Pre production report

Pre production report

Throughout the duration of our Main media task, we needed to analyse everything and anything we had done to prepare our filming. We needed to outline decisions made by the whole group and ensure every one of us made a contribution to the production.
The pre production paper work was very stressful it’s self. We were very unorganised at the start but gradually pulled our self together knowing we had limited time to be filmed and edited. It was difficult to try and outline an opening sequence when we were put into groups, and there were only two of us and we wanted to let the other two members of our group have an input. Conflict was not an issue when trying to come up with a theme for our opening sequence. We both came to a conclusion that our opening sequence could be based on real life issues that young teenagers are facing. Just like issues that occur in skins, I think that this teen drama has influenced us to make our choice, as well as Adulthood and Kidulthood, as they all reflect upon teen issues that are occurring in our society today. After discussing with the other two members of our group we all came to the decision that this would be a good idea, and started discussing where we could film.

Our first task was writing a writing up a plot for the whole film, then writing up a description of the opening sequence. Difficulties occurred during this, as our teacher had concerns. She was not sure if it was “gripping” enough for our target audience, and was not very appealing. We also read out a description of our opening sequence to the class, and again the feedback we had from our peers, had concerns about people watching it. It also needed more description which we were told from our teacher, yet this could be easily changed and made better.
We also had comments made about our teamwork from our teacher; she concluded that we were always off doing our separate tasks, not communicating and working as a group taking each task step by step. We took this and decide we needed to work together as a group more in order to pass this course.
Our group all came to the decision that we did not need to include dialogue for our opening sequence, due to the messaged we wanted to send. We thought it would be appropriate to have no speaking to send “silent messages” although we have included a soundtrack, which is non diegetic. We hoped that having a clear bass/grime soundtrack would fit our opening sequence perfectly, outlining the social issues that are occurring today. Also as we have included some “hoodies” it would reflect the type of music they listen to and would have a clear meaning of danger/violence that is happening today.
Our mese-en scene would have a huge influence on our filming. Our props, costume, lighting e.t.c, would all need to be outlined. We decided to include different stereotypical characters which would be appropriate for our target audience. All of our characters mirror the main concerns raised on today’s community, such as young pregnant teenagers, homosexual men, and those who take drugs for fun.
Our treatment was a very big part of our pre production, and this was very stressful as it took a number of times to get right. We changed some aspects of it such as the order of our scenes/shots. We also added in more detail to ensure we knew exactly what we were doing. Then we handed in a second copy, which still needed improving, we still needed to add in more detail, and make sure we gripped the audience and made then want to carry on watching it. By this time we was all fed up and wanted to finish this task and get on with the next one. The third time we handed a copy in our teacher explained the problems to two of us in our group, and she also provided us with examples we took it away and edited it, still adding in more detail, and made final changes to the order of the shots. Thankfully it was an acceptable piece of work, leaving a sense of relief over our group.
After our treatment was finished, we needed to design a shot list, including setting the location of the shot, what is happening in the shot, and a description of the shot. Emma wanted to do some shot’s in London as she is regularly visiting London, we were all not convinced at first, as none of us visited London regularly and could get up there. Emma then decided she could pull this off on her own, as she meets up with friends, and we all agreed. As it was getting closer to February half term, which was the deadline in which we had to be filmed, our group needed to come to a conclusion whether we should change the location and setting in order for us to get it filmed on time. We decided we would give it a go, and see what Emma would produce from London.
As we only have 3 people left in our group, we are now thinking of what we can do about the London shots, and if we should cut them out or not as we have not got access to them anymore.
Our next task was to produce a story board. This was a relatively easy part of our pre production work, and we decided to separate the short list, so each one of us would have 3 or 4 different shots to draw and write about, we decided we should share out the work with this part of our pre production and we worked well as a team, so we divided the storyboard up so one each person would draw and describe 3 different shots.Our story board needed to have a picture illustrating what size the shot would be, and a drawing of what each character is doing. Next to each picture we included a small piece of description of the scene number, shot number, whether it would be night or day, the camera movement, the character movement, the sound (whether it would be diegetic, or non diegetic), and lastly the length of the shot.
The last bits and pieces left to do was, a cast list, equipment list, crew list, and a props list. We decided to divide these tasks out between the group, as we thought it would be quicker if one of us did one each. These small tasks were very simple to do, and it took us not long at all compared to all the other tasks we had to complete.
Overall I think our group found the pre production up to the filming very stressful. We found it hard to all communicate and work well as a group at first, and i think the most trouble we had was the lack of motivation in the group but then we realised what we had to do to get all this work done. We all worked hard to get the pre production work done, and are now looking forward to getting the filming done.