My week with Marilyn

How did I engage with the character Marilyn in My week with Marilyn?

When you first see Marilyn in the film your first impression is that she is just a Hollywood girl that doesn't really know what she is doing and just wants to be famous and have a bit of fun. When you see her on the first read through for the set in the film you see her struggling to read her lines and has to get Paula, her acting coach to read them to her. This suggests that she is illiterate and that maybe she can't read. The fact she never told anyone about this shows that maybe she is embarrassed that she can't do something so easy as to read a script, or maybe she was just worried that people would make fun of her if she told them that she couldn't read. This makes you feel sympathy for her because she is obviously frustrated and embarrassed at herself for not being able to do something so easy that everyone else around her can do, which causes the people around her to get annoyed as they think she is deliberately wasting time.

Another thing you see in the film that makes you think she doesn't care much is the fact that she keeps arriving late to set and forgetting her lines. This makes you feel that she isn't bothered about the film and makes you think that she feels she is so important that it doesn't matter that she is holding up production because she is the obvious star of the show. Though during this you also see how upset she gets every time she gets it wrong and how she really beats herself up about it every time it happens. You can see in her eyes how devastated she gets when she messes up and she sees everyone looking at her with that same exhausted expression. This again makes you feel sorry for her but at the same time wonder how she managed to become such an amazing actor when she finds it so hard to read the scripts. How did she manage to come this far when she relies on someone else to help her understand the script?

When you see Marilyn first get off the plane with her third husband it makes you wonder if she has any concept of love considering she has already had two failed marriages and is now on her third. At first glance the new couple seem happy and content but as you get more and more into the film you start to see that their marriage isn't as perfect as people think it is. You see in one scene her crying on the floor clutching some notes in her hands and trying to stay as far away as possible from her husband. You find out that he had written the notes and that they were basically making fun her. This makes you understand that maybe there is more to her than just fame. You can see that she has struggles of her own from this scene and also later on when you see her take too many sleeping pills and become quite delirious. It shows how she seems to be fighting battles like depression and anxiety on her own with no support, not even from her husband. At one point she says ‘all people ever see is Marilyn Monroe. As soon as they realise I’m not her they run.’ This shows that people don’t care or even want to know about her problems, they only want to know about Marilyn Monroe. This makes you feel sympathy for her as you can tell she is having a tough time both during the production of this film and outside of it, and no one seems to want to help her except for Collin.

Though continuing on with love she does seem to like to flirt and mess about with any boy that will come close enough to her. You can see from first sight that Collin is mesmerised by Marilyn and she seems to use this to her advantage. She soon makes a friend of him and uses him as a distraction from everything that is going on around her. She becomes more confident during production as Collin tells her that she is amazing and she believes him. Although this seems good as the film is finally starting to get back on track, many people are cautious about how close she is getting to Collin. At one point you see someone come up to Collin and say ‘that’s what she does, she breaks hearts. She’ll break yours.’ He warns Collin that she isn’t good for him; this gives you the impression that maybe she isn’t that sweet girl from Hollywood after all but it also shows how she does go after many boys considering this character then later says ‘that’s what she did with me.’ You also start to see her advances on Collin especially when they go skinny dipping and afterwards she kisses him. This makes you understand why she can’t keep a relationship going for very long considering the amount of people she messes about with. You do see later on though that she only ever means for them to be affairs and never anything more when she tells Collin to ‘just forget’ about her, after he’s said ‘You could quit this. Forget Marilyn Monroe. Forget Hollywood. Let it all go. Just let it go’ This shows how ruthless she can be at braking people’s heart but also how she won’t leave her fame for anyone, not even someone she truly loved ‘I couldn’t just give it up.’ It shows us how her work means more to her than a happy relationship and nothing would make her give up acting.

Preliminary task

Last week we started planning and filming our preliminary task. It had to involve a person opening a door, crossing a room and sitting opposite another person where they then had to exchange a few lines of dialogue. For ours we decided to film two people sitting across from each other in a dark and dimly lit room. We would then have it so it seems that they were exchanging drugs, but then you would see that the person who collects the 'drugs' has a shopping list and what they actually exchanged was flour. We also had to demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule in our preliminary task.
Match on action is an editing technique where you cut from one shot to another that matches the first shots action.
Shot/reverse shot is where you film one character looking at the other and then the other character looking back at the first.
The 180-degree rule when two characters in a scene have the same left/right relationship to one another.

How did it go?

Plot
We came up with the plot of our film quite easily. We knew that we wanted to do a drug deal and make it look really dark and mysterious. After that we came up with the idea to make it only look like a drug deal but to actually have the substance being dealt be flour so that it made our clip more comedic for the audience and different from other peoples tasks. Our idea was that the person with the money would be walking down to this boiler room and would go to the 'drug dealer'. They would then talk a little before exchanging the money for the 'drugs' before pulling out a shopping list and crossing off flour so people knew that it was only flour being bought.  
Location
When we were coming up with the location to film our short clip we first came up with the idea of using the old dark room at school. We were declined using it though because it was small and there were broken tiles and things in there which meant it would've been dangerous for us to film there. We were then told about the boiler room that was much bigger that we could potentially use to film in, and so after looking around there to see if it was okay we decided to use it for our short clip. We chose this location because we thought it would make the perfect setting for our drug deal because of how dark it was down there. This meant that it gave the place a really doggy atmosphere which is what we wanted for our short clip. The ground in the boiler room was very muddy and there was vegetation growing out in certain places that gave the room the kind of atmosphere that we wanted for our film.
Cast
When we were coming up for people to be in our clip we focused on people that where free during both lessons in case we over ran in the first lesson and needed to film in the second. We also tried to find people who either did drama in GCSE or for A-Level as they would be able to act out the character's better than someone who didn't do drama. We managed to get Liz and Erin to be in our short clip and they were quite happy to do it and did an excellent job. They managed to portray mystery in their characters and show a sense of caution that we wanted the characters to have.
Props
For our film we also decided to use different props like money for the drug deal, a little zip bag containing flour and a shopping list so at the end of the clip people understood that it wasn't a drug deal but actually just one person buying flour off another. We managed to make some rolled up money using rolled up newspaper and then just wrapping one twenty pond note round the outside. This made the illusion that there was a lot of money there when in fact there was only little. We also brought in dark hoodies and jumpers for our cast members to wear to make them look shadier and more like a drug dealers. we also had a brown paper bag that the money was kept in so in the film we would pull out the money from the bag and then it would we exchanged for the 'drugs'.
Equipment

Using the equipment for the first time was interesting. We were using cameras and tripods that we had never handled before but we managed to get the hang of it. Our teacher showed us briefly how to use the camera and the tripod that we had been given. He also gave us advice like not to zoom in on the camera if we wanted a close up shot but to instead move the camera closer to the person. Using the equipment became quite easy after we got use to how it all worked, though because of where we chose to film out clip, the ground was very muddy and it made using the equipment in there quite challenging as it was very slippery but we managed to do okay.

What would you change/do better if you had the chance to do the task again?
If I had the chance to do this task again I would probably try and be a little more involved in the actual filming of our short clip. I was quiet nervous to use the camera in case I broke it or managed to mess up the filming so I stepped back when it came to the filming and let the other people in my group do it. Apart from that I am pretty happy with how our film is coming along. We all came up with the plot together and worked together on finding the right people to cast and the right location to film it in.