I will be filming on a shoulder rig / handheld, as well as on public places, therefore I do not need any particular permission from anywhere as I will not be putting any equipment down. The important thing when filming in public on free hand without any permissions is to take other people into consideration. Not film any faces without consesnt, be careful not to get childeren in frame - if so then it is important with parents premission. Let people know what it is you are doing, by either putting up signs or telling them, as well as it is important not to stall or prevent the public from functioning as normal.

180 Upper Fant Road - My House - Bathroom

/ Raw footage from shoot /


/ Raw footage from shoot /

Southbank Skatepark - London 

/ Image from google satelite / 


/ Image from google /

Camden - London

/ Image from google satelite / 


/ Raw footage from shoot /

Kings Cross - Neighbourhood - Parkour

/ Image from google satelite / 


/ Raw footage from shoot /

Maidstone - Walk path tunnel

/ Image from google satelite / 


Optional  - Walk path tunnel - London southbannk



/ stock footage from Google - not actual location image /

Urban and constructin work / old vs. new - London, central

/ Image from google satelite / 


/ Image from google satelite / 

//Images from 
Screenshots from raw footage
google.com


Adaptation
adəpˈteɪʃ(ə)n/
noun
- - - 
The action or process of adapting or being adapted. 
"the adaptation of teaching strategy to meet student´s needs."
Synonyms: converting, conversion, alteration, modification, adjustment, changing, transformation
- A film, television drama, or stage paly that has been adapted from a written work.
- Biology: the process of change by which an prganism or species becomes better suited to its environment.


From the very beginning the British Television industry has relied on written literature and drama for a signinficant proportion of its output. Adaptation is not some new phenomena that suddenly appeared over night, but rather something that has been around for centuries. In the earlier years before film and television, writers would adapt their poems, texts or novels into drawings and symbols. After some time they would start to make some of the texts and novels in to plays in theatre as well as to create musical pieces to go with it. A written story could suddnely become an opera, musical, even symphony or dance coreography.

  •  In short; Adaptation is the transfer of a written work, in whole or in part, to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.
  •  There is an efficiance affordeed by presenting a story in a visual medium which is more time-consuming in a novel. - This is wehere the Art of adaptation is brought into focus, and contributes to enable the novel to become a visual interpretation of the story.


Filmmakers need to look to the text for clues, which can assist the visualisation process. The influence of the author or the various induviduals involved in the creative process of adapting the film, varies greatly depending on the induviduals concerned. In onther cases the actors or director may dominate the interpretation of the material completely or in a bigger scale.


  • The art of adaptation evolves around fatihfullness to the original text, whereas it is a central concern of adaptation theory.
  • Somehow the original text - if not sufficiently "honoured" - lacks what was most appereciated in the origianl text or work.

"The fundamental narrative, thematic, and aesthetic features of it´s literary source"- (Stam, R. 2004:54)


  • It has, however, been argued that fidelity is something which can limitthe filmatic potential.
  • With classic´s popularity comes, inevitably, fans. And the question remains on whether or not if as an adaptor or creator you should plese the purist.
The different steps of an adaptation

Director :
- The direcors influence with their style, ideology, as well as the interpretation of the original text.
- They seek to shape the written script into a visual form and to direct actors on therir delivery on screen.

Preformer / Actor :

- The fact of the performer themselves being an celebrity, can colour their performance interlaced, - screen persona, own relationship.

Audience :
- Improving the relevance to "me" by engaging the audience with costume, to please dama-phobic audiences - who wish to see the literary work reflect exactly what they have visioned and read in the literary work.
- Engage audience through for example using apps on the phone to the character which can be accessed by audiences online and form another layer of storytelling. - the audience feels a part of the characters universe and world.

Fidelity :
- Aim to mentain "integrity"
- As well as to stay true to the story and gain loyalty to fans.


- - -

//Images from
Google.com

//Sources of information




- - -

CASTING CALL PRO AD


I chose to put up an ad at casting call pro to source out actors or people suitable for each of my urban cathegories. Unfortunatley I did not have a massive turn up in terms of people that applied for any of the roles. But luckily I had some applications and went through them througoughly to find the right people for the right categories. 



ARTIST - Elena Saenz

The actor and artist I chose to go with for the role of "street artist / artist" was Elena Saenz. She is an actor that recently moved to London after a long acting career in Spain. The reason why I wanted to go with Elena was because she had the right looks and style for my project. 

Elena creates beautiful mandals, where she is often inspired by the sea, and a lighthouse that used to be near where she lived in spain. I really liked this style of art, and thought it would be a great asset to the artsy side of my project - as well as to add colour, crispness and spark. 


PARKOUR
The first I did to try and source out some parkour artists was to google parkour in London and Maidstone, it was quite hard and a challenge to find something that was still running and active. But luckily I eventyally found an active group in london from the University UCLU - where one of their uni-societies is a parkour club/society. I contacted them and was lucky to get to tag along for their training.


MUSICIAN

Originally I was going to have a street musician as a character in my fiction adaptation, I was able to get in contact with a street musician in Maidstone town centre. But unfortunaly the person did not get back to me, did not answer emails or phone calls, therefore I will either ask someone in London, or I will have to drop the whole character from the idea.

DANCER

As another charcter for my project I have decided to have a dancer, whereas this dancer is supposed to  represent the mess and confusion in the girl in the bathrooms head. I put an ad up on CCP, had some applications. Unfortunatly the dancer I chose to go with dropped out.  I was able to find a new dancer through Sammi in our year, but unfortunaly she was in the end not able to do the days I need her for. I am now in current search of a new dancer in London, and if I dont get any luck I will have to use a friend to step in and pretend to be a dancer. 

SKATERS

I will be going to London, Southbank Skatepark to find a couple of skaters to film. If there are none that wants to be in it or I get told to leave and not to film because of the location on the southbank, I have a backup location with a skatepark in Rochester I might be able to use.

CONSENT FORMS

When on location I have made sure to have consent forms that the actors signed. Here is one of the consent forms I signed with the dancer in my production. I chose not ot upload all the others, as I feel one displays that I have done and understood the usage of consent forms.



RISK ASSESMENT

First I made one risk assesment as I filmed in the end of November, but as people dropped out and could not film on the days I had prepeared for I had to book out equipment for another week. Therefore I made a new risk assesment which is the one bellow - However I have decided to drop the smoke grenades as it is too much of a hassle to use them in public. The printed version has the parts about the smoke grenade crossed out. 

SHOTLIST

As to make sure that my adaptation would have a storyline even though it is built up as in a montage structure, I wanted to make a shotlist to part up the different urban groups, people and artist we meet, so they all have their own space in the poem. And somehow what is said or written in the poem goes or suits better with one art form rather than the other. 













//Images 


As part of preperation of this unit we had a Montage workshop, where it would make it clearer for us in the sense of what montage is, and how we can use it in our adaptation as a way of telling a story through using an editing style of asembling different shots that add a new sophisticated elemnt to the cinematography.

My group consisting of Becca, Nisserin, Josh and myself had kind of missunderstood the task assignment as to the preperation of the workshop. However, we ended up making it wotk in the sense of telling a story through various use of shots.

             

I would say that I defenitley learned what a montage is not, and decided to look more in to the research of what a montage is. And found out that if we were to qualify our little workshop montage video, it would be the second of Eisensteins 5 methods of montage - Rythmic montage.

- Rythmic montage concerns itself with what´s in the frame - cutting in tempo with the action.

I learned a lot from watchnig everyones, and realized that we could have made morre changes to our idea and the way it was filmed as to achieve our video to classify more as a montage. The sense of cutting clips together not necesserily with an underlaying storyline - but creating one through the usage of clips representing the meaning of the story you are trying to tell.

The workshop was definitley an eye opener as to now knowing how to incorporate it in my own production of the fiction adaptation.





MONTAGE

- From the French Verb monter which means; to assemble.
- An editing style of assembling together different shots that add a new sophisticated element to cinematic language.

Introduction and pre-history

At the end of the first world war Russia was a complete mess. The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin had governed and ruled the Tsar in 1917, and of 160 million people - most of them uneducated and poor - was torn apart from years of civil war. The first task of the ruling party was to consolidate and communicate to the masses and therefore they turned to film as a mass communication medium.

However the producers and technicians of the pre revolutionary cinema were capitalists and most of them were driven out uncooperative with the Bolshevik government. Film resources were bearly existant, what little they had was stregnthened by putting together a Cinema Commitee within the New People´s Commissariat of Education. Headed by Lenins wife, the Cinema Commitee founded a film school to train new filmmakers.

  • The VGIK: All Union State Institute of Cinematography / or / The Moscow Film School - founded in 1919  - the first film school in the world. 

One of the co-founders of the school, Lev Kuleshov, would bring new insight into the psychological workings of the motion picture. With film stock being so rare, he spent most of his time making films without celluoid - writing scenarios and assembling actors in a sort of mock filmmaking exercise in his workshops that he held as a separate study group outside of the VGIK school.

Lev loved D.W Griffith´s film "Intolerance" (1919) and made sure to order it to be screened all across the Soviet Union. "Intolerance" did not only become the most influential film in Russia for the next 10 years, but also subject of deep and intese study in Kulesov´s workshops.

   

- They dissected "Intolerance" and Griffith´s editing structure and even deconstructed and reassembled them in hundreds of ways to examine the impact that different edits had.

- Once film stock was avalible in Soviet, 1922, Kuleshov was ready to experiment with some of the lessons he had learned from studying Griffith´s film.

- The first experiment would illustrate what has become known as "The Kuleshov Effect". He took a shot of a expressionless face and created three different short films, editing the face with a bowl of hot soup, girl in a coffin, and a seductive woman on a couch.


/ Screenshot from the FilmmakerIQ´s Vimeo Tutorial /



- The meaning of the film was not only in spatial composition, but in the arrangements of shots. 
- To Kuleshov, the creation of the film does not start when the camera starts rolling. - That is just getting the raw material - A film is born in the edit, wich the Soviet called Montage. 

Sergei Eisenstein

“Everyone who has had in his hands a piece of film to be edited knows by experience how neutral it remains, even though a part of a planned sequence, until it is joined with another piece, when it suddenly acquires and conveys a sharper and quiet different meaning than that planned for it at the time of filming.” 

- This montage theory would see even greater refinement by one of Russia´s most famous silent filmmaker and student of the Kuleshov Workshop, Sergei Eisenstein. 
- Sergei Eisenstein alongside D.W Griffith are two of the poineering geniuses of when it comes to modern Cinema.

  • D.W Griffit developed continuity editing, which portraied film as enchanced theater within real space and time. 
  • While Sergei Eisenstein developed Montage through theory, breaking confines of space and time to make film a unique language. 

Battleship Potemkin would become Eisenstein´s most critically acclaimed and influentual films. Shot in 1925, running 86 minutes lond and containing 1 346 shots - filmed over a duration of 10 weeks. It was an international success - a clear win for Eisenstein and his use of montage to elicit emotinal response from the viewer. The film was pure propaganda - but the best ever made. 

/ Sergei Eisenstein /

Key to Potemkins success was the editing, in which Eisenstein begins to articulate his most important contribution. Eisenstein, as an ture intellectuel Marxist, saw montage as a process which in the same way as looking at the course Marxist Dialectic.

Marxist Dialectic - A way of looking at history as the perpetual conflict in which a thesis or a force collides with an anti-thesis or a counter force to create a new phenomenon called a synthesis. 

Eisenstein saw the collision of a one shot or montage cell with another as creating conflict, that produced a new idea. This new idea would create a new thesis and collide with another anti-thesis creating yet another synthesis idea. Again and again these dialectics build up in a film, like a series of controlled explotions in an internal combustion engine, driving the film forward. This is where and how he came up witht he five methods of montage, to drive a film forward.

5 Methods of Montage

Eisenstein lists 5 methods of Montage, or how these collisions between shots can be created each one building on the complexity of the previous one.
(Listed bellow from simplest to most complex)

  1.  Metric Montage: The first one is the most basic, - cutting to the beat. Cutting based purely on the length of the shot, this elicits the most the most basic emotional response. That of tempo which can be raised or lowered for effect. 
  2. Ryhtmic Montage: Concerning rythm of action in the shot. This type of Montage is much like Metric, in the sense that it is based on time and tempo. But Rythmic concerns itself with what´s in the frame - cutting in tempo with the action like in the scene from "Potemkin, where the soliders are marching down the steps, the rythm of the soliders marching legs drives the movement of the sequence beyond the basic cut. 
  3. Tonal Montage: Concerning with the tone of the shot - from the lighting, the shadows and shapes in the frame. Cutting between shots of different aestethic tones creates these Marxist dialectics. 
  4. Over Tonal Montage: Above Tonal Montage we find "Over Tonal", which is on a larger scale macro cell that combines metric, rhytmic, and Tonal Montage - essentially how whole sequences play against each other. 
  5. Intellectual or Ideaological Montage: The last of five Montage methods, where this one is the one that most interested Eisenstein, concerning Ideas - Whereas the previous methods focused on inducing emotional response, the Intellectual Montage sought to express abstract ideas relationships between opposing visual intellectual concepts. An example of this is from the final scquence in the Odessa steps, three quick shots of a rising stone lion - representing the rise of proletariat.
So invested in the intellectual montage - Eisenstein dedicated his next film, "October" - a 10th anniversary recreation of the Bolshevik Revolution, to esxploring its possibilities. In the end, the wild cutting were simply too much abstraction for the audiences to follow. 

        

- Some film theorists such as French film crtics, Andre Bazin, claimed that dialectical montage was too manipulative as well as too totalitarian in the way it seeks to control the audience by ignoring natural spatial and time relationships such as in continuity editing.

- The debate may be a matter of taste, but the effects of early Soviet Silent filmmakers and their montage theory would be refined and pushed even further in the 1950´s as the French New Wave as well as Hollywood visionaries like, Alfred Hitchcook, began to incorparate the montage as a part of their storytelling technique.

- Wuth both the continuity style bu D.W Griffith with emphasis on clear understandable space and time. And the Soviet montage style which ignored space and time completely to create impact through the juxtaposition of different images, the rudiments of cinematic language emerged in roughly the first 30 years of Cinema´s existence. It quickley became a nuanced and intricate artform through experimantation and theory.

- It was these first practitioners, who studied and built on each other´s work, would be studied and immitated by the next generation of filmmakers. Carrying on the human tradition of storytelling.

- - -

//Images from
google.com

http://soundworkscollection.com/news/the-history-of-cutting---the-soviet-theory-of-montage

//Sources of information




100%

We few,  we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters,
We riskers of life and limb, or, at the very last, of our pockets,
Our wallets or our popular social standing, for all that we believe in, 
We stand together.


We believers, in time of unbelieving,
We grievers, making safe spaces for grieving,
We, authentic, in a world of slick deceiving,
We, holding integrity, not exploiting, not thieving, 
We stand together.


We asking questions in a land of the unquestioning, 
We, questing, while laurelled heads are resting,

We, hosting, as freely as guesting,
We teaching when we´ve been instructed to be testing,
We, pointing out the ridiculous, not just pointless jesting,
We switching off the TV, doing something more interesting,
We, deeply, communally, sustainably investing, 
We recognising, honouring, counting and owning

Our own and each other´s blessings, 
We stand together.


We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters,
We resisters of manipulation, and facilitation assisters,
We men, women and children of action,
Just getting on with our own revolution,
Which will not be televised
Will not be captured on I-phones,
Will not be set lose on you-tube.
This is it happening here, We are it.
We stand together.

We, the music makers and we, the dreamers of dreams,
We, the Hopers, Komedians, and Jubilee Librarians,
We, free-rangers, forest rangers, lone rangers, power rangers,
We mentors, mentees, mentally healing, meant-to-bes,
We sun-kissed, clench-fist, anarchist activists,
We cyclers, recyclers, menstrual cyclers, post-menstrual cyclers,
We tree-huggers, ear-muggers, levellers and diggers
And all of society´s constructors, deconstructors and reconstructors,
Lover, warrior, magician and our own blessed majesties,
We stand together.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters,
We poets and masters of these amazing ceremonies,
Who heard, in a furious flash, the message,
And knew, in that moment, that we had a message to share,
We stand together

We, separated painfully at birth from the planet
And, sometime in childhood, cut off from humanity
And, as soon as we thought we had it,
Split off from ourselves,
Half dreaming of heaven, half walking in hell,
Or three-quarters woman and one-quarter man,
Or 7 parts coping and 3 parts mad,
While 8 out of 10 cats don´t give a damn about the other 2,
We cats do!

We are the 99%
And, what´s more, we remember that story about the one lost sheep.
We´re looking out for you.
We stand together.

- - -


As a big performance poet Michael has written alot of poems, alongside the poem I have chosen for my Fiction Adaptation unit, "100%". He describes himself as a performer, host, poet, and mentor. 

"I set out on adventures into the Wild. I believe I will find the Special Place, the Wondrous Thing," - M.J.P, Adventure Poetry
He has been a part of the poets team in the Brighton poets v MCs Slam from the first one in 2004. Also he as since 2009 been host of Hammer and Tongue Brighton and have additionally for the last three years hosted at the Hammer and Tongue Natinoal slam Final in London. Apart from hosting events Michael has also been running poetry workshops for young people in Brighton, Sussex and around the UK since 2003.

In newer times, such as in 2013 and 2014, Michael has also been lead Artist at spoke´n´Word project, running young people´s poetry workshops and events in Kent. And last but not least the project Michael himself is the most proud of, - running BITE: the Brighton and Hove Youth Poets v MCs Project as Project Manager, Poet coach and host of the big event for the last three years.


         

Here is a video from YouTube that I found through Michaels website, of a live performance of the poem "100%". Which has helped me in the sense of understanding the pacing, pronouncing, rythm, and type of expression he wants to put across to an audience. This has been very useful in the sense of prepering for the filming and editing of the adaptation.

I teach, I coach, I train. I train the teachers, the coaches and the trainers.  I know how I do what I do. It works and I love it. I've got a rucksack full of ideas.Where do you want to go?   
M.J.P, Adventure Poetry


Looking at the other videos of Michael perform on his website has been interesting and also aiding me in the process of learning more about him. Learning about his creative sides, see how hw uses pace and rythm as a tool to reach out and connect to an audience. Show me how his written work is adapted and performed live. See the words mean something different or completley the same as they did on paper, as well as it helps me to easier conclude with wheter or not I want to adapt the poem in the same direction as he takes his written work, do the complete oposite or create some form of mixture and find a path of creating something in between.


- - -

//Images from
google.com

//Sources of information


During prepearation for this unit not only did I go through images and the text of the poem itself. But I also started to search the web for inspiration in videos and short films already made. Beneath is video clips and films as well as a description to each of them with elements I like and would like to include in my own project. 

Smoke / cigarettes

In this video I really liked the use of smoke/smoke grenades and how the contrast with the light surfaces and the sun up against the persons dark clothes and personality. As well as how you see the smoke of the cigarette and shadows on walls. As well as the feel of being in an abandoned building, waiting for something, waiting to be rescued. The smoke represent something pure, yet it portrays a vail of dissortion.

Red Crown '15 Winter Collection from Anamatis Rene Gibson on Vimeo.

What this video does with storytelling and montage effect is something I really liked. The cigarette she is addicted to, just like the addiction and relying on the man in her life, as well as with her career and life. Portraying her journey in upwards with constant challenges, the feelings of despair and being lost or distanced from the world around oneself.

This Cigarette from LG on Vimeo.

Dancer 

What catched my attention in this video was the use of coreography and editing combined to acheive a sense of soul and pressence in the music and to oneself. The beauty of being grounded to the earth and inside. The colours is also noticeable, and I like that it is by the sea as to being pure. However this would not be relevant to my project as it is not urban in that sense.



This is a very good example of what I have pictured the dancer in my project to perform, in the sense of representing the chaos in the "depressed girls" head in my story. There is somewhat a beauty over it all, as well as it strongly reflects on the mess around and inside the depressed character.

Cassandra :: NYC Contemporary Dance from Marco Schott on Vimeo.
KAHO KOGURE / ERICE【CONTEMPORARY DANCE #01】 from FILM SESSIONS on Vimeo.

Skater

Exactly the type of feel I wish to portrait, except from with the surrealism and crazyness, the smoke, grenades and fireworks portrays a spark and contribute to create action and excitment.

Leeside Skateboard Mayhem from Zenga Bros on Vimeo.

Musician

Street lights, people walking by, awareness, as well as distance between the crowds and the artist. The handheld style creates a personal connection between the musician and the audience.


Meet Klaim from Gozphy Visual on Vimeo.

Sparklers

In my project I have decided the sparkler to be a symbol of each of the induviduals/groups of people we meet´s passion towards what they do. If that is painting, drawing, skating, singing, running, jumping and putting that in contrast with one character ("depressed girl") about to lose her spark, and let go of her passion due to feeling disconnected to and shut out by the pressure to be perfect from the world and society around her.

Forevs: Sparkler from Adam Weinberg on Vimeo.





//Videos from vimeo.com





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