Post 31- NARNIA EVALUATION
Throughout the filming days, we had Emily filming the short film, something which she succeeded in as the final outcome was something that we couldn't have imagined it to be and half of that was due to Emily's high quality filming. When watching the film back it is obvious that we used a wide variety of camera angles, as well as a lot of camera shots. For most of the lines delivered, we filmed the actor for that line alone, from an actors perspective this was extremely strange, and it sometimes made it hard to fully get into character although when the final film was completed, it looked very good and the singular camera shots worked well as it allowed the spectators to fully engage on the character speaking to get an understanding of each of the Pevensie children's characteristics. There was one particular camera shot and angle which stands out to me, is when Mrs Beaver is telling the Pevensie children about the prophecy, when the actor is delivering the line the camera pans past the children, seeing their reactions to the obscure prophecy. This was a successful shot as it differentiated from the others which were seen throughout the film. The benefits of having this angle was that it really emphasises the children's emotions and see how they react with one another, therefore making them start to look like a family. The actor playing 'Lucy Pevensie' looks up at her sister 'Susan' in dismay, as if she's looking to her older sister for reassurance.
When we were first introduced to this task, we had many aspirations for what each characters costumes were going to be, we wanted them to be periodically correct, meaning that we wanted the girls in skirts and tights, mainly of dull colours, and the boys in waistcoats and shirts, again of dull colours. We also wanted them to have coats on, the type that were used in the film, the big fur coats that were clearly too big for the Pevensie children. We felt like this would be most suitable as it would really give the impression that the children were in Narnia due to the extreme coldness that is in Narnia and so by having them seem as though they aren't dressed for the occasion (the children just wearing indoor clothes as they weren't expecting to find what they did when going through the wardrobe), and so there only choice was to wear the fur coats which were already in the wardrobe. We as a group made these decisions however they were finalised by Justine and Ellie, those who were in charge of costume. The role of the Beavers caused a lot of brainstorming as as a group we were unsure as to what they should have been wearing. A lot of our aspirations began in the makeup side of costume and so we didn't know what to dress them in. As our task progressed we eventually came to a decision as a group.
However, we found that these aspirations for the costumes weren't as easy as we thought and so we had to replan. We tried to find some fur coats, enough for the Pevensie children to have one each however this didn't go to plan and so we asked them to wear there own hats, coats and jumpers, we specified for them to wear anything warm, however we did ask for these garments to be faded or dull colours to try and stay periodically correct as we didn't think it would be very successful if they were all wearing brightly coloured clothing. Going back to the previous mention about the Pevensie children wearing an oversized fur coat each, we only managed to get hold of two fur coats, generously given by our peers, therefore we decided to dress the beavers in these coats, it worked well as it clearly defined their role, something that we were concerned about not happening as we didn't have many ideas relating to what the beavers would be wearing and so the fur coats worked in our favour after worrying that we wouldn't have enough and wouldn't be able to use them at all, by having the beavers dressed in them it made use of the fur coats as well as suitably working for them seeing as they were meant to be playing animals. Once we got a strong idea of what each character was going to be wearing, we started sketching the costumes to get a minor understanding of what each character was going to look like.
To begin with the original plan was to have none of the Pevensie children wearing makeup, however we were going to have the Beaver's wearing makeup to give the impression that they were actual beavers. The plan was to use cotton wool and tissue with liquid latex and make them a nose that stuck out like a beavers would. We were also going to make their eyebrows seem bushy and under cared for, we were going to do this by using individual false eyelashes to stick onto their original eyebrows to give an impression that they had more eyebrow hairs. We were also going to draw on two front teeth with a white eyeliner as it was the only item of makeup in which I thought would give off a realistic effect. We felt like it was important to have the beavers wearing makeup as we weren't sure of what they were going to be wearing, and so we thought if we didn't have a suitable outfit for them, the makeup would help show who they are meant to be playing.
However, things changed and we managed to get a suitable costume for the Beavers and so the makeup aspect wasn't as important anymore as we had more things to sort out. Although, I did do some research on makeup, such as how to make a nose with liquid latex and tissue and the results weren't as helpful as I thought they were going to be and so we decided not to use any makeup on the beavers as we didn't have enough time to fully investigate and figure out what works and what didn't, however, I think if we were to use makeup, it would be a distraction for the spectators and would lead them to not fully focusing on what was happening in the film.
When we were first introduced to the task, we were brainstorming the props in which we could use to make the short film as successful as possible. However, due to half of the film being outside and the other being inside the beavers house, most of our attention went to the beavers house as it was important that we picked a suitable location with the right props to make the beavers house seem as homely as possible. To begin with we weren't sure of what to use, considering that we didn't have a setting for the beavers house, however after we found one, we started to really focus on the props.
We started off by each allocating a prop to each other, this was the one prop that you had to make/buy to be used. My prop was to make a box of wood chip cereal, I used an old cereal box and wrapped it in brown parcel paper, I then used my laptop to create a cover for the cereal which I then stuck on to the front of the box. On the day of filming, we all brought in our prop and placed them in the beavers house, this really set the scene and it started to feel like the beavers home. We had wood chips building up in the back, books on the tables, lanterns, all of these props made the house seem like a home, and the wood chips in the back really helped the effect that this was meant to be a beavers home.
When we first got introduced to this task, we had many ideas as to where we wanted it to be set. Our initial ideas were to find somewhere which could act as both Narnia and the Beavers house to put the travelling to a minimum, this had to be taken into consideration due to the actors who were considerably younger than us as the actors were from different year groups. Although, before we even had our cast, we thought about Bewilderwood as a location due to their treehouse which would have been perfect for a beavers house and Bewilderwood itself would have been appropriate for Narnia as a whole.
After getting in contact with Bewilderwood we found out that we
wouldn't be able to film there, and so we had to start thinking about another location. Our second idea was to use the plantation gardens in Norwich, as we thought this would work well as Narnia and there is a hut at the top of the staircase, meaning we would have our beavers house also. We felt like the plantation gardens would be a more accessible location compared to bewilderwood and it would prevent us having to organise a time slot to go and film as the plantation gardens is open all year round and it is a public garden meaning we wouldn't need to be under a time limit leaving us to be able to get as much filming done as possible.
However, due to the time frame in which we had to complete this task, we didn't get organised in time, therefore meaning that we were unable to get ourselves to the plantation gardens leaving us with no other choice but to find a suitable location in our area. Luckily, Emily had a garden house at the bottom of her garden which was perfect for the Beavers house. We furnished it to make it seem more homely, and then had to find a second location for the beginning of the film when the siblings first meet Mr Beaver, however, we managed to use the woodlands at the back of our school field which we were able to make seem like a more substantial forest through the camera angles in which we used. Although our locations didn't end up being our initial ideas, I think the ones we used worked very well and we got the best possible outcome which we could have.
When considering lighting we had to make a decision on how we were going to light the beavers house. We were relying on natural lighting for the outside shots, something which worked in our favour as when watching the end result, the lighting was getting dim as it was getting further into the evening and was getting darker. However this worked successfully as it gave an eerie atmosphere to the film and added to the effective nature of the children being somewhere that is dangerous. In the beavers home we used warm toned tea lights to add a warm feeling to the home. We did this as we wanted the beavers house to seem homely, and to seem as if it was dark outside and a fire has been put on. Furthermore, this lighting gave a red vale over the actors, which could represent the danger that is to come to the Pevensie children.
After we had spoken about location and our initial ideas, we started to talk about casting. We sent out an email and a notice to be put in the form boxes, we put them out on the Friday, for the auditions to be on the Monday. The plan for the auditions was to hold them at lunchtime and to be in the drama studio where it would feel like a professional environment to hold auditions. We planned to not have the whole class there to prevent the actors feeling under pressure because although we wanted it to be professional, we also wanted our actors to enjoy themselves and not think they are auditioning for a high end performance, we just wanted people who would be committed and understanding that this was going to be a film and so there would be a lot of repeating lines and actions to get the perfect shot.
Although, we sent out the audition slips and when we went to the drama studio it seemed to be in use and so we had to think of another location. After waiting for a while, no one turned up to the auditions and so some of us had to leave in order to do some work during our lunch, nevertheless, some class members stayed and a few people turned up. We ended up doing the auditions outside the music room, which in the end, worked in our favour as it took away the professional aspect and made it a more light hearted environment. Overall, we got a few year seven girls auditioning for the role of Lucy and one year twelve girl auditioning for the role of Susan.
After watching the footage from the auditions, we decided to have the girl in the final clip to play our Lucy and due to being unavailable for filming, the girl who auditioned for Susan couldn't be in the film, meaning that I had to then play the role of the older sister. We then needed 4 more characters, a Mr and Mrs Beaver, Peter and Edmund. This meant that we went to a year ten drama lesson to see if any boys wished to take part, one boy volunteered however a while later two other boys came to find us to say that they wanted to be a part of it. We then asked a year eleven boy to play the role of Mr Beaver. This meant that we had all of our cast and so we had to start rehearsing. We began by meeting after school to run through the lines (even though the actors didn't need to learn them) just to allow them to get an idea of who they were playing and due to the difference in age gaps, it was effective to get them all to meet before filming.
When we were introduced to this task we brainstormed what characteristics each character had, therefore giving us something to search for in the actors during their auditions. In the script, the Pevensie children show different emotions. Peter and Susan, the eldest of the siblings, show a more concerned attitude due to their protective personalities over their younger brother and sister. An opportunity for this to be shown would be when Susan tells the beavers that they really must go after thanking them for their hospitality, Peter agrees with her and they begin to leave. This shows the eldest Pevensie's responsibilities. Lucy and Edmund seemed more naive, from the context of the film that hit our screens in 2005 is that Edmund had been to Narnia before and met the white witch, thinking that she's a good character which leads him to run away to her castle, we wanted to foreshadow this event by before walking into the beavers house he would look into the distance, as if searching for her castle, it is then at the end of our film that he's disappeared and Mr beaver hints that he may not make it out alive. Lucy Pevensie, the youngest of the siblings and the first to discover Narnia is more convinced by the Beaver's story and believes that they should be the ones to destroy the white witch. This would be done through her determination to save Mr Tumnus, especially when she turns to Susan and tells them that they have to save him. Mr beaver seems confident and seems to admire Narnia and only wants whats best for it, he is a humorous character and this is shown through his voice, language and movements whereas Mrs beaver seems a lot more caring and is aware that these children are going to put their lives at risk.
When filming and seeing the final outcome, it is obvious that all of our actors fulfilled these characteristics excellently, we told the actors the characteristics of these characters and they all gave a very convincing performance. At first, I thought the actors may be hesitant to give it their all however once we started going, they were brilliant. I think if we were to improve, it would have been good to portray the siblings relationships even more, to make them really seem like they need to care for one another, specifically Peter and Susan caring for Lucy and Edmund, this could have been done through their body language and expression. Although at certain moments in the film Susan and Peter gave each other concerning glances, I still think there could have been more communication between the two to give the impression that they weren't safe here and they were fully aware of it.
Similar to character expression, there were also a specific way that we wanted our actors to move, we wanted to be able to get the children's emotions through their movements and body language. Specifically Peter and Susan, they are the eldest and so they need to protect their younger siblings especially from the talking beaver, who at the start of the film, they don't know. As well as this, Lucy could look confident and if Susan or Peter was to pull her away, she would look up at them and pull away to show that she isn't afraid of the talking beaver and that she is motivated to save Mr Tumnus. Furthermore, when in the beavers house, the children would be sat close together to show their close relationship and again, showing how the older siblings don't feel safe here. Also, when Susan tells the beavers that the children have to go back home, she would lean across the table to talk directly to Peter who is becoming convinced by the beavers story to show how desperate she is to go home.
When we were filming it, all of the actors fulfilled our plans of the movement that was going to be taking place. However if we were to improve, I think the physical contact between the older children and the younger needed to be stronger to fully get across the idea that they are protective of their family, and seeing as they don't have their parents with them, they feel as though they are responsible for Edmund and Lucy.
Once all of the filming was done, Aston started editing the film, he used adobe premier pro to create the film. We had over 300 clips to get through and some of them were mistaken takes and so there was a lot of searching for the right clip to go in the film. Aston used the story board to help him put each clip in the order that it needed to be in. It took a long time, however in order for the short film to be as best as possible, we needed to take our time.
As a group as a whole we worked on different aspects of planning, some members of the group worked on story boarding, this was the planning of what each clip was going to contain, including sketches and annotations with details with the line the actor would be saying whilst the camera was rolling.
As well as this, others worked on props, makeup, costume, this entailed making decisions about what the actors would be wearing and any props we needed to create Narnia. We all worked together to create a well structured plan of what was going to be happening in the film, something that acted as a benefit when approaching the planning of the filming days as this was not something which we were confident on. Although the end product was very successful, it took a lot of last minute planning to get where we wanted to achieve and I think if we were to repeat this task, the planning of the filming days would be a great area to improve on. When looking back on the days in which we were filming, I think the main issue was the communication aspect and the difficulties in which we had when trying to contact all of the actors.
As previously said the communication between the group and the actors was an area in which we needed to improve on, although, the situation was difficult as we had a big cast, who were all of different year groups, which made contacting one another challenging as the only way of getting hold of them was through emails, which we couldn't guarantee they would check, or by going to their lessons and speaking to them in person, something which started to become a too often occurrence. I think if we would to do this activity again, I think it would have been affective to have a group chat which enabled everyone involved with Narnia to communicate in an efficient way. If we were to have done this, then it would have made the organisation of the days in which we were filming, how long we would be to allow the actors to inform their parents, as well as what they needed to bring, it would also have been a lot easier to remind the actors what time we would all be meeting on the filming days. As a group, our communication was successful. We had a group chat to keep in touch with one another as well as meeting up during break and lunchtimes, after school also to plan how we were going to create this short film. If we were going to improve on our communication it would be successful to have a scheduled meet up every week instead of making last minute decisions leading to not everyone being able to make it, therefore meaning that we had to repeat the same ideas numerous times. Overall, our communication was good, however could have done with some improvements to make the whole filming process easier and successful.
Our organisation was successful in some senses however there were some alternative approaches in which we could have taken to make the film making experience a little easier. Overall, I think mainly the organisation issues came together with the communication issues, as previously said, our communication between the actors could have been done in a different approach which would have made the organisation part easier, however there is nothing that could have been done at the time to sort this out as we were trying to communicate with others in different year groups and obviously everyone was going to be free at different times, group members and the cast. However when we were all together we worked well as a group to make the film successful. Furthermore, we made last minute decisions which didn't work in our favour as it meant that we had to quickly make everyone aware of the decisions and as previously said it was difficult to get everything done in the time frame in which we had as there was a lot of stuff to be done, and in order to get everything done, we needed the people who were in charge of that specific task to be there and due to the large amount of us, this wasn't always possible. The organisation of the props were all distributed between the group members and we had to make one prop each in order to get everything done in the given time, this I think worked well as it reflected on our organisation skills and how we made a group decision which we stuck with to create the best possible outcome. As well as the props, other roles were shared in order to get the best result as there would be more than one person working on it. Overall, I think our organisation was successful, and we tried our hardest to make sure everything was done to the best of our abilities, ultimately, our organisation would have been better if we didn't leave everything till the last week, however we managed to get it completed and we were happy with the end result.
When we were first introduced to the Narnia task, we realised we had a significant amount of blog posts to get through, and so we came up as a class with the decision to distribute different blog posts to different people meaning we would all eventually get them posted on our blog. We decided who did what based on what role we were given in the group, for example, my role was co-director, and so one of the blog posts in which I completed was 'post 28- Directing your actors'. Before distributing blog posts, we firstly had to decide who was going to do what in the group, to contribute to making this short film successful. Joe wanted to be the director of the short film, as he felt as if he had strong ideas that would be achievable, as well as this I was the co director, as I felt as if I would be able to support the decisions in which Joe made, I was also acting in the film, playing the role of Susan. The producers were Lucy and Keri as they thought they were able to get everything completed on time, and by having this as a joint effort it made things a lot easier for them both. The film crew position was distributed to both Emily and Ellie to get a maximum number of successful shots and to get alternative angels. Emily also wanted to do lighting, as she is interested in the lighting aspect of film and photography. As previously said we wanted to split the making of props between the group as whole and made sure that everyone bought something in as there were a lot of props to be bought in and it would have been unfair to leave that job to one person. For costume and makeup, Justine and Ellie felt like they would be most suitable for the role and due to their creative mindset they did this job successfully. Finally, Aston was the person to edit all of the shots together, he is experienced in editing and premier pro, the editing software in which we use, and as a group, we felt as if he would be the best person to create a successful video, this was something which he did.
When we were first introduced to this task, we had many aspirations for what each characters costumes were going to be, we wanted them to be periodically correct, meaning that we wanted the girls in skirts and tights, mainly of dull colours, and the boys in waistcoats and shirts, again of dull colours. We also wanted them to have coats on, the type that were used in the film, the big fur coats that were clearly too big for the Pevensie children. We felt like this would be most suitable as it would really give the impression that the children were in Narnia due to the extreme coldness that is in Narnia and so by having them seem as though they aren't dressed for the occasion (the children just wearing indoor clothes as they weren't expecting to find what they did when going through the wardrobe), and so there only choice was to wear the fur coats which were already in the wardrobe. We as a group made these decisions however they were finalised by Justine and Ellie, those who were in charge of costume. The role of the Beavers caused a lot of brainstorming as as a group we were unsure as to what they should have been wearing. A lot of our aspirations began in the makeup side of costume and so we didn't know what to dress them in. As our task progressed we eventually came to a decision as a group.
However, we found that these aspirations for the costumes weren't as easy as we thought and so we had to replan. We tried to find some fur coats, enough for the Pevensie children to have one each however this didn't go to plan and so we asked them to wear there own hats, coats and jumpers, we specified for them to wear anything warm, however we did ask for these garments to be faded or dull colours to try and stay periodically correct as we didn't think it would be very successful if they were all wearing brightly coloured clothing. Going back to the previous mention about the Pevensie children wearing an oversized fur coat each, we only managed to get hold of two fur coats, generously given by our peers, therefore we decided to dress the beavers in these coats, it worked well as it clearly defined their role, something that we were concerned about not happening as we didn't have many ideas relating to what the beavers would be wearing and so the fur coats worked in our favour after worrying that we wouldn't have enough and wouldn't be able to use them at all, by having the beavers dressed in them it made use of the fur coats as well as suitably working for them seeing as they were meant to be playing animals. Once we got a strong idea of what each character was going to be wearing, we started sketching the costumes to get a minor understanding of what each character was going to look like.
To begin with the original plan was to have none of the Pevensie children wearing makeup, however we were going to have the Beaver's wearing makeup to give the impression that they were actual beavers. The plan was to use cotton wool and tissue with liquid latex and make them a nose that stuck out like a beavers would. We were also going to make their eyebrows seem bushy and under cared for, we were going to do this by using individual false eyelashes to stick onto their original eyebrows to give an impression that they had more eyebrow hairs. We were also going to draw on two front teeth with a white eyeliner as it was the only item of makeup in which I thought would give off a realistic effect. We felt like it was important to have the beavers wearing makeup as we weren't sure of what they were going to be wearing, and so we thought if we didn't have a suitable outfit for them, the makeup would help show who they are meant to be playing.
However, things changed and we managed to get a suitable costume for the Beavers and so the makeup aspect wasn't as important anymore as we had more things to sort out. Although, I did do some research on makeup, such as how to make a nose with liquid latex and tissue and the results weren't as helpful as I thought they were going to be and so we decided not to use any makeup on the beavers as we didn't have enough time to fully investigate and figure out what works and what didn't, however, I think if we were to use makeup, it would be a distraction for the spectators and would lead them to not fully focusing on what was happening in the film.
When we were first introduced to the task, we were brainstorming the props in which we could use to make the short film as successful as possible. However, due to half of the film being outside and the other being inside the beavers house, most of our attention went to the beavers house as it was important that we picked a suitable location with the right props to make the beavers house seem as homely as possible. To begin with we weren't sure of what to use, considering that we didn't have a setting for the beavers house, however after we found one, we started to really focus on the props.
We started off by each allocating a prop to each other, this was the one prop that you had to make/buy to be used. My prop was to make a box of wood chip cereal, I used an old cereal box and wrapped it in brown parcel paper, I then used my laptop to create a cover for the cereal which I then stuck on to the front of the box. On the day of filming, we all brought in our prop and placed them in the beavers house, this really set the scene and it started to feel like the beavers home. We had wood chips building up in the back, books on the tables, lanterns, all of these props made the house seem like a home, and the wood chips in the back really helped the effect that this was meant to be a beavers home.
When we first got introduced to this task, we had many ideas as to where we wanted it to be set. Our initial ideas were to find somewhere which could act as both Narnia and the Beavers house to put the travelling to a minimum, this had to be taken into consideration due to the actors who were considerably younger than us as the actors were from different year groups. Although, before we even had our cast, we thought about Bewilderwood as a location due to their treehouse which would have been perfect for a beavers house and Bewilderwood itself would have been appropriate for Narnia as a whole.
After getting in contact with Bewilderwood we found out that we
wouldn't be able to film there, and so we had to start thinking about another location. Our second idea was to use the plantation gardens in Norwich, as we thought this would work well as Narnia and there is a hut at the top of the staircase, meaning we would have our beavers house also. We felt like the plantation gardens would be a more accessible location compared to bewilderwood and it would prevent us having to organise a time slot to go and film as the plantation gardens is open all year round and it is a public garden meaning we wouldn't need to be under a time limit leaving us to be able to get as much filming done as possible.
However, due to the time frame in which we had to complete this task, we didn't get organised in time, therefore meaning that we were unable to get ourselves to the plantation gardens leaving us with no other choice but to find a suitable location in our area. Luckily, Emily had a garden house at the bottom of her garden which was perfect for the Beavers house. We furnished it to make it seem more homely, and then had to find a second location for the beginning of the film when the siblings first meet Mr Beaver, however, we managed to use the woodlands at the back of our school field which we were able to make seem like a more substantial forest through the camera angles in which we used. Although our locations didn't end up being our initial ideas, I think the ones we used worked very well and we got the best possible outcome which we could have.When considering lighting we had to make a decision on how we were going to light the beavers house. We were relying on natural lighting for the outside shots, something which worked in our favour as when watching the end result, the lighting was getting dim as it was getting further into the evening and was getting darker. However this worked successfully as it gave an eerie atmosphere to the film and added to the effective nature of the children being somewhere that is dangerous. In the beavers home we used warm toned tea lights to add a warm feeling to the home. We did this as we wanted the beavers house to seem homely, and to seem as if it was dark outside and a fire has been put on. Furthermore, this lighting gave a red vale over the actors, which could represent the danger that is to come to the Pevensie children.
After we had spoken about location and our initial ideas, we started to talk about casting. We sent out an email and a notice to be put in the form boxes, we put them out on the Friday, for the auditions to be on the Monday. The plan for the auditions was to hold them at lunchtime and to be in the drama studio where it would feel like a professional environment to hold auditions. We planned to not have the whole class there to prevent the actors feeling under pressure because although we wanted it to be professional, we also wanted our actors to enjoy themselves and not think they are auditioning for a high end performance, we just wanted people who would be committed and understanding that this was going to be a film and so there would be a lot of repeating lines and actions to get the perfect shot.
Although, we sent out the audition slips and when we went to the drama studio it seemed to be in use and so we had to think of another location. After waiting for a while, no one turned up to the auditions and so some of us had to leave in order to do some work during our lunch, nevertheless, some class members stayed and a few people turned up. We ended up doing the auditions outside the music room, which in the end, worked in our favour as it took away the professional aspect and made it a more light hearted environment. Overall, we got a few year seven girls auditioning for the role of Lucy and one year twelve girl auditioning for the role of Susan.
After watching the footage from the auditions, we decided to have the girl in the final clip to play our Lucy and due to being unavailable for filming, the girl who auditioned for Susan couldn't be in the film, meaning that I had to then play the role of the older sister. We then needed 4 more characters, a Mr and Mrs Beaver, Peter and Edmund. This meant that we went to a year ten drama lesson to see if any boys wished to take part, one boy volunteered however a while later two other boys came to find us to say that they wanted to be a part of it. We then asked a year eleven boy to play the role of Mr Beaver. This meant that we had all of our cast and so we had to start rehearsing. We began by meeting after school to run through the lines (even though the actors didn't need to learn them) just to allow them to get an idea of who they were playing and due to the difference in age gaps, it was effective to get them all to meet before filming.
When we were introduced to this task we brainstormed what characteristics each character had, therefore giving us something to search for in the actors during their auditions. In the script, the Pevensie children show different emotions. Peter and Susan, the eldest of the siblings, show a more concerned attitude due to their protective personalities over their younger brother and sister. An opportunity for this to be shown would be when Susan tells the beavers that they really must go after thanking them for their hospitality, Peter agrees with her and they begin to leave. This shows the eldest Pevensie's responsibilities. Lucy and Edmund seemed more naive, from the context of the film that hit our screens in 2005 is that Edmund had been to Narnia before and met the white witch, thinking that she's a good character which leads him to run away to her castle, we wanted to foreshadow this event by before walking into the beavers house he would look into the distance, as if searching for her castle, it is then at the end of our film that he's disappeared and Mr beaver hints that he may not make it out alive. Lucy Pevensie, the youngest of the siblings and the first to discover Narnia is more convinced by the Beaver's story and believes that they should be the ones to destroy the white witch. This would be done through her determination to save Mr Tumnus, especially when she turns to Susan and tells them that they have to save him. Mr beaver seems confident and seems to admire Narnia and only wants whats best for it, he is a humorous character and this is shown through his voice, language and movements whereas Mrs beaver seems a lot more caring and is aware that these children are going to put their lives at risk.
When filming and seeing the final outcome, it is obvious that all of our actors fulfilled these characteristics excellently, we told the actors the characteristics of these characters and they all gave a very convincing performance. At first, I thought the actors may be hesitant to give it their all however once we started going, they were brilliant. I think if we were to improve, it would have been good to portray the siblings relationships even more, to make them really seem like they need to care for one another, specifically Peter and Susan caring for Lucy and Edmund, this could have been done through their body language and expression. Although at certain moments in the film Susan and Peter gave each other concerning glances, I still think there could have been more communication between the two to give the impression that they weren't safe here and they were fully aware of it.
Similar to character expression, there were also a specific way that we wanted our actors to move, we wanted to be able to get the children's emotions through their movements and body language. Specifically Peter and Susan, they are the eldest and so they need to protect their younger siblings especially from the talking beaver, who at the start of the film, they don't know. As well as this, Lucy could look confident and if Susan or Peter was to pull her away, she would look up at them and pull away to show that she isn't afraid of the talking beaver and that she is motivated to save Mr Tumnus. Furthermore, when in the beavers house, the children would be sat close together to show their close relationship and again, showing how the older siblings don't feel safe here. Also, when Susan tells the beavers that the children have to go back home, she would lean across the table to talk directly to Peter who is becoming convinced by the beavers story to show how desperate she is to go home.
When we were filming it, all of the actors fulfilled our plans of the movement that was going to be taking place. However if we were to improve, I think the physical contact between the older children and the younger needed to be stronger to fully get across the idea that they are protective of their family, and seeing as they don't have their parents with them, they feel as though they are responsible for Edmund and Lucy.
Once all of the filming was done, Aston started editing the film, he used adobe premier pro to create the film. We had over 300 clips to get through and some of them were mistaken takes and so there was a lot of searching for the right clip to go in the film. Aston used the story board to help him put each clip in the order that it needed to be in. It took a long time, however in order for the short film to be as best as possible, we needed to take our time.
As a group as a whole we worked on different aspects of planning, some members of the group worked on story boarding, this was the planning of what each clip was going to contain, including sketches and annotations with details with the line the actor would be saying whilst the camera was rolling.
As well as this, others worked on props, makeup, costume, this entailed making decisions about what the actors would be wearing and any props we needed to create Narnia. We all worked together to create a well structured plan of what was going to be happening in the film, something that acted as a benefit when approaching the planning of the filming days as this was not something which we were confident on. Although the end product was very successful, it took a lot of last minute planning to get where we wanted to achieve and I think if we were to repeat this task, the planning of the filming days would be a great area to improve on. When looking back on the days in which we were filming, I think the main issue was the communication aspect and the difficulties in which we had when trying to contact all of the actors.
As previously said the communication between the group and the actors was an area in which we needed to improve on, although, the situation was difficult as we had a big cast, who were all of different year groups, which made contacting one another challenging as the only way of getting hold of them was through emails, which we couldn't guarantee they would check, or by going to their lessons and speaking to them in person, something which started to become a too often occurrence. I think if we would to do this activity again, I think it would have been affective to have a group chat which enabled everyone involved with Narnia to communicate in an efficient way. If we were to have done this, then it would have made the organisation of the days in which we were filming, how long we would be to allow the actors to inform their parents, as well as what they needed to bring, it would also have been a lot easier to remind the actors what time we would all be meeting on the filming days. As a group, our communication was successful. We had a group chat to keep in touch with one another as well as meeting up during break and lunchtimes, after school also to plan how we were going to create this short film. If we were going to improve on our communication it would be successful to have a scheduled meet up every week instead of making last minute decisions leading to not everyone being able to make it, therefore meaning that we had to repeat the same ideas numerous times. Overall, our communication was good, however could have done with some improvements to make the whole filming process easier and successful.
Our organisation was successful in some senses however there were some alternative approaches in which we could have taken to make the film making experience a little easier. Overall, I think mainly the organisation issues came together with the communication issues, as previously said, our communication between the actors could have been done in a different approach which would have made the organisation part easier, however there is nothing that could have been done at the time to sort this out as we were trying to communicate with others in different year groups and obviously everyone was going to be free at different times, group members and the cast. However when we were all together we worked well as a group to make the film successful. Furthermore, we made last minute decisions which didn't work in our favour as it meant that we had to quickly make everyone aware of the decisions and as previously said it was difficult to get everything done in the time frame in which we had as there was a lot of stuff to be done, and in order to get everything done, we needed the people who were in charge of that specific task to be there and due to the large amount of us, this wasn't always possible. The organisation of the props were all distributed between the group members and we had to make one prop each in order to get everything done in the given time, this I think worked well as it reflected on our organisation skills and how we made a group decision which we stuck with to create the best possible outcome. As well as the props, other roles were shared in order to get the best result as there would be more than one person working on it. Overall, I think our organisation was successful, and we tried our hardest to make sure everything was done to the best of our abilities, ultimately, our organisation would have been better if we didn't leave everything till the last week, however we managed to get it completed and we were happy with the end result.
When we were first introduced to the Narnia task, we realised we had a significant amount of blog posts to get through, and so we came up as a class with the decision to distribute different blog posts to different people meaning we would all eventually get them posted on our blog. We decided who did what based on what role we were given in the group, for example, my role was co-director, and so one of the blog posts in which I completed was 'post 28- Directing your actors'. Before distributing blog posts, we firstly had to decide who was going to do what in the group, to contribute to making this short film successful. Joe wanted to be the director of the short film, as he felt as if he had strong ideas that would be achievable, as well as this I was the co director, as I felt as if I would be able to support the decisions in which Joe made, I was also acting in the film, playing the role of Susan. The producers were Lucy and Keri as they thought they were able to get everything completed on time, and by having this as a joint effort it made things a lot easier for them both. The film crew position was distributed to both Emily and Ellie to get a maximum number of successful shots and to get alternative angels. Emily also wanted to do lighting, as she is interested in the lighting aspect of film and photography. As previously said we wanted to split the making of props between the group as whole and made sure that everyone bought something in as there were a lot of props to be bought in and it would have been unfair to leave that job to one person. For costume and makeup, Justine and Ellie felt like they would be most suitable for the role and due to their creative mindset they did this job successfully. Finally, Aston was the person to edit all of the shots together, he is experienced in editing and premier pro, the editing software in which we use, and as a group, we felt as if he would be the best person to create a successful video, this was something which he did.
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