SOUND RESEARCH & IDEAS

A close friend of mine - Cameron Jacobs is an incredible classical pianist but can improvise easily to certain moods or atmospheres. For our film soundtrack, we don't want to set anything in stone until we have filmed and produced our rough edit. It's important to us that the non-diegetic sound enhances the diegetic and aids the film in its purpose.

With recording Cameron - we plan to tell him nothing about the film and then when we are ready to record, link a keyboard to recording equipment which is available in our school music department and show him the film raw, simply allowing him to play what he feels appropriate.

We will then tell Cameron specifics that he needs to play and look out for, moments lasting a certain amount of time that we have pre-decided to fit with the film. He can then adhere to our requirements, neither of us are able to write music for him to play but I have experience in music and can clearly show Cameron our intentions, after the initial viewing and recording we will also show him example pieces and short film examples for him to take inspiration from.

We will repeat this process seven times, obviously during the repetition of the process he will create something that he feels suits the mood and by the last times should be able to pre-empt what happens on screen and show this in his playing.

We realise this is a lot to ask a pianist in only an hour or two but Cameron is incredibly accomplished and has been playing most of his life. He also plays violin and guitar to a high standard and has experience in computer generated sound.

Once we have recorded material we feel is sufficient we plan to mix together parts of the seven tracks and create a master track that will accompany the film. There will be moments of silence within the film such as the blackout in-between the acts but apart from this we want to leave ourselves open to Cameron's interpretation, it would be a shame to waste such musical talent and intuition. Obviously if we don't feel it's appropriate we will cut it finely to change things around.

Once we have the master track we will add foley sounds such as swipes using Logic Pro & Final Cut Pro. It's important that the non-diegetic sound accompanies the film well. The reason we plan to film in the next two weeks is so that we have plenty of time to edit and add effects we feel appropriate to the sound.

With our film we feel it's important that the non-diegetic sound doesn't add all the emotion to the film but that it's an aid. You should be able to watch the film and understand it the same way you would with non-diegetic sound.

Good examples of non-diegetic sound being used and natural sound being enhanced are in my studied short films such as White & Apricot, the sound is very much an aid rather than leading the film where as in Future Proof for example the sound is leading, more like a music video.

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SHOT LIST

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CHARACTER: GIRL

• Amelie is a character who certainly looks as if she is a little crazy but also isn't abnormal in any way. She has quite and innocent look to her as well.
• She is younger looking than we had intended when using the boy, more around 7 years old, but again she will seem younger than that in the film due to her condition. However still with above average intelligence and understanding for her age (doing the rubik's cube), just struggling with communication with others.
• She understands she is autistic but struggles to relate that to her behaviour as she can justify all her actions as normal in her head.
• She likes to be on her own most of the time however when she wants attention she easily gets upset if she doesn't have it straight away. She is not bothered by that fact that she doesn't have many school-friends and doesn't understand why this does bother her mother.

Amelie is a character who won't necessarily be relatable by the audience, but the audience should connect with her as they will feel sorry for her, although we would not want the audience to pity her. Our target audience is older, more similar to the age of the mother, so it is possible parents watching will relate to Emma who has to deal with a difficult child.

ACTORS: AMELIE STANIJIC AS AMELIE

We've chosen to switch the script to a combination of Amelie & Rachael. The pair are already mother/daughter so they know each other meaning that their acting as this will be far grater than two people who don't know each other.

Amelie Stanijic

5yrs

3"8

Large, Brown Eyes

Long, Blonde Hair

Fair Skin

Amelie is a young girl, in yr1 at school. Her mother is Rachael Watkins, the actress playing Emma. She enjoys dressing up, playing with Lego & Toy Story and watching Shrek. She is very bright and can clearly take instruction.

I have no doubt she'll be able to act well for the film, especially as the mother and daughter relationship on screen is real. She has lots of clothes, girly and not-girly. She also has dressing up outfits that would give us the option of having her dressed in some more exciting clothes that an autistic/OCD child might like to wear.  

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SHOT LIST & STORYBOARD AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

We interviewed the same pair to get feedback on our final narrative that was derived through the shot-list and clarifying the storyline shot-by-shot. We asked them what they thought of the completed narrative and also what they thought of the storyboard animatic.

They thought;

"I love the completed narrative, it makes a lot more sense, the motifs we talked about are clearer and it  will let the audience, umm, feel more towards the child rather than confused I think"

"The drawings and use of the story video [animatic] are great, it makes it clear, if you stick to that I'm sure the film will turn out great"

"When you're filming make sure you stick to that storyboard, it looks really clear, and they're only stick characters!"

"The shot list is good, all the columns with the different things should make the filming pretty easy for you. The new narrative as well is pretty good, it makes more sense and is clearer"

From this we are far more pleased with our final choice of narrative and motifs, they felt that we had taken on their advice and got a clearer vision. We now want to confront the filming day itself and how we go about scheduling that day and working out the equipment we need.

UPDATE #4

Over half term Harry has been working on our shot list whilst I have worked on the storyboard. We decided to simply split the tasks instead of sharing both as this way we can both play to our strengths. Harry has now finished the shot list and we will talk through it together to confirm that we are both 100% happy with it before we post it. Currently I have done the storyboard for Act 1 and will do Act 2 once we have finalised the shot list for it.

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LOCATION RECCE

We did a recce of the location showing some of the different shots we will use. The recce was mainly so that we could see which shots would work or not, if any shots would need lights in certain places. Being on location was helpful as we came up with some other interesting filming ideas such as shot where we could pull focus, interesting camera angles and ways of composing each shot for a higher aesthetic.

HH + TB