After picking a location for my shoot, I used Starnow.com to find actresses that could play my characters by placing a listing.
From this I managed to cast two actresses to come dressed in character to the location on the filming days.
I also made a list of props I needed to get such as phones, empty coffee cups, and an envelope, as well as props I was going to create myself, such as Diana's drawings and a fake picture post. I created Diana's drawings on Photoshop by adding a filter to pictures of my location and then printed them out on an envelope, stuck them into a sketchbook, or wrote on them to create posters. I also used Photoshop to create the fake post by modifying existing banners, changing the numbers and user ID to match what the action blocks say in my screenplay.
So that I knew which scenes I wanted to shoot for my trailer and so it would be clear to the actors exactly which lines they needed to learn, I broke up the scenes of my whole screenplay into a shooting script. This allowed me to create a schedule as I aimed to film about a scene an hour.
To prepare to make a shot list I made some script notations so that the shots I wanted to get matched the action blocks in my screenplay and I didn't miss anything on my shot list.
From this I then created my shot list, where I estimated the time each shot would take based on how long it would take to set up and how many takes would be needed adding an extra five minutes to each shot just in case.
From this, I then created some storyboards, mainly of the establishing and insert shots, using a template I made based on the example ones from the book From Word to Image (reading list).
For the more complicated shots, I then created some overhead diagrams so I would know where to place the equipment and tell the actors to stand whilst on location, hopefully saving time.
I also researched lighting as I was unsure how to best use the lights I had available in an exterior location. Therefore, I read the paragraphs on daytime exterior contrast management from Lighting for Digital Video & Television by John Jackman, and the section on lighting day exteriors in Cinematography: Theory & Practice by Blain Brown. I also researched how they use lighting when filming outside in some of my favourite TV shows, such as Once Upon A Time. From these sources, I found out that the best method is to use a reflector but, as I didn't have one of these, I instead planned to use the sun as a back light as my location is quite sheltered from the sun by trees.
As I have decided to make my film a two minute trailer, I researched and found a guide on wikihow which breaks down the trailer for the film Whiplash, and also watched other trailers so that I could better understand the structure:
I chose to watch these trailers as each of them have different tempos, as well as different themes. Also, some of these films I have seen and some I have not, meaning that in the ones for the films I have seen, I already know the clips, and their order in the narrative. For the films I have not seen, I found that it helped to show me how to structure a trailer to give the audience a sense of the story that will be told, without hopefully giving too much about the whole film away.
Although these trailers are all for different films of various genres they all have things in common. For example, I noticed that all of them start with a question which immediately tells the audience something about the main character of the narrative. This is shown in the final trailer which is for Colossal, as the main character, Gloria is asked, 'You don't remember anything last night, huh?' This hints at what the entire film revolves around, which is Gloria's drinking problem and her attempts to overcome it, right at the beginning of the trailer, so that the audience can immediately sense what the central themes and characters in the film are going to be.
From using these trailers as examples, they have influenced me to structure my own trailer as:
1) A question summing up the central themes/characters of the text,
2) Establishing shots of the main characters and location(s),
3) Show the conflict the character's must overcome,
4) Build up the action,
5) Spotlight the characters and the actors playing them,
6) Show the climax to provide a cliffhanger, without giving away too much about the text.
I also noticed that these trailers all feature a lot of moving shots, therefore I adapted my shot list to add more tracking, pan, and tilting shots even if they were just inserts to make my trailer more fluid and interesting, as well as focusing the audience on the aspects I want them to pay the most attention to, such as Diana's drawings and Ida walking along.
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