We got down the basic structure of the film to help us build a story from it and plan, this included the genre we wanted, who can act and operate and the first main key plot points of our film. The genre we went for was crime, thriller and the reason behind this was because we all felt like we needed to make a more mature film compared to our past creations and this genre was perfect because of the conventions and cinematic look that this genre holds. The purpose of the film was really to show that our skills as filmmakers have massively improved and we are more than capable of producing a professional short film, but it also allowed us to look more deeply in film making and gain vital skills and knowledge to help us through this production and future ones. The intended audience was never really planned for, we wanted to make a film that was well represented by different views that anyone could watch it.
And this is the stage where we finalised our proposals for our film.
Affiliation Short Film Proposal
Over the course of the following months, we planned and adapted our original ideas into a sophisticated story that we were ready to write into a script.We wrote the script using Celtx, which was extremely helpful as it aided us into formatting our script professionally and improved not only the look but the quality and efficiency of our pre-production stage. Another great thing about using Celtx was that we all were made contributors to it, so we didn't have to meet up for meetings every time, we could Skype each other and write the script from the comfort of our homes.
We finished the draft script in late September but then adapted into a final Spec Script in November and then it was ready to move onto other planning that needed to be done.
Affiliation Short Film Final Script
SCRIPT BREAKDOWNS
STORYBOARDING
After this, it was time for Storyboarding, I was apparently the best illustrator out of the group so I had the job of drawing up the storyboard. At first, I loved this idea as could see the film come to life at the end of my pencil but after a few weeks of constantly drawing I was ruined, I didn't think I would ever get it finished. Storyboarding started on the 1st of January 2019, we all agreed that we deserved a little break over the Christmas period, but when we came back we were ready to amplify our productivity and get things into an efficient momentum again.I did some research I found out that filmmakers break each page up into 8ths when breaking it down and storyboarding so you can keep track of where you are up to more in detail and it breaks the pages up so we felt like we were not bombarded by lots of work as we do it little by little, but still maintaining a good rhythm of work.
I drew up the storyboards alongside the others as we went through scene by scene, speech after speech so we all could contribute towards the final shot ideas. We all put forward ideas on angles, camera movement and how the characters should be seen on a shot and why they are seen in that particular way, as we got further into it we realised that our film had a lot of deeper meaning behind the decisions we were making.
As you can see above in the picture there is a piece of paper with only numbers on (1.19/1.21) this is because I wanted to save time in storyboarding and didn't want to draw the same shot over and over again, especially in shot-reverse-shot sequences, so I developed this idea where I could just reuse an original drawing which in this case is shot 1.19 for shot 1.21. Some may call it lazy film making but I'd like to rather call it "time-saving".
After drawing I photocopied each drawing into my computer and labelled them to each shot, I put them into different folders according to the scene they're in. I also labelled them SCENE.#.SHOT#. So if I ever had the struggle of not being able t find the shot in the folder I could search my PC for it.
These folders looked like this.
After experimenting with different storyboarding through UNIT 18 STORYBOARDING, we adapted a storyboard that met the needs of our visualisation, taking in components of our favourite storyboards and putting them together. This can be found here- Storyboarding- Jack Willoughby.
The other main important pre-production plan that was one of the most essential parts of the film was the location, we knew that a pub had to be the location as we build the story around that so we had multiple days of location scoutings, we tried many different pubs within a reasonable proximity of cast and crew. This was to make sure people could get there easily and that we could manage to transport all the equipment, costumes and props to the location with the least stress possible.
We eventually found a pub that was willing to allow us to use their property to film, I filmed once in this place before so I already built a small business relationship with owners. We expressed what we needed to do and what we were filming and we wrote a contract stating all the things we were doing and we had them sign it. We needed this so that there were no issues with having an actor stationed behind the bar and that we had permission to put up set pieces such as 'framed pictures' and our' board of cufflinks'.I covered up the signature for privacy purposes, but we had them do this so we had a mutual agreement that our film could be shot at their property and we were allowed to do certain things whilst there, we also stated how some stunts will be performed safely and prevention of any health and safety issues will be made and if any were to occur we would have a first aid kit on set.
We then assessed the environment of the pub, taking test photos to see what settings the camera would have, where the equipment could go and where the crew could be.
