Week 19: Pre-Production Set- Finalising The Script

PRE-PRODUCTION SET

Week 19: Finalising The Script

By Ahmed Sofia

Team 10 - 

Sofia Ahmed - sa605

Shufi Sufana- ams64

Juriaan Van Linschoten- jlv7

James Totty- jt365

Ahad Talukder- at442

Module: EL342- Moving Image

UNIVERSITY OF KENT

Week 19 was our considerably big week. Everything about this week made us feel better and more welcomed to work and enjoy ourselves. To start off with, I've always considered England to be one of those few places that you could have a serious discussion about the weather with just about anyone and everyone. This was it, after all the horrid weather we had been through, Week 19 was all about smiles and sunshine. Weather's always played a special role in either making or breaking my mood for the day. Week 19 started off with sunshine.

The day of our usual group meeting, it was as sunny as it could be. Walking over to Jennison, I felt absolutely wonderful, watched everyone 'walking on sunshine' but at the same time I couldn't be asked to sit inside, the thought of sitting and working inside was starting to bother me little by little as I got closer to my destination.

sit outside and play outside and enjoy the weather.

Walking into Jennison and realising that I was leaving the sun behind, I was starting to feeling low. I walked over to the computer suites, greeted my mates and asked them if it seemed like a good idea to work outside, the weather was perfect for sporting a tan whilst typing away on laptops and finalising our script.

Everyone seemed to love the idea, quickly jumped out of their seats and onto on of our mate's house, placed the chairs outside and planked ourselves out in the sun while typing away. Discussing the opening shots, the details of the film and the closing scene. The sun was a booster in regards of our efficiency.

We sat out there, having a laugh, pulling a cheeky joke on each other and talking about the script. The laughs just made us want to work and focus on our script event further. We sat there over two hours under the bright sun, enjoying the warm rays, laughter and the preparation of the script. We started of discussing camera angles, while laughing at each other's roles if we ended up behind the camera, or checking sound levels.

Little by little our script began to come together, our ideas began to pour out and in all that happiness and truth, our film began to gain more focus and we began to ease in to the zone where we would come up with ideas nearly every second, even if we came up with it in between all those jokes and then we would realise how well things had gone, hours had passed and our script was prepared.

All we were left with now was giving our protagonist a face and bringing our film to life.

Sofia Ahmed.
Team 10.

Week 18: Pre-Production Set- Treatment

PRE-PRODUCTION SET

Week 18: Prep And Finalising The Treatment

By Ahmed Sofia

Team 10 - 

Sofia Ahmed - sa605

Shufi Sufana- ams64

Juriaan Van Linschoten- jlv7

James Totty- jt365

Ahad Talukder- at442

Module: EL342- Moving Image

UNIVERSITY OF KENT

Week 18, a newer buzz with the treatment due in just about two days. There was excitement, confusion and cries all over the place. Everything was going well so far up until the phrase treatment popped into our minds and the first thought that entered everyone's mind was - What do we write?

My mind was exactly torn into two halves, two absolute and perfectly carved out halves. One side equivalent to the other. My animation pre-production pack was due on Friday whilst the treatment was due on Tuesday. I visited Shufi's two nights before the animation deadline and she had the exact same look as me. We were both puzzled. As much as I've been trained in multi-tasking by my generation for the ideal 21st century lifestyle, I was absolute caught off guard. My mind would just not agree with the idea of thinking about two things at once, two deadlines with extreme importance marked on both. I spent the two nights working with the animation module and as soon as I finished the animation submission, the team was summoned for an emergency treatment review.

Every member presented their research work from Week 17, we started going through our events list from the film's scripts. Each action, each detail and every shot was taken into consideration. I began to request Google, my best friend for help once again. I started reviewing Film Treatment examples for pre-made films and their templates, accessing moodle and going through all the lectures over and over again to finalise the treatment over the weekend.

We managed to put things in order, one after the other, discussing the contents of the film and checking reason behind the event, the location of the event and the camera angles of the event after which we started to frame it in the universal language spoken by almost all human beings on this planet, the English Language.

After spending many tiring hours in the computer suite, we managed to finalise our treatment and with a final click - 'Upload' 

We had achieved freedom.

Temporarily.

Sofia Ahmed.
Team 10.

Week 17: Pre-Production Set- Individual Research

PRE-PRODUCTION SET

Week 17: Individual Research

By Ahmed Sofia

Team 10 - 

Sofia Ahmed - sa605

Shufi Sufana- ams64

Juriaan Van Linschoten- jlv7

James Totty- jt365

Ahad Talukder- at442

Module: EL342- Moving Image

UNIVERSITY OF KENT

Week 17 hit us with a slightly different taste than the past two weeks. It was project week, in university terms it would mean enjoy finishing off your deadlines for the next week and spending sleepless nights in the library or labs regardless of the week being off. I would love to add a twist and say, it would be something you would expect me to be doing but luckily, I was free and I enjoyed my project week catching up on sleep that I've been missing ever since I was born. Sadly, I'm going to burst everyone's bubble by mention here that the latter was something I could not do, I spent my project week working on project which were due the next week. I spent days and nights cringing and crying like any other student, the story of the protagonist in my Moving Image film now had my face printed right across it, I managed to procrastinate myself out of most things until the last minute and it managed to hit me during project week that I had limited and very little time left for work.

As a team we had agreed to meet up at least once every week and discuss our ideas and make progress in our film and script but that seemed impossible during Project week with all the inconvenience we had created for ourselves. Our team came up with the idea of using the social networking systems to our advantage, or what today's generation calls Facebook. We created a group for our team on it and decided to share our views, opinions and ideas on the group's page and upload files/drafts and documents, anything we felt was relevant or in our case even irrelevant considering we're a set of right goofballs. We decided that if it were impossible for even one of us to attend the meeting, we would share our day's work and progress on the page and let our peers be the better judge of whether it made sense or was absolute rubbish.

It was our very own Moodle but with a quicker feedback system because we seemed to spend half our lives on Facebook. We made considerable progress in Week 17 even though I was not able to meet the group for a meeting. The network seemed to connect us just fine and share our views perfectly. Few of us lived minutes away from each other so even though we were unsuccessful in meeting up as a complete group, I was able to drop into their places from time to time and discuss ideas and views in person as human beings and then upload up new ideas together to the rest of us.

I spent Week 17 reviewing most lecture notes and thinking about the events that would take place in the film and started to create the film in the blank canvas inside my head. I was able to visualize the various camera shots and potential locations we could use in the raw footage of our film. I'd keep a notepad or a digital device of sorts considering we're in a highly technological age and I'd scribble down the tiny musings that I've had at the most absurd times during the week.

Sofia Ahmed
Team 10.

Week 16: Pre-Production Set- Finalising Ideas

PRE-PRODUCTION SET

Week 16: Finalising The Idea Behind The Film

By Ahmed Sofia

Team 10 - 

Sofia Ahmed - sa605

Shufi Sufana- ams64

Juriaan Van Linschoten- jlv7

James Totty- jt365

Ahad Talukder- at442

Module: EL342- Moving Image

UNIVERSITY OF KENT

Week 16 started off with a rather familiar buzz as week 15 with exception that I had new faces in my life that I would be working closely with for the next month or so, that was the scenario work-wise. On a lighter note, I had made amazing new friends with a great sense of variety in their likes and dislikes which had me all riled up about things I had never noticed before or could have never been bothered to look into.

We took another look into the draft idea we had introduced ourselves to and realized that it felt a slight bit odd. All in all, I realized that the film did not have a strong enough link to the theme which assigned to us which was starting to worry me. I expressed my views to the group after which they began to see what I was trying to express and we had clearly enjoyed the idea of 'perception of time' which was introduced by James but just the follow up story of the two main protagonists.

We continued to think hard over and over about a follow up story or a main story line which clearly linked our film to the theme, at the same time we tried to keep in mind that we did not want something which would be expected of us. I began to research on the computer right away, Google being my best friend for years has never let me down and once again it reassured me and proved itself after coming to my rescue.

As I was reading and researching leads relating to the theme, I started thinking about time in general and how as a child my parents always spoke about these idioms and a very particular one in my childhood, the one phrase - 'A stitch in time saves nine'. They never said more or less right after and I was never tempted to ask my parents what it ever meant, somehow it was self explanatory to me at that age and in the given events in my life.

For some very odd reason I began to think harder on that phrase and before I knew it I was typing away on Google trying to find out it's origin, the actual meaning behind the phrase and what it's importance was. I came across an explanation saying - 'A timely effort will prevent more work later.' That was my eureka moment, the more I fiddled around with time and it's leads, it ended up leading me straight to 'Procrastination' and all its evils. Bingo, just what I needed. It was my code-breaker, procrastination was suddenly the most meaningful and useful phrase in my life. The theme just happened to break through with the strongest link to procrastination and running out of time. I presented the idea to the group who seemed relieved and absolutely enjoyed the idea.

Along with the importance of time, procrastination became it's other half like ying and yang.

Sofia Ahmed.
Team 10.

Week 15: Pre-Production Set - Ideology & Brainstorming

PRE-PRODUCTION SET

Week 15: Ideology & Brainstorming

By Ahmed Sofia

Team 10 - 

Sofia Ahmed - sa605

Shufi Sufana- ams64

Juriaan Van Linschoten- jlv7

James Totty- jt365

Ahad Talukder- at442

Module: EL342- Moving Image

UNIVERSITY OF KENT

Week 15 was spent in social interactions with my team mates, most of whom I had met for the first time. The original idea was to sit down and discuss the idea behind the film although most of our nights were spent in basic rapport building. Team 10 consists of James Totty, Ahad Talukder, Shufi Sufana, Juriaan Van Linschoten, Wonseok Choi and I.

I was unable to attend the workshop that day so we met up the next few days as we were off and we discussed our plans for our film. The first question that popped into our minds was what the theme 'Out of time' really meant and what were the various ways of perceiving the theme that was presented before. Our group had already decided to try our shot at creating something a little out of the box, a slight bit twisted and different than the usual understanding that would pop in someone's head after they hear or read the theme - 'Out of time'.

During one of the team's casual meet ups James brainstormed and came up with the idea of the 'perception of time' or in layman's term the manipulation of time or the idea of having alternate parallel universes being compared against each on a basic principle. In this case the principle was the theme - Out of time.

The basic ideology behind the script was that the film would cast two main protagonists and their lives would be revealed to the audience and how they went about their day-to-day activities. There would be a variation in their time frames, one of them would have a fast-paced whilst the other would have a rather slow and laid back lifestyle. This was the first basic draft was prepared in week 15.

The weekend of Week 15 was taken off to relax and have a good and eventful weekend.

Sofia Ahmed.