The Commissioning Process

 As a writer your job is one of the most difficult as what you are writing is purely your work/ idea so have to sit and think about what it is you're writing and whether or not it will catch the readers attention. It is also very time consuming as you have to be in the right frame of mind to sit and write for a few hours. Different writers do it differently; some choose to sit and just go for it and others set themselves a time in the day dedicated to writing and working in general. When the writer finishes their script they may wish to sell it, which means they will have to get an agent to work with them on getting it produced. If they were to sell this to a studio they would get paid an amount depending on how much they want it. Not all writers get this treatment, but you will find all writers who have made a successful sript will get paid for it. The writer will also get paid through royalty fees when the film/TV show is shown as it was their idea.

If you're writing a script you have to mindful of what you are writing. Writers will do heavy amounts of research into what they're writing to see if has been done or someone else has already had the idea. This would cause a lot of legal issues and could end up in fines for plagiarism. They would also have to mindful that what they're writing is not offensive, racists or otherwise inclined to insult or hurt anyone. 

If the writer is lucky enough to have their script published then they will have to worry about  regulatory bodies such as OFCOM. What OFCOM do is look at what you have written and apply censorship, the watershed  and libel laws. Censorship is making sure that any violence and swearing would be either gotten rid of or it would simply been shown after the watershed. The watershed is the time of day when offensive or violent programmes can be shown. The watershed is 9 in the evening which means that people of the right age will only be up. Libel laws are to balance the right of free speech against protection for the reputation of an individual from unjustified attack." what this means is that if you would create a story about a real person then any real events that you use have to be very accurate especially of the person is shown in a negative light. The writer who wrote 'Wolf of Wall Street' was sued as the story wasn't completely accurate.

Script commissioning 

A commissioning body who is an organisation or studio who decides what can and can't been shown on TV and what ideas can and can't be made into films.

Company - BBC Writers room 

Writers room is a very useful forum type website where writers of any age and ability can upload a script for the consideration of the BBC writers to see whether their idea can be made into a TV or not. The writers would then be contacted about the use of their script. The people who read these scripts will read the first few pages and if they're not interest it will be discarded.

Competition - Script Pipeline

Script pipeline is a screenwriting competition much like the BBC writers room which tasks writers of any skill level to submit their script with a chance of it being developed further. The current script pipeline competition that is running has a deadline of March 1st 2016 and an entrance fee of $50 (£34) [4] The person who wins the competition gets a lump sum;

Journey of a script

A script starts off as being written then sent off by the writer to hopefully be accepted to make into a TV show. Most writers are self employed and don't work for a company or institution. This means that they can work in their own time without any pressure for a deadline. A good example of a screen write is Steven Speilberg who wrote Jaws and Indiana Jones. Then the literary agent who is the person who then helps the writer produce their script and make sure that they are paid correctly and aren't conned. They also very well educated in the market and will help writers the best they can.

Script Editor:

The script editor is the person who works with the producer to make sure that the script doesn't turn into a different story or that it loses it's pace to keep it as interesting as possible. Kate Leys is a good example of an editor as she edited Trainspotting. Sometimes writers will make complaints about sctipt editors as they during this process they may end up making the script into something else. This can cause a lot of problems with reputation as it will be the writer who is blamed if the film is then boring as they cannot revoke their name from the script

More often than not the writer and director are the same person so the script will then have to go back through it to see whether they still think that they can make it in the way they want. The reason for this is that they writer is the est person to visualise what they want the production to look like. A good example would be George Lucas with Star Wars which was also controversial as the finished product was only a small part of his original idea.

The role of the writer in pre-production and production.

When the script is then finished and everyone is happy with he end product the writer will do a page lockdown which basically means that the pages are done and they are the final draft and the one that will be used in filming. The director will then go forward and work out a plan of attack so to speak. The writer will almost always be invited to the set to make sure that the production is what they want it to be. The it's over to the cast and crew to make the production a reality.

Job roles in the commissioning process:

Commissioning editors

These are the people who decide what scripts are good enough for production

Directors

These are the people in charge of making their vision a reality

Script editors

 They work along with the writer and suggest any changes 

Agents:

Agents are the people who help the writers get their scripts published

Writers

The scripts writer who wants their idea to be a full scale production.

Corporations

Groups of people who work in the industry to make productions

Independent production companies

These are pretty much corporations but on a smaller scale and make their own films within them.

Independent directors or producers

These people have just started out in the industry and are trying to get their names out here so they can grow

Organizations

These are media groups who publicise a writers idea

Competitions

BBC writers room is an example of a competition


Pre-production planning

This is when the script has been chosen and they then need a plan to start 

Director or producer involvement

The director will attend all the meetings about the script so that he cans tart to visualise what the end product will be.
Shooting script production

Thiswill be the final script used for filmingPage lock-down

This is when the writer is happy with the  final draft and 'locks it down'so that this is the one hat they will use for shooting
Adjustment during shooting stage

The film may be lacking momentum so the script may be slightly altered to increase the pace
Agent representation

IF you have a good agent then the script will have the best chance of success 
Royalty payments/optioning

The writer will receive money for royalty and this means that the better it is the more it's shown and the more money the writer will make.

Time management

A writer will have their own pace for writing a script but will be restricted when making changes.

Garlic Bread Planning

Garlic Bread Research Dossier

Garlic Bread

Final draft

Timeline

Music Video Pre-Production

Music Video Planning

The song that we have chosen to use is Frank Turner's Get Better. The video will hopefully be filmed in a run down location as we feel that this would work well with the style of the music that we are using. We are hoping filming underneath a restaurant where there is a small in-cove in which we could stand and have the main area for the filming of the video.We will be using multiple people as we will be cutting between the people as they do the same thing, we will also be mixing up the instruments that the people are playing but keeping to the ones in the song.

The Purpose of Music Videos

Music videos first came about during the 1940's when jukeboxes start to display small unrelated clips of people dancing. Later on in the 20th Century these videos were made deliberate by recording the artist(s) on film and making a specific video to go along with the track. This form of media has become more and more popular throughout the years and are now more or less a must in popular music.

Music videos are one of many ways that you can promote a band/ artist but I believe it's one of the most effective ways to do so. If a song has a video, then you are more likely to watch is as if the video is good then they may like the song too. Also as YouTube is one of the biggest sites on the internet, anyone who uses it will most likely see the video. But this would be potentially unfortunate for any smaller bands as the general public will watch videos of songs that are in the charts so this may not be the best way to promote themselves. This form of promotion would also be beneficial to the producer as they will be credited for their work. The band/ artist could also use this form of media to promote a new album, tour or merchandise.

Producers who make videos for mainstream high-end artists have a very different job to ones who produce for smaller artists. Mainstream producers tend to have the artist at the forefront of the video and promote them as a person/ people. This leaves the video open entirely to interpretation and can be completely unrelated to the song if this is what the artist wants from the video. But it’s polar opposite for smaller artists as their videos tend to focus on the actual song to make people listen to it more. It’s definitely harder for smaller artists as they have to go with what the producer wants to do as well because if it’s a higher up artist then they will employ the producers to make videos for them.

As this has become a large form of media, the music video will produce a lot of income for artist no matter the fan base. Also if the video is uploaded on YouTube the band will be paid by them for the views the video gets. Not only will uploading it to YouTube get it a lot of views but will also increase the market for that person’s music as YouTube is one of the most used websites in the world as so many people will use it daily. Also, if the band/artist has a Facebook or Twitter page, they could upload it there. This will mean that people can share the video, again, extending the market.

When you combine all of these, the artist’s video will have a good chance at success especially with social media as that is one of the biggest enterprises to be in in this day and age. Also even if the band/artist isn’t very big they can do a lot to expand their fan base just by making decent music videos. And if a song has a video that you like you will be more inclined to listen to more of their music if it is to your personal taste.

I feel that music videos are a great form of media as it means that the artists can express through the video what the song is about and in some cases, are completely irrelevant to the song.I also believe it to be one of the most popular of media forms as songs such as ‘Hello’ by Adele have over 1 billion views, which is phenomenal. But if you go back about 20 years then music videos weren’t anywhere near as big as they are now and this is entirely due to the invention of the Internet. Before that they were only on TV and in Jukeboxes, which were still kicking around. But again, all thanks goes to the invention of computers and the Internet.

Music Video Styles, Conventions and Techniques

Live Audience.



I chose this song for live footage as they are playing on a podium in the middle of loads of people. Also the lighting has been changed a fair bit so that it all fits together. There are a lot of examples of this type of video, but sometimes the crowd is green screened/ superimposed to make it look like they're performing it live.

Narrative/Interprative



This video is for the whole of Fall Out Boys album Save Rock and Roll, the video contains all the songs from the album which makes a video that is 50 minutes. I'm using this song for a narative example as the whole video is about the band. The video consists quite a few different events that are all connected to the songs playing at the time. This is a one off type of video that i couldn't find being done by any other band.

Surrealist



I'm using this video from Aphex Twin's Come to Daddy for the surrealist example as the video is very disturbing and really doesn't make any sense. Throughout the video young children are running around causing chaos, but what makes this absurd is the fact that they all the face of a middle aged man. This is one of the reasons i picked this video.

Impressionist



This Adele's recent song Hello which topped the charts after a few days. I have decided to use this for the Impressionist section as even though the song relates to the video, a fair bit of it is not realted to the video but is about her returning back to the house she lived in with her ex. I felt that this was a good example as it encompasses two different types of video but does it subtly.

Allusion



I'm again using Adele for her joint song of Skyfall for the Daniel Craig 007 film. This video alludes  to the film as it is played at the beginning of film itself. Also I felt that this is a good example of this form of video as all 007 movies have a song written deliberatly for the films. Other ones include Madonna Beautiful Stranger and Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend.

Animation/Cutting to the Beat




I chose this song from Newton Faulkner's Write it on Your Skin album. I'm using it for an example of animaton as i feel it's different from the normal type as it involves the animation of his hair instead of clay or Lego. I also think that this would appeal to most people as it's quite a funny vidoe that also cuts to the beat of the music. Which is why I am also using it for this type of video because it cuts to the music all the way through the video.

Lip Sync/Playback



This is Panic! At the Disco's Emperors New Clothes for an Example of playack as the video features the lead singer turning into a demon but he moves in very unnatural which could only be captured by making him do everything slowly but singing quickly so that in after effects they can they make it seem as if he's doing it real time.


Chroma Key, CGI, Camera Angles



For the CGI example I'm usind Woodkid's Run Boy Run as in this video there is a lot of use of CGI as there are lots of giant city lik structures that are panned across and up for effect. Quite a few of the their videos contain CGI but I felt this one was most prominent in context to this section.

Multi Screen



I chose this song by Frank turner as an example of multi-image video which is where multiple of the same person or object are in the same place. as it shows 3 of him and for part of it, one of him split into three.

Homage

   


As Brendan Urie wrote this song in the style of Frank Sinatra, the video also reflects the kind of video he would've have had. I also feel that as this video in black and white and the way he acts, I feel he may just be paying homage to that entire style of music.

Artist Research

Frank Turner is an English folk/Rock artist, who before being with his current band The Sleeping Souls (named after an line in one of their songs) was the lead of the punk band, Million Dead. In 2005 the band split and he decided that he would pursue an acoustic career. In 2006 he released his first EP 'Campfire Punk Rock' which had a total of 5 songs but 6 on a vinyl. Frank went to Eaton University to do a scholarship alongside Prince William The songs he wrote for the first album and all that would follow are ones about his fight with depression and his views on politics. Frank's songs focus on things personal to him, such as how he battled  with depression and even political elements.The band has been going for 8 years and have just released their 6 album Positive Songs for Negative People in which there is the song Get Better which is the song that we have chosen to make our music video on. He has one 3 awards which were Kerrang 2010 for No Half Measures and 2 at AIM  for Best Live and Hardest Working artist. He also bagged a live performance at the opening of the London Olympics in 2012.
His style is very casual, he tends to wear a white shirt and black jeans no makeup. This shows that he is just likie everyone else as he doesn't stand out 

Frank Turner- Josephine









Frank Turner-The Next Storm




Frank Turner-Recovery

Assignment Brief

Edge of Darkness Single Camera Production

What happened in the opening episode?

In the opening episode of Edge of Darkness, policeman Ronald Craven is going to pick up his daughter from a political conference and her high school. When he takes her home he is confronted by a man with a shotgun, he then goes to shoot Craven but she jumps in the way to protect him. Later on in the episode when Craven in is her room looking through all of her stuff he finds a box with a Geiger counter and a gun. He the uses the device and finds out that everything is covered in radiation. When at the morgue earlier on he takes a cut of some of her hair, which he hen tests with the Geiger counter and sees that it is the most radiated thing there. He then travels up to London to be of further help to the case. When there, he is contact by a man named Pendalton who is 'attached to the prime ministers office and informs Craven that his daughter was considered a terrorist ad the she was the target that night, not him.

Single Camera Techniques

In this essay I shall be covering how Camera, Lighting, Sound and Editing are all used in single camera productions and explain why they are used in this way. I shall also discuss how these differ form multi camera productions.

Camera
In single camera productions, the camera can be controlled a lot easier as their is only one camera to work with. It can also mean that they can bring the audience closer to the action and make it seem a lot more alive. Also, another plus is that if you only have one camera you can film in more confined spaces such the corridors of a house. There is the downside of that you would have to film the same scenes multiple times to get different angles which means that he actors may have to do the same thing more than once. This then makes the filming more expensive.

Lighting.

Lighting is a lot easier to control in single camera productions as once the lighting looks good through the camera then that's that. Whereas in multi camera productions the lighting needs to be the same for every camera and therefore look more unnatural and will consume more time during the filming process. Using one camera means that there can be shadows cast across the scene giving more effect and making the scene more dynamic. For instance, in the film Drive, which is a single camera production, the lighting is a major part in the opening scene in which Ryan Gosling's character is waiting out side of a shop for a robbery to take place as he is their get away driver. Throughout this scene he says nothing which is why the lighting and his actions need to stand out so that the scene doesn't be come boring etc.

Sound
Using one camera means that the best thing to do is use a separate microphone to the actual camera as inbuilt microphones are not of a good enough quality to use in a professional piece of work. If, for instance there is overlay between the sound and the actual picture, the audio would need to be recorded apart so that they can be edited apart as well. SFX can also be used in single camera to add extra effect and to fill out certain sections. In a multi camera production it's easier to mic up the different people as in many multi camera productions, if the microphone is in shot then that isn't a problem such as the news or any kind of game show. In some shots the audio has been pulled from another clip in pasted in. This kind of technique can be used in things such as over the shoulder shots.

Editing.

Editing in single camera productions, much like other productions,takes a lot of time and effort. As in multi camera productions you can film in lots of different locations with different people at different times, in single camera it is better to film everything and everyone in the same place at the same time. Multi camera productions can be edited on the spot with shows like 'X-Factor' and 'The Voice' as they have lots of cameras around the set so they can chop and change between them live on TV. This would be an impossible feat in a single camera production. When filming with just one camera you tend to end up with a lot of footage as a lot of scenes will be filmed more than once and it'll all be on the same camera, so as you can imagine there would be a lot of footage to go through in the editing stage. Editors tend to use Shot Logs when editing single camera pieces so that they know which pieces are good for use and which ones are not so useful.

Genre and Formats.
Single camera productions are most used on TV shows such as EastEnders and Doctor Who as they tend to be shot in small areas or small sets where more than one camera would get in the way and would be of inconvenience in the filming process. Whereas shows that are live such as 'X-Factor' need to be multi camera as they need to swap between angles live on TV which is impossible with just one camera. But as I have mentioned throughout, Multi camera is used for live TV whereas single camera is preffered for other things and both have their pros and cons.


Multi Camera

To sum up how they differ, Multi camera is used for live shows and larger film productions so that the director can show lots f different things all at once without filming them multiple times. But the draw backs are things such as lighting, as i can be very plain and not bring much contrast to the scene in hand. Also when filming in a small environment such as a house, there would be less space as the cameras are taking up all of it. It also has the the quite large draw back pf the fact that it costs a lot of money to

Friends+Scrubs Multi Camera Production

Friends Season 1 Ep 7
In this episode of friends, there is a power cut in the city and the whole cast is stuck in darkness, and decide to stay in the apartment. Chandler is stuck in the bank with Jill Goodacre, a notoruis super model. Throughout the episode Ross is trying to ask Rachel out on a date but a cat gets in the way. The cat belongs to neighbour Paolo, who Rachel becomes instantly obsessed with, which leaves Ross distraught and Joey telling him he has to organize Monica's birthday party.

Scrubs Season 7 Ep 1
In this episode the Janitor tries to educate the rest of the staff about being 'green'. J.D's brother returns back to him and tells him to grow up because he's finally found his feet in life. Dr. Read also comes to the fact that she is very contradictory about a patient's weight as she says that she needs to eat more as in fact she actually weighs less than the patient.

Research and Planning: Designing and E-sting

For my proposed E-sting I shall be using Lego and clay to make my animation. These two types of animation I would hope would work well together as it means there are more possibilities by combining the two. In my animation the idea is that a giant purple monster is chasing down three little white Lego men in a city and tries to eat them. When he does catch them and eat them he melts into the ground, forming the E4 logo. I took some of my inspiration from the 1958 film The Blob which is about a giant mass of goo terrorising a city. I though that I could adapt this for an E-sting. Also I decided that once the animation had been filmed, I would make it into a sort of film Noir style so everything in it was black and white apart from the monster which was still purple. This was an idea that I took from the film Sin City in which the whole film is in black and white apart from the colour red. There maybe some issues with using Lego men as they are obviously copyrighted but apart from that I don't see any other immediate issues that surround the making of my animation. I am going to be aiming this towards a young audience, hopefully between the ages of 16-25 as I want to attract more young people to watch E4. This will be aimed at both genders as to attract as many people as possible.

The Blob- This is the villain in my animation who is trying to eat the Lego people and ends up turning into the E4 logo.

Lego men- The are the victims in my animation who get eaten in my animation.

E-Sting Evaluation

For this evaluation I shall be writing a written report on the responses that we collated and how they will help us for future filming. 

When the questionnaire results came back I was surprised at how many of the results answered the questions correctly as people knew what stop motion animation was, but there were draw backs such as the noises that the characters made came across as annoying to some, this is something that we would take into account if we made it again because if the target audience didn't like the audio then we failed at meeting the brief in this regard. Also it seems that when we asked about the target audience the answers were absolutely what we wanted to hear as this was the target audience that we wanted to aim for so we were very happy with that. There was one response that caught my eye was one that someone said that they could see the table in one of the shots. This is again, something that i would take into consideration if i had to film something like this again. People also seemed to like the style of the animation as it was different and I quote 'pleasing to the eye'. Overall, of all the responses that we got, no one said that they didn't like it, which is encouraging because the constructive criticism the we were given has helped us to prepare for the next task, and be more weary of what is needed it a piece of media text.  

When we made the animation, we came across the rather large elephant in the room, which was copyright. Because we were using Lego we had to remove any trace of the LEGO brand so ended up painting the LEGO people white which worked well with the film Noir style. We also had to be careful with our budget as we only had £5, but we had to go slightly over because of the price of the paint and the postage for said paint. But the rest of the set we were able to make out  of resources that could be provided by the college.

We were given 6 lessons to meet our final deadline, but we were able to get the animation done with a couple of lessons so we could start editing  earlier, giving us more time to get everything done. This was useful as we had to go back and film a couple of frames as they were out of focus and our finished video was a bit short so we duplicated a few frames and filmed a few more to fit to our 10 second time frame. I think that i maybe a suitable candidate for working to a brief as we only made a couple of slip ups that could be amended easily and that we kept to the brief as well as we could. I personally might consider animation as a further career as i fully enjoyed making the animation and that I feel that it would be a viable career for myself.

We received feedback from our classmates and tutor as we put our video on you tube and we all watched all of the animations and then in the YouTube comments wrote feedback for everyone. The feedback for ours was very positive and constructive. For our E-Sting I feel that it went well and that we ended up with an animation that was very much as I had intended it to be when I originally thought of it. We managed to easily fill the 120 frames that we needed to, also as we used a DSLR camera all the frames were of good quality apart from a few that were blurry but we weren’t able to change them in time as we had already finish filming so had to leave them in. This would probably have been the only thing that I would’ve changed to make it look a bit better. Editing went well through-out but we did run into a few small problems such as some of the frames went missing but we were able to recover them quite easily. I had also wanted it to be in a Film Noir style but to also have the monster to still be in colour which we were able to achieve quite easily in Premier Pro. When we had finished with editing we had achieved the style that I wanted and the monster was still purple so was prominent in the animation and fit well with the brief. We also had to use music provided by E4, although there wasn’t much in the way of choice we still managed to find a piece that fit fairly well. When actually making the set and characters it took a while as we had to wait for some of the materials as we didn’t have them present at college so had to order them. In the meantime we made a backdrop on Photoshop that we could use, it was quite simple as we had to change all the colours when editing so it made that job easier. We did look for backdrops on google but couldn’t find one that fit well enough so we just made one instead. I supplied the Lego characters that I had to paint white as they would be the white in the E4 logo. Admittedly it did take a while to make the set and characters, which is what I would have improved if I had to do a task like this again

I feel that we met the requirements of the set brief as our animation fit very well with what was asked of us, more specifically that we made sure that the animation was exactly 10 seconds long and that it was appropriate for the TV. Also we didn't breach any copyright laws as we stayed within our restraints and made sue that nothing we had in it, had no logos etc. - we only used material the we had created ourselves or that which E4 had provided (the music and the E4 logo). The music that we used was copyright free as it was from the list of tracks that E4 had provided for people to use for the competition. And finally we tried our best to appeal to a large audience that would be watching the allocated TV channel - E4. This is a target that we think we met, but, there were some drawbacks as some people found the noises that the characters made, annoying, this is something that we would revisit if we were to send this off. Also one of the answers to the questions was that they could see the corner of the table which isn't really very professional and again something that would change. Looking at the content of the esting, I believe that the esting meets Ofcom standards - we have not caused any offence or included anything that would cause poor behavior in young people.