George Wing Television Blog

Cast Dead Angel:   The same Little girl in the photograph shown in the photograph in scene six. I can imagine her to be played by a 12 year old girl with blonde hair. Someone like Ramona Marquez known for playing Karen in  Outnumbered , or Margaret in  The Kings Speech . When it comes to the angel, she will be using white makeup and will be edited to look ghostly in After Effects. Eddie Dunford:  Eddie is described as :  “youthful, ambitious, libidinous. Elongated shirt collar and kipper tie.”   So the actor would need to be young, preferably early 20s. I would probably cast Thomas Brodie-Sangster, known for his parts in  Nanny McPhee, Stig of the Dump  etc. He would be perfect for this part given his age experience, and visually I can picture him to the part Bill Hadley:  Bill is described as having a  “grey beard, grey eyes”.  This description is relatively open, but given the probable age range of 50+ I woul...

Title: Outnumbered Date: 2007-Present  Writer(s): Andy Hamilton Guy Jenkin Director(s): Andy Hamilton Guy Jenkin Outnumbered is a BBC television sitcom revolving around the hectic lives of a modern nuclear family. I believe in this family, the children are the ones that seem to take control, having the parents, Sue and Pete Brockman running around worrying about them. Although this is a fictional family ,I cant help but think its a reflection of modern family life. I enjoy this genre and show because it pokes fun at modern life. I watch the Brockman's daily struggle People’s lives change dramatically after having children. Outnumbered is supposed to be a comedy but thinking about it it's deeply depressing. The children seem to hold all the power, and the parent lives revolve around the children.  Wrier and director Andy Hamilton believes, it's reassuring to ny parents watching. “We thought we’d celebrate the incompetence of parenthood."  So is there a lot o...

On balance I am very pleased with the final outcome of this unit. I certainly feel my knowledge has improved. I have worked independently with both my idea development, research and filming of my two minute film trailer. This unit was an interesting experience for me because I had never actually written a proper screenplay before. I enjoyed everything from coming up with the idea for my short film to actually producing a trailer for it with locations and crew. Although it wasn't the most enjoyable aspect, I even found it useful filling out a detailed risk assessment. In industry, I realise how valuable and highly regarded they are; most productions are unable to go ahead without a completed risk assessment to ensure the safety of the public, cast and crew. Unfortunately, after filming my trailer and editing it beyond the rough cut, one of my peers accidentally replaced my footage when importing a file to my hard drive. This resulted in the majority of my footage being deleted. I...

Obsession (1976) Director-Bran De Palma Psychological suspense thriller Homage to Hitchcocks Vertigo Starts off establishing visual motifs Camera moves forward, then circular movements with couples dancing. The shot the closes up to the waste of a man  with a gun who turns around. All done in one shot, tracking. De Palma sets up visual motifs with forward momentum tracking shot taking the audience close to the action. Continuation of camera moving. As the dancers move around the camera follows around. De Palma foreshadows by setting up the father and daughter at the start and again at the end. Chekhov's Gun is a narrative literary trade. Anton Chekhov in drawing room of his plays tends to be very dark. Gun in frame, don't put in frame without having any significance. Dolly takes you into ransom note. The film does a great time leap in one sequence. Memorial park. Reminder of opening titles, showing us significance of first opening shot. Dolly shot of insi...

Today I showed Simon my first edit for 'Far Gone', in order to gain some constructive feedback with as to what I can work on. I didn't find any of his points unfair, and they were definitely elements I could work on. Firstly, he picked up on my use of titles throughout, and how they were too 'forced'. I could understand where he was coming from here as they did seem unnecessary. The idea behind the trailer is to show and not tell the story. By having too much writing would be telling too much. Besides from this it was almost as if the writing was trying to say "look at this! Keep Looking, feel emotion" which wasn't the intention, but how it comes across. I then went onto removing most text and keeping it simple with my film company logo, the name of the film and the credits; the rest was unnecessary. Another piece of feedback was the overpowering music that distracted from the radio audio. Because the music contained vocals, it didn't really wor...

Sam Bain is a British comedy writer. He is responsible for some of Britains funniest sitcoms including the likes of Peep Show and Fresh Meat. I have enjoyed both of these shows greatly, without realising they were actually written by the same person. It therefore had me questioning: what is it about his writing style that really appeals to me? When researching into both shows I came to realise that Sam Bain isn't a solo operation. Him and his friend/partner Jesse Armstrong are both responsible for these two television sitcoms. After realising this I became instantly hooked; its very rare for two screenwriters to be close enough, and share the same sense of humour to want to collaborate on projects together. In fact, most of their work is a collaboration. Peep Show's high standards and reputable quality have remained consistent throughout, and has if anything got better over the years, as the characters developed further and the programme budget got higher. Unfortunately ...

The Bill The Bill is a British Police television series, first broadcast on ITV from 16 October 1984 until 31 August 2010. The programme originated from a one-off drama,Woodentop, broadcast in August 1983. Objectives: Analysis of the crime drama as genre Codes and conventions of crime drama genre Some possible critical approaches.  The Bill is set in a fictional London Police Station  Longest running UK Crime Drama Originally 12X60min episodes   Changed its form in the way it was run- From 1988-2005, became year-round twice weekly serial. Went from being a classic crime drama series into a soap opera Peak audiences of 11million viewers in 2005 rivalled Coronation Street . What is the crime drama genre?   Evolved from literary detective fiction In TV, often police procedural sub-genre- 'realistic' investigation of a crime by law enforcement teams.  A ' whodunnit ' (enigma to be solved)  A ' Howcatchem ' Crime Drama-Te...

The art of Screenwriting is one of great skill. Screenwriting is the art of being able to tell a story, and should usually be based on what we know. To some extent, stories are how we learn. Our existence on this earth is told as a story whether be it a religious belief or scientific. Parables were told by Jesus in order to educate people. I myself as a child used to thrive off stories, usually from books and films. I feel its important in screenwriting, when the idea has been established, to know exactly what it looks like on screen in your head. This helped me personally to write my script because I was able to actually visualise what I wanted to see on screen. However, television is passive in many respects. We can start and stop it at any point. If we leave the room at a fundamental part of the story, the television will continue to tell the story.  Screenplays are the basis for most dramatic films, the essential work from which all other filmmaking flows. The rollercoast...

Before shooting my trailer, I decided to create a storyboard win order to make it easier to shoot all my scenes, and various specific shots i want to include. I wrote a short description for each of the boxes, giving a little more detail because it was difficult to capture details in just the pictures. I found this to be a useful addition to my storyboard and despite the drawings not being the best, they still showed me exactly what I needed to film, which was important when it came to shooting. This also helped me with the risk assessment because I had more of an idea as o what I would be filming, therefore taking all risks into consideration. Just to make sure I took note of the scenes I would be filming in my shoot list and looked through the script to see where I was filming and the potential hazards/risks. Storyboard When completing my risk assessment I wanted to be sure I had every last detail on there to prevent potential accidents from happening and to ensure the...

Title: Joy Director: Bart Frank Narrator: Jude Lovick Nee Frank Length: 6:11 In my research I decided to watch a short film called joy, based on the dementia story of a Joy Frank narrated, by her daughter. Although this short film was produced in a different style to mine, with its documentary -like style, it was still an inspiration to my piece. This is actually a true story, so is biographical whereas mine is fictional but based around what I know on dementia. As soon as the film is introduced we are given this narration which carries on throughout the piece. We are shown picturesand  told  these  stories  about joy and her husband, and its so well told, the audience can  picture  in their minds what i happening. The lengths of detail create this like with 'The Three Bells' pub.  Even the name is mentioned rather than just being a 'pub'. The film footage of the pup adds to this to again, make us really picture the scene.  ...

John Sullivan's style of screenwriting has become more than iconic. Throughout his career, he had written a number of side splitting comedies including Citizen Smith, The Green Green Grass and not forgetting of corse one of his best renowned pieces, British comedy sitcom Only Fools and Horses. So how does he do it? And how has it developed? Well, Sullivan writes most of what he does based around his own experiences in life, and stories that he's heard. If you’ve seen the famous ‘chandelier’ scene in Only Fools and Horses (of course you have), you may not know that this was actually based on a true story told to him by his father. Men he used to work with made the same fatal mistake, except it wasn't funny. Men lost their jobs, which in that current economic climate, couldn't afford to do. John still found it hilarious, despite his father telling him otherwise. Eventually it was written in, and his father watched the episode he said “yeah you're right it was funny”....

Television Drama Review- BBC Drama Life on Mars  Title: Life on Mars Director(s): S.J. Clarkson...(6 episodes, 2006-2007) John Alexander...(2 episodes, 2006) John McKay...(2 episodes, 2006) Bharat Nalluri...(2 episodes, 2006) Richard Clark...(2 episodes, 2007) Andrew Gunn...(2 episodes, 2007) Writer(s): Matthew Graham Tony Jordan Ashley Pharoah Chris Chibnall Mark GreigGuy Jenkin Julie Rutterford “ Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time” Life on Mars is a BBC television drama set back in time to 1973, after Police Sargent Sam Tyler suffers a severe car accident in the present. After watching the entire series back to back, I discovered that this enthralling piece has been an inspiration to my own project in multiple ways. The most important thing to note about this series has to be the characters/actors and how well they bounce off each other. The relationship between Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt is one of love/hate, with a begrudging admiration. Given policing ...