Week One

It was time to receive my first initial introduction at the Green Lecture Theatre in the Octagon Building. Nervous on what to expect, I was relieved to know that everybody seemed to be in the same situation. Reality struck when I entered the lecture theatre to be greeted by what would become my tutors and lecturers.

We were told the basic layout of our course, with the breakdown of the modules, and were given the opportunity to ask any questions that we had. Given I had 1001 questions I could've asked, I decided to keep quiet and let myself absorb everything around me, before overthinking and questioning every detail.

Task One -

Recreate a Scene from a film on a budget and no resources - Oh.. in one hour!

Our very first task was a practical one. We were asked by one of our tutors Paul Ottey to team up into groups, to recreate a scene from any film, but on a basic budget with no resources. As if that wasn't enough of a challenge, we were also told that we would have only one hour to film, including taking the equipments and bringing it
back on time.

Our group consisted of three people, Matt, Charlotte and myself. We sat down to discuss all the possible film scenes we could do. In barely any time at all, we had already come to the decision that we were to re-create the very first scene of James Bond's Casino Royale.

We decided to watch the relevant scene, and analyse the fine details that we would like to include in our very own version, including 'Screen Shots' that we belived were crucial to keep it dedicated to the original such as -

We believed that this scene was ideal for our recreation as it included very little special effects / CGI and relied mainly on dialogue. Although the location is stated in the opening scene, the buildings seemed rather annonymous, which made it easier for us to find the perfect locations within the University Campus.

Once we had settled on our idea, and what elements we were going to include, it was time for us to dive deeper into the planning process...

We decided to give each other tasks on which we would complete on our next meeting as a group.

Charlotte - Given the task of story board

Matt - Given the task of Scripting

Myself - The task of arranging locations and also searching for two actors to take part.

Sanj Singh Dhadda

Sam Estall

As a part of my task, I had to try and find two volunteers from the university that were willing to do some acting work, playing roles within our recreation. This was a challenging task being a fresher/newbie as I was unaware of the University Campus and knew very little people. Therefore i had to think of a way of engaging with fellow students in the hope we would find someone that would help.

I decided that I was to create a form of advertisment for the roles via Facebook, on both Staffordshire Uni Tech Group & Staffordshire Freshers Group. I was fortunate to recieve two responses from students, in which I was able to make new friends, whilst also making new contacts for future references!

Along with arranging volunteers to act in our re-creation, I also had to ensure that we had suitable locations.
Bearing in mind that the original film scene is set in an office location including flash backs to a bathroom, we needed to ensure that we had similar locations to shoot in.

I ended up arranging with Legends Lounge Manager, to make sure that we had permission to film in the club bathroom. We were luckily given permission, and that it would be available for us for the following day.

Shooting Day

This is where time definitely wasn't on our side, therefore we had to make sure that we were using it wisely. We decided that certain parts of our short clip required more attention than other parts, therefore we dedicated more filming time for these. We would have to edit these clips into order later on.

Only having a twenty minute session on the camera before hand to learn the basics, we had to use our heads and improvise slightly during the filming. We chose to take it all in turns to use the camera, and suggest our ideas on the best way to film. That gave us all a chance to experience the camera first hand, and slowly learn the process of how to shoot a film. The challenge of only having an hour, gave us a good idea of how to work under pressure, and keep within time, and definitely became an eye opener for us, and myself personally.

Editing