End Summary

The film has been completed successfully and the group wish to thank:

• The actors for their time
• Stafford prison, Cafe Nero, and Staffordhsire University for allowing us to film

Vision Media Productions Team
Left to right: Yoann Desmoyers Davis, Philip Swart, Robert Unwin, Kevin Philemon

Good Points

Overall the film was successful and showed the story we wanted to tell. The pre-production stages were the toughest: finding locations, actors and readying a script but we felt the film has done justice. The political aspect of it we felt we had succeeded in explaining and the discrimination and corruption of today are still strong unfortunately.

Bad Points
The only realistic bad points about the experience was the time constraints that were involved to get the production together. Perhaps better planning could ave avoided this but none the less have succeeded and learnt new things. Difficulties during filming were few and we suffered no technical failures. Lighting was the only minor difficulty as filming outside the sun set really quickly and we had to work fast.

Final Film

Here is the final cut of the film, the flashback/back story has been saturated and the colour lowered to create a brown tinted image. The first and last scenes are in full colour to show that it is in the present day. This was inspired by the film American History X


The audio has also been changed, during the recording of audio it was discovered that the actor said the wrong surname for Thomas during the court hearing and was pronounced Dudley instead of Selman, this has been removed and the audio shortened.

Edit with Sound

This is another draft of the film however the audio has been mixed and new sound effects added




Audio added in this edit include:

• Music for the beginning, altered for both the pub and the bedroom.
• Ringtone shortened for more frequent rings
  
• Frequency changed for the vocals during the argument between John and Sarah.
• Music added to the cafe scene at the end of the film.

Draft Edit

This is the first rough draft of the film, the audio has yet to be mixed and the footage needs to be colour corrected

Lighting Sets

To have better control over the lighting we have hired out two red-heads from the stores. These tungsten lights can deliver 800w which is a lot of light. However it is useful to have too much light as it can be controlled using reflectors and gels.
The lights will be used to light all of the scenes we are filming and possibly use them to create early morning light if needed; depending on the shooting schedule

Here is some examples of how we lit the sets for the film:

Kitchen

we set up the Key light behind the cameras into the kitchen so the characters and set were illuminated better. Using the kitchen lights made the room very dark and it would be difficult to film.

Another light was added outside the window to act as the morning sun. This would diffuse the shadows cast by the Key light and give more depth to the scene











This is how the set looks when lit. There is a warm yellow tint to the room as mornings are when the sun rises.
















Bedroom

Only the bed needed to be lit up for this scene and so both lights were pointed towards it. One light was on the right of the bed and the other was on the left. This cast fairly bold shadows but it lit up the set to how we wanted it.

















Pub and Outside

When filming outside we used the lights inside the pub rather than the redheads, here we could get the natural light from the lights and as we were filming at the bar the lights were bright enough as it is.

Here, Norman is lit up and the background is much darker. There is no need to light the background as it is un-important and that it is obivous he is at a bar with the pumps in the foreground.

Outside we used the lights from the street, using a redhead would have caused the wrong type of lighing that we needed and would have looked un-realistic. It is too powerful and would cast shadows too strongly

Camera Setups

We noted down our various camera setups and positions for the main scenes.



The DVX100's were filming at the same time so as editing would be easier (Continuity would be minimised) and it would speed up shooting time if the takes were successful. One would be stationary in a safety wideshot and the other would be filming close-ups or other angles that were needed.



Kitchen



In the kitchen both camera's were set with:

• F stop at 5.6
• Shutter speed at 1/120
• Neutral Density at 1/4

The neutral density was added to decrease the amount of light in the camera, it made it easier to change the aperture (as it would have had to be very high) and gave more range.

Bedroom

The bedroom had a similar setup and the cameras were set up with:

• F stop at 5.6
• Shutter speed at 1/60
• Neutral Density at 1/4

The neutral density was needed in this scene as the lighing would be very bright and as the light would not be able to expand then it would overexpose parts of the scene. Setting the shutterspeed at a lower rate helped too.

Pub and Outdoors

As we would not use the red-head lights in the pub or outside we would need to find as many areas of light possible so the camera's would pick up the image.

Inside the camera's were setup with:

• F stop at 5.6
• Shutter speed at 1/60
• No neutral density filter

The ND was taken off as there was little light as it was.

Outside the camera's were setup with:

• F stop at 2.8
• Shutter speed at 1/25
• No neutral density filter

There was little light outside and so the aperture was opened as much as possible and the shutter speed was lowered to as low as possible. The images were obtained but were slightly dark.

Sound

The sound can be recorded using the DVX100's but to improve the quality we will be using a gun-mic; this is a directional microphone with a cardioid pickup pattern (picks up noise from only one direction). As we are recording the audio through a microphone we will be able to focus it more on dialogue rather than other noises that may be heard such as traffic in the pub car park scene.

The microphone we are using is a Sennheiser 6


This is the microphone, the furry object on the right prevents outside noise such as wind from entering the microphone. It doesn't stop all wind and so care and precautions must be made when recording








Here we are testing the microphone out by recording dialogue through the camera. The microphone is powered by phantom power. Phil (holding camera) is monitoring the levels on the camera display to make sure that the audio does not clip. When the audio clips it becomes distorted and useless so it must be monitored carefully. The microphone is pointed directly at the sound source so that it will record only that sound but is held further away from the actor to prevent clipping.

Here are examples of the audio that we have collected from the tests:

This audio is very clear as the microphone was placed very close to the actor to pick up the best sound. The audio does not clip and it is at a good level to be mixed.




This second recording is much quieter than the first, this is because the microphone is much further away from the actor when he speaks. However if this audio was amplified to boost the signal in the final mix it would also amplify background noise and possibly create a hiss.