sound clip as some clips ending up drowning out other sound effects I used which made the soundscape seem really flat especially when the music came in. Layering sound is an important part of creating a soundscape (Powell, 2015) and a skill I need to develop as every sound should be heard / at the right volume for the clip.
To conclude I think both my practical skill development and wider reading contributed to my personal development as a filmmaker throughout this semester. I was not entirely successful in all of my tasks however I did reflect on these mistakes to not make them again in the future. There is a great deal of personal, creative, technical and theoretical knowledge that needs to be combined in order to be successful in production and I will continue to develop these skills in my work at university.
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