Kodak Awards - 'Time' Progress Update - Costumes 2

This is the second update in relation to our costume situation. In my previous post I discussed the progress we had made in terms of costumes for our production. This week we have made great progress into the creation of our costumes in time for the shoot that we needed them for. A few days ago I left two fur coats with my flatmate who is a textiles student. She agreed to help me cut the coats up and fashion them into fur clothing to fit a caveman and cavewoman. I am extremely pleased with the results. Below are some examples of what we came up with. 

Progress Update - Kodak Awards Shoot 1

Yesterday we completed our first shoot of the project, at Preston park for the Victorian sequence. I was extremely nervous before the shoot as this was the first time I had ever shot anything on film and I was ready to direct the scene. So after what was an absolutely dreadful start to the day which included ruining the museum property by off-roading onto the grass, leaving deep tyre marks, we got into the shoot. Fortunately enough the guy came around. At first he was furious, threatening myself and the producer by potentially not allowing us to shoot inside the museum. Rightly so, as we were entirely at fault. I thought we handled the situation very well under the circumstance. We tried to be as professional and as apologetic as we could. We collected £10 from everyone in the crew as a gesture of good will and as a donation to the museum, which the guy declined. Fortunately he saw our sincerity and even said we were welcome to shoot again. I couldn't be any more grateful and in retrospect I'm a little disappointed we didn't insist he took the money for the museum. It was such a perfect place to shoot for free, with access to a wide range of period costumes we were so hoping to find. 

After a complete misunderstanding with one of the actors who didn't turn up (turns out he thought it was the 29th we were shooting) we decided to cast a crew member. Turned out to be a fantastic decision as the character he was playing was an artist, and the member of the crew we chose happened to be the only talented artist amongst us. There's another lesson to be had there in that our communication via emails with actors could be improved upon. I'm yet to learn whether we were at fault when coming up with the shoot dates, that will be looked into very soon. Below is an image of our crew member all dressed up in victorian attire on set, which we experimented with on the day. We had a few options but in the end I opted for a blazer and shirt combination with a matching bowler hat which finished the costume off very nicely. 

The technical aspects of the shoot seemed to go very smoothly. The most daunting aspect is that the shoot went as well as a shoot can go, but from a digital filmmaker that might mean nothing once this footage is processed. There's a lot of suspense on a shoot using actual film as I found out, as every second that runs through the camera costs money. Money we have very little of. It's been drilled into us over the past few months of lectures and discussions about film that we need to be extremely strict with our timing and with our aperture. The production log was extremely effective on set, the producer managed to pick up every pro or con from each shot which included one accidental run of the film for a few seconds. Hopefully that means we know we had enough useable footage and successful takes. We found using the light meter easy enough as myself and a few others had previously used it when we had shot footage on a super 8 camera. I'd also spoken to a few fellow filmmakers about it, and I'd previously been on the set of a 16mm film shoot where I witnessed light meters in use which was helpful. Below are a few images of the cast and crew in action. 

Kodak Awards - Progress Update - Window (Cancelled Shoot)

Yesterday we were scheduled to shoot 'Window' in Sunderland, at 6PM. I have had a busy few days, this morning I travelled back to Glasgow to the uni so I could load the film into the camera for tonights shoot. I was incredibly nervous in doing so, this is the first time I will have loaded the film into the camera. As I am director on the other advert 'Time' it was not my duty to load the film. Despite my nervousness I recalled all that I had been taught over the past few weeks and applied that knowledge. Luckily I had recorded a tech demo from one of our lecturers on my phone, so when I was loading the film I was able to look back on that. 

Loading the film itself is obviously very tricky first time around as you can't see a thing you're doing with your hands inside the bag. It took me the good part of half an hour to find my way around the mag which was inside the bag and to successfully load the film. Once I had loaded it, we were ready to go. The crew had loaded the equipment into the car ready to drive to the set where the actors were already waiting. Then a bit of a problem occurred. 

We realised we had loaded the wrong film. Whilst I am partly responsible for this (if I'd checked which film I was loading, I would have maybe realised) at the same time we would have had to cancel shoot anyway. Long story short the wrong film stock was handed to us, the wrong one had been removed from the fridge a few hours prior and the right one had been left in. The film stock I had loaded was the 250D stock used to shoot in daylight settings. This stock was to be used on the 'Time' advert I was directing. The right stock to load would have been the 500T stock used to shoot in low light situations. Despite loading the wrong film we couldn't shoot anyway as we didn't have time to remove the 500T stock from the fridge and wait a few hours. 

Needless to say the director and producer of the advert were very frustrated, they had organised this whole shoot only to cancel. There is nothing we could have done on the day however, so for them it was back to planning another shoot at another date. For me there was a valuable lesson in this, to always check your film stock before loading. Another positive I took from it was that my film stock was successfully loaded. The 250D stock is to be used on Monday for a shoot. This basically meant I didn't have to worry when it came to Monday, the stock was loaded into the camera and ready to go!

Kodak Awards - 'Time' Progress Update - Costumes

This is my first progress update in a few weeks. Things have picked up and we shoot our first scenes at Preston park on Monday 28th November. We will be shooting the Victorian sequence there and with a bit of luck everything will run smoothly. The main challenge over the past few weeks has without a doubt been the effort of getting actors and also getting costumes for the production. We needed eight people to cast in total; 4 male and 4 female all around the same age range of 18-25. This is always difficult with a student production. As we've found from past experiences, actors either see it as an unreliable production or they themselves are unreliable. I've found its mostly the latter. However this time around with us reaching out to a theatre group, we've had a lot of responses. We've managed to just about cast for all of the available positions as we're due to begin shooting a few of our scenes next week. Hopefully no one drops out last minute. 

Since our location scout to Preston park last Thursday my primary focus has been on gathering costumes. The reason being that costumes are to play a huge part in the advert, as we have numerous period pieces going on one after the other. I contacted the costume department at CCAD to see if they had anything I needed. One of the lecturers told me to come over for a chat and so that I could have a look around to see if there was anything we could lend. Upon visiting I found two outfits that will help us immensely. I found a roman soldiers outfit which I have provided pictures of below. This is a full armour outfit that can be used for our Roman soldier scene, which is to be shot at Arbeia roman fort in South Shields. It is very appropriate to the setting and even better, it is adjustable, meaning that we can make it fit the actor depending upon their size. 

Furthermore we managed to also get a large piece of fur that we can use in the caveman/cavewoman scene, also from the costume department. Despite this, I didn't see it as anywhere near enough. We needed two full costumes for a caveman and cavewoman, that are going to look convincingly neanderthal. I decided to call in a couple of favours. Whenever I need something I look to my mother who has a large network of friends who usually have whatever I'm asking for lying around unused. So my mother asked around if anyone had any fur coats, or just fur itself that they wouldn't be needing. I ended up with two fur coats that I could cut up or do what I wanted with. I spoke to my flatmate who is a textiles student and she's agreed to help me cut up the fur and fashion it into a bra, a skirt and a range of fur style accessories for both the man and woman. I'm going to take the coats into the textiles room with her on Wednesday, a week away from the shoot and we're going to see what we can come up with. This was all another ingenious student method of saving money on a production I really want to see do well!

Visual Culture Research & Inspirations & The Concept

The Concept
The concept for my creative piece will explore the themes of identity and representation. I will attempt to document the struggles a man has with his masculinity in contemporary society. By doing this I will be linking my creative piece to my essay, where I am exploring these ideas theoretically and where they exist in cinema. 

My creative piece will make great use of colour. I will use often overbearing powerful colours such as bright red and dark navy as signifiers and visual motifs. These colours are used to represent masculinity in a range of ways. 

The narrative of my creative piece follows a man in an ordinary office job. He is so angered, depressed and defeated by his current status in society because deep down he knows he isn't the man who he wants to be. In many ways he is leading a false life, leading him into an identity crisis. The man one day decides to rebel against what is expected of him, and what is expected of men in society in general. He realises his own need to be free from the shackles of society, because those around him will never accept him for who he is. In the end he reverts to becoming a woman. Something he always imagined himself as inside. He escapes to the seaside where he is as far away from society and the inland expectations as he possibly can be. 

Below I have linked some visual inspirations from the films 'Interstellar' and '2001: A Space Odyssey'. I love the uses of overbearing colours in both of these scenes, particularly in association with the close ups.

What is Hegemonic Masculinity?
-dominant form of masculinity in our society
-culturally valued the most
-qualities include heterosexuality, whiteness, physical strength, suppression of emotions

Hegemonic: The Driver (Drive) - Nicolas Winding Refn (2011)

Traits of The Driver;

• Instinctive. 
• Emotionally Unavailable.
• Physically strong. 
• Brave. 
• Calm and Composed in the face of danger. 
• Heterosexual. 
• Manual labourer. 

What is Marginalised Masculinity?
-cannot fit into the hegemonic because of certain characteristics like race
-still subscribe to norms of hegemonic masculinity like physical strength and aggression
-men of colour or men with disability

Marginalised: Jake Sully (Avatar) - James Cameron (2009)


Traits of Jake Sully; 

• Mentally strong
• Physically handicapped
• Self-dependent 
• Down on his luck

What is Complicit Masculinity?
-man doesn’t fit characteristics of hegemonic masculinity but doesn’t challenge it
-often admires the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity

Complicit: Theodore (Her) - Spike Jonze (2014)

Traits of Theodore;

• Caring. 
• Affectionate. 
• Heterosexual. 
• Charismatic. 
• Confident.
• Lonely. 
• Brooding.

What is Subordinate Masculinity?
-exhibit qualities that are the opposite of those values in hegemonic masculinity
-may exhibit physical weakness or be very expressive with emotions
-gay or effeminate men

Subordinate: George (A Single Man) - Tom Ford (2009) 

Traits of George;

• Emotional. 
• Vulnerable. Homosexual. 
• Timid. 
• Intellectual. 
• Non-Manual labour. 

Kodak Time Progress Update - Auditions

Yesterday we held auditions in the uni looking for potential actors and actresses for the project. Last week we approached a theatre group to see who would be interested in auditioning for the roles on Facebook. We had a large quantity of responses at once, so we decided to hold a full open day for those auditioning to come in whatever time they saw fit between half 9 and half 5. It turned out to be a long day but one that was totally worth it as we ended up a lot of options between the 3 groups. 

Going into the auditions I was worried we wouldn't be able to find 8 actors for the paperchase advert I'm directing. I had hoped for 4 actors and 4 actresses to each fill the roles of the caveman/cavewoman, the roman man and woman, the victorian man and woman and the modern man and woman. I've planned ahead incase we didn't get 8 altogether by coming up with a compromise where one actor and one actress would play all of the different characters. This is not at all how I want things to go but I always think its good to have a backup plan. I explained this to everyone who auditioned and all seemed very happy to play all of the characters if it came to it. 

The auditions themselves were rather awkward. Unlike the casting process for an actual short film where you have a script. In that situation you can ask the actors to act out a scene naturally. For these adverts there is no script, so the audition requirements were purely physical and only for around 10 seconds. It seemed a bit degrading as that was all they had to do and many of the people had travelled to get to the auditions but I suppose thats the way it goes. I'm very happy with the amount of people that turned up and they all seemed eager to be involved in some way. 

Fortunately we still have a few people to audition. A few actors couldn't make the auditions in person so agreed to hold auditions over Skype at one point this week, or for them to record themselves auditioning and then send that to us. We are continuing our preparations for costumes and locations this week. Combined with the casting decisions we will be making over the following few days, things are shaping up very nicely as we approach shooting dates.