Costume & Props

Props

We did not have to invest into buying any props as we are filming an informative short film based on a true and realistic event. This meant we were using our own props and filmed in our own houses.

Prop list:

• Insulin pen
• Fastfood tray
• Blood glucose machine
• Car keys

Insulin Pen
Prior to filming, we were given the idea of using the pen as a resulution in our film, this meant it would be introduced during the beginining and again at the resulution. The insulin pen is a very important prop in this film as it blatantly shows the differences of character between Abdul and Jeppe. when Abdul ignores the insulin pen it foreshadows later events and therefore tells a story through it.





Fast food Tray
We borrwoed a fast food tray to film Abduls scene at Aspire, the local resturant were happy to help and also allowed us to film within the resturant which is were the final scene was filmed. We stacked the fast food tray with cardboard box and plastic utilities from the resturant.


Blood glucose machine 
In the very start of the film we see Jeppe use this to measure his glucose levels, this shows he takes care of himself more than Abdul and wants to remain health, as you see from Abdul's house he doesn't even owe one of these.

 

Costume

Costume is a very important factor in this film, as each character represent themselves through their clothing,
we did not plan the clothing you see in the film this is what they would wear normally.

Jeppe  
Jeppe dresses in a typically normal way most 18 year old boys dress, he wears neutral colours and tight fit clothing, Jeppe represents most stlye of the European region and therefore our audience can relate.


Abdul 
Abdul dresses in the typical way most people from the arab regionsdo, loose fitting clothes and dull/plain colours, abdul is also seen wearing hats which is very common at this age.

Set Up Shots

First Day of Filming:
We went to my house to film some of the opening scenes of my daily routines, to show some of the shots we took we have some set up and background shots.

Here is a shot where I am waking up from bed, this is going to be one of our opening scenes, as you can see it was one of the harder shots to take because of the unstable bed but we managed to do it

This is me taking my medication, as you can see Abdul is filming a close up of it.

As I leave my house Abdul is shooting some match on action from both inside and outside the car.

Coming downstairs to take my daily pills, again Abdul went for a close up

This is me walking around from the bathroom to go downstairs

Bathroom scene, due to some height issues Abdul had to stand on a chair which you cant see in order for me to fit into the mirror.

Abdul filming a pan shot from around my room where I will still be asleep

This is Abduls scene at Tea time with him in his car ordering food, we took a lot of shot reverse shots of when the waiter came over with the food.

Casting Choice

To film our short film we need some actors, in order to try and make it as realtistic as possbile I will be playing the role of the type 1 diabetic since I am actually affected by this. This enables me to act out the realistic scenes as I will just be going through my normal life, furthermore I can provide various probs which relate to the film.

Abdul which is our other group member will be acting as the type 2 diabetic. Unlike me he is not actually effected by it however he fits the profile very well and having someone in our group be the main actor also helps the organisation. 

Finally we have Dr. Sharad Taheri which is my doctor, he is an educated doctor that has agreed to help out and be filmed. It is good to be using someone who is a professional as he can provide us with more details into the medical aspect of diabetes.

Furthermore we are going to be using some of our close friends on days where we need extra, they cant really be specified because it will simply depend on whom can come out to help.

Plot Summary

The main intention of our short film is to try and create awareness about the importance of taking your medication when affected by diabetes. In order to try and express the importance, since it is such a problem in Qatar we are comparing the lives of two actors.

 One actor who is living with diabetes type 1 and the other with type 2, one person is living a healthy life taking care of himself through exercise and diet meanwhile the other one is not caring about his medication or doctor appointments.

We are going to back up this by having professional doctor explain in an interview what exactly happens to your body when you do not take care of yourself, this will be going on in between shots of the 2 actors. One actor the unhealthy one is going to run into some issues regarding his health when the other healthy diabetic then runs into him and ends up saving him.

To again really express the importance we are then going to have a real life victim who did not take care of himself explain to the audience what he is living with now. This will then be the summary as we try end on a strong note, to end the film completely a scene were the previously unhealthy actor will have turned his life around will be shown.

Plans

here are some overall plans we have from discussions about how long the different parts of the film should be and a textual plan over how the piece will plan out.

Filming Permission

In order to film in certain locations like at the Medical College we needed to get permission from Qatar Foundation. This includes a series email communications and written forms between me and Qatar Foundation. Furthermore, I have also been contacting Qatar Diabetes Association about a possible patient who is willing to explain their life. 

Social Media

We are not going to be active or any special social media sites, we are keeping it simple with the standard Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. We will create fake accounts linking to our production name and will use these accounts on both our postcard and website.

To incorporate the social media into our products, we are going to be promoting the links on our website. Furthermore, there will be links to the social media sites pasted onto our postcard.

This is a screenshot from the website, once completed each of these social media blocks will be hyperlinked to the specific social media. Like you can see under the Facebook logo, the link will be referring to our site which will revolve around the title 'the sweet truth'

To further help the sense of branding, I actually created accounts on the various social media which meant we could paste the links onto the website and postcard and people would actually be able to go view them. You can see the various accounts in live under:

The reason for us using these social medias is that these are the ones we established our target audience would be using in our original questionnaire. Below I have re pasted the answer we received from our questionnaire which further indicates that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the main sites which our audience is active on.

Questions for interviews

As we want to keep our film as professional as possible, it is important to plan ahead. Therefore we planned some questions we want to ask once we have our interviews with professionals.


Doctor:

• Briefly explain how diabetes type 1 and 2 develops and what symptoms you may experience?
• What happens to a patients body when they do not take their medicine? 
• What long term effects can diabetes type 1 and 2 have on your health?
• Why is Diabetes such a problem in Qatar?
• What can you do for a patient to help their condition?
• What does the future hold for diabetes patients in Qatar?
• What are some of the worse effects of diabetes on patients you have seen?

Patient:

• Please tell us a little about yourself and how long you have had diabetes?
• What changed in your life when you were diagnosed?
• First when you were diagnosed, how did you react?
• What long term damage has been done to your health because of diabetes?
• How do you treat your diabetes?
• What is the worst part about this disease?
• If you were to go back to your day of diagnosis, what would you change about how you treated yourself?

Festivals and Awards

On our postcard and website, possibly also in our film we are going to have our short film be nominated for different awards and pretend to be shown at various film festivals. We obviously are not involved with any of these festivals or awards but it helps create a more realistic and professional sense of our products. To ensure it becomes as professional as possible, I researched the top film festivals and nominations some other top short film have received. I am going to try and only use ones which appear realistic to the genre of our film. I used http://www.raindance.org/worlds-top-short-film-festivals/ to find the festivals.

• Sundance Film Festival (USA)
• Cannes Film Festival (France) – for shorts under 15 minutes only
• Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films (USA)
• Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (France)
• Aspen Shortsfest (USA)
These are the top 5 world wide festivals with the most submitted films. We are defiantly going to include these on our products as they are the most known.

To find the awards, I used short film awards from BAFTA which are British. I got the list from http://www.bafta.org/film/awards/british-short-film-british-short-animation. I used a professional product, a short film postcard called '' Rain in Summer '' and copied their nominations. Below you can see, we are planning to use the same ones on our products. Mainly the nominations are just best short films and are at different film festivals, because it is short films there rarely are multiple nominations as it is not as big.

People Involved

We want to make our film as professional as possible, to do this we are getting associations involved with the filming. As we are planning to use actual people and have them talk about their personal problems associated with diabetes. Over the last few weeks, I personally have been in contact with the Qatar Diabetes Association, asking them for permission to film some of their patients and film at their location. Below is one of the emails between me and their contact.

Furthermore I have been in contact with a world leading diabetes doctor, who is working at a Medical College here. He has promised me after I contacted him in person that we can come out to the Cornell Medical College, film the locations and interview him and other people who study diabetes. Below is his business card.

Logo

Taylor, has been working and produced a logo for us to use. This incorporates the name of our film and the color scheme we decided to go with from our questionnaire. We will be synergysing this name, on all of our products.

Shot list

D ate

Scene

INT/EXT Day/Night

Shot descriptions/ Summary

Location

Characters

Equipment/ Props/Costumes

21/11/15

Opening scene

Day-ext

Establishing shot of the corniche,pearl and aspire taking from inside a car

Corniche,Aspire and the pearl

None-buildings and etc.

None

Second scene

day

Birds eye view of jeppe waking up

Jeppes house

Jeppe

Bed,bathroom costume:pyjamas

Second scene

day

Tracking shot with eye level view with close up

Jeppe’s house

Jeppe

Tv,food and epipen

Third scene

day

Over the shoulder shot

Car

Jeppe and the person driving

Costume: casual attire

Second scene

Day

Birds eye view of abdul waking up and point of view shot

Abduls house

Abdul

Bedroom,bed and bathroom Costume: pyjamas

Second scene

day

Point of view shot

Abduls house

Abdul

Same as previous scene

Third scene

day

Eye level shot

Car

Abdul driving in his car

Car and phone Costume:Causal attire

TBA	Forth scene	indoors	Eye level and over the shoulder shots	Doctors office	Jeppe and doctor	Doctors office and casual attire plus doctor
TBA	Forth scene	Day	Side on shot	Teatime	Abdul and waiter	Same as previous scene
TBA	Fifth scene	day	Various shots: close up,point of view,side view and birds eye view	Jeppes lifestyle	Various locations;house, cars and others	Same as previous scene
TBA	Sixth scene	day	Various shots: close up, point of view,side view and birds eye view	Abduls lifestyle	Various locations;house, cars and others	Same as previous scene
TBA	Sixth scene	Night	Handheld shot and point of view	Consequence	Hospital	TBA
TBA	Seventh scene	indoors	Eye level and straight on	Experienced diabetic	TBA	Same as previous scene
TBA	Seventh scene	indoors	Still camera on same level as doctor no movement	Doctor talking about diabetes	Office	Doctor in office
TBA	Final scene	indoors	Eye level and straight on	Back to experienced diabetic	TBA	Same as previous scene

StoryBoard

To be more organised when it comes to filming, we drew out the scenes we are going to film. There are a few basic instructions to indicate how the shot will be done, this saves us a lot of time when it comes to recording. Furthermore, we have overheads which are a birds-eye-view of how the shot will happen. These were planned out in class but completed and drawn by Maya in our group.

Production Schedule

Tasks	Description	Time
Interview with doctor	Need to organize a time with diabetes doctor who we have contacted for us to come out to Cornell Medical University and film an interview	T.B.A.
Establishing Shots	Various shots at decided locations around Doha	21st Nov 2015
Jeppe's House	Scenes to be recorded at my house plus car scenes	28th Nov 2015
Probs and costumes	Getting hold of any necessary costumes or probs required for the scenes	28th Nov and 5th Dec 2015
Abdul's House	Scenes to be recorded at my house plus car scenes	5th Dec 2015
Interview with victim	Need to organize a time with victim who suffered from diabetes, Qatar Diabetes association will be our contact	T.B.A.
Postcard and Website Pictures	Planned out pictures need to be taken so the post card and website can be finalized	30th Nov 2015
Editing	Putting all the scenes together into one piece	5th Dec 2015 onward
Finished Product	Have all 3 of our products be done and ready to publish	16th Dec 2015

Site Map

To help us navigate around our website, we created a site map showing how the different pages will be laid out. It is very basic, this is because looking at professional websites they also have very limited navigation options with little drop down menus. We wanted to have more interaction but were not able since we wanted to follow the conventions.

Postcard Sketches

Likewise the website, we also have to create sketches for our postcard. These were drawn by me and Taylor, other part of our group was absent but we previously had discussed ideas. As we were drawing our artistic skills rather limited our options but personally we are aware of what needs to be done. These postcards mainly focus on the image, we still are not sure about what one to go with but will try make both and see which works out best.

Website Sketches

Before starting work on our final project, we planned out what elements should be included on our website. We tried to draw it out, discussed a few options for the colours etc. We obviously will go with the colour scheme blue and white as this was wha our questionnaire suggested also it is the whole colour scheme of our products. Two templates were both draw by me, we then picked our favourite and discussed what further elements should be on the website, like the actual pictures and texts. We have used professional short film websites as inspiration and our earlier research into conventions and analysis of websites to make sure we get the best possible end product.

 This second variation is the page template we decided to go with, it will include our logo ''The Sweet Truth'' which Taylor has designed. Categories on the page which will be navigated will be about, leading into team and film, news, festivals and awards. As mentioned the colour scheme will be blue and white. We will have links to social sites promoting our webpage also.

Location Planning

After we established our story, we started to plan where we will film. To start of the film we will have opening establishing shots to help set the location, these are going to be of landmarks in Qatar. These landmarks will include places like the Pearl, Katara, Corniche and Aspire. The reason for using these specific locations is that within Qatar which is where our film is produced they are very well known, the Qatari culture is displayed and it helps audiences from abroad understand where this film is from.

After we have established the location, we will move into the story. Here firstly we will introduce our 1st character, this is actually going to be me. Therefore I will be introduced in my house, for the couple opening scenes showing me taking care of my disease. The locations within my house are going to be rooms like the bedroom, kitchen and dining area. After I have been introduced we are bringing in our 2nd character which is Abdul, similar to me he will introduced in his own house as well with similar but opposing scenes to the ones in my house. To further develop our story we are going to back up our facts with statements from official doctors and professionals, to help create the sense of professionalism we are going to be using their working settings like the Qatar Diabetes Association and Hamad Medical Centre. We will be recording interviews and statements in their offices. We are also going to visit Cornell Medical College where we will be creating some interval shots to put between the story. Finally we are going to have some scenes which are going to be located on the set, as in when we are filming because it involves driving around therefore we can't know exactly what locations will have the least traffic and noise for example until we are on set. 

This is from Abdulaziz's house where we only filmed within his room. This picture was taken prior to the filming as you can see the equipment laying around the room.

For my house we filmed in loads of locations including, garage, my room, living room and kitchen. This is from the kitchen where we filmed two scenes of me eating breakfast and taking my pills.

Mood Board

Documentary: Diabetes Research

Diabetes is a chronic illness marked by an increase level of glucose (sugar) in the blood. It is caused by partial or total lack of the insulin produced by the Pancreas, or a decrease in the effectiveness of the insulin it produces.
Insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas, and it plays a fundamental role in regulating the transfer of sugar from the blood to the cells to be utilized as a source of energy.

Low blood sugar can cause the following effects:

• Dizziness
• Excessive fatigue
• Excessive hunger
• Shivering
• Headache
• Sweating
• Anger
• Increase heart beat

*Hypoglycemia can lead to fainting and unconsciousness.

High blood sugar can cause the following effects:

• General fatigue
• Frequent urination
• Excessive thirst
• Dizziness and headache

*If not treated can lead to diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA)

http://qda.org.qa/about-diabetes/diabetes-facts

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129799/Qatar-named-fattest-nation-earth-HALF-adults-obese.html

http://www.action-on-diabetes.qa/diabetes-in-qatar.html

http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/news/qatar/119521/diabetes-rate-alarmingly-high-in-qatar