Monday 16th April: How 2 make a Drama

The drama had begun, planning had commenced, and as the sound designer, I had a list of sounds to record and design! At first we'd talked about the basic idea so I came up with a list of sounds I thought I'd need for an abuse story. I made a checklist on my phone in preparation. Here's the checklist!

You'll notice everything had been checked and there's a number of quite harsh sounding phrases below it! This is actually the list currently, after I've finished recording all of the sounds I needed. That's right folks, I'm speaking to you from the future after creating the film! Except it's the past for you, since I typed this up before you arrived here to read it. It's all rather weird.

But, back to the project, we had a filming day, and once we had all the footage, I was then cast as the voice of the abuser! So I set to work writing down lines to say and get to recording them! Which are the lines you see there. I actually had to warn my housemates not to worry if they hear angry shouting, which is always a fun warning to give!

But let's head back in time a little, back to when we were still in the design stage, when we weren't quite sure what we were going to get. Originally, the film was going to have two characters on camera, a Mother and her Daughter.

This was the very first draft of the script. As you can see, it has structure, two characters having a conversation, this is laid out much more as you'd expect for a scene in a film. It didn't stay this way for long however. The next task we had to focus on was drawing up a storyboard of these scenes. Now, here's where I introduced a new method of organisation. There is a program which exists, known as "Discord". Now, Discord was originally designed as a gaming chat client. But my genius was able to craft it, mold it into a new form! One which took the philosophy of organising your work and brought it to an all-you-can-eat buffet of efficiency! I present to you, the "Super Awesome Film Team" Group chat:

Take your time, peruse the words I've left on the screen to guide you through this parlor of organised entertainment. No more would we be searching for that one storyboard sample we made 3 weeks ago, it would simply be waiting and ready in the appropriate room. It was here, planning began. 

This, is my house. More specifically these are the parts of my house we used in the final film. It turns out, to make a storyboard you need to know where the camera is going to be pointing, which helps a lot if you know the location you're going to be dealing with. I took these pictures around my house and swiftly posted them into the filing cabinet in our new Discord group, so that everyone could get a feel for the place, and Ryan, being Cinematographer, could draw up an accurate storyboard. Speaking of which:

This was the storyboard Ryan drew after looking over my pictures of my house. Now, the film is starting to come a little closer to the finished product. We have the basic shots seen in the final film, and a few extra which we ended up scrapping. The more we planned, the more we realised a simple idea would be much more effective at getting a point across. So, with a location, a plan, and a hesitant actor, we organised a date to film.

Here are some shots of the day itself and all the equipment the group had to carry! Well, most of the group had to carry it, they were all on their way to my house so I escaped this task. I didn't sign up to film making for heavy lifting! The day went by relatively quickly and filming concluded with a good number of shots and sounds. At this point however, no dialogue had been recorded. This would change soon.

Meet Lucy, a friend of mine and a work colleague from a scuba diving club. This was the voice of the female actor in the final film. The great thing about no live dialogue, is that we can use any voice and the audience will believe it's the actor they're seeing! During the edit, Lucy came to visit and recorded a few lines, which included some terrified screams and pleads for help. At this point my neighbors have got to be convinced something is going on in my house. Once these were recorded, and I'd recorded my own lines of shouting anger alongside Lucy's, the rest was history.