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Showing posts from 2017

The IT Crowd: A review

The IT Crowd The IT Crowd is a british comedy TV show revolving around members of the IT department for the company Reynholm Industries. It lasted for 5 seasons, running from 2006 to 2010 on Channel 4. Each episode is based around the odd (and comedic) situations that the characters find themselves in, usually resulting in them getting in trouble. Aesthetic The aesthetic of the show follows a very natural, realistic look to not take away from the comedic effect, and to focus the attention on the script. The introduction titles are based around the appearance of an 8-bit animation as a nod towards the ‘IT’ (Information Technology) theme of the show, along with electronic style music. They use a classic style of filming with obvious use of the Rule of Thirds in every shot, which makes it easier to watch, once again helping to focus on the script and action rather than the appearance of the show. The main set is in a basement, with the office covered in posters and clutter,

Pre Production.

Shooting Schedule LUNCH by Effie and Friends on Scribd Room Booking Request- Mac Area by Effie and Friends on Scribd Shot List Lunch by Effie and Friends on Scribd Risk Assessment by Effie and Friends on Scribd Call Sheet Ebony's House by Effie and Friends on Scribd Call Sheet Studios by Effie and Friends on Scribd Mini Script LUNCH by Effie and Friends on Scribd Lunch Script by Effie and Friends on Scribd Room Booking Request- Canteen by Effie and Friends on Scribd

Screenwriter: Jack Thorne

Jack Thorne. Jack Thorne is a screenwriter, known most notably for This is England  and Skins , but also stage plays such as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Let The Right One In . [1] His work tends to be dark or particularly stylistic. You can see a similarity between a lot of his works, in the way characters relationships are very realistic. He seems to know his characters like they are his friends and family, and write them in a way that makes them particularly relatable and believable to the viewer. In Skins, all of the characters have a friendship that is unique to them. None of them will share the same kind of connection. This can also be said for This is England . From what I've seen in This is England '86 , this sense of unique friendships continues. Every character is different to the last, and they seem to be known in so much detail that you could guess things about them that aren't even shown. He represents real people and real situations, albeit

The art of screenwriting

Screenwriting. Screenwriting is the art of creating the story in a way that is understandable visually as well as when read. Literally, screenwriting ˈskriːnrʌɪtɪŋ/ noun the activity or process of writing screenplays. - Google Dictionary It is the writing for anything like film or TV, including scripts. There are many books about the topic as new screenwriters try to find their place in the screenwriting world, and I will be talking about them here. History Screenwriting has been dominated by it's recent past in Hollywood despite it being around much longer. The practice began to become much more popular in the early 20th Century. "The beginning of cinema is usually considered to be one of two dates: 1894, when the Edison Company held their first public screening of the Kinetoscope or, alternatively, 1895, when the Lumi è r e  Brothers shot and projected their Cin è matographe films." [1] The word 'screenplay' did not

Project evaluation

LUNCH. The Plot Lunch follows Connor an office worker who's house has recently been broken into. He discovers what happened through his dreams, and confronts the person he believes was the intruder. What Worked After I had developed my script into something I wanted to create, it flowed a lot better than my first one I had written. Once I had gotten to filming it was useful that I had completed all of my preproduction as when acting on some other films, some hadn't completed it all and it was sometimes difficult to know what was coming next. The second day went particularly well and I got more than I even planned to (I had planned coverage) which ended up being really useful in editing. When it came to post-production I was surprised to find that I only really wanted to do re-shoots for small reasons, as I was used to needing to do a lot of re-shoots when filming in college. Maybe after the coverage lesson that's somewhere I've really improved on. I

Character Run Down

Character Profiles. Name: Connor Age: 25-30 Job: Office, banking Traits: Shy, family man, private, prone to being anxious about other people Appearance: Conservative haircut, suit and tie Likes: Coffee, his wife Dislikes: Busy streets, public speaking, the movie Titanic Connor is living home alone at the  moment because he is watching over the house after the recent break-in. His wife has moved out of the house and Connor is trying to be confident enough to stay in the house alone, but really, he's scared. Name: Ethan Age: 20-25 Job: Office, banking Traits: Quiet, mysterious, deceptive, sarcastic, some people think he's a sociopath Appearance: Dark and mysterious, more disheveled suit than Connor Likes: Apples, being alone, Donnie Darko Dislikes: paying for things, leaving tips, music Ethan is Connor's friend at work. Ethan doesn't really like people, but he hangs out with Connor because Connor sometimes buys him lunch. He broke into Connor

Alone Time (S2S Research)

Alone Time Alone Time by Rod Blackhurst is a short film "based on a true story" about a woman who goes camping to get out of the city and when she gets her photos developed from the camping trip, photos are found on the camera of her asleep, despite her not seeing anyone else. This tense, eye-widening thriller is a great example of how cinematography and set can instill an emotion in the viewer without any particularly obvious clues. Rod Blackhurst Rod Blackhurst is an award-winning director, known most notably for the Netflix Original documentary Amanda Knox. He has also worked on music videos and commercials, inspired by his well-traveled grandfather. He also has a second feature film, Here Alone, a post-apocalyptic thriller that won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca Film Festival. He has a wide range of different work, all with great cinematography and putting full use to the term "show, don't tell". (Others can be found he

Screenwriter: Chris Chibnall

Screenwriters. Chris Chibnall Chris Chibnall is a screenwriter known for Torchwood and Broadchurch, and will be next to work on Doctor Who in 2018. I decided to study Chris Chibnall because I really enjoyed Broadchurch on ITV when it first aired in 2013. The murder drama follows the Latimer's and detectives Alec Hardy (David Tennant) and Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) as they discover the murder of the Latimer's son. Before he wrote Broadchurch, Chibnall started with stage plays that were shown in the Soho Theatre and Southwark Playhouse [1]. Even before then he was a "writer-in-residence at a tiny pub theatre in Hampton Wick" [1] which just shows how far he had come and that he had stuck to it. =In order to get a better understanding of how to please the audience, Chibnall sat in on "pretty much all" of the performances to study what made them laugh, and at what points they got bored, to try and figure out why. [1] He moved on to write for the Sci

TV Drama: Skins

Skins Skins is a TV drama that aired on Channel 4 for 7 seasons that ran through 2007-2013. It followed a group of teenagers through their final years of secondary school and portrayed the highs, lows and dramas of teen life, including drugs, sex, hangovers and death. Different characters for every 2 seasons, some found it refreshing and some found it hard to move on from certain groups of characters after they had created a rapport. Review I began watching Skins in 2015 and finished the whole series November 2017. I could relate to the characters in the beginning which drew me in, but as it got more dramatic throughout the different seasons, I was watching because I was hooked on how the story would develop and not because of why I originally began to watch it. This led to me not watching it as often because I wasn't so hooked on finding out what happened to particular characters (although I did have a favourite character throughout all the seasons; Effy, and not just bec

Room 8 (S2S Research)

Room 8 The short film Room 8 is a BAFTA award winning production made by James W. Griffiths for The Bombay Sapphire Imagination Series. It shows a short interaction between 2 cellmates in a Russian prison, and involves elements of supernatural. James W. Griffiths Griffiths has been in the business for 10 years as a director, editor and actor, creating films for the likes of Google, Mercedes and Nokia (+ many more). His work for Bombay Sapphire achieved a BAFTA award for short film in 2014. He had only just started to explore directing after being an editor and saw the competition that Bombay Sapphire was hosting as a great opportunity, since they would be giving him a budget and be promoting his skills. His other work proves him to be a lover of beautiful cinematography as seen in A Solitary World.   The Video The video is part of a project funded by Bombay Sapphire called The Imagination Series, which involves 5 short films created by different directors but to the sa

Moodboards

Mood Boards Moodboards created using Canva.com Other Research Asking on local Facebook groups My Wishlists on Airbnb for local homes I could film in I conducted some primary and secondary research in order to begin developing my first idea, which involved trying to source a location and looking at how different scenes have been shot in other films to get an idea of how to shoot my own. Once I decided to be shooting my second script, I started to look into locations for this as I needed somewhere with a double bed. Thankfully, one of my friends and member of my crew Ebony Edney agreed to let me use her house to film in. This worked well as it was local and Ebony was able to drive me and the equipment to and from her house. The idea came from a few weeks I had where I was struggling to sleep and if I did I was having nightmares every night. As this was quite a weird and tough experience I thought I could be able to adapt this into becoming a story. My first

Very Rough Notes

Some Very Rough Notes These are some ideas I noted down throughout the whole process of developing my scripts, trying to come up with ideas that I could work with (and really trying to fix my first script before beginning to plan the second). Thrillers work with the world/situation as the viewer understands it; horror film upend the viewer's world and present a world/situation that rejects normal conventions. Morning in the house - Sam and Mark - Just married couple moving out of rental apartment to move into first house together - Curiosity by Alberto Manuel is sat on the bedside table - House listings on the kitchen table - Just married cards sat around the house - Holiday photos or images of space dotted around (to show exploration) - Talk about holiday plan - Mark leaves and we have a MCU of Sam walking through house to make viewer feel suspense (seeing something in the background) Sam leaves to attend home viewing - She walks past sign on lamp post that hints to wh

Script to Screen: The Timeline

Initial ideas My initial idea for script to screen (as seen in earlier posts) was about a woman who becomes locked in a cupboard on purpose in a house for sale. I liked the idea of having a trusted character become  the antagonist in the 'twist', and so in the end the woman gets shut mysteriously behind the cupboard door, and then we see in a phone call the salesman says "send in the next one," hinting to this being a planned event, that the salesman was in on the whole time. I then realised that this idea was too horror (who closed the door behind her, locking her in? What made her climb inside the cupboard?) and so I thought that she could know the person selling the house, and instead of climbing inside the cupboard, she finds something in there that is important to her... So I gave her a missing daughter. We know her daughter is missing because the first scene shows her dreaming about her daughter. The woman finds her daughter in the cupboard and the p

Watch Diary

Week 1- This week I've been watching The Office (US). I watched this on Netflix and I chose to watch the US version and not the UK version because I prefer the actors in the US version. I find it funnier, whereas I personally find Ricky Gervais quite crude. In the episode Christmas Party , Michael hosts a Christmas party in the office with a game of Secret Santa, but it all goes wrong when he changes the game to "Yankee Swap", where everyone gives their pre-bought presents to a different, random worker. I've enjoyed all of the episodes of The Office (U.S.) that I've seen because I really enjoy the mockumentary style. Overall I enjoyed this episode and I know I will continue to watch The Office. Week 2- This week I've been watching Skins on Netflix. I used to watch Skins very regularly a year ago but had to stop for a while, and then picked it back up again this week. I'm on season 7 episode 5 Rise Part One. This episode is the second to last episode o