Unit 8 FMP

 Unit 8 FMP

Task 1 Analysis

Creating a short film is no easy task, there is a lot that goes into it and it can be hard to think of a story that can be told in a short time frame. I find the best thing is to come up with the barebones of a story and build on it, focus on the three act structure and think of how it can be condensed. A short story has to be simple and can't be multi-layered so it has to be strong as a single arc. Myself and Kenz Day discussed Gustav Freystag, a French novelist who in 1863 created the five-step story structure which consists of:

Exposition - This is where the story is set up and the stakes are explained, here we are introduced to our main character, their world and the conflict of the film is set. A common rule for this step is "show don't tell" as often times exposition is abused in the way that the whole film is just explained with no nuance and results in "story dump".

Rising action - The rising action is the key trigger and builds up to the climax, this is integral for not just the story but the character development too. At this point, the protagonist steps up to the challenge. Relationships between characters deepen and the conflict rises and rises.

Climax - This is the absolute peak of the tension and where the most development of the character happens. The character must either rise or fall here and must involve everything that has been established earlier or else you risk disappointing your audience

Falling Action - The falling action is the cooldown from the climax, this time is used to resolve any subplots in the story. The action doesn't fully stop here but the bulk of it is done, it needs to de-escalate and blend seamlessly into the resolution.

Resolution - The resolution closes the story, usually the most memorable piece of the story as it will be the freshest part in the viewer's mind. 

Task 2 - Research

To begin with, I was stumped for an idea, wanting to do something that reminds me of Jeff Buckley and Richey Edwards and the mystique that surrounds their death/disappearance. When given the assignment brief, I teamed up with the rest of Cheeky Bugger Productions (mine, Kenz Day's and Jack Herriott's production company) and we began to work on a whole new story from the ground up. The basic plot of our film follows Doug, a former overweight man and champion competitive eater who now runs a camp to help overweight teens. The future of this camp is put into jeopardy as McDonald's send him a notice of destruction. To prevent this, Doug needs to raise £20,000. All hope seems lost until Doug comes across a flyer for an eating competition and decides to enter to save his camp.

A big issue here was casting. We had no idea how to approach overweight people in a sensitive enough manner that they wouldn't be offended as the script isn't about making fun of people's sizes, plus size people are just necessary to the story. To help with this issue, our tutor sent us an article on inclusive language that can be found Here . After reading this, we constructed our green light pitch and held a group seminar with the actors. This can be found Here . We asked the actors for their opinions and in the end decided the best way to cast would be to put up a call sheet and let people come to us. 

For the script, I took a lot of inspiration from Adam Sandler's early films that rely on light-hearted and inoffensive humour. 

We began planning on our locations almost instantly, the first place that we planned to use was the Metro Inn as we liked the colours of the place and thought it would make a good site for our camp. However, we were informed by Kane that it was a potentially unsafe place and we were advised against using it. Next, we looked at the Premier Inn but it didn't fit the feel of the film. Finally, we arranged to film at the Hilton hotel. Our first location sorted. Next we had to look for somewhere to film the eating competition, we tried OK Diner but they politely declined as no filming is allowed on their premises. Luckily, we managed to secure Eaglescliffe Village Hall as Kane knew somebody there. The next location was the gym which was easy to secure as its just the college gym. The final location was the office, for this we used an office room in college. 

For costumes, we decided that we wanted yellow t shirts for the campers with the "Chunks 2 Hunks" logos painted on but my printer broke so they ended up wearing plain yellow t shirts, Doug wore a blue t shirt, joggers and occasionally a hoodie. We wanted bright colours in each costume to make the film visually striking. 

The film is very music heavy as we believe it helps to make things feel less "empty" and build atmosphere. We collaboratively designed a soundtrack together to suit each different mood we wanted to build.

Task 3 - Planning

All paperwork can be found here

Task 4 - production

Monday 8th May 2023

Today we helped another group film their film noir piece Red Herring. It was interesting to see how the process worked for a film of this genre and we helped them with certain shots and lighting. This was all done in the black room at college, this group's set design was very impressive for the limited space they had to work with and I'm proud to have helped them.

Tuesday 9th May 2023

Today the office scene between Mike Schwipps and Doug was filmed, it was a good day in terms of figuring out the layout of the room and feeding back to our actors what we wanted as a directors but ultimately Kenz was unhappy with his camera work so we rearranged for the 11th.

Thursday 11th May 2023

Reshooting the first scene, today is where production really began. We booked the office room in college and printed out notice of destruction papers and gathered all of our equipment. A camera, a tripod, two lights, a camera battery, two light batteries, a shotgun mic, an SD card, and some headphones as well as a shoulder mount. We had some trouble setting up at first due to how tight the space was but with clever and creative angling we overcame this obstacle. We ran the scene through a lot before filming as one of our actors needed a lot of direction but once we communicated to him in a way he understood he was great. In the end, we got the scene done to a degree of quality that we were all happy with with ten minutes to spare. This was a great first shoot and helped us to get comfortable in our respective roles. 

We had to wait a week to get everything ready for our next shoot as the camper's shirts had not arrived so we spent a lot of this time planning future shots.

Wednesday 17th May 2023

This was our second day of filming and possibly our biggest, this shoot was in Eaglescliffe Village Hall and the pressure was on. The equipment used was the same with the addition of the dolly and wireless microphones. Our original actor for Doug's eating rival was unavailable so Kenz had to step in for us as 'Eat it All Paul'. A problem arose with the camera as we discovered that its SD slot was dodgy and required holding everytime we wanted to film something. This became frustrating as we had to do many takes over and over as insurance. We decorated the set amazingly and the end result of the day is arguably our greatest moment in all of the film. Alongside my Cheeky Bugger companions, I served as an extra in Turnips Tweed and Tractors. I also served as the announcer character in my own film for a fun cameo.

 Thursday 18th May 2023

 Today the pressure was on as we had 3+ scenes to film in the Hilton Hotel. We had a lot to do and little time to do it in so we had to maximise productivity and wrangle our actors like never before, with me chaperoning them to the shop for a 15 minute lunch break we gave them to make sure they would waste no time. What really annoyed me about today was how a lot of the actors arrived late which also inconvenienced hotel staff, was rude to us and all around unprofessional. When everybody finally arrived, myself, Kenz and Jack went into overdrive and managed to get everything done in good time using innovative shots and clear direction creating a stunning looking sequence in our film. However, it came to our attention that the sink plug stopped working after one of our actors used the bathroom. We encouraged him to tell the front desk but were later made aware he didn't which resulted in us not being allowed to film at the Hilton again as they felt disrespected. This annoyed myself, Kenz and Jack as we were told that we were responsible for our actors and didn't understand what we were meant to do in the event of them going to the toilet. However, we realise that we should've told the front desk rather than asking the actor who did it to tell them. The shots that we got looked amazing, all that was left was to go to the high street and film the scene of Doug finding the flier which we did in no time. Our main takeaway here is that we need to work on our professionalism as our products are great but we need to be better onset. Onset photos can be found Here .

Tuesday 22nd May 2023

Today marks the final day of shooting. We had to film the gym montage and two quick inserts. Kenz and Jack filmed one of these inserts early in the morning and did so incredibly well. I then bought food for the gym sequence and we made our way over to the gym with all of our equipment. There was an obstacle with one of our actors in the first 20 minutes of filming that was effortlessly resolved. It was a very fun shoot as it is so over the top and zany, we filmed many different exercises and incorporated food into them however we could. It was done very quickly. We got a few soundbites for certain parts of the film to help them flow better and then it was a wrap.

Task 5 Evaluation

Overall I have loved this project dearly as it was based around an idea I came up with and watching my idea play out is an incredible feeling. None of this would've been possible without my amazing friends Kenz and Jack. Jack was an amazing director and came up with some great shots too and Kenz was an amazing cinematographer and editor. The film has come out amazingly, our tutors are impressed saying that it is 'second year level' which makes the three of us very very proud. We developed as a unit which is great for the future of Cheeky Bugger as we now know everybody's core strengths. Aiden made for an incredible Doug, we couldn't have gotten a better performance and I believe he deserves to win best performance for our film. As previously mentioned, our professionalism needs work as our tutors have told us themselves after giving us a talking to and punishment for the incident with the sink. The end product is incredible and I believe it to be the best film made this year. The editing needs work in parts in terms of sound but is visually stunning. I need to keep better track of my blogs and written work as that became  major factor of stress for me later on in the term as I had neglected it in favour of practical work. This cannot happen next year. Overall, I am incredibly proud of what the Cheeky Buggers have achieved together and look forward to seeing how we top it.

You can watch The Weight Of The World for yourself HERE