The production team of city drama is officially formed as we found our male leading actor. At this early stage, we are all a bit at loss, unorganized, but we follow our instinct; and I am glad that we have Sylvia who’s experienced in this type of filmmaking of this size before. Since I’ve only just finished the complete script yesterday, we couldn’t set the exact shooting plan and prepare much for the film. Nevertheless, we did as much as we could at this stage several days prior today.

The meeting on Monday was helpful for us to get everything on our hands and make a start for the project. We further elaborated on the schedule sketch we did on the 15th and tried to look at several issues regarding the production. Here’s the sketch:

Roles:

  • Director: Jialu
  • Cameraman: Rachel
  • Audio: Sylvia
  • Editor: Sylvia
  • Sound Design : Jialu
  • Script: Jialu
  • Production Manager : Rachel

Pre-production ：

  • Jialu ： Script
  • Sylvia :  Storyboard
  • Rachel : English help

Issues:

Male actor; Location; Costume; Weather; Prop; Seaside scene; Budget; Timeline

During the discussion, I just found out how extensive the work was. The script I wrote was expected to be really long as much as a 5-7 minute film. I knew my plan was going for that length, but I didn’t realize the complexity and the work load we might get for I thought its was only a little bit longer than a 3-4 minute film. I’ve always been a person who does believe in the word “impossible”. I believe in aliens, science and wrap-speed spaceships. I believe in dreams coming true, love and ideas altering the world. I believed that we could do anything. It was Sylvia and Rachel who mentioned that the script is too long to realize it with good quality in screen in a month’s time. I didn’t quite get what they meant on Monday until today. In one month, we need to write up the script, find locations, get releases, find an actor, draw storyboards, gather equipments, film, record voiceovers and sounds, edit the video, do the sound design with soundtrack. It’s ok if we don’t have other school work, but we do have other courses. Nevertheless, I now think we should stick with it since we picked “City Drama” the first thing. I think I can concentrate fully on the film as I am the one who came up with this idea. Sylvia and Rachel are really great that they stick with the plan too even when they realize the amount of workload.

I also find that we need to be more organized. Organisation is vital for us to keep on track of what we need to do and progress smoothly with the production. Although I’ve wrote up most of the scripts, I am still a bit at loss since I’ve been too immersed in the story while ignoring the actual production aspect. What we did on Monday was to grasp a bit control on the pre-production preparation. We’ve not been doing enough due to the lack of organization of our group. In addition, we can also benefit as it keeps group members close, levels up efficiency. It is like logic which ensures us for clearer thoughts and reasonable decision making.

As for today, the class was about lighting. Being introduced to three types of still lights, I was happy to gain more knowledge in using lights for filmmaking. It enables me to put more thoughts on the matter for filming and analyse more critically of the single shots. I wouldn’t say I can already do that, but I will try my best to notice the slight difference in lighting that perfects the shots a bit more. The devil’s in the detail, I suppose.

Robin suggests us to make the film in Chinese as it clearly has a Chinese background to the story. This enlightens me. Every decisions we make in the approach to the film is important to from the film style. The control of style is vital for else the film would look segmented, dis-oriented, boring, and even wrong. The theme and feeling that I was trying to express was generated from my point of view. As I am from mainland China, the script inevitably possesses an aura of that specific society.

Now what I need to do is to translate the script “back” to Chinese and get things more organized with Sylvia and Rachel. Still in the pre-production process… Wish us luck!