Survey Feedback

One of the questions on the survey that Hennie created was, 'What could we have improved on?' All of the responses that we received were to do with bigger budget.

For example more food on final day, and a fee. These are things that we wish we could have given our cast and crew but is something that we couldn't with it being a student budget. There was enough food and drink for the cast and crew but on the last day in the final scene when the extras arrived we did not allocate enough food for how many extras showed up. I was very happy with this feedback as we really put our all into producing a professional shoot with the budget we had. 

Emails to writers

For my report, I ideally wanted to have some feedback from some writers about how they got into the industry. So I thought the best thing to do was to email them with a personal email and hope for some replies. Here is an example:

To Freddy

I was wondering if you would be able to help me. I am a final year student at the University of Creative Arts and I am studying Broadcast Media. I am in the final 2 months of my degree and I am currently writing my final report. My report is based upon my passion which is script writing. 

I am a big fan of Bad Education so thought I would give it a go in asking you for some writing advice. The combination of brilliant comedy writing and great acting in Bad Education is something I admire as it is not just appealing and relevant to teens but adults too. (Even my mum watches it!) I have just finished writing a television coming-of-age teenage pilot but for an older audience and have looked towards Bad Education greatly for inspiration. 

For part of my report I have to discuss established writers and how they write, so I was just wondering if  you could possibly answer the following questions for me?

1. I understand you write plays but how did you get into writing?

2. Was it always comedy that you favored writing? (If you do)

3. What advice do you have to someone just graduating from university hoping to make their way into television/play writing? 

I understand you are very busy so I appreciate your time in reading this email.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

Maddie Ireland 

Fortunately I didn't receive any replies. However when I attended a Creative England event at the studios, I spoke to Perry O'Hallaron, who I had met previously before on one of Dean's shoots. He now has his own production company called Milk Gone Bad, but is still writing. He gave me a very valuable piece of advice, which was 'Just keep writing.' This sounds simple but is very important just to keep writing no matter how many knock backs you get. This is definitely something I am going to do after uni.

First edit feedback

I knew that the cut that we had given to Simon was rough. Most of the scenes weren't together meaning there was big bits of black throughout. But it had all the scenes there and was  first cut. 

Hennie and I had said that the whole thing felt a bit flat but we knew this could be lifted by music and sound effects. Our editor Josh also had a lot of animation that he planned to put into the edit to lift it as well.

Simon's main points were:

-Not enough close up shots, he wanted us to get straight into the action to get to know the characters.

-Maisy unintentionally keeps looking to the camera, she does it so often that he confuses the audience to whether she is actually meant to be doing it or not.

-Big issue with crossing the line and peoples eye lines in the last party scene.

-The first scene is the biggest problem area- bad choice of shots, over exposed and in some areas soft.

We will pass all of these points onto Josh, so he can improve the edit and we can have a better end piece.

The first edit

Today I watched the first edit of 'Totally Maisy'. I was so excited as I knew how much effort everyone had put into making it a brilliant show.

I was pleased with the first edit but felt that the second half of the film was much stronger that the first half and that the first half just felt a bit flat. I think this is mainly due to the sound not being sorted yet and there is no background music/ sounds to lift the action. I found some of the scenes even funnier now they had been brought to life and there were some brilliant shots in there too.

We will be showing Simon on Monday, so we can give his feedback to Josh and he can get on with the next edit!

Our Editor hard at work

Our first and only problem

Day 4, our final day gave us our first and only problem that we had whilst filming Totally Maisy. The call time for most of the cast was 6pm, including Katie (Maisy's enemy and school hottie.) It got to about 4pm and neither me or Hennie had heard from Katie all day after numerous phone calls, texts and emails. She had been at the first day of filming and seemed happy and excited to continue so we thought this to be odd. By the time it got to 5pm we decided that we could not wait any longer for her to contact us so must start on an contingency plan. Katie is a vital character to show that Jack is not interested in Maisy but is going out with Katie. Katie's purpose is to be horrible to Maisy and the girls and be Jack's girfriend. So we decided to write myself a part in as Katie's big sister, who all the girls to be older and scarier than Katie, a mega bitch if you like. This would work so that when Maisy looked in the binoculars she would see that Katie wasn't there and get excited only to be confronted with her big sister when they got inside. To us this was the only thing we could do with such short amount of time and stand ins. 

Luckily at 6pm Hennie received a text saying that Katie would be late and her phone had died. So luckily for us Katie turned up and we were able to continue filming as normal!

This really taught me the importance of contingency plans and how important it is to have them just in case.

Jack Baugh (Jack) and Mel Sanger (Katie)

Totally Maisy- Day 1

We were all really excited to meet our cast and start filming today. We knew today and Saturday were to be our hardest but most exciting shoots as they were on location and with the most cast/crew and extras. Today's shoot was at the school so the crew arrived at half 7 to begin setting up and then the cast call time was 8. We had a late start as Maisy was stuck in the Dartford tunnel traffic, so we had to cut our whole script read through, down to just the first scene read through.

Our Director, Jordan then briefed the cast and crew and Hennie and I gave a brief health and safety talk so that the cast and crew knew what precautions to take. 

The cast all bonded together really quickly and really well which I was really pleased with as that was my main concern to begin with as they had never met each other before. By the end of the day it felt like everyone was old friend and we were all really excited for the next 3 days filming.

If I could have changed anything from the firsts day shoots, it would be that the extras were waiting around for quite some time at the beginning of the day so I should have made their call time later. They didn't seem to mind though and ate their way through the provided food!

We also had time to take our promotional image that we will be using for all our posters, dvd cases etc. I am really pleased with how this came out and think it really portrays the different characters and their friendship groups. 

1 day to go!

With one day till the big shoot I am getting very nervous but excited. There is still somethings to sort out with directer and 1st AD so we are having a meeting first thing tomorrow to go over last minute issues to do with the schedule and extras. 
This is the list of things we need to do tomorrow:

• Meet with Jordan and Josh at 10am.
• Print at studios (Call sheets, scripts, shooting schedule and shot list.)
• Collect equipment from studios.
• Collect dolly from UCA campus.
• Buy last costumes pieces (A few white shirts from Primark)
• Food shop for first few days. 

Our first day involves most of our entire cast so Hennie and I have to make sure to cater for them all. It will also test our organisation skills with so many people to control.