The Practical Blog

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...