The Practical Blog

03/05/2017 In this video I will be answering the first two questions of the set Evaluation task given to me by my teacher. Those questions revolve around which conventions I included, developed, or excluded from my final movie, as well as which social groups are included in our film, and how they are presented. 05/05/2017  In this segment, I've used Prezi to answer the next two questions of my evaluation; What institutions would distribute EARNEST, and what would our target audience be? In case the embed link doesn't work, here's a direct link to the Prezi 06/05/2017 Here is the final section of my evaluation; Addressing questions five, six, and seven, which involve attracting an audience and what i've learnt this year. The reason that it's over two videos is because I had to pause it after question six and start a new video for question seven, and I did put the two clips together on Final Cut Pro, but the file wouldn't expor...

This isn't really a day of filming, but we have been made to make major changes to EARNEST. Unfortunately, the audio used for the major dialogue between Jay and Alistair outside City Hall is unusable, due to the poor nature of it, and the prevalence of background noise from the nearby roads and people. It was also too long, and when discussed among the group, it was decided that the music we commissioned a cover of was far too slow and mellow for the romantic comedy nature of EARNEST. With some expert editing and a little bit of movie magic, we've done our best to turn this horrible situation around in the very short amount of time we have left. Now, two monologues are going to be heard through narration whilst the boys get ready, and the movie will only span as far as Alistair and Jay meeting downtown. We've rewritten the scripts and chosen some new, royalty free, music to use in place of 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' The new script will still follow the orig...

The girls on camera Getting the title card shots For our final day of filming, we went to my house after school. The Dapper Stork team and Conor walked there after school, whereas Aneurin got to my house a bit later because he had further to get. We started off by getting a few establishing  of my house o use for the opening title card. The weather was nicer at the beginning then it was when we filmed downtown, but it turned grey fairly fast, so the shots look consistent with what we filmed earlier. Filming went smoothly, and it was a relaxed experience, more so then it had been before in town. Now all we have to to is edit the shots and do the finishing touches. I'm excited to be reaching the end of our project after so much work. Our makeshift tripod Behind the shots At the train station An establishing shot of the railway tracks Waiting on the train Jay's opening shots

Due to a technical error, the media that we recorded last Wednesday wasn't actually recorded, so today, Monday 3rd of April, we're going into town to reshot the scenes downtown with Aneurin and Conor. Both boys are available to redo our shots and at least this time Conor can bring a whole costume instead of just his shirt. The weather will be sort of the same, and we'll be able to use the same location. We need to remember to get some establishing shots of City Hall too. -- Keeping Aneurin warm between shots Dapper Stork Cinema vs the Elements The god-awful weather So, we redid our filming yesterday, in the same space as last time, but it was really miserable weather, and started to rain. The last time we filmed, it started to rain lightly, but then died off, so we decided to wait it out and just start filming anyway.  But, Mother Nature wasn't on our side, and the rain only got worse. We tried to film anyway, but things were getting very cold and ver...

Caoimhe isn't actually present on any of our filming days, I shot her cameo myself on my phone a few weeks ago when we were rehearsing for the show we were in. She doesn't have any lines other then giggling, so it didn't take long, and she was very eager to help. I took a few shots, and have embedded both of them here into this post. We'll film myself as Gemma on the next Wednesday of filming so that I have time to put on makeup and a costume. We need a fake Facebook account for 'Oscar' to use, so I made one using photos of Conor and some of my own photos with Conor in them. It had to purposefully look vague, as 'Oscar' isn't real, and there isn't enough of him to flesh out an actual page. For his status, I wrote 'Style, not sincerity', a quote from the original play that we originally considered as a movie title, before settling on EARNEST. Here's a screenshot of the fake account we created for 'Oscar' to use...

Left to right: Jane, Conor, Cliona, Jennifer On Wednesday 29th of March, Dapper Stork Cinema started filming our short movie, EARNEST. After school, the team and Conor, our actor for the character of Jay, went to Dunmurry train station to get the 3:45 train to Great Victoria Street. From there, we headed to City Hall, where we met up with Aneurin, our actor for Alistair. We choose a bench to the side of the main building, where it was quiet enough to film in peace. We were scared the weather would turn on us at first, but it stayed mercifully dry for the filming period. Jane on Camera Conor got changed into his red shirt on the train, but Aneurin only had to get to City Hall from his school, Inst, so he had enough time to get changed in his school bathrooms. Both actors took our desired colour schemes on board and dressed as they saw accordingly. Conor and Aneurin We filmed a shot on the train of Jay travelling, but other than that, we didn't film much at first. Cono...

Alphonso - as seen at the beginning of EARNEST Every film production company needs a company name, if they're to be taken seriously. We, of course, want to be taken seriously. Cinema is our passion. We have a lot of big personalities in our team, and so we went through a lot of name suggestions for our company. Jane would've liked something in Irish, whilst Cliona wanted to name it after a musical. Jennifer loves sharks and wanted one to feature in at least the logo, and I like puns. I wanted a pun. A screenshot of the winning name Because we couldn't all agree on any one idea, we decided that no one was getting what they wanted, and that we had to come up with something totally different from anything we originally planned. That way, we were all happy (well, none of us were happy, but at least we all felt the same way) We looked up a name generator to help us along, and upon clicking 'generate' we saw the name for us. Dapper Stork Entertainment. T...

Sometimes certain events or sounds reoccur in a multitude of different movies or TV shows, eg, playing the "Jaws" theme tune when someone is sneaking up on someone else, or a character is sunglasses walking in slow motion away from a huge explosion. This is known as a trope. Tropes can be comedic or dramatic, and most of the audience will recognise a trope they see from something else they've seen before. Tropes can be criticised as cliches, or used ironically in satire. We're going to be using a variation of the "Dream Weaver" trope, which originated from the cult classic movie Wayne's World.  The trope consists of a character, usually a main character, seeing someone very attractive. The camera goes soft focus, there are some sparkly visual effects, and music is heard playing softly in the background, normally, "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright, hence the name. We'll be using this trope twice, for the brief appearances of Gemma an...

It's come to light that the original date we had for filming wouldn't work for our two actors; Connor is working and Aneurin has a test the next day, and isn't allowed to go out. We're having to reschedule our plans. Originally, we changed the date to the 8th of April, but that would be too late for proper editing. It's going to have to be some day after school this week, between the 28th - 31st of March. Connor can come down town after school on the Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday, Aneurin can do the Wednesday, which is the 29th. This presents a new set of problems for filming the first scenes in my house - We can shoot the scenes downtown after school, but it'd be too dark afterwards to shoot the opening scenes of my street. We're going to need two separate filming days, and this splits up our team. The weather for Wednesday the 29th The weather isn't as good this week as the week we originally intended, but it should be decent. So long as it doe...

After watching the 2002 movie adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest , I noticed that colour schemes were very important to the aesthetic of the movie. Rich colours were primarily used, as everyone in the movie is very rich themselves. Reds and golds were used in Lady Bracknell's house, whilst dark greens were featured in Jack's home. Jack's clothing became more colour when he became 'Ernest', in comparison to dressing in head-to-toe black during his 'mourning'. The original play relies heavily on the overly dramatic and flamboyant to set it apart, so makes sense that the movie adaption is colourful and packed with visual delights. I want to make sure our movie is just as entertaining to watch, even if it will be little simpler. We wouldn't have huge Victorian mansions or elaborately dressed ladies of stature, so our clothes schemes are going to be subtler. We've set it in our own modern context, so we need to work with relevant clothing ...

We're filming EARNEST outside City Hall, or at least downtown, for certain. We don't have control over what happens in the city centre, but we can take as many precautions as possible to ensure that we have a safe and productive trip into town. Buses and Cars: The part of town we plan on filming in is very close to the Donegall Square West Bus and Coach station. I doubt we'll be flinging ourselves or either of our actors in front of the buses, but we do need to be very careful crossing those roads; it's the Wellington Place right in front of us and it's one of, if not the , busiest road in Belfast. Train: We need to get the train into town, and I'm very familiar with the route, so I doubt there'll be many problems. But we need to stay on track, because on Sunday the trains only run once every hour, and the day goes quickly; The more daylight we have downtown, the better. If we leave my house ten minutes before we're meant to get the train, then w...

The opening of our video will be set in my house, and we'll give the illusion that the two boys are in two different houses, both getting ready to go out and meet each other. We'll have Jay in a bedroom and Alistair in the bathroom, but only see Jay leaving, as he's the main character. Our last project relied heavily on artificial lighting, and we're trying to pull away from that this time by shooting most of our film outside. We want our second location to be outside Belfast City Hall - it's a very notable landmark, which will firmly set our movie in Belfast, and there are clear colour schemes surrounding the building; white, green and blue, with occasional blacks. We're hoping for good weather, but the biggest problem we can think of with using outside City Hall for our location is noise. It's on the busiest road in Belfast, and there are usually plenty of people hanging around on the benches, or walking past in the street. We want to avo...

One member of our team, Cliona, has a friend, Stingy Eyes, who agreed to do a bespoke commission of the first fifty seconds of "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John and Kiki Dee. We decided we wanted an upbeat, happy, pop song to give the short film the right feel, and this was a popular choice among the group. We'll play this music during the opening shots while there is no dialogue and the credits roll, showing names of the actors, characters, the members of our team, a short sentence explaining that our story is based off the Wilde classic, and a credit to Stingy Eyes for covering the song for us. We considered some other music for the opening; all upbeat, well known pop songs, and it was hard to pick between them, but we all decided that Elton John was the way to go. Here are some of the other songs we considered earlier, and why we decided against them. This song is very upbeat and poppy, with a fun message and a lively beat. I thought it ...

We pitched our movie idea to our class on the first of March, after finalising our script, storyboard and treatment. We handed out questionnaires and copies of our script into our class to get feedback, this was a good idea, our class had a lot to say, and it was really useful. IT was also a good confidence boost, we weren't worried really, but it was nice to hear other people thought it was a good idea, and would be interested in seeing a movie like this in the movies. If the embedded link doesn't work, here is a link to the actual prezi: Our Pitch And here is the recording of our pitch in front of our class, including the Q&A at the end.

Cliona and myself worked together to produce our storyboard and animatic, and, coincidentally, we noticed some of the more fluid drawings were reminiscent of the monochrome work of Aubrey Beardsley. He was an English illustrator in the late 1800s who used ink for his drawings instead of colour. In a strange  coincidence ,  he is most famous for illustrating a play translated by Oscar Wilde, called Salome. After we learnt this, we felt it would be wrong to just ignore it, so here is some of Beardsley's work.

Opening titles Pan up Grace's street- establishing shot. Boys getting ready Mid shot of Jay putting on his jacket. Close up of Ali styling hair in mirror- camera is mirror. Close up on Jay tying shoelaces. Same shot, Ali comes back into view on camera to style hair, leaves shot. Close up on Jay's hand picking up wallet, walks out door. Camera is still, Ali bursts back in to do his hair again. Waiting on train then waiting for Ali Long shot of Jay waiting on train. Cut to Jay sitting on bench alone with earphones, Ali comes into view- wide shot. Dialog scene Over the shoulder shot, behind Jay looking upwards to Ali. Two shot of dialog to line 5. Catfish scene Close up on Jay's phone, scrolling through faux-file. Mid shot at slight up-angle of Ali's torso and face. Mid shot of them fighting over the phone, then long shot of them continuing to scuffle. Handheld shot of Ali getting phone. Return to two shot of dialog. Sl...

INT. BOYS GETTING READY THE BOYS ARE GETTING READY IN THEIR OWN HOMES, ONE IN BEDROOM, ONE IN BATHROOM. SOUNDTRACK. THEY ARE BOTH GETTING READY TO GO OUT. OPENING CREDITS ACCOMPANY THE VISUALS. EXT. CITY HALL WIDE SHOT OF JAY SITTING ON A BENCH ON HIS PHONE, A COUPLE OF SECONDS PASS AND ALI COMES INTO SHOT AND SITS DOWN. SHOT CHANGES TO MID SHOT OF THE TWO. ALI: SORRY I'M LATE, COULDN'T BE HELPED. JAY: WERE YOU DOING YOUR HAIR AGAIN? ALI: MAYBE. JAY: SO HOWS THE STUDYING GOIN'? ALI: HORRIBLE, ABSLOUTELY HORRIBLE - JAY: SERIOUS? ALI: YEAH! I'M LUCKY I WAS LET OUT TODAY- MY MUM'S GOT MY MOCK REPORT, SHE WENT MAD. JAY: OUCH. ALI: YEAH, I KNOW. ALI LOOKS AT JAY'S PHONE AND NOTICES SOMETHING, LOOKS CONFUSED. ALI: WAIT, WHOSE ACCOUNT IS THAT? IS SOMEONE STEALING YOUR PICTURES OR SOMETHING? JAY: NO? IT'S NO ONE NEVER MIND. ALI REACHES FORWARD AND TRIES TO GRAB THE PHO...