The girls were more than happy to be filmed in the fair and their 5 minutes of fame got to them when they decided they needed to go on the majority of rides. There was some unhappiness when filming whether it was due to cold weather in the garage or when only one person could lie on the bench at a time (Libby).
The pond caused great amusement to the girls when they decided to throw bricks in the pond instead of stones and managed to hit a duck.
Our first filming session was on location in Clapham common on the 17th of February to film the home movie clips of Cassie and Faith when they were younger. We thought this session went pretty well as we shot all the footage that we needed plus some extra options if the others didn't work out. The weather was excellent for what we wanted to achieve as it was mild for February and sunny so that our actors wouldn't be too cold and also the natural lighting gave the footage an innocent feel reflecting the children playing and being happy. However, there were some issues with sound as it was a windy day and the sound of the wind blowing muffled our actors improvised speech. Although we solved this issue by deciding not to use any audio from the footage and instead use the Final Cut Pro X ambience sound effects.
Sunday's weather report
We then moved onto to the Clapham Common fairground filming session. We had sound issues here as well because the fairground had a sound system playing modern day music. This was an issue due to the fact that this music wouldn't have existed when Cassie was younger therefore making it an inaccurate portrayal of Faith's disappearance in that particular time period. To overcome this issue we again decided to use sound effects instead of the original audio.
Here is an example of the sound effects that we could possibly use.
Our next filming session was on the 20th of February in the garage setting. The temperature had dropped quite dramatically from Sunday's mild weather causing the garage to be very chilly so we all had to wrap up warm and move the heater in order to avoid catching frostbite! However, disaster struck! During the previous filming sessions, we kept leaving the camera on stand by mode by accident thinking that we had turned the camera off. this obviously drained the battery and made us rush the shots, but thankfully they were all decent and suitable for use so we didn't have to go back to the COLD garage and re-film. YAY!
YAY! We found a new garage location to film in! We actually think that this garage is the better of the two as it's even more cluttered, dusty and depressing than the last one. We can now keep true to our filming schedule as now have the location for Wednesday!
The garage is extremely cluttered which is exactly what we need!
It has hardly any natural lighting which will help us create the dingy garage effect that we want.
Cluttered shelves.
Unorganised mess.
An example of the lighting we are thinking of using
Disaster has struck! We have are now unable to film in our garage location! This is due to the unfortunate fact that we are unable to move a very heavy treadmill that is there.
In order to overcome this problem, we need to find a new garage and FAST! We are planning to film on the Wednesday of half term and if we don't find a location by then, we would have to run over schedule. This, in the film industry wouldn't be good as TIME IS MONEY!
Choosing costume for our opening sequence may have only been a small part of what we had to think about however we did have to take into consideration what the children would be wearing in the home movie and also what the older Cassie would wear when she was watching it back. Although it may be a small element of the make up of a film but in essence it can be a very useful tool. For example some films have such memorable costumes that they contribute to the success of the film and also possibly the popularity. For example:
Johnny Depp's costume in Pirates of the Caribbean as Captain Jack Sparrow
Uma Thurman's costume in Kill Bill
For the children we wanted to keep it simple and have them wearing similar sorts of clothes to emphasise that they are sisters and that they're very close. We also knew that because it was supposed to be set years ago, as Cassie is watching herself on the video as a child, the children couldn't wear anything that featured logos, pictures or symbols that wouldn't have been around back then. E.g. Hannah Montana, Peppa Pig, Camp Rock or High School Musical.
So we decided on plain bright colours that would contrast with the dark room and clothing that the older Cassie would wear as it would represent the happiness and also fit in with the bright colours of the funfair. We also had to consider the weather because we were filming in February outside so we knew the girls would be wearing coats. In the end we decided on plain leggings or tights with brightly coloured coats.
In complete contrast to this we knew that when we filmed Cassie sitting in a dark room watching these videos, she had to be wearing old dirty clothes of dark colours to show the deep depression that she had fallen into and how much her life had changed since she was a child. We thought a baggy tracksuit would show this and it's as though she has no care of what she looks like anymore.
These are the actual costumes that we put our actors in when we were filming.
We put Cassie and Faith in brightly coloured coats as it was cold outside and we also wanted to portray the fun that they we having and contrast it to the depression that Older Cassie feels. We put Older Cassie in a jumper, sweats and relaxed footwear. The colours aren't at all vibrant as this would distract from the depression she is feeling.
These are our excellent actors! We are very happy with our choices as they were all very professional and did what we asked of them. We chose them due to availability and we knew that they would be happy to be filmed doing what we wanted them to, plus the fact that they are all related to Ellie.
Name: Libby Gardener
Character: Faith Lewis
Reason for casting: We chose Libby because she is the correct age for the part and was more than happy to go to the fair for the day. She has no acting experience but this was a good thing as we needed her to act naturally for the 'home movie'. As well as this, we were able to take her out for the day and not have a specific time frame.
Name: Casey Gardener
Character: Cassie Lewis
Reason for casting: We chose Casey because she was also the correct age for the part and as she is actually Libby's sister it meant that it was more believable that they were sisters. She also has no acting experience which was perfect and was also very happy to go to the fair. Their availability was very coincidental as the exact time we needed to film was when they were in the country.
Name: Claire Jackson
Character: Older Cassie Lewis
Reason for casting: We chose Claire because she was happy to do it and we needed someone with brown hair who was her age to play the part of Cassie when she is older. She has some acting experience as she was an extra in an episode of the bill once several years ago. She was very reliable and was fine with staying to film for as long as we needed.
This is the animated version of our story board! In theory this could be the very first edit of our film! We've added the sound to it and some sound effects, enjoy!
This is the second draft of 'Unparalleled'. We have made changes that we thought are necessary in order to make our opening sequence effective. We responded to feedback that there were too many shots of Cassie and Faith when they were younger and put shots of elder Cassie's response to the home videos in between those shots. This version of the storyboard is much closer to the vision we've had in our heads and we will use this as a blueprint when on location filming.
This is our first draft of our storyboard! It's always useful to have a storyboard to avoid any confusion or misunderstanding about the type of shots that you want to use, camera angles, camera movement when filming on location. It also enables you to be organised and efficient with your time. This is a very rough draft of what we aim to include in our opening sequence. Some amendments will be made to get it closer to the vision in our heads that we both share.
For our last shot we were particular inspired by this shot from the film 'Repulsion' (1965). We thought that we could recreate the shot but adapt it to make the title credit jittery.
When drafting our storyboard, we were looking into the various ways in which we could display the film credits. Mirror in dust icing on cake? Polaroid photos-scratchy text Sparklers? Envelope-pile of unopened letters Camera information Important files/documents When we shared several of our ideas, we received some criticism on the following ideas:
The newspaper
The birthday cake
The credits being displayed in this way may distract from the tone of the film as it is mainly a bleak and depressing story due to the issues addressed. Therefore if the beginning of the film is happy then it may give people the wrong impression about what they are watching. We have taken this criticism on board and we see how this could be confusing if the tones clash, however we think that the music that we choose and the lighting won't give the impression it will be happy as the sequence shows Cassie in a dark room watching these home movies back and instead shows her desperation to find her sister. When coming to the final draft of our storyboard, we only used two ideas from our credit brainstorm: Polaroid/writing on photographs and the important files/documents. We feel as if the rest of the list wouldn't look as effective when it comes to filming and could be a tad unrealistic unless we had advanced technology. We want the opening sequence to look as professional as possible and we feel that computer generated graphics will be a step closer in that direction. We are extremely inspired by one of our main influences 'Se7en'. The typography exactly conveys the mood and genre of the film and gives off a very cool effect! This is in essence what we want to achieve with our opening sequence.
We'll post more about our typography development when it comes to the editing stage.
The reason for making a filming schedule is so that we can accurately organise and manage our time. This will also be beneficial as we know when and how long we need to call our actors for.
As our opening sequence has limited dialogue, sound will play a major part in creating the effect and atmosphere to start off the film. When coming up with our initial idea, a song instantly came into our heads that we thought would match the tone of our film which was James Blake- Limit To Your Love.
Although we worry that the lyrics are a tad cliched in relation to our concept. However our main focus isn't the lyrics as we really like the piano and the bass in the backing track. The piano starts off a bit abruptly so we were thinking of asking someone to compose a piano solo to add on to the beginning of the track with softer tones to gently introduce the opening sequence. When focusing on the music, we also looked at some other options that we felt reflected the tone of our film. We particularly liked material from alt-J...
Here's a review from Tom Howard at NME...
"In which the ultimate Devendra Banhart soundalikes roll on with ‘Tessellate’, the most Devendra Banhart of all Alt-J songs. Doesn’t matter though, ’cos its piano lollop is as pleasingly creepy as all their other stuff, helped by the superbly delivered line, “And all your friends come… (breathes in deeply and heavily through nose) …sniffing”. "
We like the mellow tones that the track starts off with and how it slowly builds creating an atmosphere before it introduces the lyrics half way through. There aren't many lyrics which is perfect for our situation as we want the main focus to be on the action that is taking place. It also reflects the melancholy emotions that we are wishing to portray.
Another Artist that we have taken a liking to is Ben Howard. His song 'Oats In The Water' is a particular favourite of ours as we love the effect it creates when listening to it. However when applied to the footage, we're afraid that it may come across as if it's a music video for the song which is exactly what we want to stay away from.
It's going to be very hard to decide what track to use as they are all in some way suitable and we also want to put our own spin on the tracks to make them unique and tailored to our opening sequence.
Finding appropriate film locations are crucial to the making of a good film, in order to do this we became location scouts for the day! We travelled to various possible film locations that we included in our storyboard and photographed them.
The first location we are planning to film at is Clapham common, this is due to the fact that there will be a funfair there during February half term which is where Faith goes missing and is also when the actors who will be playing Cassie and Faith are available.
The poster!
This is a nice establishing shot that we would include include in the home video section.
This is a quick clip showing the location in it's full glory. Enjoy!
Another one of our locations is a dimly lit, bleak garage where the opening sequence starts with Cassie sitting watching home videos of herself and Faith when they were younger.
View from the back of the garage.
Harsh lighting.
Loose wires, exposed brickwork and unfinished paintwork reflect the dishevelled aspects of Cassie's personality.
Dusty splintered floorboards.
The view from outside the garage.
The view from the front of the garage.
These photos present the location in its raw form. With the application of props and some finishing touches i'm sure it'll be close to our sketches from our story board and it'll really create the atmosphere that we want to give off. There will be photos of the finished set posted during the filming process.
