Bridget Jones's Diary Remake - Complete

Production Begins

Filming the Remakes- Crewing for Fahrenheit 451

In our lesson we helped another group with their re-creation of the opening of the 1966 dystopian film 'Fahrenheit 451'. They needed shots of television aerials, so we filmed from the school field, using a tripod and a video camera to get the desired effect. The zoom function on the camera was very smooth, so this helped to precisely replicate the gradual close up used in the original shots.

I think that it was useful to see how the cameras worked, as this will be key in our own re-creation of 'Bridget Jones's Diary'. We may possibly shoot from several different angles using multiple cameras as some shots in the opening are face-on wide shots and others are wide shots from the corner of the room. I think we should use a DSLR as all of the shots are stationary, so we won't need the camera to focus quickly;it will remain focused on one particular spot. I also think that setting up the tripod efficiently could be difficult for our group, as we only have three people, but because we don't need any tracking shots, we won't have much other equipment, such as a steady-cam.

Pre-production #2

Bridget Jones opening remake:

Story Board, Shot-list,Titles List

Breakdown of Opening Titles

Pre-production

Bridget Jones's Diary - Preparation

Myself and Charlie planning

 We've been working on story-boarding and planning out the shots for our production. Our re-creation has suffered from slight delays, because we lost the storyboards and have had to make them again. Eden was also off school for a week because of illness, so we are not where we are supposed to be in terms of preparation.



Storyboarding

 The hardest part of the process so far has been finding props and deciding where to film in the common room, to mirror the look of the opening as closely as possible. It's becoming increasingly harder to find objects that accurately resemble those in the opening; such as an unlit cigarette instead of a lit one, red pyjamas and wine (Ribena).

However we made up for lost time quickly and we're hoping to begin shooting on Wednesday, after our rehearsal. 

Deciding on the Remake

Bridget Jones' Diary Opening Recreation

Our group decided that we would try to re-create the opening of 'Bridget Jones's Diary' (released in 2001, directed by Sharon Maguire) based on the novel of the same name by Helen Fielding.

The film is essentially a romantic-comedy,about Bridget Jones (Reneé Zellweger), a self-conscious, accident prone woman in her early thirties, who has to choose between two contrasting male love interests, the barrister son of her parents friends, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and her boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). It had a budget of $25 million and earned $281.9 at the box office.

We chose 'Bridget Jones's Diary', because it's a British film produced by 'Working Title Films' (Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan), the production company that we will be studying later on in our course. The opening scene's mise-en-scène consists of various pieces of furniture, made to look disorganised and haphazard to emphasise Bridget's own complicated life. We are hoping to use the 6th form common room, as well as our own props to re-create this look.