PLANNING: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Hot seating your characters (like this) can help you develop how you represent them. 
It also gets everyone on board by delving into the backstory of the character. 
Pick a realistic interview situation and write the script outline.
Video your interview (make it brief) and post it on your blog together with the following information (in your own words).

PLANNING: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Open source HERE

For my character in my film opening entitled *********,  we decided to interview our protagonist in order to develop his character further.
We were inspired by an article written by Charlie Sierra about building the back story to film characters in which he quoted from Riding the Alligator, a book written by Pen Densham, an Academy Award nominated filmmaker.
In one of the chapters in the book, he provides a check list of questions every writer and director should ask of themselves when they are developing their characters. The purpose of this is to outline a deep understanding of your characters for both the actors and director, and for motivating a character’s choices or actions.

My Character Interview

(Example) As my film opening features only one character in a world without anyone else, we decided that rather than a questionnaire interview, we would use a video diary of our character asking himself and answering the questions as if he is communicating through the camera to anyone who might find it, which is a creative way to handle the questionnaire whilst still keeping with the solitary theme of the opening...(video interview + script follows)
(Example) One of my central characters is a young girl, we have decided to compose a series of exchanges that she made using What's App with her friend in which she confides her worries about her sister. Her friend asks her a series of questions about her state of mind... (screenshots of What's App exchanges follow)
(Example) Our protagonist is a senior police officer who is struggling with his job (meeting targets; pleasing a critical boss) and his family (his daughter challenges him and he questions his ability to relate to her). He is interviewed by a police psychiatrist after the incident when he knocks down a teenager on his bike.

PLANNING: CREATING PROPS

• We set up shots to create our fictional company ROBOTICA.

The plan was to create props to dress the set of our office, such as publicity material, newspaper articles, press releases for the robot product.

• We dressed our three principal actors in office wear: smart suits, ties and asked them to look smart and clean-shaven.
• Stance (posture) was key in showing their assertiveness and sense of ambition. 
• We took about 20 shots and selected the ones that best represented their sense of ruthlessness and business drive. 
• They need to look super confident, arrogant, cocky and therefore unaware that their robot could actually be a liability that gets out of control.

We used Airdrop to send our photos to our computers.

Luca created a YouTube channel to upload the MP4 file.

We used the collage tool Fuzel to present this planning exercise.
Fuzel Collage  allows the creation of animated and still collages.

It led to the creation of authentic-looking publicity material and news reports that I present in my next post.

PLANNING: SHOT LISTS & COLLAGES

Feedback on shot lists and development of treatments.

PLANNING: CREATE SHOT LIST

When you have completed your post on your Treatment, the next step is to create a shot list, then call sheets for each shoot. (Info on call sheets below this.)
A shot list helps you organize the order of your edit, so that you think of the whole narrative arc. 
Start a draft version. It may change during the edit. 
This is a group task so work together on one Word document. Some people find a collaborative document like Google Docs useful so that you can all access the same document.
Below is an example, made in Word, for the start of a 30 second TV commercial (open link) made for Young Enterprise.

Look at each line from left to right across. The first box SOUND: LOVE HOME BAKING? describes what we hear (such as dialogue, music), the second box VISION is what we see at the same time (live action), the third box ACTORS notes the actors needed, then look to the right for the props PROPS.

Then drop down to read the next shot.

 

 

 

 

CREATE CALL SHEETS FOR EACH SHOOT

Each group will produce a call sheet for each shoot. 

A call sheet 'calls to action' the people, props and equipment for a shoot. It makes you look super organized!

Share the work: one person can do the call sheet for a shoot and another person can do the next one. Easy to prepare in advance!

Do not post your phone number, address, email or any private identifying details online.

Just let your group have it on the paper handout that you will each have for each shoot

OPEN this example.

• Title of page: Media Studies Call Sheet for [name of your film]
• Shoot date
• Location
• IMAGE: FROM GOOGLE MAPS
• Crew: [name of person, their phone number, their email]
• Crew: [name of person, their phone number, their email]
• Crew: [name of person, their phone number, their email] etc..
• Camera equipment (this heading then lists camera stuff)
• Lighting equipment (this heading then lists lighting stuff)
• Props (this heading then lists all props)
• Wardrobe [name of character]
• Wardrobe [name of character] etc

 

 

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OPEN LINK HERE