The Coffee Cup

The Coffee Cup is based on the conversation between Tom Waits and Iggy Pop in a coffee shop. This happened in the short film Coffee and Cigarettes - Somewhere in California. This was filmed in 1993 by director Jim Jarmusch it was shot in North California. Later on this would be part of three short films called Coffee and Cigarettes this would be the third installment out of eleven all of which were shot in black and white. Tom had filmed something the day before and was very tired and was also late to this day of filming because there was a car crash on his way to work therefore he wasn't in a very good mood. He threw the script onto the table and said to Iggy 'Do you think this is funny?' as he wasn't impressed with it. However Jim Jarmusch decided to pull Tom aside and discuss with him he came back in a better mood but Jim wanted to keep some of that mood in the character. Therefore his character turned up late to the coffee shop saying that he had been in a car crash on his way there. 

This is what our theme for this week was based on.

In our scenario we had to make sure that we came up with a quote for our short film ours was 'Once Upon a Blind Date' It included my colleagues Olivia Searle, Jade Popham, Katie Patrick and myself filming a blind date scene in The Caffeine Club. The things that we had to make sure happened in our scene was that there was two people sitting together and having a shared experience. We also had to make sure that it was around 5 minutes long, with a wild track in the background. 

This is our risk assessment to showed that we had everything

 prepared in order to film in The Caffeine Club. 

SYNOPSIS : 

First time blind dating, first time meeting and twiddling thumbs. After being match made, showing the awkward mishaps between two social rejects with very high standards. “Is that a 6 pack? I think not.” Images can be deceiving.  

Myself and Olivia took turns in filming it, I decided to film everything that was on the tripod while Olivia filmed everything that was hand held because she had more of a steady hand. This was the first time that I had done the main filming. I think that it turned out very well and I was really happy with the material that I had filmed. 

SHOT LIST :

1. Mid shot of man waiting.
2. Close up of him fiddling with hands and something on table.
3. Extreme close up of him biting lips.
4. Female date walks in looking around  for male date mid shot .
5. Awkward eye contact as they are the only ones in cafe.
6. Close up of females face with a over exaggerated disappointed look on her face with voice over.
7. Mid shot of her sitting down at table.
8. Quick shots flipping from both characters looking at each other and then the floor or table.
9. Mid shot of male character going to say something but nervously stoping.
10. Passing over table a punch of flowers. 
11. Female character looking unhappy and declining flowers wide long shot.
12. Mid shot of female character sneezing and wiping nose.
13. Awkward eye contact. 
14. Both fiddling quick shots. 
15. Girl looking at time close up of phone. 
16. Extreme close up of hands tapping.
17. Man goes toilet.
18. Girl runs out. 
19. Long shot thinking back to the date.      

Our idea was that Jade would play the man and she would waiting for Katie to arrive. Jade's character would be really creepy with Katie's thinking that the man was a topless model. His mood would be that he was impatient and nervous. Therefore when she arrived there would be lots of awkward eye contact. There would then be disappointed looks from the girl because she imagined that he would look a lot different. It   would then be filled with lots of awkward silent moments with music softly playing in the background as an ambiance  The next idea was that the man would bring some flowers and she would respond saying that she was allergic to them. However we changed this idea and decided to get Jade's character to order a burger for Katie's character only for her to respond saying that she is a veterinarian  Jade's character then shouted at Katie's saying that he couldn't be with someone who was a vegetarian. He then storms out to the toilet and then Katie's character makes a run for it. In the final scene Jade's character returns to see that she has left, to which he starts shouting and thinks back to the start of the date.

This was our three part storyboard. 

Our planning was a very important process of this project because it was our first time as a group filming out of college therefore we needed to make sure that we had a basic idea that we were going to follow. I think that this storyboard was very important because it helped us a lot even though a couple of things got changed. 

 Once Upon a Blind Date

The editing process for this was quite difficult because I had to rearrange the order of the clips in order for them to make sense. I then had to make sure that I cut them down as some of them were very long. The music was very hard to work with in this video because the music in The Caffeine Club kept changing, therefore I had to turn the backing noise completely down to make it sound like there was just a beat in the background. I found this incredibly difficult but I think it worked well in the end because in the final cut of it you cannot hear the music changing which was the main idea that I had. I then had to make sure that our quote 'Once Upon a Blind Date' only lasted for 3 seconds. Finally I edited it all to black and white to make it look like a montage to Coffee and Cigarettes with it fading to black for five seconds at the end. 

This is my edit decision list, it's what I went through while editing. It shows each the timing, what happens and who is in each of the scenes. This was quite complex to complete because it was hard to record each of them as there is so many of them. Although I think that the edit shot list is a really good idea because in the end it a quick way of seeing what is happening in each individual shots. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_and_Cigarettes:_Somewhere_in_California - 9th December 2013