over the past two lessons, we have been filming in the woods near the school, the boys toilet for the cave scene, (no seriously it worked very well), and then the art block for the ruin and then finally a classroom for the .....er......classroom scene.
filming went very well and we suffered little problems, apart from johnny and the pumpkin guy doing the kersal massive, but that was all in good fun and it won't appear on the main piece, though that would be a shame. either way we have succeeded.
Looking at our plans our group was planned on what we wanted to achieve in terms of footage and scenes were we shot. We did not write much down as there was no script required and we at the time was not sure on the shots that we were going to shot whilst in the locations as we would just record what looks good and hope we are being creative with what we shoot during our filming days.
In our final planning lesson which as been designated to designing the introduction we have. We had four main locations to film in which has to resemble one of these each, A Forrest, A Cave, A ancient ruins and a classroom The forest was our first location we found which was near the train track where there is a lot of trees which of course suits our forest location well The second location we found was the ancient ruins which is in the art block area. Its the best we could do with the limited places around school that resembles ruins(we don't mean that in a bad way). We then had a big problem trying to find somewhere which is cave like. We had to find something dark, which not much in. Finally we stumbled across the toilets in the photography area which is very dark and generally a good places for our cave scene. We did not bother looking for a classroom for our final scene as this is a school and so finding a classroom should be easy with many classrooms with no one in. Also we will have to use what ever classroom is free on the day we film the classroom scene we can find a free room on the day. We then discussed what we want our main character is a child known as Joe which i (jonny) reluctantly volunteered to play in the film. We have based him on the character from the child programme "recess" called Gus, he is the boy wearing glasses. So basically we are trying to create a character who is not really that "cool. Here is a video of recess in which you can see who Gus is.
A productiive lesson does not quite sum up how productive it was. After a big knuckle down we finally not only came up with an idea which we have now got officially planned, we now have a title for it and also a story board. The introduction is looking like it will take around one minutes 30 seconds. We plan to include three diffrent locations at minium, one being based if a green area e.g trees, another location will be in a 'cave' whih will either be in very dark room or under a table, whatever works best. Ad the last scene will be in a class room. We plan to have the kid narrating during the introduction which will be what he is thinking at the time (his imagination) The introduction will have three characters in it, one will be the teacher, another is the kid and the third is the 'monster'. Tomorrow we plan to get where we are filming these places set and also what will be happening in these scenes so for next week we will be able to just arrive film with no planning on the filming day and get it done. Here is a picture of our storyline
During the our second out of three lessons we have to plan for our child's film we actually had an idea that does not at any point mention Fidel Castro which is an achievement in itself. We were looking into the Lemony Snickkets and Ronald Dahl books for some "insperation' however while looking through some of the introductions to the films of the books by these two men we came up with a idea. It came from realising that in these books there is usually a non average person, this does not mean weird but that they can be more interested for example. They are sometimes escaping the real world somehow which they do not like into a world they prefer. By escaping the world we do not mean getting on a rocket but getting out of realism by example of imagination. So from realising this we came with the idea of a kid who dislikes school. He likes to imagine exploring places. The current idea we have for the introduction is that its showing this kid in these exotic locations for example in a forrest or cave. The camera does not show that the kid is actually only near some trees or under a table until the last bit of the introduction when also of a sudden while the kid is dreaming he is in these locations he hears someone yelling his name, all of a sudden the camera will show he is actually for example under a table and it will show him getting out and going to lesson. The reason we chose this genre which is adventure is because children enjoy that sort of genre as it can capture their imagination and its fun for them to see these weird places and ofcourse because the adventure genre suits all the criterea for the u or PG certificate. The way the certificate has influenced our creative choices is quite a lot, we had to chose from a smaller choice of genres which meant that some of our ideas would have to be scrapped when we were originally brain storming ideas due to not being suitable for the certificate.
Today we were brain storming ideas. Well we hoped to A few "jokey" ideas came about which included the idea of Fidel Castro - The early years. despite the prospect of this idea we felt this idea lacked the child film qunatities required of us. Another idea that came to mind included an idea influenced by recesss, mouse trap and a kid themed Ninja bonanza. However with two lessons left of planning we leave the room without a set idea to do. Maybe when ideas are scarce the Fidel Castro - early years does not seem so bad.
