Pre-Production: Planning and Development (Advertising the Project)

The leader of the Drama Society got back to me very quickly and informed me that if we prepared a facebook event, some information and a poster perhaps, they would gladly pass it on to their members.
That means of course that we need to start working on our plans for the audition as soon as possible. We need a poster to promote the project (something I never even previously thought of), an audition date, and some clear information on what kind of actors we are actually looking for. We need to find a location where the auditions can be held, and we need to invite as many people as possible to it and maybe seek through more professional casting sides online.

That meant honing in on a title.
My suggeston for the title "Transient" remains, considering it is fairly unused yet. So far that title was only used for a small production for a film festival it seemed, and not many people would assosciate it with that. There is "The Transients", but that is technically another title. We could ofcourse add something to the word, like

"Forever Transient" or "Transience" but because I got impatient I went with Transient for the Poster and went ahead and did a first design.

by Nathalie Kranich.

For a first Poster I think it does the job. Atleast I tried to make it representative of the Plot we have so far. The two lovers try to connect, but can never truely touch or be together, the falling snow might call for associations with fragility, melting, magic, cold, and ofcourse a snow flakes very existence is doomed to a very short lifespan usually. Only it's not like rain. They hold on to their life, I guess, before they eventually melt or get trampled down.

Transient never the less. The white hand belongs to the boyfriend, fading into red. Which probably best connotates love and blood here. 

The "T" is a Clock. That one is probably obvious.

Well, overall happy with my work, and if we decide to use this as it is we only need to add some information, an audition date, and all the other thousands of little things we haven't figured out yet.

 On a side note, I thought about the plot today and thought that even without a script, we will need a few scenes that we can give to auditioning actors to practise. I thought of quite a few scenes that I could write down and suggest to the rest of the team.

Back to the drawing board.

Pre-Production: Planning and Development

The last post summarized what we had decided on last thursday, so I also want to catch up on our progress from today's seminar group.
I had already mentioned that we decided to work on the idea of the couple reunited after Death. This decision was made early on in the seminar, so that we had a lot of time to think about the details of the project.

Actors

The story gains its dramatic value solely from the two characters interacting. Only the girl can see her dead boyfriend, so no other characters can interact with them. They are intimate and trusting with each other, and their story is one filled with raw emotion.
It will therefore be very difficult to find actors that are able to portay the intimacy and the grief that they experience. If the actors give a bad performance, the film would be ruined, but it could on the other hand be very uplifted if the performance is good.

We are looking for the following:
A female protagonist - able to display grief, crying, anger, very intense emotion. Someone who can come across as natural.

A male protagonist - able to display maybe more subtle emotions, but intimate moments, care, confidence, and again, a natural portrayal of the character.

Those two protagonists must be able to interact comfortable with each other. They will be expected at the very least to embrace each other, and that intimacy should not looked staged. We will require actors who are comfortable touching and hugging each other, and make this look natural.

We will also possible require a few extras, although that will depend on the script. Waitresses, witnesses, maybe. 

Because we are looking for two very able performers, we were adviced to go to casting websites and organise auditions. For the latter, I have emailed the head of the campuses Drama Society today and received confirmation that if we were to establish an event on facebook, with the necessary data and some images to advertise ourselves, they would be quite willing to send our plea to their members.

Sach will probably be able to speak to some of the members himself as he has a few connections, and will also know a few people in the Campus TV society.

Locations

A very important location will be "the girl's bedroom". We intend to set up the room to give a lot of exposition, including pictures of the couple together, diaries, mementos, books. As the female character might have a history of depression, we considered making the books range from selfhelp and psychology books, to regular, positive fiction, to finally end with scrap books and photographs of her and her partner.

The young woman can be a University student, allowing us to naturally use the campus for what it is, and not set any location up as particulaly different to its real purpose.

For nature shots, there are a lot of forest areas around, but the exact locations will have to wait maybe until we have a better idea of the exact plot and script.

The Plot

A risk we see with the story is that once the boyfriend returns, the couple will simply share happy memories together and then part ways again. This would lack an arch, it would lack resolution. We are working therefore on a relationship issue that the two characters might have had when they were together, something that kept causing them fights and arguments.
This issue should be resolved in the progress of the movie, so that by the end of the shortfilm, the characters have forgiven each other, and said their goodbyes with their hearts at rest.

The Characters

The characters still need a lot of work and consideration, something that has to be decided on before we start writing the script. We have put some ideas in and discussed, and found that creating an issue for the characters to overcome would make it easier for us to then decide on the personalities that led to the issue in the first place.

We imagine the female protagonist to be introverted, calm, a people pleaser. Her greatest weakness is her insecurity. She rarely just accepts the good that is happening to her and is instead easily caught up in her worries and the little things that she tends to blow out of proportion. She projects her insecurities onto other people, making her defensive and constantly on her guard, hard to approach for others and sometimes hard to understand, perhaps. 
The arguments in the relationship often source from her inability to accept his affection for her, and not always realising his feelings for her entirely. She needs constant reminder of his interest, and needs a lot of time spent with her. She cares little for grand gestures and instead appreciates the small things in life, for which her partner rarely takes the time.

The male protagonist is the more protective and strong of the two, perhaps a lot more confident. So far we only know that he takes little time to express his affection in small gestures, but instead just occasionally arranges a grandeur gesture. He offers her material gifts, certain events, and their different display of affection causes conflict between them.

The male protagonist possibly intended to move their relationship further and propose to her, but the female was scared and incapable of committing under her fear of being abandoned or judged. 

These are our ideas, but we still struggle to find a clear, resolvable problem between them, and to see which quality fits the characters better.

About the filming - our Intentions.

The shortfilm is all about emotions, grief, forgiveness and acceptance. It is a heavy, sometimes very touchy subject that could be portayed completely wrong if we are not careful. Actors will be important, but so will the dialogue, the script, and the way in which we film.

We all agree that we want the characters to show a normal, mundane, very real relationship. We are not aiming for hollywood romance, but the true intimacy that exists between two people who love each other, and often includes very special, silly, trivial behaviours that differ from their behaviour towards others.

We will have to be careful to avoid Clichés, and capture the story as something new and fresh that won't let the viewer feel bored. The story might be very predictable, and it will be hard to work against that.

Cian suggested that we portay the psychological state of the female protagonist through colour. We could turn down the saturation ever so slightly when the girl is portayed on her own, seen as she is by others, and turn it up whenever she is interacting with her partner. 
The world can appear more grey when in depression, and the film could mimic that.

Another important part of our discussions was also the establishing shot. We decided so far to begin the shortfilm with the girl picking up the phone and receiving the bad news, and then moving the camera in a circle through the room as time passes, showing the differences int he surroundings, different times of different days, and the girl in different stages of griefing. 

What is on the Agenda first?

We need to set up an audition, get people to audition, and choose two good actors.

We need to get started on the script and decide how many actors we actually need.
To get started on the script, we will need to meet up once more and decide what kind of characters we want our protagonists to be, and where the story is actually going to go.

Once these details have been filled out, we can do all from location scouting, to preparing the script and story board, to practising with the actors. Around that time, we will also need to write up a Treatment for the project filled with all the details we don't yet know.

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That summarizes all progress up to date. Anything to come in the future will document our further progress and how succesful we are in handling the different aspects of the project.

Nathalie Kranich(NK312) : Pre-Production: Brainstorming "The Greatest Day"

Moving Image, 2015
University of Kent
Team 1
Group 3:

Nathalie Kranich         NK312
Cian Hamer                CH564
Sachin Ladva              SL497
Alistair Hunter-Craig   AH675
Oscar Ramsden         OR47


Today marks the first day of my documentation of mine and my group's work on the Moving Image Module. Now that our idea is set and we can start thinking about the important decisions in the project, I am feeling quite optimistic about the shortfilm's future. 
Because we started working on this before today, I'm going to use this chance to recap a little.

Here's a little bit about the group of people working on this project:

My group consists of five people, of course. I will be working with Alistair Hunter-Craig, Cian Hamer, Oscar and Sachin Ladva. At the moment we have no assigned roles, but no which one of us would prefer working in which area of the project.

I personally hope to work a lot with the script and the story board, supervising the narrative and help to tell it in a succesful way. That may include producing or directing.
Sach has already expressed an interest in editing, as has Alistair, and Cian wishes to work mainly as the camera man.
The roles will most likely be changed around as we see fit, mainly of course because we all need to acquire some skill with the software and the equipment.

The Project:

"The Greatest Day" is the Theme of 2015's Moving Image Short film, to be filmed in its entirety on Campus. The shortfilm may be no longer than 3 minutes, but should exceed 2 minutes. 
The criteria appeared a little limiting as first, and the time limit may still become a large issue once the script is written and we find that scenes may take longer than originally intended.
With the idea we have settled for, it will be possible to shoot on Campus only, and the film will not be impacted at all by that restriction. As for the theme, we met up as a group on thursday the 22nd of January and put forward a few ideas.

Our Favourites:

1. Transient - or the Ghost story. 

A shortfilm about a girl that recently lost her boyfriend in a car accident. Their relationship had been troublesome as of lately, but upon his sudden departure from life she is hit hard by grief in all its five stages. Just when she is starting to accept the fact that he is gone, however, he suddenly appears back in her life. It seems like no one else can see him - a ghost come back to haunt her. At first, she is angry. All the suffering she had endured at his loss was bound to be repeated if he was to leave her again. But as the day progresses, they get a chance to finally set aside their difference and make the most out of their last day together. They are able to say goodbye, something that had previously been denied to them. In the end of the shortfilm, he disappears again, leaving the viewer and protagonist unsure of whether he had really returned for her, or whether he had just been an image projected by her hurt mind in order to heal itself.

2. Drowning in Advertisement.

A man wins a great day, some sort of special experience, and returns from it ecstatic about it. When he receives a phone call politely asking whether he was alright receiving some advertisements and newsletters, he absentmindedly consents.
In the following day to come, however, advertisements keep bothering him, but not in the conventional way. He finds people in his home, explaining and offering products to him. Strangers suddenly dress him in the newest fashion, even what he eats is decided by strange voices coming from the ceiling, and weirdly dressed women smiling. The focus of his life starts to be about the product, and not about himself, and as the short film progresses he becomes more and more dehumanized and captured in this world of advertisement, where individualism doesn't matter.

3. Long wanted fame - Be careful what you wish for.

Also originally an idea Alistair had. A young man or woman go to bed after posting on a social network, wishing to themselves that they would get more recognition for their work and achieve fame. When he/she wakes up in the morning, he has several hundred thousand likes on his work. People on the street start noticing him, and he is at first feeling this would be his best day yet. But as the day progresses he is deprived more and more of all privacy and worth as a human being, and becomes followed by more and more fans that wish for his attention, and yet don't care for his individual being at all. They become a disturbance, and at the end of the day he gains nothing but diststress from his newfound fanbase. His fans are sure enjoying their day though.

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We had of course some further ideas, but decided on the three above as our favourites. The project we will be working on is number 1, and I am quite proud that the group decided to vote for my idea. We had discussed every single idea thoroughly, weighing the pros and cons and developing it further, so that in the end everyone of them seemed like a work of our own. I believe we would have been enthusiastic for every one of these ideas, but decided that the story about the ghost returned was the most sensitive and dramatic topic, and most likely to engage the viewer emotionally.