Establishing a Style

The feedback from the animatic was that there was too much shot-reverse shot which doesn't prove much in the way of skills and is ultimately just visually dull. I tried on the shoot to balance this by other shots with interesting camera movement but there wasn't nearly enough so I had to start thinking about what I could do in post production to resolve this.

I talked to a couple of people and an idea emmerged to impose sketchy drawings of say thought bubbles and arrows and the like over some of the shots which would better convey infomation to the audience if I needed to condense my work later on. Something along these lines:

This could be used in the kissing scene where the shots we have actually aren't that strong so this would draw attention and emhasis to the action

Another idea I had was punctuating some moments by inserting a poorly taken photograph at the party which would envelop properly the mood of the evening. It's hard to explain but I hope to experiment with both this week and post my results.

First Day of Filming

The first day of filming could have gone a lot better. Time pressure meant we had to make cuts in the schedule including a whole scene.

Our first task of the day was set preperation and this went reasonably well. To create the illusion of evening at 9:00 in the morning we pegged a dark red sheet over the window and attached black-out matirial to the outside of Katie's front door (we filmed the whole thing at her house). Then we set out food for people to pick-out which we hoped would reflect the low-key party atmosphere we were trying to create.

Here are couple of examples of our efforts:

We found that anything can look sophisticated if you put parsly on it.

This was intended to poke fun at some of the posy food you get served at partys. It's mini-toblerone with mayonaise and again parsley.

We started filming with the exchange between Joe and Sarah because Bobby wasn't scheduled to get there for another 2 and a half hours and since we had Matt and Katie in the same place it seemed foolish not to get the shot reverse shot and the cutaways of her ukelele done. We spent a strangly long time finalising her costume. We thought the bow would give her a childish quality that Katie tends to convey in her charectors anyway.

Next we wanted to get Matt's half of the reaction shots we'd be using in the rejection montage to signify the passing of time. To do this we shined a light on the wall behind him to create a plain white backdrop and asked him to pull a variety of bizare expressions for the camera which we could pick from later and mix with similar footage of Katie, Megan (who was supposed to be arriving that afternoon) and myself.

After Katie had left to meet Bobby at the station I kept working with Matt on the montage. I had an idea as to how it would end that one of the girls would through water on him and you'd see it trickling down the lense blurring his face. We set up carefully with a towel on the floor and I was ready to experiment only everytime I started to tip the glass (having covered the lense in cling-film of course!) Matt would start laughing. I'm still not sure how we over-came this in the end but we did. Disappointingly the footage didn't come out all that well. In heinsight I'd like to play with the focus on this- it's something I might pick-up on when we re-film some bits next Sunday.

After 12 the schedule started going astray. When Bobby arrived we went straight into filming the stairs scene which took about an hour and a half and we'd already been put back 45 minutes or so by the trains. This was mostly due to a line we'd put in to condense several so as to cut down the running time and the amount of shot reverse shot which was the main critisism I got for my animatic. The line was: I love you Mike but I see us as more of a Lennon and McCartney than a Colin and Justin. Matt couldn't say it. One time he even came out with 'I see us as a Paul McHeather McCartney story?' In the end the best solution I could come up with was Matt saying 'I love you Mike but-' and Bobby cutting in with 'But you see us as more of a Lennon and McCartney than a Colin and Justin'. It worked.

A major problem we had with the party scenes was keeping the illusion of there being many people milling about when infact we only had three extras if you included Katie who was playing Sarah as well. The best solution was Katie fetching out a selection of hats and hoodies people could wear so that from behind they looked like different people. Example's are shown below:

Finally after Matt left we recorded a few cuttaway's a pick-ups with suprising success. We didn't get nearly enough as we were all very tired and wanted to finish so we could have the cheesecake which had been serving as the insentive to keep going for the the last 6 hours. But I got some reasonable shots of Megan and Katie to insert into the last scene to give it a bit of diversity.

I found looking back time pressures had forced us to leave a lot out but I plan to make a detailed list of shots to pick up on next Sunday before it comes round including showing Matt and Bobby what I already have and seeking their opinions amongst others.

Time Management

Having a schedule for Saturday 9th (our first day of filming) became all the more important when we found out first off that James couldn't make it after all (didn't I say he was unreliable) and we had to call in Bobby Kirke at the last minute who's brilliant but lives in Twickenham and secondly because Matt had to leave to go to work at three.

When I made this rough schedule for the day it was on the assumption Bobby would arrive at 11:30 when instead, due to train difficulties, he arrived at 12:15 so we had to abandon the scene with Natalie and post-pone that for the following week:

8:00-9:00 - Set-Up. Set-dressing. Black out windows.

9:00-10:00 - Film the scene with Sarah exclusing shots of Michael

10:00-10:30 - A selection of optimism to rejection facial expressions from Joe. Shot of lights dimming over Matt and water trickling over-lense.

10:30-11:30 - Line learning with Matt Goodwill.

--ARRIVAL OF BOBBY KIRKE--

11:30-12:00 - Scene with Sarah including shots of Michael.

12:00-1:00 - Joe and Michael stairs scene.

1:00-1:30 - Scene with Natalie

1:30-2:30 - Film build-up and climax to final scene

2:30-3:00 - Establishing shots and pick-ups

--DEPARTURE OF MATT GOODWILL--

3:00-3:45 - Second half of rejection montage (girls reactions)

3:45-4:00 - Wild Track and Sound Effects

Shot List

Click on image for a larger and clearer version.

Film Title

I was considering changing the title from 'Fishing to Affection' to 'Fishing for Confidence' because it would then be a better pun on Fishing for Compliments and still make sense. I even played about with the titles to see which one was visually more pleasing:

Personally I really like Fishing for Confidence but I asked several other people and there votes all went for Affection possibly because the fs provide something close to alliteration which is midly pleasing. I shall stick with 'Fishing for Affection'.

The Montage

The montage in the middle of the party scene has remained up to now hazy in my mind and I really wanted to get it straightened out before I worked out the shot list. Eventually it occurred to me this was an opportunity to do something more like the opening credits than your classic film montages of this type.

I thought I’d mix shots of girls rejecting Joe with Joe’s feelings of dejection culminating over the evening so that it has more of a narrative to it. The idea came from the cover of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ which was lying on my desk at the time:

This in turn reminded me of the clever credits sequence at the end of the film (A Hard Day’s Night) which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgFOQuWICnM&feature=related (watch from 0:56) so that has now become my basis for the montage.

Production Plan

Click on the picture to see a clearer enlarged version.

Charector Development and Casting

For Joe I always had Matt Goodwill in mind as I have worked with him previously with a similar kind of charector. He'd already proven himself reliable, also I think he has an appropriate look for someone like Joe as illustrated in this screenshot from a previous film I made with him 'White Lies' :

To help me really pin Joe down I also drew some rough costume designs my intention being that in the party scenes he's putting on an uncomfortable act by being dressed awkwardly smart, it's part of his charm (I hope) :

Michael has been much harder. I orginally intended the part for John Platt who had also taken part in 'White Lies' but for personal reasons this became impossible so after asking around I had to fall back on James Hoye. I worked with him last year reasonably well but he has proven in the past to be quite unreliable so it's risky but ultimately I have no choice.

Again I sketched some cotume ideas for Michael: