Proposal – Short Film: “Fortune?”
A superstitious girl exits her house one morning to find an advertisement in the mail for a clairvoyant. As she goes out the gate, a black cat runs in front of her. Startled, she drops her handbag, out of which falls a small compact, the mirror of which shatters.
Rather distressed by these bad omens, the girl goes straight away to see the advertised clairvoyant, who performs a tarot reading, which signals that she will die within the day.
Horrified, she sees death everywhere, nearly choking in a cafe, almost being run over, fearing she is about to be stabbed by a coated person eating an apple, and then in the shower before bed.
At 11:59, she hops into bed, satisfied that she has shaken off the prediction. Leaning backwards, she knocks a heavy mirror off her wall, which falls and kills her instantly.
Ok! Much has changed this first post.
ReplyDeleteBasically the story now goes that death is starting his days work with the death of a guy in a lift. He succeeds at this and proceeds to the girl. However, the girl is impossible to kill. As the story moves on death goes from a character of power to a character of failure. In the end the girl gains the power and becomes death.
So far we have filmed the lift scene, house beginning and end scene. Now we need to add the street scenes, cafe scenes and the shower scene. This should only take a few more hours of filming and then its onto editing. At this stage there have been no major complications except trying to come up with some creative shots! Its in the editing stage that we may find some barriers.
Sarah.
OK so, after documenting our filming process and some of the problems we encountered we should start updating this site!
ReplyDeleteThe last comment showed the change in the plot and where we were up to with our scenes. The next wednesday we filmed at the uni after deciding that it was taking to much time out of our filming time to travel up to Maitland. So we began filming the car scene at the uni out front of the Hunter Building only to be stopped and questioned by Security. We only had about 1hr to complete this scene and were quickly running out of time. Security had a problem with the fact we were filming on the campus and near a child care centre. However, we proceeded to explain that we had permission from the centre and we were not aiming the camera any where near the centre.
This was not enough. Security as a result, tried to contact our lecturer but in the meantime I made a mad dash through the Hunter building dressed as death to find someone that could help us. Thanks to David Palmer we were partly saved but had to move the filming to the 'student area' of campus (as if this was much better!) Anyway shooting began and the day worked out fairly well. We got the shots we needed and were able to complete a rather annoying part of the film scenes.
All in all from this day we found out that all filming does not always go to plan!
The next meeting of the group dealt with the shower scene. It was to be one of the most challenging scenes and the most enjoyable to shoot lol (thanks to Jess's misadventures). We needed a shower curtain which Blake's dad thankfully rigged up. The next problem was how to make it look as though Jess was jumping out the window. We shot a variety of angles including her at the window then outside of the window with the cape up and her jumping down.
ReplyDeleteHaving Renee in the shower also proved to be difficult as we had to make it look as though she was having a shower without obviously exposing her swim suit. Might I add she was a very good sport during this phase!
Overall, the filming went well and there were no major problems during the shooting of this scene. Getting the right angles was challenging but worth it.
Another problem we faced was the 'traffic light scene'. We had problems finding a time of day that was not busy - the traffic was too heavy and it was too dangerous/inconvient to film. So we decided to replace this scene with a 'hallway/study room scene'.
ReplyDeleteEditing Phase - thankfully we acquired Matt in week 2 of the course who is an absolute pro with technology, thus we had little difficulty cutting scenes, adding music etc. I found the editing phase an interesting experience, as I had never used I-movie before. I picked up some great skills and tips that I could employ in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteMy Acting Debut - When I was "cast" as the lead girl I was really nervous because I am awful at acting and did not want to let down Matt, Jess, Sarah and Blake BUT I was also excited to be a movie star, even if it was in a student film with a very, very low budget.
ReplyDeleteLuckily for me the film contains no dialogue so I only had to pull a few faces (curious, scared, pissed off...) and walk past the camera 894092393 times.
My full acting potential was realised when I had to pretend to be choking to death in the Hunter cafeteria. Unfortunately we sat near a big table of first years who stared at me the entire time which was really off-putting at first, but after a while I got used to it and could choke on cue without bursting into fits of laughter. Just call me Meryl Streep.
Despite my initial nerves I had a lot of fun making this film and I cannot wait for you all to see it!
x
P.S. Hats off to Matt, Sarah and Blake who did a lot of the behind-the-scenes work, the film looks fantastic
P.P.S. Thanks to Jess my co-star for getting dressed up in that costume on several occassions and chasing me around the uni =)
i might just post this also, which was posted to facebook on 29 April:
ReplyDeletehey dudes,
there's nothing important here, I'd just thought I'd chronicle the day's shooting for a blog entry.
Updates / challenges:
film editing class
not enough battery - we'll charge it fully next time
campus security stopped our filming, then after a long discussion asked us to move to another location (apparently on account of us being potential pedophiles)
added new scene in hallway - Death listening to ipod (glad we remembered that)
cut scene at crossing because of time and location restraints (as I can't yet control traffic lights with my mind).
added a new actor (rhiannon, the next meryl streep)
let me also say a big thanks to jess and renee - you're both doing a great job. thanks for being willing to be fools in front of the whole uni. And you too blake, but you would have worn a pink hat and lipstick today either way...admit it. And finally, Sarah, for running through Huxley dressed like an unoriginal goth
Matt
just some general comments -
ReplyDeletethe film has turned out to be a really nice collaboration. The locations and costumes (thank-you Blake), the attention to detail that everyone kept up, the extra scene we added on the fly, and everyone's contributions to the music etc. really made it a fun film to make and to watch. I think it the fun we had shows through.
we had some technical problems, I didn't have imovie 6 and had to come to uni to edit and i know sarah lost quite a bit of editing work when her computer died. but besides tis, and the 'security scare' it was pretty much smooth sailing.
and just to sum up -
it has been fun. I'm surprised you guys think I'm good at technology. I've learnt a whole lot about imovie and shooting in this process.
everyone did their jobs really well - its great when group work works out the way it should. we couldn't have brought it together so well without everyone's hard work. Everyone did their best and it shows in the film.
looking forward to the screening too, mostly to check out the other films
I would have to agree with Matt!
ReplyDeleteIt has been a great experience. Some points for the future would include:
-Cleaning the lens on the camera before shooting!
-Saving EVERYTHING! every 5minutes.
-Review the footage after each scene (something we only figured out when we got to the early editing phase)
-Make sure you stay right away from security!
I would also like to thank everyone for their efforts!
It is difficult to stick a whole bunch of uni students together in their last semester of uni and tell them to function, however I now know how to use imovie on my computer and hold a camera so it actually takes footage thanks to our collaborative effort.
Great team work thanks guys!
:)