Pre-Production: Stage 1 -- Acting Research from movies

Pre-Production: Stage 1 -- Research into Acting and Inspiration

Before production began I decided to some research into acting and looking at films for inspiration.

I have had prior acting experience when I was younger for a theater production of South Pacific. It has been a long time since acting and acting in front of a camera is different than on stage therefore I had to learn as if I was fresh to the experience.

I started with the basics and simply searched up how to act: http://www.wikihow.com/Act

Using this article I was able to learn the basics which enabled me the confidence and skill for acting in preparation for production of our film especially due to the film having minimal dialogue, a lot of the acting requires my body language and facial expression to be able to convey my characters though. The film is mainly action orientated which makes it easier to convey emotions such as fear, anger and concern.

I learnt that the most important points where:

• Pinpoint character traits: Come up with a back story for the character something only I know about the character and how that has influenced that character to be who he is now. His favorite food, music. Ethnic and cultural influences. I found it easy to relate to this character as I also have the same geek/otaku interests and also know how it feels to be undermined by an authority figure.

• Emote to ensure the audience can understand what the character is trying to convey without the use of words due to the lack of dialogue in the film.

• Do not break character, become the character. Get into method and almost live like the character. During the weeks of filming I tried to envision my life as Frank, I did not shave or get my haircut (also due to continuity), I wanted to feel the grubbiness that Frank would feel when he was unemployed and I would hold my whole demeanor as if I was Frank, luckily I enough am already quite a geek,

• Listen to the director, as the director knows the production and understands the vision he wants to create out of the film. Ask the director for questions before filming to ensure I know what he is looking for. Take criticism from them seriously and understand why they want you to act a certain way in a scene.

• Learn and familiarize with the script, so I was prepared and knew what I'd need to do for when I was on set. I read it multiple times and remembered any actions and lines which I would rehearse acting in different way doing multiple takes so I can evaluate my own acting skills.

Pre-Production: Stage 1 -- Location Scouting/Recce

We decided due to the pleasureful weather of that day, we would go location scouting for our location recce after out meeting.

Since we had just read the script we needed a suitable location for where the fight scene (the most prominent scene and where the majority of the film occurs) would be filmed. Preferably a wooded area.

For a suitable location it had to have the following attributes:

• Not a lot of traffic (people walking through interrupting shots).

• An adequate distance from roads and buildings (no noise interruptions from cars and people).

• Had some wide space enough for a fight scene to be performed.

Since we are filming on campus, it was perfect to find a location as there is a plentiful wooded area right on the hill of the campus.

As another member of the group and I had explored this area before we already had in mind certain locations in the forested area to be used for filming.

The area we scouted is located here:

The forest area by the University Road (51.294049, 1.067596)









Below are pictures I had taken of the location: