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hi i'm Dean i'm studying broadcast media at Maidstone UCA, so ive set up this blog to network and steal other peoples ideas while i'm on the course!

Wednesday, 6 February 2013

Hitchcock, drama, documentary and film

On boxing day there was a drama on BBC2 called 'The Girl' all about Alfred Hitchcock starring Sienna Miller, it wasn't as good as I was expecting but it is defiantly worth a watch, it only focused on the filming of The Birds and I was hoping it would be based around his hole career, but never the less here is a little synopsis and a tailor.

Alfred Hitchcock was at the height of his fame and creativity when, in 1962, he chose an unknown fashion model to star in his most ambitious film, The Birds. But as he sculpted Tippi Hedren into the perfect Hitchcock blonde of his imagination, he became obsessed with the impossible dream of winning the real woman's love. His failure destroyed both of their careers. 

Following this drama was a documentary presented by Paul Merton about all 23 Hitchcock films, I really enjoyed it, it was great to learn more about the great director and learn about his films I didn't even know existed, and how he learned his trade in the film business, here is a a synopsis and trailer.

Documentary in which Paul Merton explores Alfred Hitchcock's film career.
These moody features - some silents such as The Lodger - provided the essential cinematic DNA for his rise to prominence as Hollywood's 'master of suspense'.
Merton sees Hitchcock as a man immersed in the visual language of cinema, who understood how to use camera movement and lighting for dramatic effect. For Hitchcock, heavily influenced by the German expressionist cinema, the pictures would always be more important than the dialogue.
Using clips and previously unseen archive interviews with Hitchcock, Merton weaves together a playful narrative of the director's early career and macabre world, revealing a man with a great sense of humour.

So carrying on my new found Hitchcock obsession, there was a few films that stood out that I really want to see, such as 'Frenzy', Mr & Mrs Smith, The Birds, Vertigo and Rear Window. while looking on the internet for these films I stumbled across this....
I managed to get hold of a copy and watched it, it is very good with a great performance from Antony Hopkins who plays Hitchcock, but like the BBC 2 drama I felt robbed, as it only really focused on the making and filming of Psycho, and I was more eager to learn about his early career, in my opinion the documentary  is by far the best out of the three, but all three are worth watching.

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

Dissertation ideas

So my ideas for my dissertation; I am struggling to come up with a question for my dissertation, I know I want to base it around comedy writing, mainly around BBC British comedies such as Only Fools and Horses,
The Office
 and Gavin and Stacey
But I am still not sure what question to ask?

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Toerags - The edit

So the last few days Dan Baugh and I have been assembling rough cuts of all 3 episodes, so far everything is looking good and we are working on getting each episode tighter, and finding the correct buzz tracks/atmosphere sounds that will suit our film.

We have also set up a Facebook page for 'Toerags' http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=tn_tnmn#!/pages/Toerags/299707950141424 Where we are keeping people up with the process.

We have also been collaborating with Francesca Fry who is in her 3rd year of Graphic Design at UCA she will be designing our opening and closing titles as well as designing up a sleeve for the DVD she has been updating her process on her web site; http://francescafry.tumblr.com/ She is using this as her major project for her course, here are some of the ideas she had sent me to choose from and also some of the rough edits she has done so far.

Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Toerags; Thats a wrap!

Today Dan Baugh and I meet at the studios to sort out all the footage we've shot over the last few days, we finished filming yesterday well ahead of schedule, the shoot went really well and all cast and crew were amazing we had a blast filming with great people. We've got hundreds and hundreds of clips to sort through before we start the edit, we are hoping to have a rough cut of every episode by monday.

Sunday, 11 November 2012

Toerags

So with all the episodes written for 'Toerags' Dan Baugh and myself have been busy finding locations, finding/auditioning actors, making/sourcing props and creating shot lists and call sheets.
We have decided on a 3day shoot the week commencing 19/11/12.
As usually with all our projects its really hard work trying to get actors to commit to a 3day shoot free of charge, so Dan and myself are doing our damnedest to pull in as many favours as possible.

Toerags

So I handed in my finished draft 15 page script for 'Toerags' for Simon to read, he came back and suggested that it might work better in 3 episodes and it will help with use of the 3 act structure. So after a discussion with my director Dan Baugh we decided to cut the original 15 into one 5min episode and I would write 2 new episodes, which are now written with episode titles 'Throw Bombs On It' and 'One Lump Or Two' the story seems to be a bit clearer now, but Dan and myself feel the show has lost a bit of its charm, I've had to lose the friendly banter between the boys and replace it with story. Have I done the right thing?? as first and foremost it is a comedy...Drama second.

Wednesday, 17 October 2012

Green screen work shop

Today we had a green screen work shop with Kim Brooke, 
I've never done green screen before so it was good to be shown the basics on how its all done, hopefully I'll be using green screen in the future for some of my projects.
Kim set us a task where we had to read out a newspaper article in front of the green screen and then edit the back ground of the green screen, here is my first attempt at green screen. I can only apologise for my poor presenting skills.