Closing Post

It has been an extremely long process and we have all worked so hard over the past few months, however we believe it has all been worth while. We have had such positive feedback and feel our sequence is the best we could have made it.

We are all going to miss working as a group even if we have had our few disagreements!
Overall we've helped eachother out and got on really well and we are all really happy with what we achieved :)

Take a look around our blog you will find all the work really easily if you use the links bar on the right side of this page. It is all the work we have put it in, in order to achieve our goal

THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED!

Goodbye xxx

Our Screening

These are pictures we took of our screening of our final media product, FIXATION. We used only one room and layed our table and chairs for people to sit in.

We held the screening on Friday 26th March, we had 61 turn up from year 11, 12 and 13. It was the first time many people saw our final project and we got positive reactions from everyone who came. To advertise our screening we posted a group on facebook and invited everybody to join, we also used word of mouth around our school. Finally we decided that the addition of popcorn and sweets would attract them in.

The purpose off this was to get feedback from our target audience. we printed off questionaires 55 in total and asked everybody to fill them in with their opinions, questionaires is a good way to gather results as it is confidential they didn't have to put their names so people weren't afraid of saying how they felt.

Questionnaire

Age

Gender : Male Female

What is the film’s title?

What genre do you think the film is?

Is the film a British, or American made film?

British American

What type of Cinema would you expect it to be shown in? (tick one box)

• Multiplex (Cineworld, Vue, Odeon etc…)
• Independent Cinema (Phoenix theatre)

Who do you think this film is targeted at?

Male
Female

What age group do you think the film is aimed at?

Are the characters easily identified? Who are the main characters? What role do they play?

Describe what happens in the sequence

What do you think the film is about? (themes)

Do you think the opening sequence works? Does it introduce the film successfully, the characters, the genre, the narrative?

What, in your opinion, works well in the sequence?

What could be improved?

Would you want to watch the rest of the film based on what you have seen so far?
Can you rate the opening sequence out of 10.

This is a copy of the questionaire we handed out, as you can see we asked questions about how they thought the sequence was and we also asked for feedback on how we could improve.This feedback is always helpful as nothing is ever perfect and there is always room for improvement.
 


This is an example of a questionaire completed by a student during the feedback session.

• By looking through all our questionaires we soon realised that our opening sequence had gone down really well with rating ranging from 7 to 10 out 10.
•  Everyone understood key themes and could identify them easily.
•  The genre and characters came across well and we had lots of good feedback on that.
• We had repetitive improvements which was to make the kitchen scene shorter and see more of the shed scene. However the reason we did this was so we could convey the OCD really clearly
• People indentified that it was predominately a male film
• They picked up that it would be for young adults mainly
• Finally, the feedback we recieved was very positive with minor improvement, the titles and graphics were really liked so as a group we were very happy with the outcome

The only problem with this screening is that the people who watched it our a couple of years younger then our target audience. This is because we are still students and we don't have access to 50 plus 22 year olds so we decided that the feedback from 16 to 18yr olds is still better then nothing.

Signed Off

We have officially been signed off!! After so much hard work, commitment, re- shoots and over the past 4 months our life being spent in the media block our teacher has finally said that there is no more we can do and she loves it!

We are very pleased with the outcome of our opening sequence, we have alll really worked hard throughout the whole process and we have got on really well as a team

We cannot wait to show our families, friends and to see the reaction at our screening later this week!

X

Our Final Title Choices

After creating our sequence and adding in different effects and music the last job that we had left to do was the placement of the titles we chose to

• Put these titles on a black background and have a white font colour
• The titles would play over parts of the sequence eg : we would show him counting the cups and saying 1 then we would place a title as he counts 2,3,4 and then cut back to the action
• This was in order to make our piece quicker and to make it more entertaining as the kitchen scene is quite repetitive.

• 
  
  We kept all our titles quite plain and neat to reflect the charcters state of mind with OCD, however the font had a slight weirdness about it to reflect the horror genre. The titles spell themselves out so they come up letter by letter in a precise way:

• Our main title was the most important title as it tells the audience what the film is called and therefore we really wanted to make this stand out and be really effective. We decided to make it quite simple however to really emhasise what the whole film was about; the obsession with 4; we made A in FIXATION to FIX4TION. Our colour scheme again was kept simple and we only used the colour red to make the 4 stand out and we used an effect on it to make it move.

• Our Production company was again kept simple, we used a sound effect of birds in the background and green tree productions slowly faded upwards. This title was extremely important as it showed the audience who produced this film and gave our film recognition. Also if people liked our film they would perhaps become more aware of out production company and this would gain us interest

• 
  
  Our Distibutor focuses mainly on distributing horror films therefore the font and styple of the text and colours had to reflect that. We again used simple but effective colours and quite an eerie font to suggest horror to the audience. We had a sound effect over the top and this title faded up then down.

• 
  
  Overall we learn't that the placement of titles is crucial because you do not want to distract the viewer from the action but you still want them to be really visable. This is why are's work really well because we don't make our audience watch action while titles are showing instead we show them separately but still show them crucial parts of the sequence.

Round up of Editing Week 4

This week spencer was left alone to edit from tuesday til friday, as you can imagine it was alot of pressure put upon him as the deadline was on friday and he was on his own to meet it.

However he managed to do a lot of work by himself, it was lucky that spencer was the one left behind as he is the most skilled editor out of all of us. However even though we were in swanage on a field trip for geography we all managed to contact spencer once a day and answer any question he had or give him any advice.

This week spencer sorted out our music, he didn't like the music choices we gave him so he decided to change it, we trusted him to do a good job, and we are all happy with the final outcome.

Also spencer added an echoing effect of the girl screaming, this makes the scene a lot scarier and brings a dillusional effect to the noise, this matches the picture extremely well as spencer also added a blurry effect, he crossed the shots so one plays on top of another, this is pretty easily done on adobe premier pro but it creates a very professional look. 

WE have now finished editing, i hope you now know exactly what went on.

Round up of Editing Week 3

This week we shave captured all the footage we had took from our back up shoot, we started to work a lot harder this week as we were behind other groups with our work as we had to do a back up shoot and we didn't want to have a big panic when it came closer to the deadline.

We continued to edit during lesson time but we also came in during our free periods aswel, not all of them but a decent proportion of them as we wanted to get as much editing done as we could.  As you can see above we commited ourselves to as many study periods as we could, but not all of them as we needed a balance in our life.

This week James, Ciara and India, did a lot more of the editing, this is because Spencer is going to be left alone next week for 3 days which he'll have to edit by himself, so we decided we wanted to make it as equal as possible.

We sat down in our editing suite together and had a group meeting on what exactly we wanted spencer to do next week, so even though we weren't there we were still contributing. We told him about the speed we wanted the shots to be in the shed scene and we talked about different techniques and effects we could use to add to the sequence, we didn't come up with any final ideas though so we told him to experiment over the next week.

Also when it came to music all three of us sat down and decided on 3 different tracks we would give to spencer so he could choose which one he liked best.

Music: Final Cut

The Music we used for a first edit fitted well with that sequence, however it didn't have the right tempo/feel to it in order to match the second sequence. Therefore to create the desired effect for our final sequence we had to search for some new music.

After hours trawling through the tracks on free play music we eventually found two tracks that when combined fit perfectly with our sequence. 

The music we used creates a long and slow build up, but when overlayed with the second track, the build up became a well constructed action filled piece of music. 

The track we used in our sequence from free play music was called In The Mist

Production Company Logo

Examples of Film Production Logos

The production company logos are very simple.

Both 'Celcius Films' and 'Lime Films' have their name as the picture. We intend to use a similar idea. We want to keep the production logo as simple as possible, because simplicity works well.

Our genre is horror / thriller, so we need to take this into account when deciding on our production company logo. Most production companies tend to focus on one main genre of film. We want our production to specialise in horror. We looked at horror based film production companies:

Horror based film production companies

Main Shoot: Shot Log

This was the shot log that we recorded all our shots and takes on during the main shoot. We took turns writing and recording while others helped with filming and sound. I think we used our shot log really well compared to the practise shoot and it really helped us capture footage much quicker. I think we all learnt how important it was to use a shot log on shoot.

Round up of editing Week 2

This week we started the editing of the footage from our main shoot, we were a lot happier with the footage we came back with as we had changed all the things that we decided we needed to change and improve.

One big difference between this shooting and the last is that we kept up to date with the shot log, this made it a lot easier when it came to editing as we knew exactly where on the tape the shot we wanted was. This is a picture of all of us discussing the shot log and deciding which piece of footage we needed to capture next.

This week we were in the editing room for alot longer then the previous, we had all our lessons to edit, so the same as you saw in my last editing post plus we came in two lunchtimes for half an hour and two after school sessions for an hour. We could choose any two lunchtimes out of tuesday, wednesday and thursday and any two after school periods of of the same days. The whole group didn't have to do the same sessions as eachother and this worked to our advantage as we had group members in the editing suite pretty much all the time out of the six possibly sessions we could choose.

We made some big decisions when it came to editing this week, we decided that we would have the scene of the girl in the shed second as apposed to it being the opening scene, this meant that the audience could link the two scenes together and it meant that we could finish the sequenmce off with something scary that will interest the audience.

We didn't need to re-shoot for this however we could just move the footage around on the programme we were using, adobe premier pro.This programme is fantastic,  it has many effects and different cool things you are able to add when editing.

Also this week we had decided on the music we were using, the music was very eerie and spooky, it had a slow tempo, we got this music from 'freeplaymusic' this is a great website you can get music from, and its all uncopyrited, so we were able to use it in our sequence.

However we have had some problems this week not with the editing but with the lighting in our shed scene, we have tried to adjust the light using the darkener on the programme but this doesn't looked realistic, we are looking for more of a strip of light instead of the whole shed being lit up, so we are going to have to re-shoot this weekend.

The Script

We only really needed to plan the script for the radio recording we play over the house scene. This is because the girl in the shed and the man in the house never actually exchange any dialogue. This wont make shooting the sequence any easier as we have to tell the story in other ways.

This is a picture of our original script. This is the only planning we have done for the script we have focused more on the shooting schedule and storyboard.

All it shows is some of the dialogue needed for the news on the radio. It does not include any screams and noises made by the girl in the shed. To be fair we are planning on letting the actress in the shed make up the noises and screams she makes as this will make it look more realistic as apposed to false.

We are also thinking about having the man repeat 1,2,3,4 whenever he does an action for example opening a cupboard, as this will enthesise that he has OCD, however we are not entirely sure of this as we don't want it to get too repetitive and bore the audience.

We are yet to shoot our final media product but i know we should have planned our script then we have so far. hopefully it won't have any repucutions on the quality of the product.

Main Shoot Thoughts

• Our main shoot was very successful. We were much more aware of what a shooting day consisted of and the need to work really hard to achieve a really good finished product.
• We also had an actor outside our group: Alex Thomas, (see in the post 'Amendments to casting'). Consequently we wanted to be really professional and use his time efficiently. In order to do this we held a meeting with him on the Friday before the shooting weekend just so he could do a walk through of what was going to happen. We also showed him the story board and our rough edit so he could get an idea of the character and the role he was playing. He was confidence about his role and ready to take it on.
• We had a really good time on the shoot. Our group all get on really well and work well together so we had a lot of fun and hopefully achieved a lot of good footage at the same time!

Shoot day

Main Shoot: Schedual

Ammendments To Casting

• 
  
  Since our test shoot, we have decided to make an ammendment to the cast, as James' performance on camera was not up to scratch, we have drafted in someone from the school Drama Department.
• 
  
  Alex, the new lead role, has partaken in Drama lessons at school since the young age of 10.He also has over 10 years of drama experience in extra curricula clubs both inside and outside school.
• 
  
  He is currently sitting his AS Drama Exam, and hopes to continue this specialist subject for at least another year and get a full A-Level in the subject. His current predicted grade is an A, which shows he has supreme acting abilities.
• 
  
  I have personally briefed alex on the task, and he seems perfectly comfortable with the role he will be playing. I have also shown him our groups rough edit and OCD symptons video, that we gained inspiration from.
• 
  
  He has agreed to the shooting time and we consider him a reliable and valued member of the team.

Rough Cut of our Opening Sequence

Due to this only being a rough edit, there is no need for titles to be added.
However, the lack of title shots means that there a cuts that look really jumpy as they are supposed to be split by a title shot.
Our Thoughts

• We think that overall we made good progress however by doing our rough cut we have seen vital errors and mistakes and missing shots which we need to improve on in order to make our final sequence better
• We think both actors and actress worked well however some shots can still be improved
• We need to sort out missing shots and make sure they are included next time
• We need to look at finer details-eg OCD actor should have shirt tucked in at all times, shoes on at all times, same pen in each shot
• We like the music choice we have made at the start of the sequence
• We need to change the POV shot from the toaster to the fridge as its not a good shot
• Props need to checked through-pen, toast same colour, butter needs to be soft, 4 keys

Teacher Feedback

•  Like the shed door scene but need to think quite carefully about make up- need to look at fake blood- doesn't look realistic
• OCD- they would know when the news would be on therfore play the news as soon as radio turned on then music plays after when he goes to turn off the radio
• Calender shot-already have the 24th circled? do crosses?
• He needs to switch of the radio

Round up of Editing Week 1

This week we were in the editing room, capturing the footage we got from our practice shoot on the weekend. It was the first time we had done some editing since we edited for the preliminary task, This time we were with different people, and in a different group.

We were pretty confident that we would do well with the editing this week, as we all knew what to do due to the experience we gained from our preliminary task and other media projects where we needed to use editing.

We got straight to work capturing all the footage we took, and straight away we realised that we were missing some of the shots we intended to shoot. However it was just a practice shoot and that is the purpose of a practice shoot, to learn from your mistakes so you don't make them again for the real thing.

As we were editing for the practice shoot it wasn't as important so we just editing during lessons, this is my timetable for the week, we edited in the periods highlighted in red, this periods are 40minutes long, so 7 x 40, is 280 minutes, so we spent 4 hours and 40 minutes editing.

We sat down as a group on friday lunchtime to discuss the weeks events and to talk about anything we might need to improve or remeber for next time we shoot.

We came up with a list of problems we had to solve and things we have decided to change for the main shoot:

• We have to keep the storyboard with us at all times to ensure that we know exactly what we want in each shot
• We need to shoot in chronological order so we dont forget any shots, this will be ok as we  only shoot in two different locations
• We need to keep up to date with the shot log so when it comes to capturing we know exactly where the shot we want is on the tape
• We need to make sure that when shooting we do more then just one take, as in a number of cases on the practice shoot we moved on to the next shot instead of checking that the footage we had got was good enough
• We have to make sure that we keep using the clapperboard so we know what take we want to use

Music

The music that is featured in our sequence is from one of the tracks on the free play music website.
The track is called Abandoned Infirmary (click link for music sample). The track creates an eerie atmosphere and builds up suspense towards the end.
However, the track has been cut and copied across so it fits the desired time while watching the sequence. I have tried my best to edit out the cuts between tracks, and they are barely noticeable, but if you listen closely the track skips a bit in two or three places.

Notes on editing

Guys, while you left for Hollywood I went through out final practise shoot edited sequence and have noted down major elements we left out that makes our piece not make sense and flow properly. I also got feedback from ms dymioti:

• Missing shot
• Turning of the radio and looking at the shed then leaving- he doesn't actually turn of the radio it just stops after the news announcement
• Shot of the camera leaving the shed and sliding across the floor
• Need more CU of in shed -eyes-cut between each look
• Polaroids!
• Reaction shot of toast popping
• CU of eyes looking at shed

Suggestions

Say news date at the start of the radio announcement- because he is OCD wouldn't he know exactly when the news would be on and let music play after as he walked to turn off the radio

Group Meeting: Editing

• Lots of mistakes
• Continuity errors
• Some good shots
• Need more reaction shots
• Broken continuity techniques
• Background sound
• Burnt toast then the next shot doesn't have burnt toast
• lots of takes-need to cut that down in order to save time

Time:1 hour

Practice Shoot

Shed Scene

James' spraying the numbers on the shed

We used photos however we want to use polaroids for the final shoot

India setting up the camera

Spencer filming an outside shot

Just about to film one shot

James in our main location

James and Spencer attempting a point of view shot

India filming an over the shoulder shot

Kitchen location

Spencer filming and India on sound

James acting

Ciara filming and Spencer on sound

Setting up the camera

India with shoot board

Practice Shoot: Thoughts

We think the practice shoot went well. The shooting schedule and story board proved really useful. We did have a few hiccups along the way but we managed to work through these and come up with alternatives.
For our main shoot we need to work hard to pull off an even smoother shooting day. We worked hard on our practice shoot and it gave us a clear outline of what a shooting day involves - a lot of hard work! We need to take into account that setting up the location took a lot longer than first anticipated and work this into our schedule. hopefully everything will be easier for our main shoot because we carried out this one.
Overall we all had a really fun time and hopefully our film is good enough to pull off a good rough draft sequence.

Practice Shoot: Shot Log

This again kept all our shots in order and we knew exactly what shot to capture for the editing process. We all took turns recording down capture times and what shots we were using and what shots went wrong so we were not going to capture

Practice Shoot: Capture List

This is our practise shoot shot log. This helped us to know the time codes of each shot and take allowing the editing proces to be quick and easy.