When I first started thinking about my drama video I had an idea of what TV series I wanted to choose, but I wasn't 100% sure with my decision. At first I thought about picking 'One Tree Hill' but because it's my favourite TV series I thought that it would be quite hard to direct it myself and put my own twist on it. My second choice was 'Pretty Little Liars' (PLL) and I thought this would be a better TV series to pick as I had watched some of the show, but I wasn't mad about it at the time. I'm really happy with my choice of PLL and I'm also really happy with my choice of scenes.
When picking my scenes, at first, I was nervous about the amount of dialogue that was in the script but I wanted to challenge myself and I knew that the scene wouldn't be too complicated to direct myself.
When shooting the first scene, three of my actresses came to the location on time, but the fourth one ended up not attending which was disappointing and slightly stressful. This meant that I had to adapt the script quickly with help from my actresses and quickly write one of the characters out of the scene. Overall, the first day of shooting went really well considering we were missing one of the actresses, and the three actresses that did turn up worked really well together and were all really good at portraying their characters. I'm very glad I produced a storyboard and shot list for the drama as I used them both quite a lot during the shoot. They were useful to have when deciding what shot to shoot next and how much of the shot I wanted. The second day of shooting also went really well with a different actress. We shot the second scene and although the day was planned last minute, it still went smoothly and we managed to get everything shot.
So when editing the video I started by placing all of the clips down onto the sequence and I used the storyboard to help me with this. One of the things that I wasn't too happy with is the lighting in all of the shots. I found the lighting during the shooting process really quite difficult to perfect and make it look natural and looking back at the footage I know that lighting is something I need to practise and work on. The sound design of the video was quite difficult as I didn't want anything to overpower the dialogue in the scene, but I needed something in the background that could help the video flow. The background music I found and used in the first scene works really well with the scene and gives the audience something to listen to while listening and taking in the lines of dialogue. The second scene doesn't have any dialogue and I didn't want to have music in the background in both scenes, so I decided to use ambience sounds. I added some birds chirping, dogs barking and outside garden ambience and I kept the sound natural and realistic.
One of my favourite things about the video is the fact the dialogue flows nicely and the music works well with the scene. I also really enjoyed working with the actresses and they portrayed the characters really nicely in both scenes. The scenes work well together and the shot sizes match the lines of dialogue nicely.
One of my least favourite things that I wish would've worked on longer is the lighting of the first scene. It's very over exposed in one area of the shot and it's also very orange which is quite confusing to me as I put an ND filter on one of the lights. After adding an adjustment layer to the shots, the lighting doesn't look too bad but if I were to do the project again, I would spend more time on working out the lighting.
Throughout the whole process of producing my drama, I have realised and learnt that finding actors, and also choosing suitable scenes are quite challenging. Having a bigger cast number meant that it was harder to find enough actresses, however everything worked out in the end which I am very happy about. I've also learnt that directing an already existing TV drama is harder than it sounds as you have to make it your own and stay away from doing similar shot types, while keeping to the same storyline. I really enjoyed making this video, and I liked putting my own twist on the scenes I have chosen.
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