Wednesday 12th December 2012

Dan editing some shots.

Today myself and Dan edited the remaining shots from the house scene so all we have left to do now before the first cut is create and add in the film titles. Me and Dan sat and listened to the film opening after editing in all the shots and decided the background noise of the TV wasn’t essential so instead of getting rid of the shots we found a news report of the internet of the Suffolk murderers and just recorded the voice of the news reporter and added that into our film opening and it gives the opening a massive realistic boost and great affect. We also added in the same sound for when the camera reveals the mysterious man in the river scenes to the house scene as it shows consistency and lets the audience associate the sound with the mysterious man like the sound in the film 'Jaws' when the shark reappears numerous times.

New Ideas!!!

As we have decided to re-film some of the shots to make them look more professional I also looked at the film opening so far and decided that it goes straight into the storyline and characters too quickly that the audience don’t have a clue where the setting is or what sort of situation the girl is in and so I put forward to the group the idea of having a 'setting the scene' shot where we have awkward low angle shot of the house where we can see where the film opening is going to take place. Also we have decided to cut some of the river shots out of the film opening to give us more time to focus of the crucial part of the opening.

 

 

What's Going Wrong?

Example of one of our dodgy shots

Although we have some good shots from filming Monday night we also have looked over our work and been brutally honest with ourselves that some of the shots look dodgy and unprofessional. For example, the image shown above is an example of one of our worst shots taken from filming Monday night as you can see we have filmed the actress with backlighting so we cannot see any of her facial expressions. Therefore we have decided after editing for our first cut deadline that we are going to re-film some of our shots. Plus, we have decided that the film title's font that we initially decided to use for the title sequence is far too goory and that we have decided that we don’t want our film to be seen in a bloody and goory way and instead we want it to be viewed as more of a mystery and therefore we have decided to use another font that we found that’s more hard hitting and hostile.

11th December 2012

 

10th December 2012

Mollie filming Ellie.

On the 10th of December 2012 we filmed the remaining shots of the first girl victim in the house babysitting on her own, we used a student at our school called Ellie Hutchin who is currently doing AS Drama and therefore we got some really good shots however kept dialogue to a minimum to increase the chance of our film opening looking more professional.



Mollie preparing for an over the shoulder shot with Cristi preparing props.

 

Mollie filmed all of the shots as this was her allocated role whilst Myself, Cristi and Dan prepared props such as the phone receiving a message, mise en scene such as the television noise in the background being paused and rewound to keep the shots flowing and also helping Mollie out with the camera angles and shots making sure they all look appropriate.

Mollie filming the over the shoulder shot.

 

We used lights around the house to make certain parts of the film opening seem more scary then others, such as when the girl walks into the little girls room to check on her the room is quite bright and homely, however, for the shots for the mysterious man walking up the stairs we made the lights slightly dimmer for a sense of tension and danger.

 



Actors in action.

 

For some shots Dan had to be standing outside in the dark looking up at the little girls window and for these shots it was hard to get the lighting we wanted as you have the street lights and reflections off residents cars and windows which caused us to have to change the lighting in editing but only slightly as I thought the lighting looked quite natural and it's what you're likely to get if you stand outside someone's house anyway.

Dan in action being filmed in the dark street.

Whats Working Well?

At the moment we have filmed the majority of our shots and therefore have had time to look back on what they look like. Our first cut deadline is Thursday 13th of December and therefore me and Mollie spent our two hour lesson today (Tuesday 11th December) going through and editing as much as possible to get a decent first cut for Thursday. I will be spending more time tomorrow (Wednesday 12th December) in my own free time editing even more to get a better quality of editing and hopefully adding in some titles. Some of my favourite shots so far are the ones of the girl at her house babysitting as my role in the group is to edit all the shots. We got a good handheld shot of the mysterious man walking up the stairs and also a good shot focusing on the dead girl in the bath. Dan has done some really good research by himself finding sound effects and creepy music that will fit in with the shots and saved the to the hardrive ready to edit in. I have used some good editing effects to for the sound of the television as when we looked back at the shots the volume of the sound was drastically different in the living room compared to when she walks out.

6th of December 2012

Me and Mollie editing.

Cristi and Dan recording sounds.

On the 6th of December 2012 Me and Mollie spent two hours during lesson time editing our first batch of shots that we preciously shot by the river. We chose which of the shots we liked the most and left out the ones that weren’t so good. At the end of putting the shots together we did have to change a couple of shots as they were the same sort of shot and this didn’t show the variety of shots that we took and also made our film opening look a bit repetitive and boring.

Meanwhile, Dan and Cristi were out of the classroom recording the diegetic sounds that we wanted to be clearer in our film opening such as breathing, music from earphones and the sound of feet running on the floor. They did this by using a microphone which they connect to the camera and recorded it and changing it to an mp4 format. After they had done this Me and Mollie had finished editing and they fitted the sounds (diegetic and non-diegetic) to the shots and then we had completed the first cut of the second part of our film opening.

 

Dan editing in sounds.

Diagetic and Non-Diagetic Sound

In our film opening all of our shots will include diegetic sound, this is where the sound comes from the people in the film or is implied to be present by the action of the film, for example, brushing of leaves against each other and the sound of a character breathing. Dan in our group is responsible for making these sounds noticeable and believable in our film opening and in order to do this he has a microphone on every set we film and holds it out of the shot but close enough to pick up the important sounds such as conversation between the victim and her friend she bumps into on the pathway. However, some sounds are easier and better quality to record by doing them separately and not on scene. Dan did this with the breathing and music coming out of the earphones on the river set. Non-Diegetic sound on the other hand is represented as coming from the a source outside story space and this will be included in our film opening when we film the first killers victim in her house when the mysterious man is creeping around the house. Dan has found some interesting copyright-free sounds on the internet which we are going to use for the house scene and we hope this we build up tension for the audience.

 

Finance

BBC'S LOGO

In reality I would get the money to help finance my film from BBC studios. This is because BBC is a trusted and reliable company which funds many other films and TV programmes in the UK. A lot of people watch the BBC channels and therefore our film would be broadcasted to many homes and seen by a large number of people which would hopefully make our film very talked about so that people who do not what the BBC channels would try and watch it.

Our Film Distribution Company

Twisted Pictures Logo

For our film to be successful we need to have a successful film distributer behind us. I decided to choose 'Twisted Pictures'. My main reason for picking this film distribution company is because they already back a lot of horror/crime/mystery films such as The Saw Series, Dead Silence, The Tortured, Texas Chainsaw 3D and many others. Twisted Pictures is an American independent production company. The company was founded in 2004 by Evolution Entertainment's Mark Burg, Oren Koules and Gregg Hoffman. This makes them a trustworthy and reliable source to distribute our film and will hopefully make it successful.

Production Company Clip

As part of a film you need to have a professional and consistent production company behind it. We decided to name our production company 'BCDM PRODUCTIONS' this is because the letters stand for the first letters of all our names and we thought this would be an unique and original name. We used an app for the iPhone to generate the clip above in which we purchased so we have full copyright for the clip. We wanted our production company to be responsible for making films of the scary/horror/mystery genre and therefore we decided that a lamppost with a flickering light in the dark would be ideal for our production company and therefore the production company would be seen as consistent in what films they create.

Filming The River Shots

Above on the left we have me playing the victim and Mollie(top right) filming the shots and Cristi(top left) making sure the shots and outfits work together. The middle picture is of Dan playing the 'mysterious man' in his black apron. To the right we have Cristi holding props and generally helping out around the set.

As part of our opening scene is set along the river just after the title of the film is revealed we decided we needed to film these shots first before the weather gets nearer to winter and worse. On the morning of Thursday 29th November 2012 we filmed a series of shots of the 'mysterious man's' next victim. We included shots such as handheld shots of the mysterious man running after his next victim, long shots and medium shots of the girl running, point of view shots from the mysterious man’s point of view so the audience are scared for the innocent girl who is being stalked as one of the psycho's many victims. Cristi arranged all the costumes including mine which was the jogging outfit for the girl, Dan's outfit which was a black apron which was wrapped around his head so that his identity was kept secret and also her own which was a casual outfit. We were very pleased with the shots we captured and they work very well however we were aware that there was unwanted backlighting in some of our shots which was out of control and this may be something I would improve on if we were to film the shots again maybe choosing a different time of day but it does work well in showing the audience the time of day that it is as we want them to know it’s the morning and that the killer is fresh from killing the girl the night before and his now onto his next victim. Cristi provided props such as the water bottle, headphones and iPhone that I was holding whilst running and also the bag that she was holding. Overall the filming took us 2 hours and we made sure we used the extra time we gave ourselves to go through and film some shots again to get the best quality we could.

Production Planning

During today’s lesson (Tuesday 27th November 2012) we sat down and discussed when we are going to film our shots and reminded each other of our roles so that we were able to film our shots smoothly. We decided that as our first deadline of the final cut is soon approaching that we should aim to film as soon as possible. We used SMART goals to help us plan out our filming schedule meaning we need to be considerate of the time we have, make sure our filming goals were achievable so we don’t overload our schedule and have bad quality shots and also be realistic about when its best to film our shots as one of our settings is at my group members house (Mollie) and therefore we need to plan to film our shots when least people are in the house as possible so we are not interrupted and have unwanted background noise.

StoryBoard

This is the storyboard for our film opening. Mollie and Dan mainly worked together to produce the storyboard as they are the more artistic members of the group and they managed to produce clear and understandable images for what will be happening in our film opening. The storyboard was crucial to the planning of the production because we were more able to manage out time and stay on task for what we were meant to do.

Inspiration

 

As a group we took inspiration from a well-known film 'Scream'. As most of our film is about a mysterious man stalking girls and creeping around their daily lives we watched a few scenes from this film so we picked up variety of shots that work well and are more effective in creating tension, suspension and an atmosphere for a horror movie and we hope to use them for our film opening to make our film as effective. We also noticed from the film that there is little dialogue which also creates tension so we have applied this to our film opening and kept dialogue to a bare minimum.

The Title of Our Film Opening

As a group we decided that we want our film to be about the revenge of a man on other girls who know details of what happened to his daughter that was brutally murdered therefore we wanted the title to resemble the idea of revenge and this is where we got the idea of the name 'Reprisal'. Reprisal is quite a mysterious name and not many people know what it means which makes it more intriguing and we hope this makes people want to know more about it. Mollie who is in our group found a generator on the internet which allows you change the format of the title for our opening sequence into a bloody mess as you can see above. This gives the audience a vague idea of our film opening without giving too much away and it will also remind you of the genre of the film which is horror/mysterious. We will be introducing the film title after approximately 53 seconds of the film opening with a flashing black background to give the title more effect.

Our Opening Scene

 

For our opening scene we will be focusing on a scene where a young girl is murdered. She will be babysitting for her parents how have gone out to the pub and she watches a news report on another young girl who has been murdered in the local area on TV. Naturally Storm is scared and phones her parents to check when they will be home, her parents reassure her and say that they will be home soon so Storm decides to start running a bath. Storm goes over to the baby and will say she won’t be long she's just checking on her bath. She then goes upstairs where she goes into the bathroom and as she is walking into the bathroom you catch a glimpse of the serial killer dressed in all black walk from one room to another watching Storm which builds tension and fear. She then goes into the toilet and then it cuts to a scene of her parents walking home and match on action as they walk through the door into the house. The parent’s shouts for Storm and when they hear no answer they look round the house and they see that she has been drowned purposefully and is hanging half in the bath and half body on the floor.

The scene then cuts to another news report of Storm who has been murdered however in another household where a girl is preparing to go out for a run, there are shots of her running and then as she runs over the river the camera is in the eyes of the killer who is watching her and the girl is oblivious and runs on and then the opening ends where she stops for a rest on a park bench and starts talking to people who say she shouldn’t be on her own and asks her if she knows what has happened in the local area.

Our opening will include key skills such as match on action as the parents walk into the house, non-diegetic sound and diegetic sound throughout the opening and many more.

Word Treatment for a New Film

One idea I have for my film opening is basically a story around a mysterious person who is a serial killer dressed all in black throughout the film and he targets girls in the local town to kill. The reason he goes after girls is unexplained until the end of the film where you find out that someone killed his daughter and ever since he has wanted revenge on any innocent girl as he is a psychopath. The genre of the film is horror/mystery and there are various news reports throughout the film accounting the different times the killer strikes.

The film focuses on one victim of the killer and throughout the film you see sightings of the killer following the girl for unknown reasons. There will be plenty of anti-climax and fear for the young girl.Also the film will resemble reality and be more like a documentary following the eyes of the serial killer. We used the film ‘Scream’ for inspiration as there is a similar storyline however this film will be more realistic.

Film Opening Title Sequence Analysis

Opening title sequence form Durham County



Durham County

I choose to analyse the opening title sequence from the film Durham county because I think the 9 shots above have been chosen specially. All of the shots seem to be in black and white except four and even then the only contrasting colour in the shots is red and this is key in the opening title sequence to symbolise danger, blood, war, strength, power, determination etc... this so effective as instantly it draws you in to find out what the danger is? Who's involved? The title itself 'Durham County' sets the scene immediately in the last shot, there are also power lines which suggest civilisation however they stand alone without any trace of community or sophistication, we can assume from this that the film may be about isolation or seclusion. In six we can see that there is model of a man who has been shot which suggests that the film may include a murder or numerous murders and this in itself makes the viewer want to know more about the film and why the opening title sequence has decided to use models instead of main characters, this makes the opening title sequence more effective because when the viewer asks these questions to themselves they are already hooked into the film. The opening title sequence also proposes that the film may include a bit of romance for a period of the film as the seventh shot displays a bunch of red roses that are drowning in deep water and this gives the effect of a romance fading.

Main Production Task

My Team!

From left: Daniel Greenall, Mollie Neal,Cristi MacFarlane and Bethan Gray(me).

This is my group. There are four of us working together on the opening of our film 'Reprisal'. We will all be helping each other out with parts of the filming, editing, sound and Mise en scene however we all clearly have enthusiasm for certain roles. For example, I am very keen on the editing part of the film opening so I shall be very active in this and other parts such as costumes, finding recce shots etc... However Mollie is inspired by hair and make-up and sounds, Dan is enthused by special effects, lighting and costumes as well as me so me and Dan will be working together to creative the suitable costumes for our characters and Cristi is very interested in photography so throughout the filming element she will be in charge of camera angles and certain key skills used. We have all put out creative ideas together to produce the storyline of 'Reprisal' which I will be posting more on soon.



 Mid - January Cristi decided to discontinue her Media AS and therefore left us with Myself, Mollie and Daniel.



Evaluation of the Preliminary Exercise

Myself, Dan Greenall and Billy Turner worked together really well to create a good final cut of the 30 second film. In the exercise we were practising key skills such as Hollywood editing, shot reverse shot, countdown to filming, hyperrealism, rule of thirds and match on match action. These skills were very important practise because it makes our final cut look more pleasant and professional to watch.

Overall the camerawork was good quality, we managed to get some good shots to put together to practise hyperrealism. This is where I walk through the door and into the room , we tried our hardest to make sure the editing was down to a tee so that the shots flowed we did this by editing in the door slamming onto the next shot just to give it a more professional finish. This also exercised our skill for match on action and this is important as we might need these skills for when we come to doing our film opening. I would say our current at an intermediate level of production skill, this is because although some of our shots were good there were a couple of shots where we broke the rule of 180 degree rule, which means you are not allowed to film over the 180 degree line, however even though we didn't apply this rule it wasn't very noticeable when we edited it.

 

When we filmed our shots we went from a noisy corridor to a very quiet classroom which meant the levels of noise differed and this showed in our final cut and was quite noticeable so if we were to film our shots again this is definitely something I would change.

We originally planned our shots to fit into a thirty seconds which was the required time for the exercise however as we took our shots with a countdown so that we didn't miss any part of the filming we ran over the thirty seconds but we sorted this out in the editing by cutting out what we didn't need.

Preliminary Exercise Final Cut

 

 

 

My groups final cut of the 30 second Prelimary Exercise....

 

Report on the Preliminary Exercise

My Group: Me, Daniel Greenall and Billy Turner

 

Me filming for our preliminary exercise with Dan (left) and Billy (right).

We filmed the preliminary exercise in our school mainly in a classroom during a double media lesson on Tuesday the 9th of October 2012. We used a Canon Legria Camcorder  and a tripod to film most of the shots and then used Adobe Premiere editing software to put all the shots together. During the preliminary exercise we were practising certain skills such as 'Match on action', 'Timing' and '180 Degree Rule'. It all worked together really well however I have become aware of my habit of taking over control.