Location and production design

When I first had the idea to redirect this scene I thought about filming it in the Studios and try my best to make it look like a modern, minimalistic hotel (which I ended up doing).

Especially the staircase scene, watching it I could definitely see it filmed there, of course it wasn't as high as they used in the show but I thought it could be fitting. I was really confident with this idea up until I noticed how dark it is there and tried to film a person running down it. Thank God and Jo for getting the other staircase that had natural light in it and not just pretty bad lamps.

But the thing I struggled the most with was finding a place to film the meeting as I was advised to find a place with a more grand decor. In a way it really scared me because if I could get the room to film in how was I supposed to get all the kit/cast and crew to the place if I don't drive and have nobody to get all of it there. Not really sure if it's lucky but part of me was glad I wasn't able to get a room to film in. Although it probably would have been better for the scene if it was filmed in a place like Oakwood House or Bradbourne House.

In the end, it may have not been perfect but I am happy of how my set turned out, I think I did the best in the situation I found myself in at that moment. Instead of going for grand decor I ended up with a minimalistic hotel look. For this shoot I needed a fake gun, a thick law book and something that looked like weed. Because I needed the gun for literally few seconds I wasn't really planing on spending more than 5paunds, thankfully I found it in Paundland, although I had to paint it black (if it's illegal pretend that you didn't just read that), for a book I went to the biggest library in Maidstone and found something that looked simmilar to the one they used in the show, but probably my biggest headache when it came to props was the fake weed part. It took me a while to think of what I could use to replace the "weed" and after some good thinking I remembered that I had lots of herbal tea, which is what I ended up using, it looked real (at least to someone that has never seen how it looks in real life) and smelled of pepermint.

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DIRECTIONS

The magic 2 every director has to think about is: 1) what's in front of the camera 2) where's the camera positioned. It's important to read the script and break it down to questions: How? - style, mise-en-scene, mood. Who? - cast, crew, collaborators. Where? - locations, set. What? - production, costume, sound design, editing. Key director moments: How you pesent the character. Where you set the story. How you position the light. How you edit the story (rhythm, tone, mood). For our first Directions unit lecture we had to get into groups and have a go at directing a short scene. I found it to be very difficult to direct my DP instead of handling it myself. I ended up with a lot of spare shots I didn't need or couldn't use (mainly because it was hard to get the ball of paper to land into the bin) but the end result didn't disappoint me.

Camera workshop (coverage)

In one of our camera workshops we learned about the importance of coverage. It doesn't matter that in the end we won't use all of the footage and maybe even end up using just few shots, it's important to have multiple shots from diferent angles so that we would have options while editing. During the workshop we had two exercises. One of which was "The Chair": It ended up being pretty short video and I ended up not using half of the footage I got for it. For next exercise we were given scripts and had to interpret it in our own way. While editing I wished I would have filmed few more close up shots and to have actually filmed the whole scene from fixed camera positions.

Studio Idea

Personally, I found it really difficult to come up with an interesting studio production idea. But because "one idea is not enough" (Brown and Duthie, 2010) I came up with 3 initial ideas: 1) Guess the song type of game show, but instead of guessing pop songs, the contestants would have to guess classical music. I got this idea from a game my friends and I loved to play and the way my music teacher used to test my class. 2) Travel guide about how to make the most of your trip, places worth visiting and places that are overrated and not worth your time. I got this idea from my sister who travels a lot and from the way she does loads of research about each and every place she visits. 3) Debate/Game show where 2 groups of people debate about nerdy topics ( whats better Marvel or DC, which Doctor was the best etc.). The idea comes from noticing how much rivalry there is between comic book lovers and overall 'nerds'. I feel like this idea is the stronge...

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