Planning for Prelim task

When thinking about my actual short film I need to think about the planning that needs to take place before hand. Therefore the class was asked to create a prelim task of a short film that we had to produce and edit ourselves. The title of the prelim task was called 'A day in the life of...' it had to be 1 minute in length we were allowed to work in pairs.

When planning for a task that has been given we needed to think about the things that we wanted to use and what we needed to make it the best we could. We looked at some short films and thought about the planning that went before it: where was the filming take place? When? Script or no Script? What we was going to do it about? What equipment we need to use?

We had to think about what our short film will be about so we contemplated about a chief however it didn't work well so we decided to go with 'A life of a drama teacher' this was because we thought that it would be funny and that it would be easier with the space and lights in the drama studio. The chief idea would be hard to organise and would also be more time consuming because of the space that we would have to film in and the props that we would have to use. When we then changed to a student chef but because there was only two of us to film we thought it would be a lot more hard work so we stuck with the drama student. As Aneisha takes a level theatre studies she had a connection with the drama teacher so it was easier to film her as we knew her free periods and she was happy to help us. In addition we decided to use a real drama teacher as it would be more realistic and would make it easier to follow, also because she is a drama teacher she can act anything  that we wanted her to do which was helpful. Mrs Glynn the actress is a stereotypical drama teacher so it was easier for us to film her as she is crazy anyway and the two hours free that we had allowed us to get the shots that we needed of her. 

Once we had sorted out the title and characters that we were going to have we had to think about th e locations that we would film in. As we were lucky to have the drama studio which is a big space we were able to film a lot of the footage in here however the lights were difficult to use but it allowed us to use more equipment and therefore gain more information. We also located around the school so it made it more effective as it was about a school teacher, the students as well were not part of the script but it made it more funny as they were reacting to the things that we asked her to do. After we decided the locations we had to create a filming schedule which was very important as we had to then lead on to editing and if we didn't have the correct timing for this then it would not make the end product very effective. Luckily when talking to the drama teacher she had two free periods in which we were both free so we made sure that we booked all the equipment so we can film all the footage in the 2 hours we had.

After we gathered the information about the time and places that we were going to shoot it was onto the script. As the character was crazy we decided to make the script humorous which was not difficult. In addition we decided to add when we needed to shoot and what sound effects to add in the editing stage. However because Mrs Gylnn is a drama teacher we didn't really need to use a script as she improvised which made it more funny as we tended to laugh behind the camera. Although we didn't use one there was a structure and we did follow the script in what scene came next. I will defiantly be using a script in my short film as I will not be using a professional actor and therefore they will need as much directing as possible.

Finally we needed to hire the equipment out. I was thinking about using my own camera however I needed as much practice as I could get with the school ones so I decided to use them instead. As well as that I needed to borrow a tripod which we booked out with the media department in school, it makes the camera not shake so when it comes to editing it allows it to run smoothly also it makes it look a lot more professional. The number on the side allowed me to recognise which camera I was able to use and then people in my class then knew not to use this camera as I will have to upload to the macs.

The planning for the prelim task has allowed me to make sure that my short film was the best it could be for my first try. I will defiantly learn from this and will also take on board the different types of planning that I will need to do to make sure my film is as good as it can be.