'Milo' Storyboard Animatic - Alex Lloyd

As a group, together we came up with what shots we wanted to include and what we would film in each of them. The next step was for Abi and I to draw our storyboard writing how long each shot would last for, camera size, camera angle and movement included. Once this was completed I booked out a camera and took a shot of each storyboard shot, these were then uploaded to the Mac and put on Imovie as an animatic.

As you will hear, we have uploaded our monologue which was recorded through a voice recorder by Caroline and Abi. This is our plan of what our final short film will look and sound like.

Raw footage feedback - Group

We got a few members of our class and also some students who do not do Media to assess our work and give us some feedback on what we could improve/what worked well and any other ideas of what we could do.

Chris Davison - "I liked the way you have used the manual focus, and good use of facial expressions and mise en scene. The shot of the argument is quite long, and so could be shortened" Media student

Sam Jenner - " I liked how the parents were blurred in the background, I think the change over needs a bit of work" Media student

Sam Hillwood - " I like the way that it faded through to show the child ageing. I also liked how the child was in focus and you could see the parents arguing in the background but blurred. I also liked the tracking shot of the child's feet" Media student

Amy Pearce - "The boy was a good actor and I like the storyline. I think its nice how it has a happier ending" Theatre student

Patrick (Milo's friend) - "I think the mirror scene is funny as he looks so sad but it also looks really good" 10 years old.

COLOUR CODING - Caroline Robertson

As our group has been v.busy the colour coding was forgotten, I have quickly gone through all the posts that were left out and colour coded them as the following
Caroline - Black
Abi - Purple
Alex - Default Blue
Jack - Red
Group/Combined - Orange

First day of filming - Abi Black

On the first day of filming we managed to get the first pieces of our film coming together. Although the weather was not in our favour the dullness added to the overall atmosphere of our film and the shots turned out quite well. We took a variation of establishing shots of the house and surroundings in order to give off the impression of it looking isolated. One of the things which we found worked effectively was using the manual focus to create different depths of field, one extremely nice shot done from behind the bush at an extreme long shot with the house blurred in the background.
Another shot which looked nice was the same idea, but taken at a much lower angle, almost on the floor where we had the grass in focus and the house shot out of focus. The only problem with this one was the camera had to be hand held as we couldn't get the tripod low enough and so it appeared quite unstable. The other things which we played around with during the establishing shots was the use of the pan, which we found worked more effectively when done really slowly.
We then moved inside the house to start filming our first shots of Milo and the use of mise en scene worked really nicely here. At first we had an issue with setting the white balance as we were using the Sony HD camera but after getting the hang of it, it looks very realistic and really good quality. We had quite a few props and were using the lighting to try and create the look we were after, which was the lower lighting and trying to make it look as natural as possible to reinforce the social realism effect. We had a medium close up shot of the fireplace with all of the alcohol bottles on it, to give a clear message about what was going on.
The other shots we got done were the ones of Milo in the bathroom, the first time we see him. We used the "mirror" shot which at first was quite difficult as we kept getting the camera in it so had to adjust the position quite a lot. Our actor worked really well though and put up with our constant re-takes on this particular scene.
Overall it was a productive first filming session and went really well although we had to race against time before it got dark to keep the natural lighting effect. Everyone had different inputs on what type of shots we could do and unfortunately I couldn't attend the filming session the next day although after looking at the shots on the computer they look very effective. We aren't due to film again until next week, in which we are hoping for clear skies to do the trampoline shots and the ping pong shots.

To Do List 26th Feb - Caroline Robertson

This is a list of things which our group needs to do asap!
1. ANIMATIC!!!!!!!!!!!!
Done.

2.Can Probably stick up some of our Facebook discussions on here


3."- discussions of the use of technologies (especially camera) – any new techniques tried, any development of skills learned last year, any problems or shots you were unable to produce"
Done


4. Research for magazine review, links to reviews etc.


5. audience feedback on our rushes.
Done

6. colour code our posts
Done

FILMING HAS STARTED - Caroline Robertson

DAY 1 - Alex, Kaz and Abi!
We managed to get many establishing shots of the house, long shots to emphasise the isolation which represents the loneliness of the main character, Milo. Although very cold and wet the shots came out clear and we played with the camera focus a lot to get different effects to make the opening more interesting. We did lots of panning shots of the mantlepiece and photographs, and alcohol for the first opening shots before the monologue begins, and when we lost daylight we filmed the under the duvet scene using a light reflected off the back wall to give a dull light effect. We also filmed the bathroom shots with the brushing teeth and opening cuboard scenes, but on replay realised we would have to reshoot the teeth brushing as it was out of focus in comparision to the rest. Overall it was a good start to our filming, and the weather wasn't too bad

DAY 2 - Alex and Kaz
We returned the next day to continue shooting, this time with our other two actors. I reshot the extreme close up of the teeth brushing (this time in focus) and Alex took a few more establishing shots of the house. We then managed to do all the shots of the parents arguing in the background with Milo in the foreground, however had to change the setting which was origionally the living room to the kitchen as due to tree's blocking the background in the living room we were not able to get the shot we wanted if we had tried to do it in there. I think that the kitchen worked well anyway because the natural lighting was better as there were wall sized windows so we amde the most of the sunlight. We took the shots of the legs coming in with our actors arguing which came out nicely, and the shots of Milo taking his shoes off. We also took shots of him creeping down the hall amongst alcohol bottles, but are re taking them as it looks too set up - we need to smash the bottles and take them in the downstairs hall instead of upstairs because the stair banisters ruin the continuity. We now have all the shots that we need the other actors for, all we have to do now is a few re shoots and the shots of Milo running through a field, climbing the tree, playing ping pong and on the trampoline.
While alex shot the kitchen scenes I took stills with a digital camera which could be used in some way for the poster. Overall the second day was better than the first - we got more done and some of the shots were really nice, We are going to continue filming next week now as Milo is not free for the rest of the week.

We have also begun to start cutting our rushes to speed up the editing process for when we finish filming - which will be by the end of next week.
(Photos are ones taken by myself during the filming, flash was off to not disturb the filming and they could be used in posters or just as behind the scene shots.)

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