Unit 31: Social Action - Educating Grandad

As part of the social action and community media assignment and the Equality and Diversity competition at college we decided to make a video that would include both, called 'Educating Grandad'. 

Educating Grandad is a video showing a playing monopoly and a range of topics about equality, diversity and British values arise, Grandad has old-fashioned and uneducated views and throughout the video the grandchildren and daughter teach him why what he's saying is wrong. 

Today (31/1/17) we filmed the video. 

Prior to filming Taylor had been elected project manager and was in charge of the shoot, as a group we brainstormed ideas and originally wanting to do a comedy sketch however when the script was being wrote by Kane and Chloe in order to get the vital information in and after research indicated how jokes can be taken the wrong way we decided against making it a comedy. I, along with others, conducted research that could be used when writing the script I researched into the EDL and what comedy is allowed and suitable for use. Adam and Ben both looked into locations and we decided to use Adam's as it was more accessible. We arranged with the actors and adults we were using to find a suitable day to film, we agreed to use my dad and Ellie's mum as the adults as we knew it wold be difficult to show the different ages with actors of the same age. I knew I would be the production manager on-set therefore made sure all paperwork was complete and ready in the older even though I was other projects. 

We encountered some problems during the pre-production process, the biggest being that Adam failed to inform us that he and Maria, an actor we were using, had an exam on the day of filming, we found this out 5 days before the scheduled shoot day therefore we had to find another actor who fit the characteristics we desired, this caused a problem and took 3 days to find another actor. Then on the day of filming there was a communication problem where Adam said the owner of the house would not be available till 11am however then said she would therefore confusing us but a crew call of 10am was still in place. Matty, the DOP and camera operator, explained he would have to leave early as he needed to travel to a university for an interview therefore we knew we would have to get as many shots done before he left and also know how would replace him. 

Today, crew call was at 10 am, myself, Ben, Dylan and my dad were there on time waiting for the others, Matty came at 10 past 10 and we helped bring in the crane and other equipment and Taylor and the rest of actors, equipment and makeup artist turned up at 20 past. We immediately started setting up the crane whilst Andrew (my dad) was getting makeup done to look older. First shot was at 11:05 and wrap was at 13:45, there were no scheduled breaks or lunch however between setups toilet breaks took place. Filming went really well, no problems arose, it was a very nice experience to use the crane outside of the studio as this piece of equipment is something we don't always have the chance to use. As a team we worked very well together and the shoot was completed before the intended wrap time with more than enough footage for the video. 

My role in pre-production stage was to research any information we may have included in the script and where the limit was as to what we could say, the majority of people involved read the script whilst Kane and Chloe wrote it to offer what we thought of it and if anything needed to be changed, this was really important to ensure that the script wasn't crossing the line and included the important details.