THE SHOWROOM CINEMA, SHEFFIELD

This was the main location that was used for the production of original footage for the short film, in which we shot in and around the cinema.

The Main influence for the new edit of the film was the 2013 film "The Conjuring". This was because i wanted to go for more 'Scary' and 'Surreal' approach.

Comparison of shots between first concept and edit and shots of the final concept and edit.

Stills from 'The Projectionist' (2013) 

Sound And Experimental Film Evaluation

Sound And Experimental film evaluation

The concept for our sound project titled “The Projectionist’ is to try and give people an insight in what it’s like in the life a projectionist and how it can be a lonely and secluded working environment. We went to the showroom cinema (Sheffield) and interviewed a projectionist called Will, and got him to take us through his average day when working at the cinema. It was really interesting getting the perspective of the person showing the films as we can all relate to going to the cinema at sometime or another either as an adult or a child.

Personally the cinema was always something that excited me as a child and the entire cinema experience was something that never failed to capture my imagination and I’d always wanted to see the what was in that little room above the seats, obviously as I grew older I realised that it was just a man in a room pressing play on the projector but regardless when we first went into the projection room it did take me back to my youth and made me feel like a kid again. There were lots of things that influenced this project such as the 'Earworms' audio piece about a man who had been working at a meat factory, this was similar as it was a man talking about his memories from working at the meat factory and about how songs triggered memories mind and reminded him of his past. This was one of main inspirations for our project. We enjoyed the manor in which the man described his job in such vivid detail and how he made such a dull and boring job sound so enticing and eventful. The piece uses the use of song to great effect breaking up the dialog and by doing so keeping the listener interest and entertained. Although our first vision for this project didn’t include any music, the latest edit, which I’ve recently done, does include a song. The song in our project is just to try and scare the audience or freak them out, as it sounds very ominous and creepy.

There were a few different films, which inspired our short film, one of which was Pulp fiction (1993). This film was a great influence in our experimental film as there are multiple scenes through out the film which use footage that almost looks like a still image freezing in a moment in time in the film capturing an emotion of the actor or subject. This was very interesting and intrigued my group during a few of our lectures. The still image lecture had inspired us (me and my group) to experiment with this idea. Particularly one of the independent projects that a guest lecturer had done, he showed us some of his own independent work he’d previously done, the film showed in no particular order) how he’d applied various film footage of a town to interviewed dialogue. The film showed 2 screens side by side, the first showing a panning shot moving through the town and the second showing footage of local landmarks from the town with the camera kept still making the footage almost look like a photo as it included very little movement. It was interesting to see the effect it had given, it was hard to make "sense" of, and it was all down to interpreting. It was abstract and gave a very solemn mood and had peaceful tone to it. Personally I really enjoyed the film and thought it was really inventive and really unique approach. We wanted to do something similar with our project as we thought we could hopefully get a great end result if we used aspects of the film we watched.

With encouragement from our tutors to be creative and experiment with some different approaches, we also decided to experiment with lighting and contrast as our main visual focus for the piece. This resulted with us creating an abstract, dark, moody piece although did feel somewhat like a documentary. Our plan was that we were going to primarily use one key light so that there was harshness to the juxtaposition with the light against dark and we feel we achieved this too some extent. When we got back to the edit suite with the footage we’d captured, we put it into final cut and changed the shots into black and white for emphasis, and to try and set the mood for the project. When we started putting the footage along with the sound and we lip-synced in some sections to give the piece a professional feel, so that it was as close to the industry standard as possible.

As the project is linking with the experimental film, it was really interesting to hear the feedback for our sound and film in the CRIT session with Dom and the other groups. What learned from the session was that our film was good and worked well, but gave off the feel of a Documentary as apposed to an “experimental film’ and although it was different to any of the other classes films, it was possibly a bit too safe. Its always good to get a range of different opinions on your own work as if gives you an insight in to what people thought worked well and what can be improved or slightly altered.

So after taking all the feedback and taking a good hard look at our project we all came to the conclusion that the film had became a documentary and wasn’t suitable enough to be a classed as an “experimental film”. So with the original saved away, I decided to just get creative and try some new approaches. Due to the lack of time that we had between our CRIT session and the deadline (one week) meaning we wouldn’t have had enough time to re-film any additional scenes. I decided that the only opinion was to use royalty free footage. I wanted people to see our film in a whole new light and recognize it was experimental project as apposed to a documentary. To give affect to these new changes, I also used new sound effects as we were trying a completely new concept for our project.

We wanted go with a more creepy, weird and surreal twist on with the new concept, as the end result has turned out very different to the original concept in many ways. We’ve not only used a range of different sound effects but we’ve also used royalty free music in a section of the film. We all collectively feel that the new changes give the production a slightly more eerie and darker feel and my doing so it makes the production much more experimental in comparison to the original concept that we first showed to the rest of the class. We’ve also tried out some risky visual and sound editing in an attempt to prove that we could produce a project much more diverse to the first attempt. `there are interesting sections in the new edit that are really surreal and will hopefully make the audience slightly on edge and bit creped out a bit by what their both hearing and seeing in the film. 

The target audience for this piece is 18-25 as were aiming it at people around the same ages that are in our own the demographic. We feel that both our tutors and our peers will be pleasantly surprised with the new changes we’ve made to our short film and that we’ve thought outside of the box with some if the new approaches we’ve made. `There is footage from the showroom cinema interview, archive footage from what I believe is a holiday camp in the 1920’s or 1930’s and footage of objects being burnt in slow motion. I feel that these changes really give our new concept a cutting each and make it a lot more visually stimulating that the previous work we had shown in our CRIT session.

There were elements of the film that we (as a team) agreed worked really well, but we feel that we could have been slightly more adventurous with both some of the footage and the sound. As it was one of our first assignments we went through a lengthy planning stage with myself and harry not fully committing to any of our many different concepts and ideas for what we could do our project on. This process became very tedious with us edging closer towards an idea only for us to change our minds at the last minute. This process became even harder when we were given the addition of the third team member (Leanne Perry) who also came into the fold with a head full of ideas, but with time slowly running out we all agreed on a idea that we thought was thought proving and current in todays modern society, in hindsight we should have potentially used one of our other more “creative ideas” but we all knew that if we could film our idea right our production would sound professional, interesting and be appealing to a wide audience. There were lots of different directions we could have taken the film in but we still feel it serves as both a great short film and a good insight into the life of a projectionist. We feel that changing the both the audio and parts of the visual proves were both adventurous and open to change if we feel that it works well. Both Harry Miller edited both the original sound and film footage, this was the first edit that we were told to go away with and get more creative and try some new experimental concepts. I personally saw this as both an opportunity and challenge. This meant by taking on the responsibility, I had to do the final edit of the production (both the audio and the visual) by myself. Some of my team members just wanted to just keep to the original concept as it was, but I was willing to take the risk and try something different that I feel is more interesting and more thought provoking then its previous edit.

Ideally we would have preferred to film all original footage but unfortunately the time constraints meant that this wasn’t possible. I feel that given the small amount of time we had to change our idea we have done something both imaginative and exciting for the viewer. We feel that the new concept is much farer away from feeling like somewhat of a short documentary like the first edit did and although their still are many of the original shots and voiceovers from the first edit they don’t seem to resemble each other and couldn’t be further apart in the sense of style and genre in comparison with each other.


In addition to the styles and conventions that were used when I originally worked on this module i have made some big changes with the resubmission work by changing the visual edit and also on the audio edit, I wanted to show my individual abilities and editing style, and  wanted to show my personal creativity with the new edit. 


In the new edit of the film i wanted to go for a more of 'Scary' vibe, i did this through the use of royalty free sound effects mixed alongside the voice over from the projectionist. I also tried to convey this vibe through the visual side of the film as well, i did this through use of archive footage and royalty free videos of objects burning. 

My main influence for the new edit of this module was a recently realised film (the last few years) called 'The conjuring' as it included strange and scary archive footage and dimly lit shots which create a sense of unease for the viewer. 

In conclusion I'm happy with how far such a simple but creative concept has came from, to what it is now. The first edit of the experimental film sounded and resembled a documentary but now our concept is a surreal and strange experience that includes a male voice over. I hope that the changes that were made will be perceived well and i hope it was worth the gamble by changing the audio and the visual. 

Another film that was influncial to our original concept would be Cast away as the projectionist character can somewhat relate to that sense of insolation.

Harry editing on the experimental film

looking through shots on final cut pro that were filmed at the showroom cinema, Sheffield.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KVJz6GN0aUQ

This is a link to a video on YouTube which had similar aspects to our sound project in relation to the mundane tasks that have to be taken out by a projectionist on a day to day basis. I think it's helpful as we recorded some of footage for our experimental film which is similar to that, which is in the video.

One of the main influences (As strange as it might seem) is Pulp fiction. This is because it uses still imagine in the film, by showing film footage with the subject staying very still making the shot almost look like a picture.

Sin City was another film that influenced my groups production as it contains many scenes where still image in film is used and is very effective. We also changed all of our scenes in the film to black and white is is the same as Sin city also making this source helpful on two different levels.

A film that was influential in inspiring 'The Projectionist' is a filmed called 'Into the Wild' (2007) as it is based on a man who attempts to travel to Alaska without with any cash just the clothes on his back. I felt this film was relevant as he also has to deal with isolation in parts of the film, similar to that of a projectionist.

SOUND PROJECT

Today my group and I went to the showroom cinema, we had arranged to have an interview with one of the projectionists called Will for our sound project. We asked Will various questions to try and prompt some interesting and insightful answers such as how he came to get the job etc. Some of the answers we got were really interesting and surprising. We wanted to talk about the how lonely and Isolated the job of being a projectionist can be, as we are going to use footage from the showroom for our experimental film. Walking room the behind the cinema screens in the projection rooms was quite a surreal feeling as I've only ever been on the other side In the cinema seats, it was amazing seeing the reactions of some of the people watching the feature films from a birds eye view. Will took as all over the showroom showing us original film reels and vintage projectors which was great and we got some great footage and a really griping Interview which I'm sure will keep any listener interest and enticed. All in all today has been a great success, I'm look forward to seeing the footage and  listening back to the interview and I hope we people will enjoy listening to it as much as we did recording it.

Audio & Visual Crit session with Dom 13/12/2013

Yesterday was a great chance to see all of the groups individual work and for them to see ours. It was a great chance to get some vital feedback from both Dom and my peers. After watching back the film we'd made it was interesting to hear what the dom and class thought about it. After much discussion with my group and after hearing the feedback were going to re-edit some of the footage and some of the audio to make the film a bit more experimental as we've came to the conclusion that it's feels too much like a documentary as apposed to an 'experimental film'. Overall I was still really pleased with the feedback and we are gonna use this week to try some new angles and different approaches with our film.

(feedback received is based on the original edit of the film before newly edited resubmission)

Harry Editing the sound on the Experimental film project

Listening through the soundtrack of the experimental film project for the creative media project module.

Images from the Showroom cinema for our Sound project

Images from the shoot day, when filming the experimental film project at the showroom cinema.

Shoot with Connor & Amy at the flat location

Unfortunately i was unable to attend the filming of the 'Couple section' of the project, i had already committed to do work on another one of my Uni projects on the only day that Connor was free to film. After i'd finished with my other commitments, i contacted the members of the group of who was at the filming and they said that everything went well and seemed really natural which i was really happy to hear and was looking forward to watching the footage.  

SCREEN SHOTS OF SOUND EDITING

VOICE OVER RECORDING SESSION

recoding the voice overs with Jess 

VOICE OVER RECORDING SESSION

Talking through the lines with voice actor Jess 

Voice Actor recording session 


After filming all of the shots we need from the pole dancing studio with Amy, we were ready to record all the voice over with Jess (actress from the workshop). Everything went well we meet jess with all the recording equipment and after going through the essay with Jess and seeing what she liked and disliked in the script. After talking through the newly edit script (by Jess, taking out and replacing a few lines) we went to a quite room we had found where we'd be able to get a good crisp sound. everything went fine, we only had to record the entire script a few times until we felt really happy with the end result, we thanked Jess and parted ways. I will include some photos i took at the recording session.

POLE DANCING STUDIO SHOOT

Shot of Tyrese (Sound recordist) recording Amy's footsteps 

POLE DANCING STUDIO SHOOT

Setting up for a shot of Amy walking down the corridor 

POLE DANCING STUDIO SHOOT

Testing the camera on the tracks 

POLE DANCING STUDIO SHOOT

Andrew testing out the camera tracks 

POLE DANCING STUDIO SHOOT

Andrew (camera operator) setting up the tracks 

Pole dancing studio shoot day

The shoot day went really feel, we all met up around midday in front of the the studio ready with all our equipment and with about a half an hour we were all inside fully set up with the tracks. we filmed a range of different shots and probably shoot around 50-60% of all the footage we would need for the final edit of the film. I will also include some of the pictures i took on the day of the filming.

The key moments are within the film split by:

- Pole dancer travelling to studio (bus, walking etc)

- The flashbacks of the arguments she relating to pole dancing (scenes with boyfriend)

- Pole dancer entering pole dancing studio (not revealed its a pole dancing studio until further on into the film)

- Pole dancer starts to warm up (to connote sport or hobby)

- Pole dancer interacts with pole, which reveals pole dancing

- Pole dancer begins dancing and she looks elegant (most likey; slow motion, glow, well exposed shots, pan shot and shots on tracking rig)

- Pole dancer finishes practicing and gets her things ready to go to work, her actions and props connote her job (walks away in heels ready for her shift)

Equipment

Canon DSLR

Shotgun Mic

Marrantz

Technical

Requirements:

The

cinematography will be a big part of this project making sure the shots aren’t

shown in a documentary style, using close ups and interesting angles to show

the subject matter also looking at inspiration from ‘Sign Language’. We plan on

filming with a DSLR to create a more artistic, softer feel rather than a static

feel which we feel the canon fx 100 would create. 

Cast:

We plan on

having one main character here are some basic information we will be looking

for within our character persona. 

Gender –

female

Age – 18-22

Personality

– little rough round the edges, hard working, 

Backstory –

grown up living in a rough area with scrapping by with her mother, often being

bullied, struggling through her teenage life, finds happiness in pole dancing

as a hobby but soon learns the money involved in working in a strip club which

develops the story showing more deeper subject, we follow her journey and how

she deals with life. 

We will

have extras within the studio filming and the public transport filming however

these extras will not add to the story. 

Crew:

Isabel Wells – Director

Callum Petitt – Producer

Andrew Espley – Camera

Tyrese Thomas – Sound Recordist

Amy Silk – Editor

Leanne Perry – Sound Editor

Synopsis:




Our idea is to create a drama to showcase a pole dancer’s



life. A monologue will be used to document her life, however we will create an

inciting incident that will provide a more dramatic tone to the film.




The girl is a pole dancer and her back story is how she ends

up as a pole dancing, we found inspiration and influence from Sign Language (2010). We will shoot it

using a DSLR camera because we feel that it gives it more of an artist approach

rather a static feel – we want the imagery to feel poetic and beautiful, rather

than a more traditional documentary style like Sign Language. We will use no diegetic dialogue, with the story

coming from a narrative monologue, looking at her journey of what she does for

a living, how her life has led to this and if an why she enjoys it. We intend

on creating a respectful (we don’t want to criticise the art of pole dancing),

interesting but hard hitting story. 

Final Script 

The Pole
                    Screenplay by

                   Andrew Espley

 An idea developed by Isabel Wells, Amy Silk, Tyreece
Thomas, Andrew Espley, Callum Petit and Leanne Perry

INT. BUS. EARLY EVENING

A girl, LUCY (19), is sitting on a bus, looking a bit
miserable. She looks out of the rain-streaked window. The
sounds of the bus and the city fade a little, and we hear,
like it’s being said in a documentary interview:

                    LUCY (V.O)
          Erm, I don’t really know what to

say really. It’s been my life for... wow, I don’t know. Along time now. I don’t know how to describe it. 

We see flashes over her voice:
INT. STUDIO. EVENING.
A HAND TOUCHING A POLE, CLOSE UP.
INT. LIVING ROOM. EVENING.
LUCY ARGUING WITH SOMEONE, SILENT.
EXT. CITY STREET. EARLY EVENING

Lucy gets off the bus, lights up a cigaretter and starts
walking. She knows where she’s going, and she still looks
down.

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          I guess it started for me at

school. I’d never get any interest from guys, or anything like that. Being constantly overlooked was horrible - and I know it may seem shallow to say it, but all I wanted was for some guys to look at me. In that way, you know. 

We see more flashes throughout:
MORE ARGUING, WITH BOYFRIEND?
CLOSE UPS OF LEGS/ARMS MOVING ABOUT A POLE

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          I’d sit in class watching them

          all stare at all the plastic
          girls with their fake tans and
          shit. Made me hate ’em. Still do
          hate girls like that.

Lucy approaches a building, walks through the doors and
into it.

We see more flashes of the above.

(CONTINUED) 

CONTINUED: 

2. 

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          But it was jealousy more than

          anything else. If I could look
          like them - look like them and
          get guys looking at me... Well
          you get me. My life hasn’t been
          some dead hard sad case though. I
          haven’t got a sob story I can
          tell you. We weren’t exactly well
          off but we were alright - my
          family, I mean. I had friends.
          They were alright.

INT. STUDIO. EVENING.

Lucy walks into a room and we see a pole - the studio. She
approaches the pole and we see the same shot from the
first flash - the HAND TOUCHING A POLE.

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          I can’t remember exactly when it
          was that I started wanting to do

          this - get on stage, and
          everything. I think I was 17 when
          I started having classes. I saw
          classes, and then I saw some
          girls on Facebook that did it, so
          I went along. It was alright. I
          felt good. The better I got, the
          more, you know, confident I felt.
          I felt comfortable looking the
          way I did.

Lucy prepares - getting dressed/ready to practice.
We see more flashes of the argument.

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          Then I went some club with some

          lads- a strip club, you know.
          Some dirty scrotty little club
          where if you payed ’em £40 they’d
          take you to some room backstage.
          It was horrible, the way the guys
          were acting, you know. But I
          loved it. It reminded me of
          school - the girls who all the
          guys would stare at all day, but
          they were doing something I could
          do. I could get like that, I
          thought. So I asked some girl
          when she came off stage, and she
          got the manager who gave me his
          card.

          I started at that shitty club the
          next week.

(CONTINUED) 

CONTINUED: 3. 

We see Lucy on the pole - elegant, skilled - moving about
it with ease. In flashes over this, we see the argument
again, but this time it seems to have escalated to a full
on shouting match.

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          My friends didn’t like it - the

ones who knew. My boyfriend didn’t like it either. Well...(her voice falters slightly) my ex. 

We see the argument ending - the boyfriend slapping Lucy.
He storms out, Lucy screaming angrily after him, and Lucy
sitting on the sofa, sobbing. Then we see a flashback to
Lucy on the bus, upset. (Has she come straight from the
argument?)

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          They thought like you do,

probably. That I’m a slag. That I don’t have any respect for myself. You’re wrong though. I’d be there, and... I can’t put it into words, how I felt- on the pole, with the guys all staring and cheering and- and... wanting me. I felt better than I ever have. 

Lucy is off the pole now, looking like she did on the bus.
Deep in thought.

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          It’s alright this. I know

          there’ll be people looking at me
          thinking, "Look at that mess" or
          "Look what she’s done to her
          life", you know. But I don’t give
          a shit.

               (laughs again)

Lucy is getting ready - evidently for a night on the pole
- she puts on her shiny high heels.

                    LUCY (V.O CONT)
          I really don’t. I love what I

          do. I’m happy.
INT. BUS. EARLY EVENING

We see Lucy on the bus again - the same shot as earlier.
But this time, she smiles. A reluctant, but genuine,
smile.

Preparation for Pole Dancing Studio Shoot

After finalising on a script we started a more intense search for an actress to play the lead role, unfortunately the girl we had stayed in contact with from the actors workshop could pole dance and none of the dancers that Amy had spoke to were comfortable acting on camera. 

Luckily Amy was willing to take one for team and do the pole dancing and act in the film, although she didn't really fit our character profile so we eventually decided to have her act and use the original actress from the workshop to do the voice over. 

Second Tutorial with Martine : Look at new edit of film


After almost completely changing the style and the direction of the piece both visually and with new (and altered) audio as well we got a much more positive reaction from Martine. We took large chunks of the voice over out of the film and always added a backing track which ran throughout the production. We (collectively as a group) were all really happy with the end result of the second edit and knew there were only minor improvements that would need to be made.

Drama Film Evaluation 

Initially on starting this module i hadn't gotten into a group until a couple weeks after many of my peers were already in groups of their own, it is quite apparent that many of the people on our course have already made selective friendship groups and seem to work amongst their chosen circles and since i haven't gotten involved in any of these groups i found the task of finding a group slightly harder than some of my peers. After checking the Facebook page on numerous occasions and letting people know that i was searching for a group who needed an extra member, i was contacted by Tyrese who was also looking for a group to work with. After looking through posts on the Facebook page and asking around within my seminar groups we found out that Amy and Izzy were looking for a group to work with as well, after that we were soon contacted by Andrew and Leanne asking if they could join forces and then our group was complete. Once we’d all contacted each other, we arranged to meet up through a group message system on Facebook. We all met up to talk through idea's the next day, firstly we arranged between us our job roles that we would be carrying out through out the duration of the project. We spoke through about our previous modules, including our documentaries projects, our experimental film projects, our ‘Edale' work and what roles we'd done within the groups we'd all worked with before. We spoke about what roles we'd enjoyed doing and what we didn't enjoy as much so that everyone could voice there opinion on their likes and dislikes thus far, after speaking through this, members of the group put forward what role they were interested in doing for this project and after listening to everyones opinion we sorted out the job roles one by one taking into consideration of everyones preference, I ended up getting the job role as producer and was happy enough to take this job roles within the group as it was something i hadn't done previously before on any of my other projects. Undertaking the role of Producer was something exciting as it was a job i’d always wanted give ago as it was something that interested me but never previously had the chance to do, as other members of my previous groups had already picked there roles. I was looking forward to a new challenge and taking the job role as producer was certainly that, I was eager to start working with the team and getting the ball rolling on the production. 

Myself and the group had lots of initial ideas for the project but eventually after talking through many ideas and the direction we wanted to take our film in, we decided to create something that was slightly out of our comfort zone and possibly a bit risky as the subject matter was slightly taboo. The idea we settled on was to base the film on a young girl aged between 18-21, just an average girl, not got loads of money but not poor either and she did pole dancing as a way to give herself confidence and an escape from the real world, and the troubles she had in it e.g. Trouble with friends, family, broken up with her boyfriend. We wanted to make something that would hopefully be relatable to young girls and about how something so simple could give you the confidence to be yourself and a way to just relax and take your mind of everything else. we really wanted people to watch the film and be able to take something from it and hopefully provoke the audience to sympathise with her situation and connect with the girl. my main influence that i found when doing my research into the subject was a documentary about young girls who pole dance or table dance as a way to earn money for a number of different reasons. The television show was called ‘Table dancing diaries’ and was aired on BBC Three in January 2012, There were many different girls in the program but i felt that the girl who was most represented the look, the age and most relatable was a girl called Dee. Dee is a 20 year girl who is currently studying at University, doing a course in Dancing. She table dances to help pay for her living costs and also does it to feel the empowerment she gets from having everyone watch, she goes on to say that she also loves being on the stage and that is her favourite part about the job. i personally though this source was very influential to myself and my personal thoughts on our drama. The way we filmed the drama was kind of in the style of a documentary as it told the young girls story but also followed a narrative with the way in which the films pans out, with a beginning, middle and end, with moments of joy, conflict and passion spread out in different sections through out the film.  

We did a lot of preparation for the pitch with Martine, we prepared a powerpoint presentation with a range of slides showing some of the key points that we'd planned for our drama. This included character profiles on the type of actors we were looking to star in our production (lead actress for the main character and boyfriend), equipment that would be required (camera, tracks etc), the idea itself (The pole), influences behind and locations for filming. Overall we thought that from the reaction of our peers that saw the powerpoint and the feedback from Martine it went down very positively and we can build from the constructive criticisms on some of the aspects of that went as strong in the presentation (aka where their there was room for improvement with our concept) and build further on the strong points in which we had made in the presentation.

one of the biggest challenges that we collectively faced as a team was casting and actress with our budget (zero pounds) who could both act and pole dance, this was easily one of the biggest problems which arose when we taking this project to the next level after the pitch. We had a few connections through Amy who is an active member in a pole dancing society and has many friends who pole dance, she (other than being the editor within our group) was our main contact and main hope to whether the entire production had any chance of becoming a reality, things really hung in the balance of weather we were going to have to go back to the drawing board and think of a completely new idea. After the actors workshop we stayed in touch with one of the actresses who we thought could easily play the role of the lead actress in our production contacted us a few days before shooting was set to start saying that they no longer be able to be in the film, which was a massive set back. This lead us to our back up plan which was to use Amy (the film editor) as the lead actress as she said she would do the part if needs be, the main benefit of her playing the role was that she was always available for shooting when needed (as she was part of the group) which made things easier for us to film on demand, it also helped with the fact she was the editor so the rest of the team could sort out the preproduction side of the filming while Amy could concentrate on acting and the best part of all was the fact that Amy was a very skilled pole dancer as she had down it for some time as a hobby. The only problem that we faced was the act that Amy isn't an actor so if she attempted to act with dialog it would have seemed low quality and not professional enough for us to achieve what we knew was possible from the concept and idea for the film. After putting our heads together we knew the only logically thing to do was have an voice actor play the lead role and have amy do the other sections of the visual. We contacted Jess, who was one of the actors that we had meet at the actors workshop that had been set up with Martine. After getting in touch with jess she was more than happy to do the voice over for our film, so after getting the all cleat from her we were ready to film. 

We all felt the that shoot day went really feel, we all met up around midday in front of the the studio ready with all our equipment and with about a half an hour we were all inside fully set up with the tracks, we felt that the shots with the tracks gave the film a really professional feel. through the day we filmed a range of different shots and probably shot around half or more of all the footage we would need for the final edit of the film, this made things a lot easier, as we only had two more locations to film, all of which could be filmed in one day. A couple filming all of the shots we need from the pole dancing studio with Amy, we were ready to record all the voice over sections with Jess (actress from the actor workshop). Everything went really well we meet Jess on the voice recording session, with all the recording equipment working well and after going through the essay with Jess and seeing what she liked and disliked in the script. After talking through the newly edited script (edited by Jess, taking out and replacing a few lines) we went to a quite room we had found where we'd be able to get a good crisp sound. everything went fine, we only had too record the entire script a few times until we felt really happy with the end result, we thanked Jess for helping us out on such short notice and parted ways with each other. After this is the only footage left to film was the bus scenes with Amy and the boyfriend/girlfriend scene, we filmed ended up filming all the scenes within one day, it all went down without a hitch and we were ready to start work on a rough edit of the film. 

After viewing the first rough edit of the film we (as group) were all really pleased with how the film was starting to look, and we were excited to see the production starting to come together as an almost finished article. we knew there were sections of the film that could be improved but it was the first time we'd seen all of the clips together on the timeline and we were all excited to see how the film would develop as time went on.  After having had the tutorial with Martine, and showing her our rough edit, we got a slightly mixed review for the work, on one hand there were some points in the feedback, but we knew with it being a earlier edit there would be plenty of room for improvement and we knew more of the direction we wanted to take the drama forward in and get closer to watch we had first envisioned. After almost completely changing the style and the direction of the piece both visually and in relation to the audio as well, we got a more positive reaction from Martine. We took large chunks of the voice over out of the film and also we added a backing track which ran throughout the production. We (collectively as a group) were all really happy with the end result of the second edit and knew there were only minor improvements that would need to be made to get the film to its finished state. 

I really enjoyed my role as producer, keeping everyone in check and on time for deadlines working closely with the director (Izzy) checking scripts, checking edits and making sure the operation (the project) ran as smoothly as possibly without any hitches, and i personally believe everything went well with only a few unforeseen hiccups. I enjoyed working with everyone in my group as we all pulled together and i believe we created something that we can all be proud of. Overall we wanted to try making something that tested us all physically as filmmakers and was risky but we believe the film is both interesting and creative, showing off our combined skills as film makers and we all hope both our tutors and our peers enjoy the film. we've all learnt a lot from making this film, and i believe that we dealt with all the challenges that unexpected arose and made a film that means a lot to us because of the time and effort that went into producing this drama project.