SHOT LIST

Scene 1

The Apartment

1.     Long tracking shot. The shot tracks across the desk and past the window, making sure to aim focus on the various objects and elements of the room we want to highlight and link in later. It then tracks across the bed and round to the door where Sarah will walk into frame, the camera will pause for a second so she can deliver her line then it continues round the corner to the hall just in time for Mark to walk in the door. The shot ends as Mark enters the kitchen which is to his right (audience’s left).

2.    Mid shot. In the shot we see more dialogue between the characters, it can be a static shot facing the doorway, allowing Sarah to block the entrance and Mark to be moving around in the foreground.

3.    Close-up. This will be facing Mark as he tries to get past Sarah. The shot should be over her shoulder so the audience can see her reaction.

4.     Mid shot. This shot is an opposite to the end of the tracking shot, facing the back wall as opposed to the front door, Sarah is in the foreground and Mark stops to respond in a harsh tone.

5.    Mid shot. This shot will be from inside the bedroom, facing the door. Mark will walk in followed by his sister and their argument will escalate.

6.    Close-up. A close up of Sarah as she puts on a scarf and says he goodbye. She then leaves and the camera pans to show her exit. The shot holds until we hear the front door slam although it is out of shot.

7.    OTS shot. An over the shoulder shot of Mark as he looks at the contents of his parcel. The drugs. He then moves his hand up and gulps the blotter before looking into the mirror opposite. If we are clever we can organise this so that the camera moves up with his head yet is not seen in the reflection.

8.    Close- up. Close-up on the blotter reveals the image of a soviet star. To but cut into shot 8 before he drops it.

9.    Static focus pull. Here we see the postcard in the foreground which is in focus until it shifts to focus on the book in the background. I would like the camera resting on the desk for this shot which should end with Mark’s hand picking the book up.

10. Mid shot. Doing the last shot in that way will allow us to then place the camera on the desk where book was resting so that it faces the book in Mark’s hand. He then turns and flops on his bed to begin reading.

11.  POV shot 1. This is a highly technical shot consisting of Mark’s perspective as he reads the book, we want to keep the book in a fixed position filling the screen so we can transition to the new ‘trippy’ room layout.

12. POV shot 2. This is the same shot as before, however when Mark moves the book, the room is dramatically different highlighting the fact that he is now high as hell. Depending on how we feel here we can zoom the camera toward the window to allow us to transition to the stars and other visuals.

Scene 2

The Dream Building

13. Wide Pan shot. Here is the establishing shot for this scene, Mark will wake in the middle of the room and the camera will pan, following his movement as he explores the room. When he hears the voice and Mark lurches into action, the camera will follow him as steady as possible. If this does not work effectively we can break up the shot but I’d like to try this. We can choreograph this shot to allow the cosmonaut to rush past the camera adding to the tension of the scene.

14. High angle shot. Here I’d like to cut from the previous shout when Mark reaches the stairs. Then we can cut to the top and film him looking up and slowly ascending.

15. OTS shot. I’d like then to move to a OTS shot so that the audience can have the writing on the far wall revealed to them just as Mark reaches the top of the stairs. If we’re feeling particularly avant-garde we can attempt Mark running toward the writing whilst the camera slowly tracks around him until he is in front of us. This will be a nice way to reveal the cosmonaut behind him.

16. Mid shot. Here dialogue between the two commences, I thought of having a shot from the side of them so that we can see they are looking at each other from a distance.

17.  Close-up Cosmonaut

18. Close-up Mark

19. Close-up Cosmonaut

20.Close-up Mark 2These shots require little explanation; refer to the script for each line of dialogue. During the last close-up of Mark he moves forward toward the Cosmonaut.

21. Mid shot. This shot is the same as the previous mid shot, this time Mark is closer but there is still some distance between them. Mark looks cautious.

22.Close-up Mark

23.Close-up Cosmonaut 3These are more dialogue shots.

24.Mid shot. This is another of those mid shots to show the cosmonaut holding out his arm. Mark hesitates but then takes hold of it.

25. Close-up Mark 4 Shows Mark looking at the hand and hesitating. To be cut into the previous shot.

26.Close-up Cosmonaut 4This is the final shot in which the surroundings go white. This is a straight up shot of the cosmonaut, in order to transition it with a close up of Sarah when they reach the next scene.

Scene 3

The White Abyss

27.Close-up of Cosmonaut

28.Close-up of Sarah. These two shots should meld together to show the cosmonaut transitioning into Sarah.

29. Mid shot. Similar to the shots before, I want to show the two siblings holding hands and then have Sarah run off and Mark chasing after.

30.Long shot. Here I want to show Mark running into shot from a foggy background, he is searching for Sarah. He stops when here reaches mid-range and the hallucinations and voices start, the camera follows him down as he falls to his knees. Here I’d like to zoom in on Mark a little and have him cowering and trying to block it all out. This could be a long take as we want to get it really right here.

31. Long shot. Here I would like to have just blank white space in this shot to cut in when Mark looks around frantically. It could act as if it was POV.

Scene 4

Hospital Corridor

32.Long tracking shot. Here is the final shot of the film, the camera tracks up the corridor slowly toward Sarah who turns and looks past the camera.

Credits Roll.

Transcendence

[Working title]

Synopsis

Mark is a young adult who lives in his sister Sarah’s apartment. He has few prospects for the future and is struggling to come to terms with his estranged Mother’s recent hospitalisation due to a long-term illness. Meanwhile Sarah wants him to get back on his own two feet as well as make amends with their Mother. To escape himself he takes psychedelics and finds that he must first free his mind through a spiritual journey in order to find the answers he seeks.

Treatment

The film opens in Sarah’s apartment; the camera pans across

Mark make shift room and settles on Sarah as she leaves a room on the phone. Mark comes through the front door and an argument between the siblings ensues regarding their Mother’s critical condition and Mark’s reluctance to speak with her.

She tells him to get a job to which he replies he is making money, Sarah retorts with disgust as Mark is referring to selling drugs. In her anger Sarah provides mark with an ultimatum, Speak to Mom or get out of her house. She then storms out. Mark opens the small packet in his hand, he takes a piece of blotter paper by placing it on his tongue, and he smiles at himself in the mirror. Always check the merchandise. Mark sits on the bed and the camera shifts to POV, the book fills the screen and slowly the words begin to move and sway, this is when we transition to the trip sequence. The book is moved revealing a different version of the apartment, it is  filled with colour and patterns. Mark does nothing but laughas the camera tracks out through the window into the stars. He awakens in what looks like an run down building, Mark is lying on the floor and is surrounded by spiritual objects and writing, He hears a voice calling in, it is distant and ethereal. He moves through the house trying to find the source, we see a white figure dart across the screen until it ends up behind Mark. The figure is revealed to be a cosmonaut, a spirit guide, he asks him questions about his sister, Mark struggles to answer and the guide senses his dishonesty. In order to transcend the living he must first set himself free of it. The cosmonaut holds out his hand and Mark for the first time does as he is told and takes the hand. A white light surrounds him and he is taken away. In the white abyss the cosmonaut is gone again; Mark is alone except for his sister who stands utterly still, not even acknowledging him. He runs toward her but she isn’t there.

Again he hears voices this time of his mother and his sister. He hears memories of their arguments, and hears himself say some horrible things. Distraught he falls to his knees in tears, the spirit guide can be heard again telling him that now he knows truly what he is and that all there is left to do is act. The cam era pans toward Mark as the spirit guide’s voice becomes increasingly violent, a heart rate monitor can be heard as Mark tenses his face trying to block out the  noise, the heart rate flat lines and white engulfs Mark until he is no more. He flat line continues into the next shot which is of a Hospital corridor, Sarah is standing and looks terribly upset, the place is incredibly white which makes her stand out, the camera tracks toward her slowly as the ringing dies down, she  looks beyond the camera with an anguished look then looks to the ground. The shot fades out.

Rob put together this treatment and this will be the basis of writing the script:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/91203425/Transcendence-Treatment

The Brief

For the final assignment of this year we have been asked to do a drama piece that lasts 5 minutes and conveys a journey. For this project I will be taking on the role of camerawoman. To be frank I'm half nervous as my camera skills aren't their strongest but on the side of it I'm looking forward to improving my knowledge and the challenge of something new. 

For this project I will be working with:

- Jacob Waterall - editer

- Alex Withers - co-writer/directer

- Rob West - co-writer/producer

- Aaron Mears - Sound Design

- Jordan Barningham -Sound Recordist

our main concept is the journey that our character embarks on having taken some kind of illicit substance following a painful argument he had with his sister. He then goes on a trippy kind of journey inside his mind in which he has an our of body spiritual experience that the audience is privvy to through the lense of the camera. Rob and Alex have co written the treatment and the script. We have discussed shit lists, props and equipment needed and Alex and Rob are in the middle of casting actors right for the part. 

I feel the over all film is of a good standard. There was some dispute at the beginning over the direction of the film and when we first gave our initial idea out there was some confusion over what our aim and point of the film was. I think as a team we overcame this after much discussion and decided that the aim of the film was what impact the Beatles had as well as the impact they were still having today on Liverpool and the rock and pop culture it helped to create.

In terms of what we have achieved, we have put together a documentary that contains interviews with important people to the subject matter, got good shots of our subject matter, been able to use stock footage, worked hard together during every stage of production. Personally i have contributed at every stage, i helped to develop the ideas and establish what questions would best serve us for maximum usuable footage. Whilst on location I recorded all the sounds and made decisions aboout whether or not we need to re-record and such. i enjoyed doing sound as it was my first ever time in this role. I have learnt a lot both on location and in post production about my role, I feel more confident in using Soundtrack Pro to improve recordings. However i know not to rely on it and to ensure that in future to get the best obtainable recordings at the location instead of relying on post production.

The film does have some flaws, i feel we cold have got a bigger range of shots to accompany our content. Alongside maybe a more developed aspect that could have made our film truly unique. Ithink that with better planning this could have been achieved, I think the deciding of the idea took to long to form and be settled on which hindered our planning time. The quality of some of the sound recordings isnt as high as it could have been. I think we initially planned to rely on more public interviews on the day which was a no go area as we barely got a handful interviews from the public let alone any usuable ones.

We recorded the sound on a Mehrantz 660 using a rifle mic and a boom and filmed the footage on Maz's DSLR 3000 and tripod.
When it came to the editing suites we all chipped in in various ways to but Emma decided upon the main structure with Joe and Fiona also editing. We put together a transcript and also converted the footage through MPEG streamclip in order to reduce rendering times in FCP from times such as 30 minutes to 3 minutes.
I then made 3 sequences which contained our main 3 interviews, in each of them I lip synced all the footage up to the sound. This was so a rough cut could be made. once the cut of picture was put together and the snippets of sound decided upon i exported each sound clip out to Soundtrack Pro and put it through the compresser and noise reduction before putting it back again in order to improve the original recordings.
Joe also got a muscian he knows to play som acoustic Beatles tracks and this formed the basis of our backing tracking as well the recordings of buskars that we got the permission to record and use in Liverpool city centre. I feel this was an effective way to come up with the backing track to help link our images together and make the documentary flow better.

When we got to Liverpool we went to MAtthew street and gathered panning shots of the Hard Days Night Hotel and the statues of the Beatles. we then used the late afternoon sun to our advantage and got shots of the
-matthew street sign
-john lennon statue
-the engraved wall of fame
-the cavern club
-the cavern pub
-the john lennon pub

we also went inside the Hard Days Night gift shop where we interviwed  a guy named Paddy who was extremely helpful and eager to talk to us and let us film inside the gift shop. From him we set up interviews with the tour guide for Cavern Tours and also the manager Cavern Pub.

On the second day we went and filmed at the docks and got some other liverpool establishing shots, we then went to do our interviews inside the Cavern Pub with Jamie and Neil who were both very helpful gave us great interviews as well as background information about the beatles and their impact.
we also did filming inside the the Cavern Club which gave us great atmospere and panning shots to accompany the interviews.

Documentary:: The Brief

For our documentary brief we have decided to do The Beatles, we know that this is well trodden ground and our angle will be what The Beatles have done for the music industry, liverpool and what they continue to do. 

We then took up extensive research into news stories about The Beatles and how their fame has affected Liverpool. We discovered that the Mathew Street festival takes place each summer as well the The Beatles tribute week that thousands flock to from accross the world. 

It was interesting to see how our film progressed. During the shoot all three of us contributed to the how the shot was to look. As director I feel I took on the leading role in what shot we wanted to produce. Fiona followed directions very well in terms of set design and Maz pointed out each flaw when I tried to achieve something to ambitious.

During the edit the bulk of the picture edit was done my Maz and Fiona and I contributed constructive criticism at various stages. after the first rough edit we realised how much we wanted to develop the idea and went to re-shoot 2 scenes for example some of the fountain and water shots. During the first shoot my hand and foot had got in the way on one of two of the shots. this was on one hand very annoying but then again also gave us the opportunity to see the strengths and weaknesses of the shots we had got b4 re-shooting.

One very big problem we found with shooting was the last scene, which we filmed using 4 SLR cameras. We knew it had to be planned properly and only had one shot at what we were trying to achieve, however after looking back at the footage it turned out only 1 of the cameras came out with the right camera shot the others for some inexplicable reason came out to dark. This was very disappointing as we had planned to have the shots taken from 4 different angles and have a quick repetitive edit designed to shock the audience. I feel this led to one of our weaknesses of the film and that the film did not have the desired impact we had originally aspired to create.

Equipment and Materials

Equipment Used::

- Nikon SLR Camera D3100 for both filming and the individual shots
- 3 Tripods
- Set of 3 Dedo Lights, with coloured filters,
Lenses - - 16mm
               - 24mm Tilt Shift
               - 180mm

Props::

- The two characters that feature in the film... The two Teapots
- thread that assisted us to mobilise the two teapots.

We set up a mock studio using a set of Dedo lights and a white sheet. Through using different filters on the lights we could create a soft glow and the use of red light indicated how the feeling of love can be shown through light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ8aWGT6KaU

Development of Idea and Research

With all this in mind of giving inanimate objects life, we looked at using stop-animation one definition found when we googled it is:

“Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.”

This idea formed the basis of my experimental film, I looked at film makers who used still images to make experimental film but also looked at the stop motion side of experimental film.

Whilst looking Maz and I found a a incedible short film inserted below which was up of 35,000 photos, to create one short flawlessly smooth animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ8aWGT6KaU

 

Experimental

For this project I will be working with Fiona Allen and Marie-Anne Crew. I came up with the idea, and took on the role as Director/Producer. During this project I feel we have all put equal effort into the project in. Mari-Anne was the Camera-woman/Editor whilst Fiona took on the role of Sound Artist/Editor.

Initially we had the idea of using the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling, we were going to explore the opposites of girl VS boy along with how one person can overcome daily struggles as outlined in the poem. However upon closer inspection and trying to develop this idea it became apparent that it was not strong enough and therefore not viable enough to become the main concept of our film.

Once we stepped back and stopped thinking to hard I came up with the idea of giving life to an inanimate object. We wanted to use something that would be friendly and familiar to the audience. We settled upon the use of a teapot, whilst shopping for said teapot we came across two that were strong favourites for the leading role. It was in that moment that we decided to use both teapots, we developed our idea to involve both teapots big and little.

the link below was something I stumbled accross when I was researching experimental film,
although only very short i think it it very powerful. I adore the idea of how ones person night turns into anothers day, and the effect of distortion that it takes. The use if light to represent the ending of one day and the birth of another.
the edit is tight as it shows the sun move from one continent to another

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjvqlkhb9QU&feature=relmfu