Session 10 - Film Feedback and Setting Up The Social Networking - 18/7/12

Feeding back on our film

We started off the session by watching our film - we were all very excited to see it! We watched it through a few times and gave our feedback. There were a few minor changes and some name spelling changes but overall everyone agreed that it looked brilliant!

Preparing speeches for our first presentation

We discussed and made noted of what we wanted to say in the presentation that we will be doing at the school. Sadly since the session our original plan to show our film in assembly didn't happen because there wasn't enough time. We will be doing our first presentation in September after the summer holidays so we will be able to show the film then. We decided that we wanted just three speakers to do a presentation after the film is shown but we will all be introduced any way.

- Thomas - Introduction
- Djed - What is our campaign about?
- Paul - Finishing and questions

Setting up our social networking

We set up our Twitter account (@Ambitionfilms) - which Lanta and Djed will be in charge of, Facebook - which Thomas and Nadia will be in charge of, a Gmail email account - which we will all take responsibility for along with our YouTube Channel.

We finished the session really excited and can't wait to show our film in assemblies!

Filming day - 14/7/12

We all met at 9.30am and got prepared with make-up and the clothes we needed ready to film. It was a really exciting day as all of our words were being made into reality. The make-up artist did a really awesome job of scars on the members of the group playing gang members! We even got a tester of a really gross looking fake cut, it looked amazing!

Everyone had their roles on and off screen and filming went to plan, minus the rain - which made it harder to film the outdoor scenes straight away. It stopped raining after a few hours so we were able to get all of our whole film shot. It was a lot of fun and very tiring but it was well worth it for our film and campaign.

Thomas, Djed, Lanta and Nadia worked on a behind the scenes video and here is the result of it:

Session 9 - Rehearsals - 11/7/12

We have been rehearsing for the past three weeks with a professional actress Eilidh, who helped us to get into character and Patrick who will play the role of dad, helped us to understand where to stand and feel what our characters would really feel in the situations in the script.

In our final rehearsal we worked together with Patrick and Eilidh to choreograph our fight scene.

Session 8 - Confirming Roles, Script Content And Practicing Lines - 20/6/23

We started off the session looking at the storyboard to remind ourselves of the shots that we want to use in our short film.

We discussed whether everyone was happy with the script and everyone agreed that they liked it but they wanted to change the ending.

We finalised roles and re-arranged a date for filming as most people couldn't do the original date proposed. We have now all agreed that we will be filming for the whole day on Saturday 14 July 2012.

The roles are as follows:

Cast:
Tyler: Nicholas (Malachi stand in)
Paul: Michael
Mum: Actress
Dad: Actor
Gang leader: Paul
Gang member 1: Malachi
Gang member 2: Michael A A
Extras/other gang members/passer by: Nadia, Djed, Tom, Lanta, Karl

Crew:
Director: Tristan
Assistant director: Karl
Art director: Tom
Camera Assistant: Nadia, Nicholas, Michael A A
Edit assistant: Malachi

We had a run through of all of the scenes and practice lines. We made a few minor amendments to the script as we wanted the ending to be slightly different. We filmed the scenes whilst everyone was practising.

We finished up the session by going through our expenditure rationale forms for filming and promoting our campaign and filled in feedback forms.

Session 7 - Finishing Our Storyboard And Doing A Location Recce - 30/5/12

Going over roles:
We started off the session by going over everyone's roles and allocating characters for everyone to play.

Cast:
Tyler - Nicolas
Paul - Malachi/Paul/Michael
Mum - we will be getting an actress in
Dad - we will be getting an actor in
Gang leader - Karl/Paul
Gang member 2 - Micheal A.A
Gang member 3 - Lanta/Malachi
Girl (stabbing victim) - Nadia
Other gang members/extras - Nadia/Djed

Crew:
Director - Tristan/Karl
Assistant Director - Tom
Art Director - Tom/Lanta
Camera Assistant - Nadia/Nicolas/Micheal AA
Sound - We will be getting a sound man to do this
Edit Assistant - Malachi

Filming:
We looked at our schedules as there are a lot of exams going on over the next few weeks to see when everyone is available to film.

Filming dates:

- Thursday 21 June 2012 - 2.45pm - 7.00pm
- Sunday 24 June 2012 - We will film on this day too if we need to.

Storyboard:
Tom finished drawing the storyboard and it looks really great.

Paperwork:
We discussed and filled in an expenditure rationale form for our filming. This explained what we will need and how much it will cost.

Location recce:
For the final part of the session we went out to the locations that we will be filming at to do a location recce. We filmed the locations.

Session 6 - New Sessions - Finishing Pre-Production And Creating A Shot List - 23/5/12

We started off the session by having a look at the finished script and everyone agreed that it is really good and that we are all happy with it.

Actors and locations:
We all discussed who's house that we could use for the mum and dad bathroom/kitchen scene and Djed is going to ask his mum and take some location shots to show us all in the next session. We have all agreed that rather than using teachers to play the mum and dad that it will be better and more accessible to bring actors in to play them instead.

What is a storyboard?
We looked at examples of different storyboards including a scene from Toy Story. This was to help us to understand why a storyboard is important and that it helps to give a visual idea of what we want our shots for our film to look like and what impression we want them to give.

Creating a shot list:
We read through the script, all reading out a part each and the scene directions and discussed one scene at a time and how we want it to look. We created a shot list out of our discussions and agreed on what shots we want to use.

Forms and paperwork:
For our campaign there is lots of paperwork involved so we had to fill some in to be able to make our campaign happen.

We discussed the following for the purpose of funding and support:

What is our campaign about?
- Speak out and stand up for what you believe in
- Consequences happen if you keep quiet and don't help a friend who is under pressure to  join a gang
- Our slogan is - It stops with us!

What are our plans for the future?
- A launch party
- Talk at an event/festival and show our film
- Brochures for funders for future films through our group and production company, Ambition Films
- Go to talk in school assemblies with a police officer (build a partnership with them) about the dangers of getting caught up with a gang and show our film
- A website for our production company and campaign and put our film on it
- Expand our brand
- Get Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter
- Hold a day event to promote our campaign to schools and run lots of activities

We finished up the session on a positive note and excited that we will soon be shooting our film and making our campaign come to life.

Session 5 - Feedback On The Script And Improvising Final Dialogue - 16/5/12

Icebreaker:
We started the session off with an icebreaker. The icebreaker that we took part in was 'which one's a lie?'. We all had to say one lie about ourselves and one fact. The other members of the group had to guess which one was true and which one was a lie.

Miss Richards, a teacher at Pimlico Academy has agreed to take on the role of the mum in our film. This is really good news as we really need an adult to play this role.

Discussing script changes:
We read through the script, each of us reading a role. Then we discussed what we wanted to change. We agreed that we wanted to keep the storyline and scenes the same and we wanted to change the dialogue to make it even street and slang than it already was.

We agreed that we want our film to be called 'It stops with us!' which is also our message.

Role-playing dialogue:
We split into two groups to role-play dialogue for the three scenes that we felt needed it. We acted out the roles and acted the way we usually would respond. The people who weren't acting filmed our progress. We made notes of the dialogue that we had role-played.

Feeding back:
Both groups role-played their dialogue to each other and everyone agreed that there was nothing that needed changing in our new dialogue. We filmed the role-plays.




We finished up the session by filling in feedback forms and were all really excited that our film progress is going really well.