STUDIO BRIEF - EMOTE

After we had everything sorted we started the process of getting everything filmed. As I was the director all the hard work for me was over, as I had designed what the video looked like and made sure that it was all correct and would work well together once it was complete. Now we started by first creating the storyboard, which Dan was in charge of doing, but we were all able to help by thinking about what shot framing we wanted in the video and also how each shot would blend together correctly into the next so that it didn’t look awkward.  We then started filming using the storyboard to guide us through each scene and it worked out well as we were able to get through it quickly and efficiently so that Ash could then get on with editing it straight away, which he did extremely well; as seen below in our final video. 

STUDIO BRIEF - EMOTE

Once we had everything sorted and knew who was going to be acting in it we then had to decide on the theme and era that we were going to set it in. I choose to change the era from a modern day theme due to the fact that I had to make it look like Dan and myself were married and the way we were it was unlikely, this is why I decided upon changing the date to the 1950s. This was a very easy change to make as it was a poplar fashion statement and we could also use the idea of having myself as a stereotypical housewife who does everything as she’s told until one day she’s had enough and starts to cheat on him with another man. As this was settled on the theme that we were going to use I decided to do some research into 50s fashion and also 50s houses as I had to make sure that my house, as this is where some of the filming was taking place, looked as if it was a 1950s house. 

 

STUDIO BRIEF - EMOTE

--> After we had our meeting I went away and did some extra research into how much production costs would be in the industry based on the camera, equipment and how we were going to be filming it. I also took into account how much it would have been to pay for actors to be in our video as it was important to keep our costs low. During this project it was up to me to manage the budget of our film, and because we are University students we don’t have the biggest budget in the world. Saying this I still had a look at how much it would cost to be able to get actors and if we were to hire someone we would be looking at an hourly wage to be able to keep them happy and also have to provide there outfit, which, if we didn’t have the clothes we would have to buy them, which would again add to our budget. There was also the added price of the camera that we would have to hire out which would come to around £200 a week, then on top of that we would have to get lights which are another £30 each and also hire out any additional equipment that we would need, e.g. tri pod, any other lenses that we might use or different cameras if we wanted to change frame rates. Altogether we didn’t actually spend any costs during production as we acted in it ourselves and my house was used as the set along with the studio theatre, which didn’t cost anything along with the camera and equipment as the university again supplied these. 

STUDIO BRIEF - EMOTE

As my role as director I had lots of different elements of the group to think about, during the last project I got a taste of everything that I could do and I really liked the idea of overseeing the video as a whole and making sure that the final video is how it was originally envisioned. During this part of the project I took the time to design what I wanted the characters backgrounds to be like as I felt that this was important to design so that the actors would be able to get an idea of the characters past and how they would act in certain situations. I designed both characters history, and gave a little bit of insight into how they would be in terms of there emotions; for example the history of the man makes him the sort of person to get angry at the tiniest situations, whereas the woman is more controlled in this situation and doesn’t ever argue back and will just take the abuse. I wanted to make this point clear to the group at the beginning as it then made the film have more structure as it shows how much the woman has gone through in the past so she has a reason to cheat on her husband and eventually perform violence against him as he has always been the dominating figure in the relationship. 

 

STUDIO BRIEF - EMOTE

Once we had figured out everybody’s role we then had to decide which theme we would be using and how we where going to go about making it into a decent film. We tossed around a few ideas to begin with looking at each of the different themes before settling on Guilt. We felt that this was a strong option as we could use a powerful drama inspired piece to be able to connect with the audience and give them something to think about once they have finished watching it. We then went through some more ideas specifically on the theme of guilt this time and made sure that we could get a powerful idea that would work well in the short amount of time that we had to film it. Once we knew what kind of theme we would be going for we then thought about where we could film it and how it would work once it had been put together. During this meeting, as director I led it, talking about how we were going to get things done and I also took down notes while we discussed so that I could go back later and re-read them to see how we ended up coming to the conclusion we did.

STUDIO BRIEF - EMOTE

After completing the first brief I moved onto working in a group with 3 other people, including Ash, Andy and Dan to be able to come up with an idea for a 2 minute long theme that stuck to a particular theme, which meant picking from either fight, chase, love, guilt, happiness and worry.

Before we did anything else we decided upon our individual roles in the film production to be able stick to what we were best at but also to have the opportunity to learn new skills along the way. After holding this initial meeting we decided that I would play the part of the director, thinking of the general idea, ways of improving it and also I would be overseeing the filming and post production stages of the brief to ensure that they were completed to a high enough standard. Along with this I also had research into production methods and costs to think about but I was also starring in the film as we wanted to keep costs to a minimum and not have to worry about paying for actors to come in and shoot. Dan would be playing the part of actor as well due to the same reason as above and he was also in charge of getting the storyboard completed to a high standard before we started filming so that we knew what would be happening in each frame. Andy was going to be our camera man and also a co director when I was acting in the film myself so that he could see where any changes needed to be made, and Ash was our post production editor as he had the most experience in editing films out of all of us and would be able to complete this well.