Directions Unit - A Journey Through - Costume Design

The costume design in this film will consist of very urban modern clothing. Our main character will have full sleeves (tattoos) and have very 'gritty' appearance. I wanted this because it fit the feel of the movie I was going for. Our secondary character will be dressed in what I would consider to be drug dealers clothing in the modern era, I cite the film 'attack the block' as a reference point, due to the design of hoodies, nice jeans, flash trainers, implying that the dealer has some succession in his trade.

EDIT: Here's a few screenies from the shoot, with the clothing of the characters.

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - Props

The main prop of the film is the used drug paraphernalia and the package, which turns out to be heroin. There are minor props such as crumpled beer cans and a mobile phone too. The film in itself doesn’t focus on props as much, but more of the mannerisms and conversation. To be safe, I used a syringe pen so nothing went horribly wrong and the effect was still buyable

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - Underlying themes

There are a few underlying themes and subtext to my short film. These will I think really work well when I put them to execution.

Drug use:

Drug use in the modern era has a tight grip on my generation, and it has become the norm to exploit drugs in modern television, from soap operas all the way to comedy skits. I plan to use drug use in a very serious way - relative to soap opera approaches.

Losing a loved one:

With my film, I plan to make it as ambiguous as possible. There are many different possibilities and thoughts that you can take from the film. Clearly our main character is affected by the fact that he is not with a loved one, whether that could be because of his own actions, death, or maybe a combination of both!

Isolation and lonliness:

This doesn't come as a surprise as an underlying theme as this is the main theme of the script. the isolation and lonliness is essentially a combination of the above two themes, which works out really well.

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - The Crew Grows!

So my crew has grown a lot since my last blog post about the crew, it now consists of:

Michael Hoad - Camera operator
I chose michael because of his knowledge of cameras and ability to work as a team, I'm still a bit iffy on working a camera so Michael is a great pick to fill the void to make sure that the film will look absolutely perfect.

Lex Wilkinson/Ren Ball - Sound/ Set technician
Lex/Ren paya lot of attention to detail, so these two roles are perfect for them.

Roxanne Meats - Extra
Roxanne will play my extra that will be a small cameo in the film, she can also help out the team as she is free on the days I am filming and will always lend a hand if need be.

Mark Cooper - John
Mark is my guy for this film, his performance in my last film convinced me to put him in this film.

Andrei Allen - Drug dealer
I approached Andrei a few weeks ago in hope of finding my unnamed drug dealer, he willingly accepted and even said he can do different accents for me if need be.

I am confident that this crew will not let me down and will provide for a brilliant production run.

Directions Unit - Sound Design - Finished and Reflection

Overall, I really liked this project and I feel I did sufficiently to meet the brief, but the main thing is I had fun! My love of zombies and action has definitely shined through this unit, I did encounter a few problems though.

The biggest problem I faced was not being able to use FCP. Due to an error with the image, I opted out to use adobe premiere instead. Even though I favour premiere, I definitely would have benefitted using FCP as I want to develop this more. 

I also have some areas to improve on.

Learning levels - mastering levels I found very difficult as I've never really taken the time to use it before, this unit has helped me from the foundation of this for my four minute video.

Coverage of the area - I didn't cover everything in the picture, which was good and bad. Good in the fact that I didn't really need to, and it works perfectly well without, but bad I'm the fact I didn't have lots of areas to cover based on my theme.

Directions Unit - Sound Design - Resources used

Directions Unit - Sound Design - Draft Edit + Short Explanations

Just a short video filmed on my iPad talking about the first impressions on what I'm doing and the initial 20 or so seconds of footage. Note that most of the audio hasn't been fully mastered so the sound is a little off, matched with the fact that its being recorded through a microphone on my camera.

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - Script Breakdown

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - Costumes and Set Design

My biggest flaw with my last project is that there wasn't a commitment to the cause in a sense, which is my main aim for this project. If you look at my previous blog post you can see the overall design and theme I am going for. Today I purchased a piece of the costume I intend to use for the film - a fake tattoo sleeve. This doesn't seem like a big deal but to me the little details is key. I'm in no way implying that tattoo's are bad and I am behind the movement of being tattooed and employed. But there's something about the style of tattoo that I've bought that really makes the character look gritty, which matched with the correct attire, can give the gritty look that I am oh so after. here is the tattoo sleeve. Now I intend to place the time piece that is in the start of the script on the same arm of the tattoo, which works in two ways - it gives meaning to the tattoo and the time piece at the start of the video, but also covers up the seam of the tattoo tights.

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - Steve Finn Workshops

This is a compilation of notes from the Steve Finn workshop that combines my learning and ideas related to my project.

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - My Influences

I'd like to say the majority of my references are from television in general. Especially for the drugs scene subtext to the film. They are:

Breaking Bad 


The scene in BB where Jesse Pinkman shoots heroine is probably my main focus for the short. The secondary support character goes through the necessary steps in order to 'shoot' heroin. In my film, I intend to use this as a template for when Jack shoots up, the steps needed to carry this out, and the immediate aftermath of shooting up. In a way it kinda speaks a lot about the undertone in the fact another person has drove Jesse to shoot up, which is what I intend to do, but from a different angle, it should work well.

Harry Brown

Harry Brown is one of my all time favourite films, just looking at this scene, look at the character design and how gritty they are, this will be the design for Jack.

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - The Canon 7D Workshop

So I had a workshop at Uni based around the Canon 7D DSLR. As a competent techie but a novice camera user this had me intrigued before I started, as i'd only ever used the Sony EX cam. This camera was extremely heavy and can be problems for simple transportation so when I heard about other cameras to rent out I was very happy. The DSLR was very easy to get to grips with and I felt so much more at ease with this camera than before. I will be using this camera for my shoot in february. Here's a workshop video that I was the camera operator on.

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - Set

The set will focus around Marks actual flat in Rochester. However, upon previous videos that were filmed by other peers in my class, they didn't pay enough attention to detail for this at all, which I will definitely take into account. Using marks permission, we have agreed to make his flat look to my aim, which is perfect, areas around the halls also mimic what I need for my video. 

The actual set will be of what you would expect a heroin addicts flat to look like, if you reference the image below it is from a simple drug den type deal. This scene I want as a reference point for my direction for my set.

Directions Unit - A Journey Through - Crew

So, to kick off the basis for my four minute direction project. Heres my crew:

Ren Ball - Ren will be operating my sound for the day. I have chose Ren because of her attention to detail and because I can rely on her to do a good job regardless of role.

Lex Wilkinson - Lex is my Camera guy. Based on experiences in my first project and projects that I have done through workshops, I know that he communicates well with me and can pay close attention to detail.

Only a crew of three, but to be honest, I'm perfectly fine with this. The only thing I'm worried about really is the fact I get too involved in others jobs, hopefully this project teaches me otherwise.

Directions Unit - Sound Design Prep

So for my sound design I whose this picture, which I will use the ken burns tool inside of Final Cut Pro to zoom into certain areas of the picture. For the atmosphere I want to set an eerie mood, complete with piped in screams to add to almost a silent panic. The best part of this will be the inclusion of zombie moans, completing the scene I set out for. I want to set a mood of a zombie apocalypse. My main reference point for this would be a game funnily enough. If you study the clip below, you can see the influence I get from Resident Evil, a survival horror game from Capcom and Shinji Mikami, who create a very eerie atmosphere in their games by the use of helplessness almost.

Direction Unit - The Throw - Short Film Project

This project we were split into teams to make short films based on a subject we were given, opening to our own interpretation of how we would execute the film. This is the finalised project from my take, which was considerably longer than other videos that others produced. Although this was the case, I feel I was able to make a short film based on the scenario I was given but moulded to me, allowing me to take the ball and run with it. Even though it was only a day project I felt that I was able to learn a lot based on Simons feedback and other peers in the class.

Directions Unit - Intro and What I've Chose To Cover

Woo happy new year! Excited o be back and in the game with Uni, hopefully I carry on the same trend as yesteryear and work hard, and most of all, produce work im proud of.

So this term will be different, two projects at the same time! Sound design and a four minute video.

The sound design project basically says that you have to pick a photo from a catalogue from a well known photographer, and use sounds that would create an atmostphere, essentially a one minute video that tests how you use sound in film. Im excited to do this as I can learn how sound design can be implemented in film, even as small as still imagery, I have picked out a photo that I will use and already have the themr of zombie apocolypse,  due to the nature of the photo.

Next at the same time is a four minute video that I chose the topic of journey of loneliness.  I have some good ideas that will use and using the other project,  this will help me with sound design, this timr we dont have to write a script which gives us more time to think about prep, which is always good. My film will be about a heroine addict named jack, who seeks out a package of -you guessed it - drugs, the secondary character will be an unnamed dealer that will give him the drugs.

So theres a little insight, will go into details a lot more as the term progresses.  My aim this term for bloggig is to use more text and video variety,  rather than alot of one.