Day 3: Final Day of Filming

Today we had several of the same actors back to film more of the shorter scenes. We really enjoyed filming some of them and had to stifle our laughter at some of the great acting that was coming out of the people we had asked to help us in our project.

Most of the filming again took place in school, although I (Sarah) went to Alice's to film one small segment with one of our prison guards.

Today we also took the chance to take photos for our magazine front cover and on both days we took photos for our poster. The images look really good and quite believable too, I think. We will post some of them onto the blog quite soon.

We managed to get everything done, except for a gate which we still need to locate, and we hope that it is going to come together now in the editing process.

Day 2 of Filming

We felt today was quite succesful as we managed to get quite a lot filmed, despite the fact it was freezing outside and quite windy. We feel that the sound quality could be slightly affected by the wind, but we played it back on the camera and it seemed okay, so we will have to check this when we get to the editing stage. We filmed the scene in the courtyard today and our actors got into their roles quite well. We are worried about how some bits will fit together as it was difficult to get all our actors/actresses there on time, but hopefully through the editing we will make it look professional. Some of the short clips were filmed too, although some didn't end up so long, we filmed as much footage as possible so then we have more to 'play' with at the editing stage. When filming we tried to be very aware of the mise-en-scene and anything that may have been in the background, resulting in us having to move tables, chairs, etc.

The Start of Filming!

Here is our film schedule:




We began filming today, but our film schedule didn't go exactly to plan because of issues with actors, so we decided to make the most of our time by driving to Canterbury to film the front of the HM Prison there.

Unfortunately however, Jess, in our group had become quite ill and had to go to hospital and was therefore unable to partake in any of the filming on the three days. Although she is however back to health now.

When we arrived at Canterbury, we thought it was best if we went to ask permission before we got a camera out and started filming a real prison as otherwise people may have been asking questions. We were told that as long as we were standing on the pavement outside the gates, they couldn't do very much to stop us from filming. They didn't seem overly happy about it, but grudgingly said we could, so we went ahead. It took a while to actually get the shots we wanted as typically we arrived at an end of a shift, so many of the prison wardens were leaving and we couldn't have them or their cars on camera.

We filmed several shots at different paces, but we were quite disappointed that the inscription wasn't very visible.

Mug Shot Preparation

We prepared the information boards before the filming days, so we were ready to take the photos of each character to create our poster.

Story board.

As part of our planning for the trailer, we created several drafts of a storyboard containing our ideas of the storyline we wanted to produce.

Draft 1:

 Draft 2:

 Draft 3:

We updated our story board several times as our ideas constantly changed, from adding props, including different camera angles and even changing location of the set. All of these elements collectively add to producing a realistic media text.

Change of Location

We have also decided to change the set of our production as it felt like we had reached a dead end with trying to find an inside canteen restaurant that we could use for filming purposes. However we are going to stick with the same narrative and instead do it as an outside in a courtyard scene. We decided this would be suitable as from our research we saw that outside activities were included in the provisions for the Young Offenders.

We emailed our Head teacher to ask for permissions to use the tennis courts outside our school during half term and got the following reply.

Our Email:
"Dear Ms Stubbings,

Would it be possible to have the use of the tennis courts by Main School for a couple of days in the first week of half term?

As part of our A2 Media coursework is to make a trailer for our own new soap and it would be really useful if we could use the tennis courts as one of our sets. We don’t know if this would be possible as obviously most staff won’t be in and therefore the courts would most likely be locked – but if you could let us know asap, if you could help, that’d be great.

Many thanks,
Sarah"

Headteacher reply:
"
Sarah,

The PE department are happy for you to use the courts and they are not locked during the holiday.

From a health and safety point it is vitally important that you notify the site staff of which days and times you will be here at the school. Once you have made a decision about when you will be here please notify them before the half term holiday and then when you come on to the site you should let them know you are here and when you have left the site. They will be here between 9am and 4pm so you need to come on site between those times too.

The site staff will be here working, and there are a few other things – drama workshops etc going on at school that week.

Good luck with the filming.

Best wishes

Mrs Stubbings"

So that was a great response and after doing our Filming Schedule we will inform the site staff about when we will be in at school.

We have now informed the site staff when we will be in school so that is all organised and confirmed.

Theme music - permission.

To be able to use the music we want for our trailer, we need to ask permission from the music artist. From browsing through the band's youtube account, a link to their 'myspace' profile was listed:

http://www.myspace.com/youngoffendersinstitute

From this, we e-mailed the band:

"Hey,

I am currently studying A2 Media Studies and, in groups, we have to create a trailer for a new soap opera. The group and I want the soap to be set in a young offenders institution. Which is where you guys come in.

Like any soap, we need a theme tune but for any music we use we need permission to use it, unless we make up our own. We were wondering if we could get permission to use part of your song "we're the young offenders" for this coursework because, as you can probably tell, it would fit our soap perfectly. If we could, that would be great! Otherwise it's back to the drawingboard.. ):

Once again, it would be greatly appreciated if you could help us out and let us use your song.
Thanks!
Alice, Launa, Sarah and Jess. :)
x"

We are currently still waiting for a reply.

We also emailed the management company behind the band, whose contact details we found on the following website, as the band myspace hasn't been used for a while and wanted quite a speedy reply.

We sent them the following email:

"------Original Message------
From: Sarah Marie Baker
To: info@nuxx.com
Subject: Permissions
Sent: Oct 12, 2010 18:37
Dear whom it may concern,

The following website shows your contact details in regard to the band 'The Young Offenders Institute' and I am emailing to enquire after one of their songs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2004/12/09/young_offenders_institute_unheard_music_group.shtml
For our A2 Level Media Production Coursework we have to create a trailer for a new soap, and we have set ours in a Young Offender's Institution. The Young Offenders Institute's song 'We're the Young Offenders' is perfect for our theme tune music for the end of our trailer, however obviously we cannot breach copyright laws to use this song in our production. So this email is really to ask about whether there is a chance of us being given permission to use this song.
If you are no longer involved with this band, could you please point us in the right direction as that would be really helpful.

Many thanks,
Sarah Baker"

We then received this reply on 12/10/10

"
Sure you can use the song Sarah
Yours,


Joe"

Which we were delighted about, but we are still waiting for confirmation from the band itself, as we don't want to abuse anyone's right to Intellectual Property.

Theme Music

Soaps conventionally have a recognisable theme tune and with issues of copyright we had the option of finding a piece of music that the writers/performers would let us use, or we had to create our own music.

We are unable at the moment to find the contact details, because of school security website blocks, for the people who own the following piece of music. But we are hoping we could use this music as our theme tune! As its catchy and very relevant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-p22D9CXpQ

Young Offenders Institutions Research

We realised that we needed to do some more research into Young Offender's Institutions, so we could provide a realistic representation as a code and convention of soap is that it is a dramatised version of real life.

Below are some links that we used to learn more about the YOI's. We didn't want to copy and paste information as there are copyright laws protecting information such as on the following websites.
http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/adviceandsupport/prison_life/juvenileoffenders/
http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/adviceandsupport/prison_life/youngoffenders/


We were particularly shocked by stories such as the following:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1207011/Child-inmates-living-extraordinary-squalor.html
And used this for ideas for storylines, that could be seen in the last flashing montage of plotlines that the soap would cover.
http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/adviceandsupport/prison_life/bullying/
http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/adviceandsupport/prison_life/selfharm/
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/CrimeJusticeAndTheLaw/PrisonAndProbation/DG_181856

We also looked at news stories about young people being convicted and used these as background stories for some of our characters.