Health and Safety

After having a lesson on health and safety I spent some extra time researching health and safety about filming. This is what I found from the filming council, its list of rules that must be followed.

''It is recognised that most production companies act in a responsible and professional manner. However, all film makers are asked to take their surroundings into consideration.

Productions must be sympathetic to the environment they want to use and work with any restrictions they find with locations that are in areas of outstanding natural beauty and are preserved or with historic buildings or monuments that are considered delicate and fragile.

The local authority has a duty of care towards residents and businesses and will exercise control if a particular production is causing an unreasonable nuisance or noise.

Every precaution must be taken to ensure the safety of the general public at all times and a contact number for the production must be available to the council and the police.

Clear guidelines of what the script or scene involves and appropriate caution must be taken for filming in sensitive areas or at unsocial times

Areas that require any sort of set building, dressing, disguising or are subject to any sort of special effects will require a grantee to be returned to a required standard.

This code of practice sets out the standards that we would ask production companies and/or their sub-contractors to follow while filming in Hampshire."

As i could not find a set of rules for Essex Council filming, I have used Hampshire as they are most likely quiet similar.

I made a simple list of what we would have to do in order to follow the rules :

As a group we will have to make sure all rubbish is thrown away as it is harmful to the public and the habitat it lays in, for instance Bobs can props could be harmful to animals in an outdoors surrounding. As well as being harmful and unpleasant, littering is a crime that is punishable with a fine so as a group we don't want anyone to become criminals.
To not get overly excited and loud. As filming is quiet a fun and enjoyable task, its easy to get carried away. the rules clearly state that you cannot disrupt other members of the public. This means we cannot be a nuisance in any way. Meaning when filming our group will have to be calm as well as keeping the actors calm as they are our responsibility as well. We have to take into consideration the home owners of where we are filming, by being polite and sensible this will help keep us following the rules.
To avoid dangerous and illegal things (even if they appear to be dangerous or illegal but in fact are not). I didn't think this was as important to our group as our opening doesn't show anything dangerous, illegal or offensive. 
Always carry a script, storyboard and shot list. This will give us some evidence that we are a media group ready to film. This way if a member of the public is uncertain about us we can show them what we are planning to do. 
To film at the right time and in the right area. In our group we have chosen good times to film as it should always be daylight, this makes us seem less suspicious and we also decide we would film at more social hours, like after school and the end of the work day (6pm) we also chose the right areas, places with hardly any crime and the people in that area are trustworthy and calm.
Cleaning up the area after we have finished. As we are mainly filming in our own rooms, we decide this wasn't as important as other rules but to do this we would each go around the room and take away our props and equipment. We will make sure we leave everything the way it was found.


As where we are filming is a safe and calm area there are only a few minor rules to be kept when filming:
To not argue back with public. As some of our shots are outside we have chosen a few places to film as if we are asked to move from the first one we are prepared and have a back up. We agreed as a group that if a member of the public tries to argue with us and move us on that we wouldn't argue back and we would simply move. This applies to the home-owners of the homes we are using as well, even though this is unlikely as they have already agreed to let filming happen.


Look after the actors. As a group we decided we wanted our actors to feel the most comfortable they could, by asking them how they were feeling about filming, and letting them watch back there shots this ensured they were comfortable. We also had to ask about allergies as one of the characters will be eating a muffin we wouldn't want them to be in danger of a reaction.

Initial Shot List Work

We had to make a shot list so that we were prepared for filming in the next week. the shot list had to include all information, like who would be in the scene, what props we would need, where it was and how long it would last. We created a simple shot list, with the basics on it so we could use this when filming. I created this shot list with Charly Morrison in my group.

My group later realised we would need to have a more detailed and clear shot list, so we left this to Devon as she has had most experience in making shot lists.

Refilm Parts of Our Film

As we filmed all of our shots early, we were able to check them over on the Mac and see if they were up to the standard we wanted them. We also collected some feedback on them and from this we were able to make our film better by re-filming certain parts. 
The feedback we got was mostly positive and our main issue was with the lighting. This was inevitable to be a problem as this was the part I found the hardest to get right when filming. the worst part was Bobs shots. as we use the unnatural lights it gave the shot a orange tint. when we were filming this wasn't that noticeable but after watching back we realised we would have to do it again. This wasn't hard to re-film as the actor was willing to re-film whenever he could. Although saying this it was hard to find a time when he wasn't busy and we were only able to film him on the Thursday, only leaving the Friday to check it in case we had to re-film once more. Thankfully the second time filming worked really well and we knew we could use this in our final piece. 


We also had trouble with lighting again with Paige's shot coming out of her front door. The sun was just to bright and there was a lot of exposure on her. As her costume is very light (pink top and light blue jeans) she looked completely white in the camera. This really didn't work as the edges of the door were white and as she walks past she simply disappears. As we had already used everyone's front doors, we realised we wouldn't be able to re-film in a different location. This limited us and as a group we had to come up with another idea. We thought about filming out of a back door. This was a good shot, but the only problem I that there was very limited space, so we ended up filming it as a mid-shot instead of a long shot. Although this isn't what we planned, I think it works as when your watching the opening, the female actor stands out slightly more. Which is important to show to the audience as she is the basis of the film.

Recreation of Film Openings

Our media class were given a task to recreate three different films. We were given 3 different genres with 3 different films within them. Only being able to chose one film from each genre our group chose to recreate Juno, Vertigo and The Strangers.

These are the films we recreated

Juno
Vertigo
The Strangers

Type of Character Included in our Film

To help creating the costume designs for the main characters i wanted to research into existing characters and people that were very similar to what our group had thought of.





Stacey
The closest person to Staceys alter ego was popular character Regina George from famous film Mean Girls
Her pink clothing is similar to what we want Stacey to wear when she dresses up for school. Regina George is shown to be extremely high maintenance although we wont expect Stacey to wear such tight tops and defiantly not high heels.





Bob
I found that the character most like Bob was Seth from the film Superbad (played by Jonah Hill) the only thing with this character is that they look similar, but we dont want them to have exactly the same personalities. In Superbad Seth isn't a total computer geek and we want bob to be a lot more intelligent and not act as if hes cool.






Stuart (Stu)
For our character Stu i thought of comparing him to the character in famous film Scott Pilgram vs the World. Scott Pilgram is quite similar to our Stuart character, but different in some ways. I found that Stuart would have to be a lot more neat and tidy and possibly wear more fashionable clothing.








Tom
Tom is meant to be a very quiet and collect charater, hes close to his mum and likes to bake This reminded me of the character Paulie Bleeker from film Juno. It is the same actor as the character in Scott Pilgram (Micheal cera), showing that hes quiet famous for comedy films. The characters are similar as they are both good to there families and they believe in doing the right thing.