Treatment for a factual short film

Today I wrote a treatment for a factual short film to be made over the next coming weeks as my final project for production practice.
I feel production is my best area when it comes to the medis as you can be as creative as you like.
I have decided to write a factual short based on student drinking. You may think this is cliche' as many students could create a film based around this idea, however, I am wanting to make this into a serious documentary detailing the dangers and effects alcohol has on students around Liverpool and in general.
I want to address situations such as how easy it is to get hold of cheap alcohol and also the cheap students deals that are around the clubs and pubs of Liverpool and how this entices students to drink as much as they possibly can on very low budgets.

I would like to interview students who have a quiet drink through the day to see the calmness of drinking but also students of a night when they are out and about and get footage of how alcohol really does change people and how the act in situations. I would also like to interview (if possible) an NHS worker and ask them a couple of questions relation to health and their opinions on drinking.
Interviewing a bouncer of a club would also be great to get a real insight as to what they have to deal with on a daily basis of a crowded, over run club/pub/bar.

As this is only a treatment, all group members must write one too and we bring them in on Monday to discuss which one we are going to go for, therefore this may not get chosen however I would like to make this film anyway...

EDITING PERSONAL PROFILE

Today was the day of editing our footage that we shot for our Personal Profile short. As I have written about this in a previous blog, our Personal Profile film has to be a three minute short whereby we follow a person who has an interesting story to tell. We chose a comedian.
I went into University at 9am to edit as the film had to be complete and burnt to a disk by 2pm, and as I am thoroughly aware that this is a very short time to complete a full edit, it was the only day I could do it with the group as myself and other group members have been unable to edit any other day with it being reading week where many of us had gone home.

We began by looking through all the footage captured and looking at what we wanted to use. We placed our shots in the order of what we wanted, almost making a rough cut I would say. This was time consuming and stressful but we powered on through.
This was not the hard part...
The worse part was yet to come.
Once most of our shots were in the order of how we wanted them, we then had to siv through all the audio from a twenty minute interview and an hour's audio from the comedians live gig that we had shot previously. This was extremely stressful and I was constantly looking at the clock. Time was ticking on by far too fast and we needed to really work hard to get it finished by the deadline. As a team, I feel we work extremely well as we all have a clear idea of how we want our film to look, but as we were getting closer and closer to 2pm, tempers began to rise high and arguments occurred. Nothing major of course, we just felt we were all under a hell of a lot of stress. Having said this, after five hours of sitting, clicking, cutting, listening and stressing, we finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel and had completed our final edit with even five minutes to spare!

I must say this was the one film throughout the year that I really feel worked the best. Maybe it was because it was a very interesting module, but I felt the team as a whole here worked extremely well and all pulled together when we had to.

I will post up the finished film once I have posted it onto YouTube!

Watch this space.

Production on Personal Profile

We have been asked to produce a film based on the narrative of a personal profile of someone who has a god story to tell.
Myself and my group have chosen to create a film based on a comedian and as it so happens, my group member James (who is also a stand up comedian on the side) organised a comedy night at the local Vooo Bar in Liverpool, so we thought this was a great chance to get right ahead with filming and see if we could use one of the comedians.
Thankfully, one of the comedians is a friend and James' and kindly let us film his slot, then he also did an interview at the end of the gig for us where we asked him questions such as 'how long have you been in stand up for? 'are you nervous throughout or do the nerves get less?' and 'have you ever had a bad gig'.
the night went exceptionally well and we got the shots we wanted so then we went into uni the following week and uploaded our footage.
When in the edit, we realised what else we needed to capture in footage and made a plan of what it is exactly we need. In this aspect, my group is well organised and we always work well as a team so we have decided to go back out and film what we need on Thursday (which is tomorrow). James' friend who we are using as our personal profile is luckily coming to stay in Liverpool for a few nights so, again, thankfully he has agreed to let us get some more footage of him in action. However, as we have no more comedy gigs scheduled, we will have to work round this and do our upmost best to create what we want.

Below is one of my favourite comedians Bill Bailey. I chose to research how some comedy gigs are shot, so that when we were filming, I knew what it was we needed to get in order to get great marks (hopefully!)
Give this link a watch, personally I find it hilarious!