Pre-Production & Planning

Set & Staging Pre-vis

Concept 1

Concept 2

For this project, I wanted to cast my net wider in terms of casting. For last year’s FMP, I just used my brother and his girlfriend as the leads. However, this year I wanted to cast outside of people I knew, as I thought this would allow me to get better performances. I also wanted to find dancers and a choreographer who could work together to create a great spectacle of a dance.

So, I set out to cast people via an open casting call. Here’s the poster:

I posted this casting call on social media, including Instagram and LinkedIn. I also printed off physical posters and placed them around the college.

Instagram Promotion

Here’s the Instagram post and story:

And here are the analytics for both:

Instagram Ad

I also promoted the post on Instagram and paid for advertising on it. I set a £10 budget over 5 days. I also set the target audience to be dancers and actors (or people interested in acting and/or dancing) in Carlisle, aged between 18 and 40. Here are the analytics from the ad:

LinkedIn

Casting Call Form and More Information

This is what the QR code and all of the links link to: it’s a tally form that has a couple of pages describing the project, the roles and me, so that the prospective applicant has a well-rounded idea of what the project is and what they’ll be asked to do.

However, despite my best efforts in trying to promote it to everyone I knew. I didn’t get any responses to the casting call form. Therefore, I had to cast internally again, which isn’t what I wanted to do.

Scouting

For my project, I wanted a large, hall-like space that could be completely blacked out, with rigging points in the ceiling for lights and the projection surfaces to be hung.

Location Idea No.1 – UoC Theatre

One of the ideas for a location was the theatre at the University of Cumbria. This was suggested by my tutor Paddy, who used to work at the university.

Paddy got in touch with Ed Cooper who is a film tutor at the university and arranged to have a 1-1 meeting with me at college to discuss my idea and potential use.

In this meeting, I showed him my project proposal and visualisations to help convey what I plan to do in the space, and what kind of space I would need.

From this discussion, we decided that I would probably need the use of the theatre space at the university, which I had already been in as we had used the space for our FMP pitches. However, he did warn that the space may not be available due to university students also completing their final projects at the same time.

Nevertheless, I completed a location recce form based on what I already knew about the location from having been there twice already (plus I had a look around whilst I was there as I thought it could be a potential location).

Location Idea No.2 – College Theatre

The college theatre is well placed and almost perfectly suitable for what I want to achieve. Use of the location is subject to approval from the Performing Arts Dept. and can only be used if Performing Arts students are not using it for their own projects. Furthermore, the college is often open late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, allowing extra time for me to be able to get in and film in the space.

Location Idea No.3 – Warehouse

For last year’s FMP, I used a location at a warehouse at Kingmoor Park Enterprise Zone, which I would probably be able to get access to again, and it would work as a large open space. However, as I discovered last year, it has no way to black it out completely, as there are overhead roof lights which do not have a way to be blacked out. It is also VERY far away from college, making transporting things like the set pieces, equipment, cast and crew a very difficult logistical challenge.

Last year I completed a location recce and so I will attach the photos and documents from that here:

Location Idea No.4 – UoC Dance Studio

After looking at all of the above options Ed from the University of Cumbria got back in touch and said that the Dance Studio at the Uni would be available when I was planning on filming so I arranged to meet up with Ed at the uni and have a look around.

Decision & Release

In the end I decided to go with the UoC’s Dance Studio as I knew that I would have access to the space when I needed it, it was large enough to fit all of the equipment and staging I needed, and although I would be unable to suspend the projection surfaces as I had originally intended, I would just need to make subtle tweaks to the design to make it work in the space. So with that in mind, I requested release from Ed as location rep.

Projection Surfaces

For the background projection surfaces, I had originally planned on having 3 white panels suspended from the ceiling or overhead lighting rig; however, as the location I ended up having a lower ceiling than originally planned, I have had to change the idea to be floor-standing projection surfaces instead.

Materials

We looked into several different types of materials to make the projection surfaces, from painted MDF, plywood, timber frames with fabric stretched across, foam boards, and plastic sheets.

Painted MDF/Plywood

My dad and I went to B&Q in Workington to have a look at MDF and plywood boards. We had a look at various thicknesses, including 6, 9, 12, 18 and 25mm. This would have been a good option and particularly sturdy, especially if we’d chosen a thicker panel. However, they were prohibitively expensive, especially for the size and quantity I would need. For example, it would have been £43 per sheet for a 2.4m x 1.2m plywood panel, for the four panels I had planned to include, that would have been £172 in total. Not to mention the fact that we had no idea how to transport them to the uni and back, especially with all the other equipment we’d need to take.

Another idea was to buy already faced MDF. That way we’d save time painting the panels and it’d be a more professional surface that would probably work better as a projection surface with a more consistent colour.

Foam Boards

Another idea was to use foam boards as the surface, as these usually come in white by default. They are also quite lightweight and therefore would be easier to transport but they would require some supports (like the wooden panels) to be floor-standing, these would probably take the shape of wooden battens.

However, these foam panels often didn’t come in large enough sizes and were limited to standard publishing sizes like A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, etc. they also might be too transparent, allowing any ambient light created by the lighting setup behind the panels.

Cardboard Sheets

There are a few options for paper/cardboard sheets that we could possibly use. For example, there are some which are already coloured white, which would reduce the amount of time needed to prepare the surfaces by painting them.

However, like the foam boards, these come in a limited number of sizes, and they are also often only available in publishing sizes. Now, as they come in a pack of 25, we could have simply put a few together to create the panels, however, this complicates the way we’d have to attach them to the supports and how we’d build the supports. It would also mean that there would be seams where the panels join, therefore the surface wouldn’t look great, and would have long lines along them when projected onto.

Roller Blinds

When we were still considering suspending the surfaces from the ceiling, we thought about using blackout roller blinds as these would be lightweight and easy to transport, whilst being a solid colour to allow for a good projected image. They would also be weighted at the bottom, preventing them from blowing around excessively.

However, this approach would be expensive (around £140 per surface) and would not work with the new free-standing design I was now going for.

Correx/Plastic Sheeting

Corrugated plastic sheeting, more commonly known as correx, is another contender. It is lightweight and relatively portable. It is also very cost-effective at only £16 a sheet…

In the end, this is the one we went with; we had it delivered to the college under Alex’s (the arts technician) name.

Lighting Equipment

I planned to use a mixture of lights that I could acquire from college, with fixtures from Wildfire Lighting – a lighting company based near Cockermouth who I have worked with in the past. I messaged Stuart from Wildfire about the possibility of borrowing some equipment. You can read our conversation below:

Equipment List

For the projection content I got a load of royalty free clips and archive footage and edited them together to the music. I used the iconography and symbolism I discussed in my research.

For the lighting design I used Titan and it’s built in visualiser to design the lights the weekend before the shoot, I also had the lights from Wildfire laid out in my bedroom, so I could verify colours and positions.

Here’s the patch list:

And here’s the plot:

Here are the call sheets for the two shoot days and their respective schedules

Day 1 – 13/05/2025

Day 2 – 14/05/2025