MAIN Post 9: Production

Whilst filming 'Behind Blue Eyes' and editing our footage we came across various points where we would all have to make decisions and as a group agree that the decisions would be in the best interest of our film. In the end the various decisions we made were in fact helpful in making our film a success.

One of the larger decisions that we agreed on was shortening our opening sequence taking out the scene in Paige's bedroom and later on the scene of Sophie being dropped home by Paige and Alan. The reason behind the cut in scenes was we believed that by changing the location of the scene from the girl's school to Paige's house would make the audience believe the opening titles were finished and the film had started. So we replaced the scenes with a scene of Sophie and Paige walking to Alan's car with Alan eying Sophie up anchoring the voice over describing her shirt and skirt. We found that this was more effective and powerful then jumping straight to the film helping set the atmosphere of the film for the audience which I believe worked very well. 


We also completely cut out a shot where we intended to put a camera in Sophie's locker so you could see her unhappy expression about going to maths, the locker would then slam leaving the black background where the title 'Behind Blue Eyes' would appear. However during the editing process we discovered that the title looked better after that whilst the screen fades to black, also it was difficult keeping the continuity when closing the locker with the background.

There was also the decision of making the opening titles a graphical sequence, using a variety of objects that helped show the math theme we decided that there were an awful lot of plain objects which could bore the audience. We fixed this problem by using bright coloured pencils shooting them from various angles so not to get confused during editing.We also had to make sure the opening titles didn't go on for too long but they had to go on long enough to fit all the titles in. From our research into opening titles we found out that the majority of the opening titles appeared in the opening titles and not the end of the film, trying to be as conventional as possible we agreed to keep most of the titles at the beginning of the film. However we couldn't put all four of our names on everything so we made names up or suggested a specific title for one another making it more realistic for our audience. The titles where difficult to position and it took all of group various attempts to get it right due to the font being white it needed to be on a black background to make the titles stand out however not take the attention aware from what was happening in the background.

Main Post 8: Pre-Production Documentation

Our group designed a college of various locations for us to consider and use when filming, below is the image which shows various specific objects that we would have to consider putting in our film.

Our group decided on a location and continued to do a location recce of Paige's bedroom. Below is an image of our location recce which also includes information on things we would have to consider when filming in this location including; permission, power and lighting.

After considering the location of our film we also had to figure out the costume design, trying to represent our characters the best we could.We researched the costume for the three main characters Paige, Alan and Sophie as seen below.

As the opening titles of our film would include props that would specifically link to our main character Sophie, our group also researched into what props we would use focusing around Sophie and Alan's relationship that forms over maths. Below is an image of the props we considered using in our opening titles.

We then proceeded to create a shot list for our opening sequence which shows the basic information of our film, including; the scene the shot is in, the description of the shot, the scene of the shots and the names that would appear in the titles. Below are images of our shot list that we created.



Below is also a copy of our script if you click on the image, our script includes the voice over of Alan and Paige and Sophie's line's.

Risk assessments where made to make sure no one was injured during filming, below is an image of our group's risk assessment showing the risk that was apparent and what we would do to avoid it.

Here is a crew list so that all the members of our group were aware of there role when it came to not only filming but producing also.
Katie-Mai Taylor: Actor(Sophie) and an editor
Bobbi Rhodes: Camera operator, Editor and Producer.
Charley Daugherty: Camera operator and Director
Alexandra Mullins: Actor(Paige) and an editor

To make sure that we were organised we created a shooting schedule that suited everyone's schedule, the schedule shows the description of each scene we filmed.

Below is the group synopsis it is a screenshot from my work in post 4a, it tells the plot line and background information on our characters.

We also produced a storyboard to show the shots in every scene which did have an illustration to show what the shot looked like. It also gives information on the length of the shot and the characters movement. Below is our storyboard.

Main Post 6: History of my chosen genre

Our chosen genre is drama however because it is such a broad genre we chose to focus on the sub-genres of teen drama and social realism. I decided to get a better understanding of our chosen genre by researching it in hope of keeping conventional when creating our film.

From this website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drama_film drama is described as;

' ...a film that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as ... violence against women and corruption put the characters in conflict with themselves.'

From this website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_drama our sub heading of teen drama is described as;

'...a dramatic television series with a major focus on teenage characters.'

This information wasn't extremely helpful due to it focusing on television series and not films however I did notice that to reach a teenage audience I need to include a teenage cast. So I looked even further for information on teen films and found this website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_film which was helpful as it focused mainly on teen films and found out that the basic story lines to grab hold of a teenage audience usually included;

'....coming of age , first love, rebellion, conflict with parents, teen angst, and alienation. ..... Films in this genre are often set in high schools, or contain characters that are of high school age. Sexual themes are also common, as are crude forms of humor.'

This was helpful as I was then aware of what our film had to include to make it appeal to a large audience, I also noticed that the majority of these films were set in the USA and only a few were set in the UK. This site was also useful in explaining the usual codes and conventions that our target audience would be used to which also explained how our target audience was used to an American culture. Major events that a teen would expect to see would include;

'....proms, alcohol, illegal substances, high school, parties and all-night raves, losing one's virginity, relationships, social groups and cliques, and American pop-culture.'

http://www.movieweb.com/movies/2012/drama This link showed me popular and current film drama's, I found this useful as I was able to see what was popular with my film's target audience such films included the images below.

Main Post 5: Title Timeline

As a group we watched the opening titles of films so that when it came to creating the titles for our film we        would have an idea of how to structure our opening titles. Below is the opening titles to 'Catch Me If You Can'.

Main Post 4b: Narrative/Character Research

In our group we agreed that to be able to portray our characters and have a clear narrative we should research into it.
Here is a link to Opra - Sexual Grooming where we found out the steps in sexual grooming that go like so; 1. Targeting the victim
2. Gaining the victims trust
3. Filling a need
4. Isolating the child
5. Sexualizing the relationship
6. Maintaining control
By researching these six steps we were able to develop the rest of our film using these steps as the basic plotline trying to keep as realistic as possible when it came to Sophie and Alan's relationship.

This link Protect your children leads to information targeting parents so they are aware of what to look out for to keep their children safe. Below is a list of what makes children targets;
Unpopular
Feels unloved
Seeking attention and friendship
Low self-esteem and lack of confidence
Isolated from peers
Spends time alone
Often unsupervised
Experiencing family problems
This site seemed to focus on how the Abuser targets the 'vulnerable' as they are the easiest to get hold off. Therefore to keep our film realistic we have to use a few of the points above to prove Sophie is 'vulnerable'.

As we had an idea of our plot ending with the girl's ringing the NSPCC we checked there website for any information. Here is the link: Understanding Groomers. It not only told the parents how to protect there children but how the mind of an abuser works as seen from a quote below.

"I look for a child who seems to be lonely or sad looking for attention. Then I take my time gaining her trust and becoming her freind. In time she will do anything I ask."

This site also had stages of grooming however there were only four steps in comparrison to opra's six.
-Sexual motivation
-Overcoming internal inhibitions against acting on that motivation
-Overcoming external impediments to commiting sexual abuse
-Undermining or overcoming the child's resistance to the sexual abuse

From this website we have gathered information on how the mind of an abuser works which gives us inspiration when writing the script for our abuser's voiceover.

Main Post 4a: Plot development

Below is the plot development that my group created to show the characters, narrative and plot in more detail so we could get a better grasp on our film's storyline and what stages our plot line will go through.

Our group researched timelines and found this website http://www.lightsfilmschool.com/  to be the most informative. It gave us the needed information on film timelines and we created two timelines one being from a well known disney film 'Cinderella' and the other for our film 'Behind Blue Eyes'.

Here is the timeline for 'Cinderella' that we created;

Below is the timeline for 'Behind Blue Eyes' that we created also;

The title of our film is ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and it falls into the social realism drama genre. Our target audience for this film are people specifically between the ages of 15 to late 20’s.

The logline for our film - a sentence under 25 words that summarises the film, is;
“Her skirt was short, her tie was loose. They always look older than they actually are….don’t they?”

A young girl aged 16 – Sophie, is best friends with Paige aged 17. Sophie mum is a carefree single parent and her father has never been in the picture. Paige’s father is also a single parent when Paige’s mother died during child birth; the two girls have grown close through the loss of parents. The girls often hangout at one another’s houses and do homework and have sleepovers and therefore they trust each other’s parents.

It begins with a male voice over who has not yet been revealed, there is a shot of Sophie and Paige in Paige’s bedroom doing homework and gossiping. Sophie quickly goes to the bathroom and whilst washing her hands rolls up her long sleeved top and shows bruising and red hand marks. Sophie goes back into the bedroom and they continue on with homework until Sophie realises that its 18:00 and she has to go home.

Paige tries to talk Sophie into grabbing a lift with her dad trying to get away from him for a couple of minutes (making the audience question why she wants her father out of the way). Paige finally guilt trips Sophie into grabbing a lift with her father.

Sophie gets into the car with him and he starts driving and talking to her whilst touching her, she starts doubting the whole relationship and says it’s not right making the father angry. He turns things around on her making her feel guilty telling her it’s all her thought she wanted the relationship to happen (though it is obviously lies and actually the father that has been encouraging the relationship). She gets out of the car.

Sophie and Paige meet up in town and Sophie can’t take the guilt any longer and confesses her relationship with Paige’s father to her then Paige confesses to Sophie how he also has been physically abusing her. The girls are both upset and worried so tell Sophie’s mum who doesn’t believe that the father could do such a thing leaving the children vulnerable about what the father might do next. Sophie and her mother have a dramatic argument. So go to the police station and explain everything that’s happened even against the mother’s wishes, the father is arrested and taken in.

The Father is taken to prison where he receives counselling where it is revealed that it is his story by showing him talking to the counsellor.

Main Post 4: Group meeting

Our group held a meeting in order to discuss what genre we would want to do in our short film. Below is a write up of what was said when we had our discussion:

'Behind Blue Eyes' discussed by Bobbi Rhodes, Charley Daugherty, Katie-Mai Taylor and Alex Mullins
Charley:Hey guys, so has anyone got any ideas about the opening sequence?
Alex:I don't know, what genre should we do?
Bobbi:
Well what would people want to see more of?
Katie:
Looking at our questionnaire results drama seems to be wanted a lot more.
Bobbi:
Thats a good idea! I think drama usually involves problems, we have to make sure it relates to real life situations.
Alex:
Well what sort of situations could we do?Charley:
What about a relationship between two teenagers?
Alex
Yes, we could do them splitting up.
Katie:
We could but it might be a little bit boring, what about an abusive relationship?
Bobbi:
That would be quite hard to act out and we would have to be careful with the conventions we use.
Charley:
Well if we look at a few dramas and also short films that we have been watching in class I'm sure there are certain conventions that we could achieve.
Katie:
We could also involve editing to make it seem a lot more dramatic.
Alex:
If we can do it I think its a good idea.
Katie:
Ok so where are we going to film it?
Alex:
Either at someone's house or maybe at school?
Charley:
I think the school because then we can do some work during our frees.
Bobbi:
Thats a good idea, I also like the idea of maybe a flash back rather than her actually being there now.
Katie:
Or we could just use the sound rather than acting because from our preliminary task I think the acting let us down.
Alex:
Then it will show our editing skills.
Charley:
Everyone happy with this idea then?
Katie:
Yes
Bobbi:Yes
Alex:
Yes