Television Production

Effie Directs Fargo. Here is the final finished film from the directions project.

Director's Statement. In this post I will be outlining how I got to the final product via the creative decisions that I made. I have used my research into directors and the way that they work as inspiration for how I directed my own project. I tried to maintain my own creative style by not taking too much inspiration from the original piece, but what did inspire me? In order to get a better understanding of the script I was undertaking, I took what we did in the lesson with Steve Finn and analysed and annotated my script as much as I could, so that I knew I was getting as much as I could from it in order to interpret it properly onto the screen. I wrote down the emotions that the characters were feeling, and this ultimately would help me understand what emotion I wanted my viewer to be feeling. This also helped largely with the character profiles . Steve Finn showed us how to properly analyse a script and at first it was difficult to look so deeply into the use of the...

Effie Directs Fargo: How did it go? For this project I had to take on the role of becoming a director, reshooting a scene from a chosen TV programme in our own style, making our own creative choices. I chose the TV show Fargo, with a scene from the pilot episode. So how did it go? What Worked? Starting off with the positives. Working on set with a great group of people (actors and crew alike) was a privilege and it was a great deal of fun to be making something bigger than anything I had done before (although still very small). To start, I feel that I prepared for the shoot well. My timing skills have improved from the last module and I was able to get nearly all of my blog posts done well ahead of time, which in turn really helped me during production and post-production as it meant that I could focus a lot more time into production and post-production. I arranged my crew almost immediately after the briefing, choosing people in the class that I got along with but also who ...

Behind The Scenes. Although this doesn't necessarily contribute to my studies I felt that I wanted to post this here as it's good to look back on how production played out, I think it's important to look back on it and notice where I could have improved as a director and what I liked about the shoot. It's also fond to look back on as there's good memories captured. This took me 2 hours to edit together and I shot it on my Canon 77D.

Michelle MacLaren. Michelle MacLaren is a director and producer who has worked on Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. She started out as a production assistant, and worked up to being a production manager on 1989 Ranch. [1] I chose to write about MacLaren because of her work on Game of Thrones, one of my favourite TV programmes. This is because of how cinematic the show is which corresponds to how cinematic Fargo is. I admire the work on Game of Thrones with such a strong plot and the production being so detailed. After watching the first and last episodes of Game of Thrones that MacLaren directed, I can see a style of hers that carries through. There is a lot of master shots used; scene-setting shots at the beginning and end of each scene that show the position of the characters in the relation to items in the room. The characters are also played slightly melo-dramatically, but this may be as a result of the style of Game of Thrones and the actors rather than Ma...

Please listen with headphones. Sound Editing. As mentioned in my previous post, sound is a very important feature when making a film or any kind of production. However sound isn't always straight from the set. Sometimes the sound on set doesn't match what is happening in the scene and a sound editor will have to put in pre recorded sounds to make the scene more believable. Sound editing is also about removing any sounds we don't want. In this workshop we had to edit together a soundscape for a photo by Gregory Crewdson. Crewdson's images are set up like film sets, with incredible attention to detail, which required us to have that same attention when editing in our choice of sounds. I decided to use the following separate clips: A base atmosphere- for this I used wind and turned the volume down to make it more of a base for the other sounds birds- this draws attention to the trees in the back slow jazz music- I imagined that one of the buildings was a bar a...

Recording with the Tascam. In this workshop we got to use the Tascam sound recorder in order to build up experience with it so we knew how to use it before it came to our shoot week.  To display the differences, I recorded a short interview with Ebony, asking her questions about her project. Half way through I changed the sound from the mic built into the camera to the recorded sound from the Tascam, which, as you can see, made a huge difference. In order to edit the sound and footage together, I used the waveform from both devices to match together the peaks.  In the first image here, you can see that the sound clip from the camera (blue) and the sound clip from the Tascam (green) are different lengths. This is the first thing we fix. I cut off the beginning of the sound from the Tascam to make them the same length so they could be matched together. Then, in the second image, I zoomed in and looked for peaks that looked roughly the same. I circled the part tha...

Pre Production Paperwork.

Adam Bernstein. Adam Bernstein is the director of the pilot episode of Fargo, which is the episode I've taken my scene from. He directed episodes 1 and 2 from the first season which first aired on 15th April, 2014. His input on the show is very important, as he started it all off to create one of the most cinematic TV Shows, still popular today. I'm going to be talking about how he chooses and works with his crew and what lead to him becoming a director for Fargo. He started out as an animator, and then moved onto making videos for the likes of The Beastie Boys , directing their video for Hey Ladies. [1] I could see there was a style that carried through between the music video and the Fargo episodes and I think it's the use of extreme closeups and how they're combined with other shots to create a reveal. This is more notable in the music video but can still be seen in the chosen scene. An interesting shot in the chosen scene, because of the composition. I...

Directing. director dɪˈrɛktə,dʌɪˈrɛktə/ noun a person who is in charge of an activity, department, or organization. a member of the board of people that manages or oversees the affairs of a business. a person who supervises the actors and other staff in a film, play, or similar production. - Google Dictionary Directing consists of running a production from beginning to end, and keeping the production on track with the help of their crew. There are different kinds of director such as the director and then the assistant directors titled 1st director, 2nd director, 3rd director, and sometimes a 2nd 2nd director; but multiple directors are also mostly on larger scale/ professional productions. Each kind have a similar but different job on set, as follows- Director- The director is the person responsible for the creative vision of the film- they work closely with the crew to get a production from the script to the screen. They are also re...

Spike Jonze. Director of Her (2013), Spike Jonze is a director who's work has been inspiring, controversial and always stood out but in its own subtle way. Ever since I first saw Her I was inspired by the use of colour and lack of obvious historical time period in the film, to focus the viewer's emotion and suspension of disbelief into the characters more than anything else, but creating the right set to be able to do so. Jonze started out as a skateboarding fanatic, making videos for skateboarders. This then developed into making music videos for the likes of Bjork, Kanye West and Fatboy Slim, which then led to his feature films Adaptation (2002) and   Where The Wild Things Are (2009). His work stands out among the rest as being creative and has been described as his "childlike vision" [1], which I can see as his films are much like vivid dreams; he has now gone on to become a Grammy and Golden Globe award winner. I was inspired by Jonze's work after see...

Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad is a series that has ran from 2008 to 2013, following an unlikely pairing of a teacher, Walter White and his student Jesse Pinkman cooking methamphetamine (referred to here on out as the short term 'meth') together to raise money for Walter's family after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. The first season is directed in the following order- Pilot- Vince Gilligan Cat's in the Bag...- Adam Bernstein ... And the Bag's in the River- Adam Bernstein Cancer Man- Jim McKay Grey Matter- Tricia Brock Crazy Handful of Nothin'- Bronwen Hughes A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal- Tim Hunter The second and third episodes are directed by Adam Bernstein, the director of the episode I've chosen to recreate. Vince Gilligan is the show's executive producer and writer, so has had an involvement in most if not all episodes. I have watched the whole of the first season to get an idea of how Breaking Bad began, and to get an idea of how the...