Final Casting Choices

After considerations about who would be best to play each character as well as who is available. These are the people whom we have decided would be best. 

Young man - Eliot Nash

Personally i felt that this role was the hardest to cast because all of the possible actors would have been great. We chose Eliot because he lives rather nearby, as well as having good acting experience I think that his appearance matches what we are looking for. These are the main reasons that we chose Eliot over any of the other possible candidates. He cannot play guitar however this isn't important as we wanted to try to show the character teaching himself how to play guitar. 

Old man - Roger Alcock

The old man role was mostly optional however I did really want to get him into the final product as i think it would be a very effective piece of film to put in the video. Roger is my granddad. The reason that I feel he is perfect for the part is because he can play guitar.  

Abusive Parent - Nicki Sanders

While the smallest role in the film, it is still important. Plot wise the character is vital in making the boy understandable and relate-able. I chose my mother because she is readily available and also suits the role (she doesn't abuse me, promise) 

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The Golden Hour

The golden hour (sometimes called the magic hour) is a specific name for the hour of sunlight just before dusk and dawn. Lighting tends to be softer, with a more golden hue. Due to the low angle of the sun, more blue light is scattered. This causes the reddish colouring of the sky. 

Filming during the golden hour would yield excellent results due to the yellow lighting that would be cast, however, location is everything. The light can be easily blocked by buildings and trees, whereas on top of a hill the light wouldn't be at all obstructed. This is why I think that filming at Corfe castle during the golden hour is such a good idea because we can get wide, beautiful shots of red light dancing along the ruined walls as the boy wanders aimlessly. 

The main downside with the golden hour is that it only lasts for 2 hours every day, giving us a very limited window to get to a location and film all the shots we want before it gets either too light or dark. 

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Location ideas

After considering the plot the next step when thinking about filmed was where are we going to actually film? This was a very important part for us as last year we used the school building because of how we weren't allowed to take the camera equipment off site. We found this rather restricting at the time and wanted to avoid this this year. 

Luckily we were informed that we could get insurance of a single camera to take off site. This opened up a world of opportunities as it allowed us the freedom of being able to film wherever, within reason. 

These are the locations that we thought of:

Balston Road – Road where Brad lives on, Long Street with a few street lamps. Dark ambiance at night time, rather creepy. Easy to get too apart from Sam due to him living in Wareham.

18 Balston Road – Brad’s house, has some good rooms and corridors for nice camera work. Would work well for the boy’s house.

Norden railway (abandoned, hopefully) – Would provide fantastic long shots. Filming during the golden hours would be difficult due to larger trees around the edge of parts of the railway preventing shots of the sky and light would be awkward. Has some old, rickety abandoned train cars, these could be used as accommodation for the boy and would be great.

Corfe Castle – Old castle, in ruins. Available to the public, however filming may be restricted. The public can get in the way. Filming during golden hours would yield fantastic results due to the castle being on the top of the hill.

Swanage Countryside – Wide open spaces with large, rolling hills. Could be rather difficult to gain entrance when laden with heavy, and expensive, equipment. 

Being able to film anywhere has its problems however. Legally we aren't able to turn up to a place with a camera and film whenever. Members of the public may not want to be filmed and as such would be a problem for us. We also have to think about safety of both the team as well as the equipment. I'm sure all of us would rather get ourselves hurt instead of the expensive camera however, priorities. 

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Crew and potential Cast

We have now assembled a team of possible cast members, this was mostly a brainstorm of people that I knew acted and/or were likely willing to help us out. We have not actually asked most of these candidates to be in the cast. These are merely people that i feel i could call upon should we need them. I have included a few sentences about each person and what they would be doing as well as a bit of background on each of them.

Production Team
Sam Yip - Editor, Cameraman
Enthusiastic member of the group who is a talented editor. Has lots of previous experience with Sony Vegas Pro at home, even though this isn't the software we will use the experience and skills will still prove very useful. As well as this he is good at camera work and has done some acting, notably in last years AS project.
Jack Wilson - Cameraman, Production Manager
The responsible member of the team, he is able to push people (especially me) to get the work that is needed done. Has some experience with editing and filming since he was on the team last year. 
Brad Sanders - Director,Cameraman
Myself. Since my idea was picked I have had to take the role of director of the project. I have ideas for a lot of the piece however there are still areas that i need help with from my fellow production team. 

Possible Cast
We do need people to act for us, while award winning performances are not necessary, we are only marked on the filming and editing aspects of the video. These are a list of people who we think would be good candidates however we will only need 2 or 3 actors for the entire film. These are currently ideas and no one has actually been asked to act yet. 

James Knight – Long friends, great actor and studies Drama at A level.
Alex Pilchowski – Same as James.
Eliot Nash - Has acted in previous films, eager to help and has an appearance that I believe fits the role well. 
Nicki Sanders (Brads Mother) – Need an abusive parent figure to cause for the boy to run away from home. Not the my mother is an abusive parent figure (help me) If she disagrees my father (Jim Sanders) is a good substitute. 
Roger Alcock (Brads Granddad) – He lives far north however will be coming to Poole for my birthday on the 18th December. He has a thick northern accent however since there is not dialogue this will not be an issue. He has long white hair and glasses. We all liked the idea of ending the film on a slightly happier note so we wanted an elderly man playing a guitar to signify how the boy had achieved his goals. My granddad happens to play bass guitar in a band as well and a small amount of classical guitar, making him an ideal choice for the role. The only issue being that he will only be available for 3 days. 

Abi Cutler – Talented actress, singer. Has experience with stage production.

Haley Foy – Has acted in media stuff before, old friend. 

I do not think that any female cast members would be needed outside of the parent, however i feel it is good to keep a few candidate ideas in case the plot changes in such a way that one is needed. 

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Current Plot

At this point we have a plot that I feel we are all happy with, some changes are likely to be made however I think that this is a good idea to work around. 

These are the working notes that we have been using. It includes a lot of ideas about camera angles as well as areas that will need input from the entire team to figure out.

Night, a young boy walking up a dark, dimly lit street and entering his house. – costume would be a thick coat. Looking at floor as he walks. Camera shot can be handheld and slightly shaky to match with him walking. Cut to a still establishing shot of the entire house. To begin with no one is on screen, boy will then walk up the street into shot and enter the house. This part should be filmed on tripod.

Boy enters house and is shouted at by mother – Match on action for when we cut from the wide shot of the entire house and the boy opening the front door to the corridor on the inside of the house. The door will be opened, boy walks in and instantly will be berated by off-screen parent. (Perhaps only the hands of the parent shouting will be shown, letting the audience know the boy is being screamed at, yet not showing the actual character.) After he is shouted at the boy will storm off towards his room. Camera changes to a wider shot of the sliding window door that leads into room. He enters the room before slamming the sliding door shut (Concerns about glass shattering can be handled by either speeding up the slam in post, or being very careful)

The boy will decide to run away, shots of him packing a bag with clothes followed by the same shot used earlier when he enters the house, however we show the boy exiting from the house with his bag. From here we will inter-lay shots of corfe castle and the other places he wanders once he has escaped. Any input from here would be excellent.

Towards the end of the film we wanted to try and include my granddad. He will be down from Newcastle for a few days in December and can play guitar.

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Target Audiences

The target audience of a music video really depends entirely on the piece of music that it is going with. A bright, vibrant video about teddy bears usually wouldn't go with a piece of death metal for example. This means we have to draw the tone and style of the music video from our choice of song. This can be a challenge for a team because of how subjective some aspects of translating tone from music into visuals can be. Different members of the team with have different ideas about what should be done. Compromises need to be found while at the same time not compromising the quality of the final product. 

Our song has a rather unique tone, this makes any attempt to classify a target audience that would enjoy it rather difficult. Target audiences also rely on using stereotypes which may not be accurate for everyone. In our case, Far Away has a slower, sad tone. To reflect this we want the music video to be slower and sad as well. 

To find our target audience we can look at other artists TA and use them to try and pinpoint ours. For example, Justin Bieber' TA is 12 -18 year old girls. His style of music is completely different to ours so we can pretty safely assume that our TA will not be 12 - 18 year old girls. When looking at similar artists i.e. Jamie Lidell and ashtar command  we can see that their TAs are the 16 - 30 range with an equal mix of male and female listeners. I think that our music video and song will fit perfectly into that same TA. 

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Artist Research

Jose Gabriel Gonzalez was born July 31 1978 in Gothenburg Sweden. He described growing up in a very small town of no more than half a million people. Gonzalez grew up listening to Latin folk and pop music, and has named Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez as a favourite artist. He said the first concert he went to was "The Wailers. I got their autographs and everything. I was about 12 or so. At the time my favourite music was Bob Marley and Micheal Jackson."

He played as a guitarist in a few different bands before getting picked up by the then fledgling label Imperial Records of whom Jose was their first official artist. He released his first album in October 2003 entitled 'Veneer'. He made the album while studying for a PhD in Biochemistry at the university of Gothenburg, which he has not completed since his music career has taken off. 

Gonzalez' trademark sound is soft solo vocals accompanied by a solo classical guitar. 

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About the Song

Far away is a song with a rather simple meaning that I feel was easy to find without being heavy handed in giving its message across. It's message is that no matter how much you try, goals are still far away. Hence the title of the song. No real goal is given in the lyrics, giving the message more of a general meaning. 

The only instrument that is used is acoustic guitar. This, accompanied by the slow tempo and sombre melody, gives the song a very lonely, sad tone. I think that the video should mirror this. We could achieve an effective mirroring of the tone of the song by simply showing loneliness and no real sense of direction in the main character.

There is a long instrumental section towards the end of the song. I think this will be a very important part of the song for us to get right.  Since there are no lyrics in this part the main focus of the audience will be what is on the screen. We will have to use this section to effectively give off the correct tone of the song. 

     

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Idea #4 - The Choice

Initially we had a few problems with deciding which idea to pick, each having its pros and cons, such as Sam's solid idea yet very iconic song or jack's original and perhaps too ambitious one. In the end we had to present these ideas to the rest of the class as a pitch, almost selling our ideas so that we could all agree on which on was best. 

We all presented our ideas using the slides (see previous posts) as well as verbally trying to get the inspirations we all had across to the rest of the class. In the end we all sat down and discussed which idea we were going to choose. 

And in the end my idea was chosen!

I am personally very happy about my choice being selected to continue with. I have so many ideas  on what the camera angles to use and locations. I really think that we can make an excellent film and achieve a top mark. 

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Idea #3 - Sam's Pitch

Sam chose a song that, personally, I am a massive fan of. He decided on 'My Way' by Frank Sinatra.


 

I really enjoyed the idea that Sam put forward, especially the location that he recommended. It would have fit perfectly for his idea and overall I feel is the strongest idea that has been put forward. We could use a lot of sweeping camera angles over the empty seats of the cinema that I feel would be effective and we could send a very powerful message with the song and the video together.

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Idea #2 - Jack's Pitch

Jack has decided to pitch the song 'Ecstasy of Gold' From 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'. He had the idea to make the music video as a western.

Personally I really like the premise. The song ebbs and flows very nicely, with some parts rather quiet and slow to then swell and grow. This would already set the tone for anything we do, forcing us to match the action on screen with the tone of the music. 

A location has already been proposed and will seem to fit perfectly however I have some concerns. It was described as a dusty heath land and I would perhaps have some reservations about taking expensive camera equipment there. 

Another concern is that a western is rather expensive and hard to make, especially for students like us. This is because of props and costumes we would need to make the film feel authentic. A full costume would have to be a duster jacket, hat, undergarments, shoes and a stetson. This is probably too much to set up, especially if we were to have multiple actors.

Despite the negatives, this idea would make us stand out from the crowd of others, setting us apart. If we were to pull it off properly it would be an amazing piece of work. However, it is pulling it off properly which would be the very hard part. 

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Idea #1 - My Pitch

The song idea that I came up with is a song called 'Far Away' by Jose Gonzales. Click here to listen to the song, I chose this because it has both a very slow, melancholic tone.

(CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

This is the presentation  that i used to pitch the song to the rest of the class. All of my thoughts are in the presentation.

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Ideas

Before starting the main project we had to decide on what to actually make. We were given a long list of possible options but in the end managed to narrow down our choice to a 5 minute film. Sam proposed an idea that we all liked of the 'locked room mystery' (LRM) . This idea seemed to be feasible because of how it is based on the idea of the audience not knowing what actually happened. Allowing us to use more editing and camera work to convey story. However, I felt that a good LRM would really require good acting, which is something we lack.

To try and get around this I suggested the idea of not having any dialogue in the piece, a choice that we had made last year and that had seemed to work rather well. This led naturally to me, personally, leaning towards changing our idea completely. I felt that a music video rather than a 5 minute film would work far better. I thought this way because it would allow us to both have no dialogue in the piece as well as setting the tone for us.

After some debate and some explaining my colleagues agreed that this would fit better, giving us both the creative freedom to do whatever we wanted while allowing us to not use dialogue at the same time. I think this means our camera work and editing will be what makes the final product great or a disaster. We all have previous experience so i feel like we can all step up to the plate and succeed.

Now we only have to choose which song to use....

Once again at loggerheads we settled on separating, making a presentation and pitching our song idea with a vote then deciding the final idea we use.  

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First Post

This is the first post on my new A2 Media Blog. Here is where I will post and archive all the work that I do over the next 6 months or so with the final aim to have a full and comprehensive blog that looks at how I have developed in both my skills and how I, along with my peers, have developed our media project. 
     

I am developing this project with the same people I did last year. This group of three contains myself, Jack Wilson and Sam Yip. 

































































































































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