Practise Task (Before)

Plot
(Opening 2 minutes) - Two individual girls in their late teenage years, struggle with coping with life and therefore been referred to get help for their condition before it gets any worse at the local "hospital/doctors surgery" which was the location that we were given to film at least a minimum of 20 seconds in somewhere in the piece. The two girls don't know each other but after an encounter with one another, that start to discuss why they are both there, and subsequently open up to one another which they've never really done before, however one of the girls is not allowed to leave the premises, and this is where that character leaves the opening 2 minutes and we then focus on the other character throughout their home life. In this part you'll see an insight to how they feel at home and see the affects that it has on her.


Filming Schedule
The beginning of the opening 2 minutes will be filmed at the medical centre in Wymondham, this will be filmed either during a free period that all the group members including the actors have free, if not if required it will be filmed after school or on a weekend where once again people are free. As the medical centre is very close to school it will be an advantage if we can do this in a free period as it won't be as busy as on a weekend, plus it will save as time that could be used to film other parts of the film or in fact editing.
The rest of the film won't be filmed at the same location as the opening 20 seconds, but instead it will be filmed in a "home" location, which in fact won't be a home but instead somewhere within the school because then it doesn't require going to someone's home which would most likely have to be done on a weekend. To get the look of the home we will film it most probably in the schools library as its the place that would most look like home.
All of the filming will preferably be filmed within school time, this includes free periods and in fact some media lessons that we have, this is going to be more convenient for everyone and not disrupt anyone's personal life.

My week with Marilyn

How do I as a viewer engage with the character of Marilyn or Colin in “My week with Marilyn”

Marilyn

As a viewer it is difficult to connect with Marilyn as a person due to the completely different lifestyle that we have. They are two highly contrasting worlds as they come from very different backgrounds with Marilyn having a very dark and troubled childhood and because of this coming into adulthood was very difficult for her and this means that she’s a troubled soul now. However Colin comes from a very loving and supportive home with this they highly contrast. Because of this it’s very difficult to share empathy with her as I have no clue on the emotions and the extent of them she went through.

Also Marilyn is not just your “average” person she is idolised and adored by the many, she is far from normality and is caught up in a world of showbiz, once again because of this vast difference of career and lifestyle it’s hard to connect with how she feels about it all and due to this it’s incredibly difficult to engage with her on an emotional level. However the reason that she got into this business is also very difficult to connect with, due to changing her name and wanting to forget her past life through acting, the acting career is almost like she is still acting to be happy and content with life, however you can tell when she’s with Colin that she is not happy at all, she really struggles to show real emotion with most people. She’s a very difficult character to truly understand in depth through the film because it’s difficult to see what is in fact an act, and reality. In one part of the film with visiting the castle, she is swooned by a crowd of many fans and she simply says, “Shall I be her?” this suggests that the whole character and identity of Marilyn is an act too and she’s just putting on a brave face to hide the real emotion inside as she doesn’t wish people to portray her in that way. This means that engaging with the real Marilyn is near enough impossible as you can never clearly tell when your engaging with Marilyn the actress or simply the genuine Marilyn who she really is.

The real mental state of Marilyn is quite clearly disturbed and not clear at all, you can tell that she’s very troubled in the way that she acts and portrays herself. Due to this problem it’s very hard to get inside her head and really understand the thought process that she’s going through therefore making it difficult to engage with her and predict the sort of things she’s predicting and thinking of because there’s a kind of mental block and guard she has up.

Lastly Marilyn herself is older and a lot of mature in life by the sort of things that she’s done and achieved. In the film she is 30 years old and has already been married three times, and this gives her the sort of persona that she’s a very unsettled character and struggles with commitment, this could be due to her past relationships being abusive that she finds it difficult to trust people now and this once again links in with the thought process that she thinks everyone only likes her for who she is and not who she really is inside and because of this mentality that she has she feels like no one really understands her and who she is until Colin comes along and sees her for her. It’s almost as if she’s leading a double life and this makes it near enough impossible to engage with her on a good level.

Although it may be difficult to engage with Marilyn, in parts of the film it’s possible to share empathy with her, as you can tell that her emotions are real and not part of the double life that she’s leading, in the parts of the film where Marilyn is in company with Colin and she had an overdose, although she is under the influence of medication, you can tell that what she is saying is genuine and the real Marilyn is coming across to the audience.

I think that this was part of what the director wanted the film to be like, achieving the idea that underneath all of the limelight, fame and fortune that there is someone underneath all of that who has real emotion that can’t always show it to the audience as it would ruin their “image”. But towards the end of the film, you can see that Marilyn opens up more especially to Colin and therefore you can engage with her more, and you can share emotions with her.

However with Colin it’s much easier to connect with the character for a number of reasons, the first one being able to connect with him from the very beginning as he comes from a very normal background although his parents come from a wealthy background this is where it differs slightly but the style of how he was brought up and nurtured from a loving family is easily relatable, because of this it helps to engage with the character more as you can share a sense of empathy with them, because of being up properly and well-mannered I think this is part of the reason that Colin and Marilyn can interact with each other so well because everything that Marilyn ever wanted growing up she can see in Colin, and being the caring person that Colin is, he sees the true potential of who she could be and the fact that he is well and truly fascinated by her.

Instead of having his emotions bottled up and not shown because of his “image” Colin was very open and clear with his emotions, he wasn’t afraid to say what he was thinking and act on what he was thinking, because of this nature he was seen as kind and caring because of his actions towards the people surrounding him as he never held back.

  

Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task in AS Media Studies it was to film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, and then the two characters had to exchange a couple of lines of dialogue. We decided to film it in a dark and damp place that brought a grungy vibe to the piece of film as we were filming a "drug deal". In the task we had to display different features of filming this included:

~The 180 Degree Rule
~Match-on-action
~Shot/Reverse shot

Below I will explain which each of these terms mean...

The 180 Degree rule is a filming guideline that states that the two characters in the shot must maintain the same left/right relationship to one another.

Match-on-action is another filming term that means when editing the piece of film, the editor cuts from one shot to another that matches the original shots action.

Shot/Reverse shot lastly means where one character is shown looking at another character, and then the other character is shown looking at the first character.

Overall the film that we shot was of a supposed "drug deal", so to make the piece of film look as close to the real thing as possible we decided to film it in the darkest and groggiest place we could find, in the school boiler room. The location had the opportunity of having manmade light from the lights in the room but it also had a natural light that wasn't very bright, which is what we wanted as we wanted to maintain the dark, edgy setting.
The casting for the film was fairly straight forward, we asked our friend Lizzie, who took drama at GCSE to become the "drug dealer" as we thought that her established drama persona would bring across the role very well. To add to this we added our other friend Erin to become the person who wanted the "drugs", although she didn't take drama, she's a natural born drama queen and grew into the role just as we expected.
The equipment that we used included a camera to film it, so that the film was steady we used a tripod to ensure that the transition between individual shots were fluent and smooth. By doing this it improved the whole quality of the film.
The editing of the piece of work is still in the processing and this will be updated once it is finished.

If we were to do this again, to improve I would say that we could spend more time with the actual filming as we only had a limited time to actually film the individual shots, and because of this when we were editing some clips it was slightly jumpy, and didn't have a complete smooth transition between shots.

Lastly to set up this blog was the last challenge! To be honest it was quite straight forward with all the instructions being clearly stated and just having to sign in with my already existing gmail account and I was up and raring to go and ready to customise my blog to my very own liking. Although not perfect yet, the blog will always be updating in the way it looks and how its actually set up, and as I learn to use the blog in more depth and detail the quality of the content I'm producing will improve greatly, so just hold on it's only a matter of time.