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!

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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.

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

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

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: 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.

Storyboard

Here are some photos of our storyboard:

We began storyboarding a week before our shoot. We initially did a timeline which we used to then add further detail and it made us think about where we would place titles etc. We used different colours for different types of shot eg-yellow was close ups. This allowed us to see if we were using variation of shots as this criteriria would make our opening sequence exciting and interesting.

We split up the jobs of the storyboarding to make it quicker

-India and James did the drawings

-I did the writing underneath identifying each shot

-Spencer sorted out the order generally helped with all jobs

The process of storyboarding was very long however without doing this I don't think we would have a set idea of the opening sequence. It made us actually walk through our sequence and try and overcome problems

Planning: Shooting Schedual

This is the shooting schedual we produced for the practise shoot. This allowed us to plan each shot and know what we needed to do on the day. We wrote down each shot that was needed and then planned that way in which the shot order would go. Therefore we can now follow this shooting schedule ensuring we get the right shots.

Planning: Props

Shed

• Rope
• Tea towel for gag

• Polaroids
• Red paint for the numbers
• Wooden Chair
• Chains
• Cork Noticeboard; divided into 4, with 4 separate pictures on it, one of which being the girl in the shed at the moment. 
• Fake Blood

House

• Radio
• Calendar with dates circled
• Toast (bread)
• Butter
• Food for inside the fridge 
• Cutlery; a knife 
• A chopping board 
• Plastic See Though Bags
• Cups,plates etc
• Briefcase
• Keys 

Things to remember

On the day we noted down some points to remember for the next shoot as this was a practise shoot so we were able to learn from it:

• Make Up Wipes
• Black out sheets
• Polaroids
• Cork Board
• Soft Butter
• Butter and Toast needs to be in fours
• No butter on knife before
• Loaf of bread
• Full fridge
• Tuck in shirt
• Pull up trousers

• Overall we soon realised on the shooting day that we needed more time to prepare costume and setting. The shed we were using was full therefore this took us time to clear out and empty. The costume choices were made that morning therfore it took us more time then expected.
• We have now planned that on the next shooting weekend we will all come the night before and prepare all costumes and settings. Therefore clean the kitchen compltely and get the shed prepared. This will allow us to start shooting as soon as we arrive and we will save time therfore we can spend that on making all shots accurate.

Proposal: First Idea

Here is the hand-out we gave out to the cless that went along with our presentation. It offers additional information we may not of covered in the presentation and it gives us the key point to genre, target audience, synopsis and character.

OUR OPINIONS

Ciara:Today we presented our proposal for our final idea. I think it went well perhaps we should have focused on how we were going to structure the proposal more. I talked about the synopsis of the opening sequence and about the target audience

James: I think our presentation went well, we covered all the main topics, including genre, characteristics (OCD), actors/location and the target audience. In my opinion we could of delivered the presentation better, what we were talking about was good but our presentation wasn't structured enough.

Spencer: Today we presented our initial proposal. I think the presentation went well, however we could have included more information on the character and location. Also i feel that we did not elaborate on the plot enough and explain the style of shooting we would use.

India: I thought the way we delivered the presentation was good as wel covered every aspect we needed to, also i think that our handout (see above) was good and it explained everything clealy.

Casting

Distressed Girl, Girl Number 3: Ciara

• Ciara will be playing the distressed girl locked in the shed
• She has won an oscar at an early age
• She achieved an A* in GCSE drama
• She loves acting and is looking forward to taking up her role
• She is convient because she is in our group so she will be there at all times when shooting is taking place; eliminating the chance of delayed shooting due to unreliability

Charlie Smiles: James 

• James is a keen actor
• He likes acting and volunteering to act in our sequence immediately
• Like Ciara he is part of our filming group so he will be reliable and available 
• He is looking forward to getting into his role 

Planning: Costume

Costumes 

Girl number 3

• Clothing 
• Loose clothing, black or white long strap top; she needs to look vulnerable
• Look
• She should look slightly dirty, as if she has been trapped in this shed a while; in order to achieve this we could rub coal on her and her clothes. This will give the affect that she is dirty 
• We want her wrists (where the ropes have been tied) to look red and sore, this will suggest a struggle. In order to achieve this we will experiment with make up and only consider it when shooting if it looks realistic 
• Make up
• We want her look washed out. In order to achieve this we will ;
• use a lighter powder than our actress would usually use and no blusher. 
• We also will use a light-nude lipstick or lip colouring, we want it too appear that she has little or no make up on. 
• We want her eye make up to be much heavier however, we want her mascara and eyeliner smudged to look as if she has been crying
• Her eyes should be bloodshot, this will add to the idea she has been crying 

Charlie Smiles

• Clothing
• Smart clothing, plain black suit with white shirt and coloured tie. Everything should be really neat to reflect the neatness of his character (see picture of suit)
• Glasses
• Look
• incredibly neat, everything looks smart (top button done up, shirt tucked in, tie perfectly done up etc...)
• Hair slicked back with gel (see picture of Simon from Misfits)
• Nails should be clean 

Characterisation

Characterisation

• neat
• hair slicked back, top button done up, shirt tucked in
• time plays an important part
• everything has its place in his house
• slightly geeky
• smart suit, just come home from work
• We hope to combine these two typical stero-types to create our character. We want him to be percieved as normal by people around him, but slightly weird also.

Seven

The mood is suggested in the opening section. The long shot forces the audience to feel distant from the man in the frame. The shot lingers on Morgan Freeman's character, this highlights and establishes the distance and suggests something about his character. In our opening sequence it would perhaps be a good idea to start with a similar idea.

We then see this character getting ready, CU of him doing up his tie reinforce the idea that his character is very set in his ways, neat and particular. The long CU of his things arranged neatly on the table suggest his obsession for tidiness. Our character will display traits similar to Morgan Freeman's character.

Research on Editing

House scene

In this clip, before the man is cutting his toast he is removing his cutlery from the plastic bag. A series of jump cuts are used here. This looks extremely effective and contradicts the idea that everything is perfect. It highlights what he is doing and reinforces that what he is doing is extremely strange.

Shed Scene
Psyco Shower Scene


Similarly here, a series of jump cuts are used but for a slightly different effect. The jump cuts here make the audience feel uneasy and add to the scariness of the scene. The editing style is effective. We could use this technique in the shed scene to add to the idea of the girl feeling disorientated and scared.
We realise as Media students that using jump cuts could be quite risky as our examiner may not realise that we used them to add to the effect of the piece, and instead think that it is just poor editing. We will use the test editing time to see how effective these jump cuts are and use them if they look good and professional.


Vacancy

Vacancy, Section 8: Slow reveal of female victim

The first two minutes of this section of the movie uses a similar style of editing that we want to use in the first section of our sequence. Not much is giving away, we see CUs of her face, and her surrounding but and no long shots are used. In doing this we aim to achieve a sense of mystery, we want to hold something back from the audience so that they want to continue on to watch the film. 

The pace of this section here is also slow, we want to use this idea of a slow reveal to create a sense of long suffering pain and misery. At the same time, we want to show a lot in this section, we need to reveal to the audience elements of the story but at the same time be cautious not to give too much away. 

Other effects 

When editing we also what to create the effect that this girl, who has been captured, feels lost, uneasy and disorientated. In order to achieve this we want to use 

• blurring out shots to give us a sense of her surroundings from her point of view. 

The second picture of the first row could be similar to a shot we shoot. This still seems slightly blurred. This will add to her sense of disorientation, making the audience feel uneasy. 

• jump cuts as mentioned before
• blank screens. A blank screen would add to the sense of disorientation and again make the audience feel uneasy. It could be as if we are seeing everything from her point of view, and at this point she is blinking. 

Opening Sequences

• This opening sequence is conventional of most horror based films. The setting is dark and gloomy, there is a eery silent throughout. 
• we want to recreate something similar to this in the second half of our opening. 
• Genre signifiers are especially apparent in this sequence; dark house, grand, victim young and pretty, minimum light (lit by candle light), weather suggests the mood (thunder and lightening all add to scary effect)

Old style horror movie

• We want to use the idea of a radio playing in the background of our villains house. 
• The radio broadcast is the opening of this sequence, we aim to use a similar idea
• The music in this horror opening sequence is also not conventional. We want to use a mixture of conventional music and music which challenges the genre stereo-types. 

Panic Room

• Here suspense is suggested by the music. 
• The mood set is mysterious and as an audience we are drawn in.
•  The sequence is 1minute 51 seconds long yet not much actually happens. 
• This fits in with keeping the idea simple.
•  A tone for the movie is set, eery and mysterious. 
• We could use a similar idea for our opening sequence and base the storyline around a cleverly selected piece of music. 
• We could see the man going about his normal day but put on eery music to suggest something bad is about to happen. 
• this will help to build up the suspense we want to create
• We also think the idea of uses silences is important as we feel this will add to the eeriness of the situation and raise questions about what is actually about to happen and what secrets the character is hiding. 

Children

• This clip again uses conventional horror signifiers. 
• The MES set up here is dark, gloomy and there is a suggestion something bad is going to happen
• Typical a child is perceived as innocent, young etc... and so therefore vulnerable, this opening sequence plays on that. The binary opposite is used of innocents verses evil. The tone created by lighting and music suggest the evil, while the CU and LS of the toys suggests the innocence of a child. 

Confessions of a dangerous mind

• This is an idea for the opening titles
• The tone set is eery and spooky, this is enforced by the music 
• the close up of the book, with its blood stains suggests something horrific has happened
• we also get a CU of an X-ray, this suggests what has happened previously. It is interesting and draws the audience in.