Meet the crew -
This is our production crew for our sit-com assignment, the crew is made up of 6 members.
Me, Anya Lillie, Laura Hailes, Eden Hall, Lewis Rowe and Hashim Mahmood. Together as a production crew we will be creating two different shows. They are:-
- The Followers - Created by Laura Hailes
- Hardly Students - Created by Hashim Mahmood
Firstly, We all had to come up with an original idea for a sit-com and pitch the ideas to the rest of the class, only 4 got selected out of 12 ideas. I have been selected to work on the above sit-coms with directors Laura and Hashim.
My job roles for these shows are 1st assistant director & Editor on both sit-coms, this means I have the responsibilities of breaking down the script, working with the director, creating shooting schedules and managing the running of the set.
As I have the responsibility of being the editor, I will be editing all the footage together from both sit-coms to produce a final edit that will be screened to an audience. This edit includes multi-cam footage, Music and foley sound effects so I have the job of making that the audio and scenes from different cameras match up and that the correct sound effects are used.
As a very last minute change I was casted as Charlie in Lauras sit-com 'The Followers', this was due to the previous actor Victoria not being available at filming times and dropping out last minute. And also too all other actors saying that they were busy when we needed them. We made a quick change to the character and script to change the character from Charlotte to Charlie seeing as Victoria was a female and I am not, So it would of looked strange if I played a female character.
ON SET PHOTOS -
CLICK TO SEE THE FOLLOWERS ON INSTAGRAM
CLICK TO SEE HARDLY STUDENTS ON INSTAGRAM
28th - 31st January -
This was the first week we started work on our sit-coms, in this week we planned out our sit-coms and what we were going to do for them. We read through the scripts to understand what they were about and what was going on in them. This helped us to determine locations that we would need and also how many actors and extras that we would need to cast. We also did the first part of production paperwork this week, this included making a rough first production schedule, as can be seen below and also giving out crew job roles.
Making a production schedule is one of the main things that the first assistant director does, this was my job to plan out and create a schedule of what days we we're going to film, and also organise the times so that all actors and crew were available to film and be on set. This was difficult as peoples schedules were clashing as I was trying to plan. People couldn't film at certain times of the day due to things such as maths lessons, appointments and traveling to locations. I had to work around this and make a schedule where everyone was available at the same time to film. I also had to plan around the problem of not having access to our college corridor on some days of the week, this was due to exams taking place in our rooms. To combat this I made sure to plan to film scenes that were on location and not in college so that we didn't need to use the rooms, I also told crew members to take filming equipment home the night before filming to ensure that we had it prepared so that we didn't forgot anything and not have access to it as it would of been in college.
This was my first time making a shooting schedule, I found it quite hard in the beginning trying to try and fit the scenes into days of filming and making sure that all cast and crew were okay to film on certain days, but I ended up really liking this task and even though our production went over schedule by a couple of days, I thought that I did it well as the final schedule seemed to work and we mostly got the scenes we wanted to film filmed on the set day. Plus I now know how to do it for our next project.
During this week, we also did other paperwork such as risk assessments, camera plans, location lists and studio designs which are all essential in a TV show production.
One of the final things we did this week was select a cast for our sit com, we also put out a casting call on our departments facebook group to ask if anyone would like to be an extra in the show. This only partly worked as only a few people replied. Laura and Hashim messaged people directly to see if they would be extras. We also had to schedule around the actors and extras college timetable to make sure we didn't plan to film when they were in a lesson.
Megan - Anya Lillie
Bradley - Archie Harbottle
Charlotte - Victoria Thomas
This then ended up changing as Victoria dropped out, we had to change the character Charlotte to Charlie as I was now the new actor as no one else actor wise was available, I have never really acted before so this was a new experience. We chose Anya and Archie as we thought they fit the roles well with their personalities.
Part of the planning that took place this week was planning locations to film at, we had to do this for both sit-coms. Choosing locations was easy but getting the time and permission to film at them was the hard part. We choose to film in college, Laura's house and outside in a street for 'The Followers' and college, in a street, outside a house, a classroom and corridor for 'Hardly Students'. We choose our locations as made a location detail list for our production folder, we then planned what times we were going to film at these locations. This was tricky as we could only film at houses at certain times due to parents and siblings being at home and only film in the studio when it wasn't being used by another group or the second years who were filming a project at the time. Using our shooting schedule and choosing appropriate times to use the house we came up with a set time to shoot.
Shooting at locations went mostly smoothly apart from a few problems such as moving from Laura's house to Anya's house due to not being allowed to film at Laura's and some of the equipment not fitting in her bedroom such as the dolly which is quite large.
Monday 4th February -
This day was a day of working hard to finish off paperwork, which included risk assessments for the next days and rest of the weeks shoots. We did end up getting this done. It was also a day spent to getting prepared to shoot our first scene the next day. I made a shooting schedule over the weekend, and showed the team it on this day, we made a few alterations to make it easier to fit scenes in and work around locations and actors.
We confirmed shooting times with actors and extras and made sure the crew knew what we were filming and where we were filming it for the next day.
Tuesday 5th February
This was our first day on set of 'The Followers', filming was planned to start at around half 12 midday, this didn't end up happening due to actors and extras being late to set. While we were waiting we set up the filming equipment in our locations at college, this was a classroom and the corridor outside it. The actors arrived and went to the green room to get their makeup done, this took longer than expected so crew were left waiting around in the classroom ready to film. Hashim (our set designer) earlier in the day went to the classroom with director Laura to make it look how they wanted.
They moved desks and tables, put a powerpoint on the whiteboard and set out props such as pencil cases and folders to make the set look like a realistic classroom. After finally getting their makeup done, the actors came down to the classroom to film. Me and director Laura spoke through the script with the actors to make sure they knew how to perform it. We got everyone in place and started to film. We shoot a few practice scenes to get a feel for the set and audio.
This was a good idea as while doing this we noticed there was a buzzing sound in the audio which sound manager lewis picked up on. After resolving the problem by changing a few settings on the camera we filmed the scene properly. We did around 5 takes to make sure everything in frame was right and that the actors said the right lines of the script.
After filming in the classroom, we then moved outside to the corridor. We set up the dolly so that we could have a shot of the actors walking towards the camera while it slides back.
The extras had left for the day.
This shot consisted of Archie and Anya walking down the corridor talking about the 'party' later on in the show. It was now later on in the afternoon around half 4, when shooting in the corridor at this time we ran into a few small problems, these were things such as members of SRC staff walking past and getting in the frame of the shot when finishing for the day and also cleaners using loud equipment like hoovers which you could hear when shooting.
A 5 minute scene soon turned into a 2 hour shoot, after finally getting some useable footage we wrapped up shooting for the day, ending at around half 6. Way over the expected end time for the day. We learned from this that me must make more time on the next shoot for things like makeup which took longer than we were expecting.
Wednesday 6th February
Today was the day of filming our 'Set' scene, this scene was located in the green room, as the green room had a huge green-screen in the background of our shot me and Lewis decided to help design the set with set design manager Hashim. Me and Lewis put up a black background and stapled it to the wall, this gave us a blank canvas to work with just like a real black wall. I then thought it would be a good idea to print out the logo used on our characters costume to use as the 'schools' logo in the show and pin it to the wall to make it look like a school common room. We put a few desks, folders, a clock, and a sofa into the shot to give it a common room feel.
We scheduled to shoot first thing when college started on the morning, this was around half 9 in the morning, we didn't start shooting until around half 10 as our actor Victoria was late to set and she had to get her makeup done by the makeup team. Anya and Victoria went over their lines while me and the crew got the filming equipment fully set up. When everyone was ready we began to film, filming didn't take to long, we took several takes and changed the script a little while on set to make the scene feel more natural and less scripted. The final shot ended up looking good and we had two different angles as we used a multi-cam setup. This scene didn't end up being used in the final edit due to the change in cast. We reshot this scene later.
Friday 8th February
This day was planned to be one of our main shooting days, we had planned to shoot most of the scenes of the sit-com on this day. All of the planned scenes were on location, this was planned to be in Laura's house. The scenes didn't end up being shot in Laura's house as it was to small in some places and we ended up having to leave as her parents didn't want us all filming in the house. Laura and Lewis took the filming equipment home the night before so that it was ready for shooting the next day.
On the morning of filming, as Lewis drives he did the team a favour and went to collect the actors from college and brought them to set. Crew members slowly showed up to set one by one, We scheduled to start filming at 10:30AM, this was going to work until we got some awful news that one of our main actors Victoria who was playing Charlotte couldn't make it this day and was backing out of the role. This was a major problem and something that we didn't want to happen. We were all very stressed by this. While I was on my way to set I got a phone call off director Laura. She was very stressed that her actor had backed out at the very last minute. She had explained that she had asked everyone she knew to cover for Victoria and be an actor in 'The Followers', but everyone was either busy or didn't want to do it. This led to her asking me to do it, I said yes as I knew how important it was to get this sit-com shot and sticking to the schedule. This is the point in which Laura edited the script so that the character was now 'Charlie' and not 'Charlotte'. While I was traveling to set, the crew got the set designed AKA Laura's bedroom. They took down things that wouldn't look right in the show and added props that could represent the characters personalities.
Once I arrived, we had a team meeting and discussed how we were going to deal with the loss of one of our main actors Victoria. This is when Laura explained how she was changing Charlotte to Charlie to fit me better.
After the meeting we were ready to finally start filming, the cameras were set up and Lewis was testing the sound. We had planned to use the dolly to get a sliding shot of the actors talking, we couldn't do this as it wouldn't fit in the set which was Laura's bedroom. We just changed this shot to a steady shot on a tripod with the camera zoomed in a little. We got a scene and a half done and then took a lunch break, at this point it was around 1:30PM, Lewis drove us to McDonalds and after we had to stop to get Ollie who was playing the weirdo who turns up to the party uninvited. He turned up earlier than expected which meant we had to change the schedule around a little so that it meant we filmed his scene first so that he could leave. During lunch Laura decided that we needed a larger set to film in as her bedroom just wasn't working and we weren't getting the shots we had planned for.
The makeup artists then arrived at Anya's house to do makeup for the party scene, they took a long time to do this which made us end up doing the scene a lot later than planned but we did eventually end up getting it filmed quite fast. While the makeup artists were working on the actors Me, Eden, Laura and Hash set up Anya's kitchen to look like there was a party happening in it. One makeup and set design was done we could now get on with shooting the scenes, Anya's house was a much better location to film in due to the extra space, this meant that we could use the equipment which we had planned to use in the first place. Shooting then finally started to go smoothly apart from the cuts we had to do every 5 minutes when we forgot our lines.
Overall the day didn't go as smooth as we wanted it to at all, but we powered through with everything that went wrong and still got 3 scenes shot in one day. We turned an awful day into a successful and productive one. We went home and talked in the group chat about shooting the next scenes on the next scheduled shooting day.
Tuesday 12th February
This was the first day of filming for Hashim's sitcom 'Hardly Students', We shot scene 1 which was the scene where the characters are in the detention room, we used the 'Studio' for this scene which was in our green room. The set design team set the room up so that it looked like a detention room, this included setting up desks, a clock, a backdrop and other props. Me and the other crew members set the equipment up to be ready to film. Once the actors were in uniform and learnt their lines we started to film. We did a few takes and some of us kept laughing at the lines. Overall the shoot of scene 1 only took around an hour and went a lot smoother than we thought it was going too.
On this day we planned to re-shoot the common room scene for 'The Followers' using me as the character sat next to any instead of the original take which had Victoria in it. We did go ahead and do this, the set design team tried to set the set up to how it looked in the original take with Victoria, they did a good job at this and made it look the same. We then reshot the scene, it took longer than we wanted because of me and Anya laughing, because we get along so well it was hard to act serious together as we always laugh at everything. After a few takes we finally got the shot we wanted with the script being said out loud properly with no laughing.
On this day we also filmed for 'Hardly Students', We wanted to get a few scenes filmed on this day but we had to change this as Victoria said she couldn't come again. We filmed scene 4 but in a different location than the intended one, we used the dance studio instead of the cafe as it was really busy and you wouldn't of been able to hear the actors talking on the recording. The dance studio worked just as well. This scene got filmed quite quick one the actors had remembered what they were saying.
Monday 25th February
This week was the week were we had just come back from our half term holiday break, we were all now well rested and ready to get this project finished, we were motivated to get it finished within this week. We were going to film in the week holiday break but decided that we should all just have a rest from a very stressful two weeks of filming and just focus on our personal assignment paperwork for the week. When we came back to college we got started on filming the final scenes for both sit-coms, we needed to go back to Anya's house to finish the scenes that we filmed there before. But Anya wasn't able to let us film in her house due to personal reasons. As we couldn't use this location we had Kelly help us change the script so that it would work by filming it in college. We decided as a team that we would just just the college toilets instead of the toilet in Anya's house, this didn't end up working as the toilets were way to busy to be filming in, we tried the disabled toilet so that we could lock the door to make sure no one could come in but we couldn't fit the actors and essential crew members in it at the same time. So we finally changed the location to the dance studio as we knew it had large mirrors we could use to get a cool shot of us getting ready in the morning ready for the metaphorical school day ahead of us.
After this scene we had one last scene to shoot, this was scene 6 where the characters are at Megan's house talking about the party that is happening on the night, as we couldn't use Anya's use we needed another house to film in. Our sound manager Lewis kindly let us use his house to shoot the scene in. Four of us drove there in his car and took the equipment and the other crew members got the bus. We all got there in about 25 minutes and we got the filming equipment set up in his kitchen. The shoot was straight forward and we stuck to the original lines of the script. The scene took around 25 minutes to film so we got done quite quick. We then headed back to college to do the other scene.
After this scene it was now officially a wrap for 'The Followers'.
26th February - 1st March
These days were spent finishing paperwork off for the production folder but also for editing, I started to put together all the footage that we had. This was part of my job as editor. This project was different to anything I had edited before as I had to edit together multi-camera footage, even though it was my first time doing this I think that I did a good job and are happy with how it turned out. It took me around 4 days to make a final edit of one of our sit-coms, this was 'The Followers' as we had finished shooting and had all the footage from this show first. I had to take over 200 separate footage clips and make it into the 9 minute finished video that it ended up being.
I also colour graded a few of the scenes to make them more realistic as the colours were off due to the white balance not being set when shooting making the scenes look very cold in colour. I fixed this when colour grading to make them look more vibrant and warm. Just how they looked in real life.
Wednesday 27th February
This day was the last day of filming for 'Hardly Students', as Victoria and the rest of the crew were available to film this day we decided to jus go out and get the scenes filmed instead of sitting in college trying to schedule a date to film.
We got all the filming gear and took it near the lake, we choose this location last minute as it looked like the right place to shoot and it was a very nice day outside so we wanted to film outside in the sun.
We ran into a few problems such as actors not knowing their lines, to combat this we thought it would be a good idea for Conrad to have his headphones in the scene so it looks like he is listening to music but what was actually happening was Hashim was on the phone to him reading his lines out loud to him for him to say when shooting. This worked quite well and we got through the scene. We then moved to our next location which was the outside of Danniella's flat, we used this as we needed a front door to use for the scene where the boys visit Lauren at her house. We were going to film at Toms house but this was going to be tricky to get to as we would have had to take the equipment on the bus with us. So Danniella let us film at hers at it was just around the corner from college. Tension was rising on set when we arrived at Danniella's as actors and crew were very stressed and tired from filming all day. Hashim and Lewis had a little argument but as a team we just carried on filming so that we could get the scenes done in time. We then shot the scenes and they went pretty good.
Once these scenes were shot it was now officially a wrap on the set of 'Hardly Students'.
Final Products -
The Followers -
Hardly Students -
