This is the part where we let you know that we have put together the final video for our project: THE MAKING OF STREET STYLE DOCUMENTARY!
Throughout the process of making our opening sequence, we have been regularly documenting how we have been working. But this has not just been done in production diaries and regular text updates; We have also vlogged and collected behind the scenes footage to take you along the process of how we made the opening to "Street Style". This acts as summary of our journey with coursework this year and will explain everything we have blogged about in even more detail.
Watch to find out how planned and researched our idea, get a glimpse at days on set, follow along our editing process and learn what it has meant to us to make our opening sequence. You can now watch it here:
We hope you have enjoyed seeing what it has been like to work on A Level coursework for us this year and thank you for sticking with us on our foundation portfolio!
FINALLY! ALL OF OUR VIDEO IS FINISHED! NOW YOU CAN VIEW IT HERE:
That's our final piece finished but we will be back with more posts about the process of making "Street Style" and our thoughts about it. For now, enjoy!
On this day, we managed to shoot reshoot all of the bathroom scenes. This was partly because the footage before could have been improved but also beacsue Erika completely forgot to bring her costume (she prefusly apoligised, no bad blood obviously). These scenes ended up looking a lot better and now we have to replace the old footage we've started post-production work on with this quality footage.
The main reason we needed this extra day of filming was to have more time to both improve and finish the dance scene at the end of our opening sequence. Just before we filmed, we got more time to practise with the dancers and I went over the routine with them before we filmed so shots took less takes. We also ran through any acting involved points, such as having to interact with Elle's character, letting them know what they needed to do. When shooting, we made sure the dancers continued a conversation in the background to fit the atmosphere of the dance studio.
Also, we had to shoot the connecting scenes from the bathroom to the dance studio to help introduce the dance scene. This was an addition we made when we moved Elle's and Tory's scenes to the bathroom as we needed it to make sense chronologically. To film this, we had to change the shutter speed of the camera in preparation of the dance scene, to focus on motion and remove blur.
The dance scene itself was our biggest technical challenge, especially considering the fact that we couldn't have a steadicam this time or when we originally planned to film the dance. Overall though, we got a lot more dance shots than anticipated, as we tried to vary all angles and shot types for choice in edit. Very proud of us for getting on with this task despite the difficulties!
We still had a limited amount of time to film due to scheduling with actors and dancers. However, this time felt most relaxed because we had rehearsal and a shot list that Erika made right before filming that we could follow for this day.
So, now that we FINALLY have all the footage, it is time to put full focus on editing and putting together a rough cut. We've already got pretty half of the basic scenes together, so we will work from there to finish and starting adding music, effects, titles and more.
This has been our last production diary and we look forward to updating you with the rest of the process soon - possibly in video form.
So it turns out the third day wasn't exactly the last day of filming. Nor was it on the date planned...
Funny story: the college at which we organised to film dance studio shots WAS CLOSED. Apparently, filming during the holidays means there is always a chance of facilities being unavailable. So, long story short, the filming was moved to 18 days later.
Finally, on the 4th of January we tried to film the dance scenes as well as some shots of Tory and Elle walking into the dance studio. Really, we only got about 4 usable shots. Problems on this day included:
1. The studio we needed to film in was occupied until the very last 20 minutes of our filming schedule
2. We tried to reshoot some scenes in the bathroom but the college was busy at this time, so people were going in and out and around the area constantly, interrupting the filming
3. I (Vicky) had very little time to teach the dancers the routine which cut into filming time
4. The lighting in the studio to which we temporarily switched to had terrible lighting that made footage unusable
5. The dance scenes were filmed with very low shutter speed, making the footage look unprofessional as it was difficult to make out motion
6. We didn’t have a Steadicam, as it was unavailable, so a lot of the shots turned out too shaky
So… overall pretty terrible.
The footage we have is usable so we will keep it in case we need back up. And at least the dancers got some good practice in for the routine! We have rescheduled to re-shoot next Wednesday, 11th of January. Let’s hope things going smoother this time and we actually manage to finish!
This is the script we wrote for the 3 opening scenes we will be including in our opening sequence. It's also a shooting script, including shot types and camera movement so it can be used during production days.
In order to make our opening sequence story interesting, we had to make sure we had well written and interesting characters which fitted the drama genre. For this, we did research and decided on what our 4 main characters would be and how they would included in the beginning of the story. We write up information about these characters before putting them into the script and then did short auditions with the actors we thought would fit them best.
These are our 4 characters:
ELEANOR
► Name: Eleanor
► Age: 17
► Gender: Female
► Hair Colour: Light Brown
► Eye Colour: Green/Blue
► Height: 5’4
► Passion: Dance
► Character: Quiet, Brave, Focused on her goals despite her troubled past.
► Occupation: Student in a dance academy,gets involved with gangs so she can afford dance school
► Friends: Tori (best friend) and other people from her dance class
► Figure: Medium height, thin but healthy body, strong legs, skinnier arms and rather broad shoulders and straight poisture
► Weakness: She is not as strong as she acts and tries to be, breaks down under pressure and falls in a bad place
► Wardrobe: Dark, baggy clothes, dirty shoes, effortless look to show she has given up on impressing people and has bigger problems to worry about
► Accent/Dialect: East London, uses jargon when with the gang, speaks properly with her friends to cover up her background
► Voice: far from high pitched, more developped and reassuring, quiet as if she doesn’t want to be noticed
► Taboos: her family and financial problems
► Motivation: the big dance competition coming up
► Wishes: winning the dance competition and getting out of her debts
► Mood: Sad and Paranoid all the time
► Enemies: Jack and Camilla
TORY
► Name: Tory
► Age: 19
► Gender: Female
► Hair Colour: Auburn
► Eye Colour: Green
► Height: 5’6
► Passion: Making people happy and mentoring the younger dancers
► Character: Happy, Girly, Cheerleader Stereotype, Supports Eleanor and guides her through her problems
► Occupation: Student in the dance school from above, volunteers to mentor the younger years and visit their lessons
► Friends: Gets along with everyone, but has one best friend - Eleanor
► Figure: Tall, Thin, typical ballet dancer figure
► Weakness: Trusts people way too easily, is very innocent which can get Eleanor into trouble when she is not careful
► Wardrobe: Bright coloured crop tops, leggings, tight, trendy clothing, typical girly colours, well done hair and perfectly done makeup
► Accent/Dialect: Normal, teenage english, uses typical teen internet slang, nothing too specific - exactly the opposite of Jack
► Voice: High pitched, speaks fast and excited
► Taboos: She has no taboos … she is an open book
► Motivation: Other people’s happiness
► Wishes: To help her best friend deal with her problems and get her to see the bright side of life
► Mood: Happy, cheery no matter how bad the situation is, always excited and wide awake
► Enemies: No direct enemies, dislikes Jack and Camilla because of her best friend
CAMILLA
► Name: Camilla
► Age: 17
► Gender: Female
► Hair Colour: Black and Blonde
► Eye Colour: Brown
► Height: 5’1
► Passion: Causing drama and chaos, defending her gang’s title and boosting her confidence by making others feel bad
► Character: Mean, Violent, ‘Chavy’, disrespectful and challenging
► Occupation: A student in a fashion college, gang leader
► Friends: close with Jack and two girls that always trail behind her, but has no real friends, she is too self absorbed to care about anyone else
► Figure: Short and curvy, small frame but good build to defend herself if she was to get in a catfight.
► Weakness: She is nothing without the gang and Jack backing her up - she is helpless because of the lack of intelligence and common sense.
► Wardrobe: Dark, tight clothing, branded and trendy, takes her appearance very seriously.
► Accent/Dialect: Foreign accent (sounds Spanish), uses same dialect as Jack
► Voice: High pitched, speaks fast when she is angry
► Taboos: Her school grades and her family
► Motivation: Other people’s pain and misery
► Wishes: To put people down in order to feel powerful
► Mood: Either calm and rude or angry and violent
► Enemies: Hates a lot of people but mainly Eleanor
JACK
► Name: Jack
► Age: 19
► Gender: Male
► Hair Colour: Dirty Blond
► Eye Colour: Blue
► Height: 5’10
► Passion: Violence and Harming people
► Character: Short Tempered, street smart, manipulative and confident in his power over people
► Occupation: College Student as far as the country is concerned, Gang Leader
► Friends: Is close with Camilla, his right hand, but has no real friend or people he can trust
► Figure: Tall, looks skinny and normal but has strong legs, healthy and strong enough to fight back if he has to
► Weakness: Gets outsmarted by Eleanor which makes him look stupid in front of his gang and messes with his self esteem
► Wardrobe: Dark, baggy clothes, branded clothing, good planned outfits, has a little bad (pouch) he carries everywhere, his shoes are always clean and well kept, takes very good care of his appearance
► Accent/Dialect: South London, speaks in jargon only, often uses confusing terms to make the audience wonder what exactly he is talking about
► Voice: Deep, emotionless, monotone, as if he can’t be surprised, is always calm and has everything under control
► Taboos: His feelings, opinion on the people around him and anything to do with his family and past
► Motivation: questionable
► Wishes: To get his money back and bring Eleanor down
► Mood: Calm and careless all the time
► Enemies: Eleanor
These are the auditions we conducted:
We also wrote up all the actor information for the actors we auditioned, including parts of the script the auditioned with, which you can view here:
Before we began planning our opening sequence, we took part in a lighting workshop. This was done to teach us skills using lighting and a green screen to broaden our range of skills and allow us to create a more professional look opening sequence.
We got try out three point lighting, where we learnt about using key lights, fill lights, back lights in order to create a smoothly lit, high-key effect. In our opening sequence, we could incorporate this into the happier scenes in the dance studio to create a happy, typical day-to-day effect.
We also tried out low-key lighting using a single light to create a more dramatic effect. From this, we learned about the importance of positioning the spotlight to well light the subject balanced with creating a big enough difference in light and shadows to reflect an eerie and scary mood. In our opening sequence, we could use this type of lighting in the alleyway to create a scary atmosphere and enhance the tension between characters.
Finally, we also learnt how to set up, film and edit together green screen scenes. In this, we were taught about how it is important to light the subjects to not create shadows on the green screen and how to edit together on Premier Pro with the desired background. Using a green screen in our opening sequence may not be as useful but it did allow us to think about being creative with background and also editing effects into our opening, making the sequence look more interesting and exciting.
Before we began planning and filming our opening sequence, we had to do a preliminary task trying out a variation of shot types and practicing continuity. This is what our group produced.
This treatment is a summary of the first draft we have on the opening sequence. It talks about the original idea of how things will go down and it sums up the key points to it.
Hello! Welcome to the group blog for Media Studies at Coombe Sixth Form by us, Vicky and Erika. We've chosen to name our production group "A Work in Progress" and we plan to use it for all work related to our opening sequence coursework project which we are starting work on.
This blog will contain all our planning and production work leading up to the final product of our opening sequence to a drama film. Throughout this process, we also plan to film the making and behind the scenes, which we will then compile into a final video post on this blog, after our final product is posted.
