Production roles - Miss Miller

It is important to have set production roles within the production of our film as this will aid us to have a well structured planning schedule for the creation of our film. Setting certain roles for each group member allows for less stress as everyone is under clear guidelines of what their set job is, this also means that there is less pressure on everyone to perform to a range of different tasks, as well as making sure that everyone else is taking part as we have a set guideline as to all of the jobs we need to be following meaning that overall jobs can become lessened and more focused upon as people become fully aware of what their set mission is. Another positive of people knowing exactly what it is that they need to do is that they are able to spend more time and care on the individual job as they become more personal due to it being their main job alone hence it shall enforce peoples pride as it is something the team is allowing them to have responsibility over and trusting them with so they will want to do even better because of this. This also means that more time can be put into individual elements of the filming hence they will  be produced of a higher standard than they would have having been rushed. As well as people not knowing having allocated jobs meaning they wouldn't have a set structure of what to do which could result in everyone attempting to perform the same jobs leaving the team in a mess on that end and then other sections of the production going unfinished or even untouched due to a lack organisation and understanding.

Although within our group we have set production roles that doesn't mean that we wouldn't allow members of our team to work on other aspects of the film in fact we would encourage it. Although Harry was allocated the role of main director both myself and Emma took on jobs which would be seen as something which was apart of the directors role, such as simply directing we both had ideas so we brought them forward for instance I suggested that Brittany should run over to the window with the knife after running out of the kitchen and Emma suggested which way I should run out of the kitchen these were both ideas which worked well with the plot line and were used within the film. Together we practically took charge of the scene deciding where I should be standing, where the camera should be positioned etc.

I myself took on the official production roles of being an actress (portraying the role of victim Brittany), a producer and a MES coordinator.

Harry was officially the director for our film, editor and screenplay writer.

Emma took on the job as Cameraman and music producer.

We decided as a group that Emma would be the best person to take on the role of cameraman as we had planned for her to be doing most of the filming throughout our sequence. We also discovered that she had the most experience with camera work after our preliminary task she had learned the most from it as she was the one doing the most of the filming throughout the task and came to grips with how to over come her past issues with camera work such as how to shoot a close up. We also decided that Emma would be the best person to be our music producer as she already obtains a strong interest in the music industry hence we thought that she would have matured a key finding for the right pieces of music to display over our film. Although both myself and Harry also looked for music for our film we made sure that we ran through them with the group and if Emma was to say that she didn't think it was right for our film we would take that on board and find another piece. Finding a piece of music to play throughout our film was something which we struggled on as it was difficult to find something which we really identified with our opening sequence and didn't suddenly change tune which we found happened with quit a few pieces of music. I think had we found one main piece of music to run throughout our sequence finding other pieces of music or sound to edit in with our film might have been easier as well as the editing. Music is a key piece of editing for a thriller film had we set on our main sound sooner I think we would have had a better understanding of how our film would have turned out and where it was heading which would have made other aspects easier and ran more smoothly.

To for fill my role of playing the main character within our production I had to make sure I had my costume completely accurate for every scene and that there were no changes in costume between takes which shouldn't have happened. Although it sounds simple enough to remember to keep my costume the same for takes which they are supposed to stay the same changing it can easily be done. For instance between takes you may find that you are rather hot so you take your jacket off after which you may return to filming without remembering to put it back on this would majorly ruin the logic between our sequence as the audience wouldn't have seen me take my jacket off they would wonder how I went from suddenly wearing one to not without physically taking it off this would ruin the effect behind the film for audience members. Another factor which I shall have to watch in regards to ruining the film in the same manner would be my nail vanish when filming on different days it can easily be done that one day I shall be wearing it one day I won't, one day I will be wearing one colour the next a different one however this cannot happening if we are to go back to shooting for scenes which we had already began on a previous day. I also put myself in charge of deciding on the locations for our film I chose all of the locations apart from the forest as Harry thought that he knew of a better place to film than the forest I had thought of which he wasn't sure of. This was a fairly easy task once I had pictured how we wanted everything to look in my head and out of the places I could think of what would work best with the sequence, as well as which places had the most accessibility, I also tried to pick places which would have a lower population density however this was difficult to predict as these were not places which I would typically visit often especially on weeknights when it was dark which we would often be filming on.

Harry put himself forward to be the official director of our film which means he shall be controlling aspects of our film such as us the set up of characters within scenes, camera angles, etc however this does not mean that both myself and Emma won't be involving ourselves within this process as stated above we have already took it upon ourselves to act on this part. Although we have faced difficulty with Harry changing ideas for the narrative throughout the production of our sequence he did help to come up with much of our and narrative and was happy to take the role of screenplay writer so it made sense for him to take this role. This meant that he had charge of the groups storyboard as well as the camera equipment and had the duty of bringing all of it with him every time we went filming. As Harry was the official director this also meant that he had main control over the editing of our sequence which I thought he done rather well. He listened to both ideas and criticism from myself and Emma and took it on board. Although I liked the effect he was creating with the filters I thought that for some scenes they were a little bit too much. They appeared rather unrealistic which I thought sort of ruined the effect of the film for the audience this wasn't something which I was alone in thinking as when we showed our sequence to the class Ryan commented on the fact that he didn't like the filters. After which we attempted to tone the filters down as as a group the decision was that we didn't want to get rid of the filters completely.

Although the majority of our filming ran smoothly there are a few aspects which I would change. For instance Harry being the director of our film meant that he had main responsibility of the camera equipment. Not a good idea. This lead to the breaking of our first camera hence delaying filming the remaining footage which we didn't manage to film prior to the camera being broken. Once we had managed to over come this problem via getting our hands on a new camera we arranged to go out again and shoot more for our sequence however once all three of us met we found that there was a few obstacles which we needed to over come. First of all Harry announced that the camera was low on charge meaning that we would have to be very sufficient with our filming so not to waste the battery charge and course our camera to die out half way through our filming. So to save our charge we done a run through first of all without using the camera to see how everything would look on camera and make sure that everything ran smoothly however once we turned the camera on ready to shoot and put the memory card in we discovered that said card wouldn't work with our new allocated camera meaning that we had a wasted journey and was able to get nothing done. Once again delaying the filming of our production. After this incident we arranged to go out again where we discovered that both of our memory cards didn't work within our newly allocated camera meaning that once again we were unable to get any filming done. (So in hindsight our filming might have ran a lot more smoothly had we given this role to a different member of our group.) To over come this we had to ask our teacher for a new camera and rush all of our filming together in a rather short space of time which was difficult as everyone had long days and it was getting dark rather early which was a set back as we needed to film some of our remaining daylight shots despite all of this we managed to get it done in the time limit which I think was very successful and showed determination considering the amount of setbacks we had to overcome. However this doesn't mean that everything went wrong with our filming aside from a few frustrations I personally found that I could work well with Harry especially when we were discussing our narrative as we were both working together to make our ideas match, improve them and and build upon them which resulted in the creation in our narrative.

When filming I found that acting wasn't as easy as I thought that it was going to be. One time I had to tell Emma to leave the scene as Harry was the only one filming this scene so she was simply standing there making me laugh hence we wasn't able to get much good footage done. The laughter was quickly going to become a problem for us hence we overcame it by Emma moving away out of my eye line.

Just before this we were in the middle of a shooting a scene when Emma began shouting advice to me about how to act when filming obviously this would have been heard on camera therefore we couldn't use this piece of footage and had to start again. So to overcome this issue we made sure that we had even more in depth conversations about scenes prior to filming so that no one felt that had things to throw in at the last minute.

On one occasion I struggled with the acting greatly. It was a rather confusing scene for me and I'd began to get confused about all the different elements to the scene we had spoke about. It was also a confusing scene for me because I was unsure of my ques and when asking members of my group about my queries none of them appeared to understanding what it was I was asking. So It would have helped had I been more clear with my questions.