Fiction Unit: Scripting

Today I started scripting my fiction piece, I was planning to do this over the easter break but decided to start now so I can start filming as soon as I get back from the holidays. So far I have done 3 and a half pages and plan to do the rest over easter for now I shall continue writing my essay as I feels that this needs the mist work at the moment.

Fiction Adaptation: Music Mash up

Today we were given the task of creating a music video created from archive clips and a song of our choice. The song I chose was "Father and Son" by Cat Stevens and I decided visually I will use clips from the original 3 Star Wars movies (mainly of Luke and Vader). The song is about a father and son arguing about what is right and wrong although affection can still be seen in their relationship. I thought matching this song to the visuals of star wars was perfect as it basically reflected the relationship between Luke and Vader in the way that they will always have their arguments but in the end they still care for each other. Editing wise I made a rough cut that I still need to add tweeks to but all in all I am already quite proud of it and hopefully it will put some smiles on peoples faces!

Editing Demon-Con

On Monday after filming Demon Con the day before, me and Sam uploaded and edited the footage of the event. Here's what it turned out like, I hope you enjoy it!.

Filming Demon-Con

On Sunday myself and Sam Wilder went into Maidstone to film the local comic-book convention known as Demon-con which was ran by Graham Beadle who we did our documentary on. We took out a camera from the studios and used Sam's camera to record footage, when we got there Graham told us to film whatever we wanted so we decided to get some interviews with some of the comic-book artists, we asked them why they were there, what they were promoting and what they thought of the event. We also filmed an auction that took place, where they auctioned off three posters (I placed a couple of bids in but didn't get anything). At the end of the day we got some really good interviews and some great footage.

Studio Production: Studio Workshop with Hans

On Thursday I got the chance to practise vision mixing in the gallery. This allowed me to gain experience for the studio production coming up in May. Aleister showed me the controls for the mixing desk, which meant I could switch between cameras, watch previews before switching and mixing visuals from one camera to the next. During rehearsals Ashley Kay would say which camera he wanted to cut to and I would do this by pushing said camera button when the shot needed was ready. Overall I did enjoy the workshop as I got to spend time in the gallery getting to grips with vision mixing and think I learnt quite a bit

Fiction Adaptation: Finalised idea

I have now finalised my idea for my Fiction adaptation and am planning on scripting and storyboarding sometime this and next week. The narrative is based around The Graveyard Poem by Jim Morrison and in some ways associates with the authors lifestyle. Here is the finalised narrative for my adaptation:

A youth wakes up in a bed which looks unfamiliar, he gets up, puts on his jeans and leaves the room to explore the house. As he leaves the room he enters a dark hallway, as he walks along the corridor he feels that someone is following him (to which we see a tall figure standing behind him, which resembles a beast) he turns around quickly to find no one there, he carries along the hallway to find a set of stairs. He sees beer bottles and cans scattered all over the place which means he must have been at a house party however he finds it strange that for a house party there are no signs of the guests or anyone else. As he heads down the stairs images flash on the screen for less than a second and as these flash up, the youth feels a pain in his head and hold it in pain, he continues to walk down the stairs. He is now on the second floor of the house, still finding it strange that there is no one around he decides to explore the rooms where he finds a bathroom. The bathroom is surprisingly clean and is sparkling white all over, the youth goes to wash his face in the sink to wake himself up a bit. As the youth bends over to wash his face in the sink we see the beast again reflected in the mirror, he is standing right behind the youth. As the youth rises to look in the mirror he sees nothing of the beast however the bathroom is now grotty and brown compared to its earlier state, the youth is confused and leaves the bathroom quite confused. He enters another room to find a window facing out towards the garden, he looks through the window and sees the beast outside in the distance. The youths head starts throbbing again and more images flash up for less than a second, he runs to the door head in hands but bumps into the beast who now blocks his path and falls to the floor. The youth cannot look at the beast straight on, his heart starts beating rapidly as he manages to push past the beast and exit the room, he runs through the hallway but stumbles over still in pain more images flash up and the youth screams in pain, he looks up to see the beast standing on top of him he manages to pull himself away and crawl to the next stair case, he manages to make his way downstairs and runs to the back door. He collapses against the door banging on it repeatedly screaming for help, he tries to open it but it is locked so he makes his way into the living room where he is stopped by the beast. The youth tries to turn back but the beast is split into three entities and surrounds him, he collapses to his knees screaming as images start to flash and the three beasts circle him spinning infinitely. The youth draws enough strength to push away from the beasts and runs towards the front door but the beast blocks his path arms spread not willing to let him pass. The youth still in pain is determined to leave the house, images still flashing and head still in pain charges straight at the beast, he manages to knock the beast over and is right next to the front door. As he places his hand on the door knob the beast utters two lines from the poem "hate to leave, your sacred lay", the youth hears these words and looks back at the beast hunched on the floor with a concerning look as if he is reconsidering leaving the house. He turns away from the beast and opens the door to be blinded by a massive white light and the screen fades to white. As the picture is visible again we see that we are in the same bedroom as we started in the first scene. We see the youth sprawled across the bed with a needle in one hand and a rope tied around his upper arm, we then hear the last words from the beast as we look down upon the youth "Dread the milky coming of day" 

Morrison died in 1971 due to a heroine overdose which plays a big part for the ending of the piece. The whole story is the youth exploring his mind after taking heroine, his mind is represented by the house itself and as he explores different rooms this is him looking into different parts of his mind. He finds the room which he wakes up in unfamiliar due to the heroine affecting his memory which is why he finds the house so unfamiliar. Each room represents a different part of the youth himself, the bathroom represents his innocence once pure white but now brown and dirty due to drug abuse and the room with the window doesn't focus so much on the room itself but the window as he looks out and sees what other people think of him, paranoid that people may think badly of him he represses these thoughts thus actually hurting himself in the process. The beast can be looked at in a variety of ways, it can be perceived as the demons that live in the youths mind which he overcomes or could be the youth himself trying to save what's left of his tattered mind. The photos that flash up for a fraction of a second and pictures of the youth taking the heroine, the pictures will flash up too fast for the audience to see so will not spoil the ending. And finally the final "mind" scene represents the moment where the youth has left his mind meaning death and loss of sanity.

Studio Production: Producing a VT

Today we were given the task of making a VT which that to be 1 minute 45 seconds long. Luckily we used this time to edit our footage for The Making of Punchlines Episode 1 that we took whilst talent scouting last Thursday. Here is that episode that we created:

Studio Production: Talent Scouting and filming a making of video

Last Thursday the Punchlines crew went to The Walnut Tree, a small up in Maidstone who ran their own comedy club to do some talent scouting. Myself and Neill went along to this so we could film a behind the scenes video. That evening a comedian was on named David Whittney, after he done routine we had a chat with him and he was a very friendly person. He gave us his details and we said we'd get in contact with him in the near future. We got some great footage for the making of video which included interviews with the crew, footage of David and some interesting insights for our production.

Fiction Adaptation: Taking pictures on locations

On Sunday I went around Maidstone to take pictures of location that could be used in an "Emma" adaptation. I went to various locations including churches, a village and a dining room which I created. The way I am adapting "Emma" is in a modern day setting with middle class characters. I also plan to put my photos through Photoshop and add some nice effects onto them.

Fiction Unit: Location Scouting

For the location project we had 4 different novels to choose from to do location scouting for: 1984, Emma, Wuthering Heights and Bleak House. I read the first chapters of all of the novels and I decided to do Emma by Jane Austen as I thought that I could find some decent locations for this and bring in a modern twist.

Studio Production: Designing a logo

Last week Friday me and Neill stayed behind to finish designing the final logo for the studio production. After  using different features on photoshop and using various effects we came up with this as our logo.

 As you can see we added a static background with the boxing glove punching through with the name of the show "Punchlines" on it. We downloaded the font from Dafont and put a black square around the outside to make it look like the boxing glove was coming out of a tv screen.