Television Production

Locations. On 07.11.19, myself and Esme carried out a preliminary location recce in various towns along the Kent coast: Sheerness-on-sea, Whitstable, and Herne Bay. We wanted to explore these possible locations for set ideas and to also bring up ideas for the script. The locations are flagged with a green pin. Travel and boarding costs Before we chose where we wanted to explore, I researched these towns among others to get an idea of local amenities that we would need for the practical side of a shoot. I also looked at Reculver, Margate, and Broadstairs initially. We left out Reculver as it was a very small town with not much that we could make a point of filming. Margate and Broadstairs were too far from where we are based in Gillingham and train/ travel costs would have racked up. We mainly paid attention to Airbnb's and hotels as this would be key especially for a place for actors to stay but also a base from where the crew could store equipment, cook and supply

Somers Town (2008) Somers Town is a comedy-drama set in Somers Town, London, directed by Shane Meadows and produced by Barnaby Spurrier. The film follows Tomo (Thomas Turgoose) and Marek (Piotr Jagiello) and the growth of their friendship over the course of a few days. Tomo is a runaway from Nottingham and Marek is a Polish immigrant who lives with his father who drinks too much. Crew Shane Meadows Somers Town is one of Meadows' feature films. His filmography also includes another inspiration for this project This is England . I'll be looking into Meadows' work in a lot more detail in a separate post. For this production, he opted Paul Fraser as his writer.  Paul Fraser Fraser is often writer for Meadows' projects, as they have been friends since childhood. His other works include Once Upon a Time in the Midlands  and Heartlands . In time that he isn't writing, he is advising on scripts and gives masterclasses on script-writing. In his interview

Final Major Project. For this project, I'll be developing a pre-production package to begin my final project of 3rd year. I will need to develop a pitch, script, budget, schedule, casting, locations, and possibly a trailer. I will be working with Esme as a pair, because we know we want to work together on the final project and we make a Director and Showrunner team. Ideas The ideas that we have considered are all revolving around a short film platform of 15-20 minutes. We have both put forward ideas for the plot that generally focus on human interaction. Podcast One of my ideas was focused around a plot device. I was curious about a character that keeps a podcast (which could be used as a voiceover) that narrates the plot. I didn't have much of an idea for the plot and so this quickly went down the drain, although I'll keep the plot device idea in mind. AI Esme had the idea of an AI character and their human counterpart living through the end of the world.

Evaluation. I am happy with the outcome of Deadline, and during production I was able to make a lot of progress on my script writing skills and organisational skills. I will be addressing what went well, what went wrong, and what I've learned to take forward into my future projects. What worked? I am very happy overall with how the script turned out. I was not confident in my script writing skills when I begun the project and this was the aspect of production that was worrying me the most. I have also only ever written comedy one other time, and I don't watch comedy on TV often, so I was concerned that I wouldn't be well-versed into how to write something like this. However, I'm happy with how it turned out. As it was aimed towards an audience similar to my age, I was able to use my own sense of humor and events that have happened to me as inspiration for my writing, and this also meant I was able to relate to my characters more. They were also a similar age to

Casting. The casting process involves many stages of working through actors and trying to find people that fit the characters best, particularly with their personality, because the casting and characters is what I focused on for this project. My Actors To begin with casting, I used Mandy.com and Starnow.com to advertise the project and garner interest from local actors. I wrote a detailed but concise advert, explaining each character, what the shoot will consist of and when it will be. I then received responses to the advert from actors and I could decide who out of the applicants would fit the characters the best. In the end, I cast Abi Saddington as Fern because of her showreel, that showed her to be a great actor with a lot of versatility, but she had also played characters like Fern before. Secondly I cast John McArthur as Mac because of the audition tape that he sent me. He seemed a little bit shy/ reserved, which I thought would be perfect for the character of Mac, and I

Pre production. As part of the showrunner role, I am required to arrange the pre production paperwork for Deadline. To do this, I have used templates as well as research in order to aid the best and most effective working practice when creating the pre production work. The paperwork Emails (Click to expand) I have attached examples of my email communication with the actors as it represents how I was trying to fulfill my role with professionalism and ensuring the actors knew what would be happening at all times. Google Drive (Click to expand) This is the organisation of the paperwork that the team used. My Input For this project I took on the role of producer, which meant that I was responsible for all of the pre-production paperwork. I organised all of the work seen here, printing, and distributing amongst the crew and cast. To maintain organisation, I made paperwork packs for all the actors and 2 for the crew so that they could use them

Character Study. In order to develop my characters in a way that can be recognised by the audience, I'm going to look into characters that I admire to break down how they are represented to the audience. I am going to be focusing on 2 characters: Scott Pilgrim from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World , and Juno from Juno . I have chosen these characters because they are quite exaggerated characters, and their personalities are made very clear to the audience. Both Scott Pilgrim and Juno also share some similarities to the characters I'm developing for Deadline. Scott Pilgrim Scott Pilgrim is the main protagonist of comedy-comic book-style film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World . The film is based on the graphic novel of the same name and follows Scott battling off the 7 exes of Ramona Flowers to win her love. Scott's character is an awkward nerd-type but with unintentional wit. We can tell this physically because he wears t-shirts with references to arcade games. He also uses

Scripting. Scripting for any screenplay is generally the same process, with some formatting changes. However, there are also 'rules' around how to write for short film. I want to improve on my writing skills, and to do so, I'll be researching script writing specifically for short film. Short films Screencraft points out that short films are the most important moment in a character's life. "These minutes, hours or days decide everything." [1] With short film, because you don't have long to put across your point, you have to really prioritise every action. That the character does, and everything they say. everything has to move the story on. They also mention, although it's obvious, that film is a visual medium. It can be easy to forget to make a script about what the audience will see, because as a writer you're focused on what will be read. However, showrunners are responsible for all of these aspects of production, so it works well to

Misfits. Misfits is a British Channel 4 programme that follows 5 young adults who are on probation together. A storm hits that gives them all special powers that they learn to deal with together. For the purpose of this post I'm focusing on season one, as the group of characters changes in different seasons.  Scripting The scripting of Misfits is informal, and we immediately know the personalities of the characters more from the script than their appearance or representation on screen. Simon is softly and well-spoken, but Kelly has a strong London accent that is occasionally hard to understand. This adds to their character because the audience is able to make assumptions about them based on what they hear from the characters. The audience assumes that Simon is introverted because he's quietly spoken, and we know Nathan has always been the 'joker' because he never takes anything seriously, making lewd jokes even when talking about the dead probation officer. Mi

Showrunners. Showrunners, also known as executive producers, are considered to be involved in the writing, producing, and creative direction of a project. The showrunner is the chief creative voice behind the writing of the project. According to Business Insider, the showrunner protects the the show's creative vision. By this, they mean that the showrunner will be involved in every part of production to maintain the style of production. Business Insider's Jethro Nededog interviewed Remi Aubuchon, the showrunner for Playstation Network's Powers . "A showrunner has to advocate for the creative aspect of the show, and that's harder than it looks sometimes, especially when I have to sign the budget every week" ... "And the tendency, especially in the production world, is to want to simplify and go for the easiest and less expensive version of that, and my job is to actually say, 'No, no, no, I want it to be like this, and we need to figure out a way

Characters. Character development is an aspect of this project that I want to explore. Here are the 4 characters that I have created for Deadline, our zombie short film. Character Moodboards On the moodboards, I focused on particular colours that I felt conveyed their character more clearly. This visual representation of each person helps me to understand their personality in a deeper sense. Moreover, as I only have a short time within which to give the viewer an idea of the characters, the moodboards give me ideas of how to represent their character in a more visual way as opposed to using their speech to develop relationships with the audience. In relation to Deadline, I'll be focusing on physical traits to make the character relatable to the audience, such as costume, tattoos, piercings, hair (as much as possible), and physical quirks such as nervous ticks (i.e. biting nails). I'll be further developing this aspect of each character as the script is

Transition The Brief "This unit provides students with the opportunity to begin the process of focusing their own practice within a chosen production role and context, ready for the transition into their final year of study. Independent study, research and critical analysis will inform and underpin the project. Students are encouraged to focus on a chosen role (Writer, Producer, Director, Director of Photography or Editor) and a particular output (Drama, documentary, current affairs, entertainment or similar). Using an existing source of material (for example a Television drama series or a documentary) students will be asked to re-interpret an aspect of the work from the perspective of their chosen skillset." For this project, I will be focusing on the role of a showrunner- a role that combines the tasks of a producer and scriptwriter. I will be responsible for creating characters, a script, and producing a short film for a crew to then film 5 minutes of. Id

Critical Reflection. For this project I was required to take on the role as producer. I had to create and produce a 30 minute as live television programme with the rest of the class. In this post, I will be reflecting on my role, how I fulfilled the role, what went well and what could have gone better. The show The show that I pitched is called Mission Control. It is a children's game show aimed towards 7-13 year olds and to be broadcast on CBBC. It consists of a presenter and a team of 4 who must work together to solve 4 tasks in order to repair the spaceship and fly it back home. The main goal with the show was to develop a highly stylised programme that fit within the broadcasting remit of CBBC. Pre production During the pre production, my role involved writing the script, delegating jobs, holding production meetings, and driving production forward.  What went well? The pre production stage was the most busy for me. I had to write the script, which took a long ti