Category: Post by Sylvia – Director

Posted in General, Ideas, Post by Sylvia - Director

Glue 0_o

Posted on by Sylvia

Today myself and Joel met up in the library to knock out the new glue-sniffing dream sequence. I bounced ideas off him and he was an excellent scribe. We decided not to write all the camera angles and details until we got the go ahead from the group, learning from experience that if we spend a lot of time on something before doing so, it usually gets changed or scrapped.

We watched clips from Trainspotting for inspiration and I think the ideas we got from that will shine through more when I write the shooting script for the Glue sequence.

 

Annnnd here it is :] in bullet point form :p

  • Linda sniffs the glue.
  • As she phases out, Linda turns over to find the den empty but one red balloon floating.
  • The balloon floats towards the door.
  • Linda follows the balloon to the door.
  • She opens the door and lots of red balloons float into the room.
  • Linda is engulfed in red balloons and she fights her way through them till we see one red balloon left.
  • As the balloon moves away from the camera we are now in the same girls bathroom as the one earlier in the story.
  • We hear whimpering coming from one of the toilet cubicles.
  • The cubicle door opens.
  • Susan is sat there covered in bruises and blood.
  • Linda looks at Susan completely confused.
  • “Susan?”
  • We see Susan’s eyes open.
  • Susan starts panicking and recoils into the cubicle in fear of Linda.
  • The cubicle door shuts and locks.
  • Linda tries to get into the cubicle but fails.
  • She then goes to the next cubicle and peers over.
  • Mary is sitting on the toilet.
  • She slowly (creepily – with blank eyes) looks up at Linda.
  • She then looks at the door.
  • The door opens and we see Linda standing in front of it. (The Linda who took the glue is still peering over the cubicle wall).
  • Mary gets up and walks towards Linda who backs out.
  • The cubicle door shuts.
  • Linda sits back down in the cubicle.
  • Mary distorted: “She shouldn’t have dragged you into this Susan”
  • Linda slowly opens the cubicle door and walks into the main part of the toilet.
  • We hear crowd chants of “LINDA! LINDA!” as the camera goes around her 360 degrees.
  • Linda smiles and starts savouring the moment, her arms are aloft as if saluting the crowd and enjoying stage presence. She laughs.
  • We see a glare in her eye.
  • Slowly fades to Spike repeating Linda’s name until she comes around.
  • Linda is being soothed by Spike on the mattress in the den.
  • Spike holds Linda “Whoah, we lost you for a bit there, I told Shug not to give you any.”
  • We zoom in slowly on their embrace and then zoom out to Spike on the mattress.
  • Spike moves to reveal Moon on the mattress with him.
  • Linda is suddenly stood at the end of the bed, “What are you doing!!”
  • Moon: “Fuck off! You’re not one of us!!, go back to your girlfriend Susan!”
  • Fade to Susan and Linda walking hand in hand along past the same bench the punks sat on earlier during the time lapse.
  • Linda sees the same red balloon in the distance and they run towards it.
  • It is a fun chase game.
  • The balloon remains the same distance away so Linda cannot get it and its starts appearing in opposite directions. They split up to catch it.
  • Linda turns around to see Susan and Spike sat together on the park bench.
  • Spike and Susan slowly move in towards each other intercutting with shots of a safety pin coming towards a red balloon.
  • The safety pin bursts the balloon just as their lips touch.
  • Quick cut to the Den to see Linda wake up suddenly.
  • She then leans across the mattress to be sick/dry heave.
  • End Scene.

 

Yesterday due to our producer not being able to return to Lincoln thanks to the icy climate on the roads, Helen (P.A.) and myself met up to redo the shooting schedule as everything had been pushed forward due to weather, and the existing schedule was not detailed enough, without enough consideration for the actor availability etc. So THAT was a fun two hours+ of working through the scenes and thinking through logistics of when, who, with what, wearing what, has she dyed her hair yet, is that enough time to shoot that many scenes, will we have set in time? etc. Head-ache.

But it was very worthwhile.

 

TOMORROW, editing begins, as Jack and I will meet in the edit suites to get the ball rolling on editing with what we’ve got so far. I think it will be a massive help to make this process gradual, as A) we are going to have a hell lotta footage to work through, and B) the edit suites aren’t fully booked this early on.

 

Sooo yeah, I’ve been busy. Third year is mega.

Posted in General, Post by Sylvia - Director

Week 2? Week 3? It’s definitely Week 3 now…

Posted on by Sylvia

I feel that we seem to be rolling slowly to a halt as everyone starts to focus on their dissertations and other assignments. We are getting on with things, but it’s at a very leisurely pace…

This week however, we are very nearly there with the script progression, just need to create one new scene – a glue high dream. Which will allow us to be very creative so I don’t want to rush the conception of this scene. I would prefer it if we could gather inspirations and ideas from everyone for this.

Also, we have continued progress on filming as on Tuesday we filmed scenes in the headmasters office, which turned out to be quite funny thanks to our punks. Yes we’ve squeezed in a cheeky wink to camera, breaking the fourth wall – Hustle style. And then on Wednesday we filmed the record shop scene which was so elusive to us last term due to the difficulty of finding (and keeping) a reliable Susan. But thankfully our original Susan has returned to us with renewed commitment.

It would have been a hat-trick week if our exterior shoot this morning had not been cancelled due to adverse weather conditions. Yes the real winter has arrived which we thought we’d escaped. Snow. Now when a program is set in April, you really can’t get away with snow in the exterior shots can you?

It’s a shame because we were rushing to prepare for this shoot, with Shiv, Helen and Rachel contacting me left right and centre about poster decisions, costume decisions, printing decisions all the night before. (No wonder my dissertation is enjoying little progress!) But at least we got it sorted for when we do decide to shoot.

Thankfully, the street which we want to film on isn’t going anywhere so we’ll just have to post-pone the shoot for a nicer day. Which will be sooner rather than later we hope.

 

 

Well, best be off to do stuff with my day.

You stay classy Lincoln.

Posted in General, Post by Sylvia - Director

Welcome to Week 2. 2nd Gear.

Posted on by Sylvia

We have a complete script!!!!!! It took me and Joel many many hours in the library throwing ideas back and forth about structure, camera shots, characters, dialogue. Although it is admittedly still in draft stage, I don’t think I’ll ever be perfectly happy with it, but that’s just my perfectionist tweaking nature. So currently I’m working on the re-draft already, fine-tuning and I feel like we’ve all got our hands full with stuff to do. Which is good.

We had a full read-through with the cast members today, (minus Moon who couldn’t attend, and Shug who needs to be cast still [these are punk band characters, not real names heh]) and I started to see the overall picture. We also had a play about with water balloons and a camera (keeping the two very much apart for obvious reasons) to experiment with how we are going to capture our slow-mo water balloon shot. AND we got out the basics of Linda’s bedroom set to see how we were going to move the walls apart for the Union Jack psycho scene where Linda hallucinates that her parents friends and headmaster are all talking about her, all of which will be chroma-keyed onto a green screen that comes in when the walls part. Which, went quite well. There are still adjustments to be made on the set layouts but they’re coming together slowly.

 

SO, feeling positive and kinetic,

 

ROCK ON

Posted in Influence, Post by Sylvia - Director

Fly on the wall-paper

Posted on by Sylvia
This is from a spanish film, All About My Mother, by Pedro Almodovar. His set designs and costumes are really carefully constructed and I particularly like this wallpaper for the 70's look.

 

As part of my dissertation research I have been watching all of Pedro Almodóvar’s films, and they have been really useful for inspiring my camera shots and making dialogue seem natural. I have posted this quick snapshot from one scene to show the set team what I was thinking of for the retro wallpaper of our set design.

Posted in General, Post by Sylvia - Director

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Posted on by Sylvia

As the new year begins it’s swing, we have been revising our attitudes to the project. Last year it seemed we let things get on top of us and lost sight of the creative aspects of the production. Some of us were somewhat underwhelmed with our progress and with the ‘draft’ we handed in to be marked and knew we could do so much better in terms of creative shots, making tension in the sequences and making it all-round good telly! One thing that we really missed the boat on ironically was that our programme about identity crisis’ for youth in the 70’s had no strong identity!! And this is something which we now have the chance to change. After a christmas vacation full of reflection we have come back together and made some goals which we hope will keep us on track as the pressure mounts in our final term here at the University of Lincoln.

The Goals

– To have more camera movement and imaginative shots.

– Have better paperwork organisation, sooner rather than later.

– To be more positive and ambitious.

– Improve our technical skills.

– Build better working relationships amongst ourselves.

– To give and receive constructive criticism gracefully.

– Be more prepared.

– And to make something that we are proud to include in our personal showreels.