Final post

This is my final post for my AS media coursework. I have really enjoyed the course and hope to carry on with media studies next year. I have learnt a lot from the course to do with filming and construction and look forward to making a music video next year.
My blog is now closed.

Audience feedback

We showed our films today to people in our year and the year below. We asked them to give us comments on our films and tell us something that they liked about it. The general comments that we got were that they enjoyed the flashing credits and the difference of colour in shots in the flashbacks and present day.

Some examples of the comments we recieved were:
'I liked the combination of what was happening to leyla visually and the voice over of her mother (I think) talking to the police'

'Interesting, liked the flash backs and flashing credits. It was gripping and made me what to watch more'

'Music makes suspense and the writing looks good and fits. There is a good cliff hanger of Charlotte waking up'

We also got a really positive feedback comment from Ms Upton who is the deputy head. Her comment was:
'Really good! I liked the cup and milk, everything was great, story was good. Gave me the chills.'

Overall I'm really happy with the comments we recieved from people and glad that everyone liked it

Finalising our film

In our last lesson before moderation we had to finalise our film and make it perfect ready to be moderated. We edited our credits so that the last name would stay on the screen for a few seconds after flashing numerous times. This enables viewers to clearly see the names and read them. We also made all the background music quieter so that you can hear the voice over more clearly.

We then uploaded our film into youtube in HD which made our credits look clearer and more realistic as a real film.

This is our final edit of our two minute film opening coursework, Leyla:

Almost finished film opening

Our film opening must be finished by the end of the week so we have been finalising our voice over and music and have almost finished it now. In our last lesson we editing some of the music that was on our previous draft and made the bird noise quieter as it was quite over powering and made it sound quite fake. We also faded the music together more so it had more of a flow to it and sounded better. We also deleted the clips that were put in of Charlotte at the end in the mirror so that it ends on just Charlotte walking down the path as this looks more effective.
We just have to make a few more changes to our music by making it a bit quieter as the voice over is sometimes drowned out by the music at points and then this will hopefully be our final edit of our coursework.

This is the draft of our film with the music and voiceover put together:

Background music

After recording our voice over and putting it to our film we realised that it did not fill up our film and we had really big gaps that we needed to figure out a way to fill. We decided to make some fast tension music to put in the background throughout our film.
We used garage band so that it was not copyrited and then tried to fit it to our film to make it fit.
This is our next draft of our film opening with the music included.

Script for our voiceover

Policewoman (Charlotte): This is PC Smith interviewing Mrs.Richardson concerning the disappearance of her daughter Leyla -. Time is 12:43.

Policewoman (Charlotte): Mrs. Richardson, when was the last time you saw or had contact with your daughter?

Mother (Aimie): She was at home yesterday, we had a cup of tea and lunch together. Just like we always do.

Policewoman (Charlotte): What was her mood like?


Mother (Aimie): Well she's a typical teenager, how do you think her mood was?!

Policewoman (Charlotte): Did she say or do anything that you consider out of the ordinary?

Mother (Aimie): She was on the phone for a long time, probably to that boyfriend of hers, and she wasn't paying me enough attention. I wanted her to stay in with me but she stormed out. That was the last time I saw her.

Policewoman (Charlotte): Is there anyone that you know of that would have a desire to harm your daughter?

Mother (Aimie): No. Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.

Policewoman (Charlotte): Why? What was he like?

Mother (Aimie): I didn't get to meet him. She never let me.

Policewoman (Charlotte): What about her friends?

Mother (Aimie): I only really met Sarah Underwood and Stephen Land, but they haven't been to the house in months.

Policewoman (Charlotte): Do you know if she is still in close contact with them?

Mother (Aimie): No, like I said, she never told me anything like normal daughters should.

Voice over

During this week we re recorded our voice over to finalise it and make it a bit longer. We used Chrlotte as the police officer and me as the mother because it was the eaisest and convenient situation.

We have also edited our voice over to distort the surname of the victim, similar to that of Plan B in his song Suzanne. We also put more effects over it to make it sound eery and mysterious. We timed all of the parts of the voice over to fit our film and realised that we do not have enough to fit. We decided that we should make some kind of sound track to fill the gaps and used garage band to add sounds and melodies together to create some background noise for inbetween bits of the voice over. We just now need to move the music and voice over from garage band over to imovie and make it all fit in together with our film.

Evaluation of my 2 minute film coursework

This is my evaluation of our 2 minute film and the final part of my coursework. I enjoyed doing this peice because it was interesting to look back on how we have progessed from our preliminary task to our final film and how far we have come. I think I've learnt a lot from this course and from doing this evaluation I have seen just how much I have gained from the work.

Media - Evaluation

What's eating Gilbert Grape

I just watched the film "What's eating Gilbert Grape" with Johnny Depp and Leonardio Dicaprio and really enjoyed it. I had heard a lot about the film and how good it was and it lived up to all the expectations as Leonaro Dicaprio and Johnny Depp played their roles really well.

The film is about Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) and about all the stuggles he faces in a year of his life whilst looking after and supporting his family. His brother Arnie (Leonaro Dicaprio) has a developmental disability and although he is turning 18 he has to be cared for as if he is a younger child, he has to be bathed by other people and watched wherever he goes. Their mother, Bonnie Grape, is morbidly obese after turning to food when her husband died and she had not moved from the house in 7 years because she was just gaunted at where ever she went by the rest of the village. Gilbert also has two sisters who also help look after their mother and the house.

At the beginning of the film there is a voiceover of Gilbert introducing his family and their past, this is similar to our film as it also opens with a voice over.

This is the trailer to What's eating Gilbert Grape:

Genre research

Psychological thriller:

'Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the wide-ranging thriller genre. However, this genre often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre. Also, occasionally this genre will border into the also wide-ranging Horror genre.

Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and thus emphasize intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.

The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.'


This is similar to the genre of our film as we have a character, the mother, who plays games with others minds to distract them away from the fact that she has mental problems and committed a crime.

The rest of our film..

We have decided on the plot of our film for after the opening and where it will lead to.

We decided that it will be made out that Leyla's friend hurt Leyla and left her for dead in the forest but there will be a big twist at some point of the film where it turns our the mother is not in a fit mental state and it was actually her who drugged her own daughter and left her in the forest after a small disagreement they had, but to it was a big thing because of her mental state. The film will be about the police working with the family and friends of Leyla trying to find out what happened before finding her in the forest at the end of the film. (the beginning of the film will be repeated at the end)

Our voice over

We started to record some of our voice over the other day by using three people to read our script that we roughly made. Abby was the news reporter, Emily was the mother and Charlotte read the parts of the police officer. We recorded it on garage band just roughly to see what it's like but we may need to re record in the future if it doesnt properly fit.

From using the idea from Plan B's song, Suzanne, we decided to distort the girls surname on the news report using effects on garage band. By doing this is makes it sound more real as if we cannot say her full name for legal reasons and makes it seem more eery.

We also recorded the part for the beginning of the rolling tape.

We put the rolling tape and a small bit of the news report onto imovie to see what it's like and we will complete it when we go back to school after Easter.

This is the draft with parts of the voice over in it:

Voice over discussions

We've decided that we can use the opening of "The life of David Gale" as an idea for our voice over by starting it when the black screen is up for our credits. We all agreed that this was an effective way to start a film as you are introduced to the story even before you see any characters physically.

Molly also had an idea that we could start our voiceover with the sound of a tape being put on to be recorded like it is in a police interview. This could be the first sound that our viewers hear when the black screen starts. I think this will be really effective and now we just need to start recording our voiceover and match it to our film.

New draft

After watching the different film openings to look at the different types of credits and their positions in the films we decided that we should follow the opening to a film that Charlotte had recently watched "Step Brothers" We all agreed that the order of their credits worked well and we liked them so we made ours similar to theirs.

This is the link to the opening of Step Brothers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sczh_KjjFNU

We decided that our production company name could be "mac one" for the simple fact that we are working on the first mac at school and we came up with a simple 3 letter combination of LBC for another distributor.
We put all of our names at the beginning as well to see what it looked like but after putting it on youtube we decided they looked better a bit more spaced out and we also need to give eachother roles in the production and add that on

Here is our next draft:

Film Opening looking at credits

In class we looked at a few different film openings to look at where they positioned theyre credits and what kinds of other things they had such as the distributors and production companies names.

In the film "Derailed" the opening was in a prison and the first thing you saw was a black screen with "Miramax" production company. As the action started the credits appeared on the screen over the moving image. First it was the names of all the technical team, then the director, the main actor and actress' name, the title of the film and then the rest of the actors.

In another film "The life of David Gale" the credits were quite different and this time the production companies were "Universal" and "Intermedia". There is then a black screen with the distributors names on and a black screen for the tutle of the film. This is all before any action starts and there is a sound bridge over the black screen to introduce you to the conversation before you see any actors.

In another film opening that we watched "Bourne Identity" this opening was again slightly different with the credits. In this one the production company is again "Universal" but this time there is a little bit of action and then a black screen with the name of the film and no actors names are shown in the opening.


After watching these openings it made us discuss our own credits and decided that the name of our film should come right at the beginning rather than at the end to make it look more like a film than a trailer. We also decided that we should give each person in our film a role such as editor, producer etc to make it look more authentic.

Voice over decision

On friday our group further discussed our voice over as we have decided we need to start recording it as soon as possible.
We thought that to make our film a bit more creepy we could make out that the girls' mother is the person who has put her there as she has some kind of problem. We decided that we could show this in the voice over by having a police interview with the mother where she is asked questions and answers them in ways that suggests she is quite strange and innocent by changing her tone of voice to change moods and by some of the answers she gives.
We thought that we could also still use the idea of the news report as well in the style of Plan B. We could have the news report cut up into 4 parts and have it over the parts of our credits. This way it would give our film some variety.
We have started to think about a script and who we can ask to do the voice over for us and hopefully we can record it some time soon using the microphones at school.

We also decided that we will need quiet background music to go with our voiceover but we want to keep it simple so the viewer is not distracted from the voiceover. We could prehaps just have a slight heart beat or something similar to that.

Voice overs

Our group discussed our voice over that we want to put on our film and we spoke about all of the possibilities we have. We thought that we could make the voice over similar to the content of our film by having different voice clips cut up and put together. For example, parts of a police interview, parts of a news report, parts of a conversation the girl is having with a friend, parts of a conversation the person who put her there is having and maybe some of the girls relatives and friends speaking about it.
We thought of some possible voices that we could use for these ideas and made a list of some people at school and some teachers we thought would be good to ask.
We need to talk more deeply about our ideas but I think it will work out well and hopefully sound good with our film.
An idea that we had for an example of a good television or radio report is in Plan B's song Suzanne. The song is about the Camden Ripper who raped and killed 3 prostitues. Towards the end of the song there is a news reporter who is talking about the case and the reason why we liked this was because the names were blocked out which made it seem quite creepy

This is the song Suzanne:

Forth draft of our film and film name

Our group were adding some more touches to our editing and decided that we would like to change the name of our film as we did not like Pulse. We decided that we could have use the name of the girl who has been left in the woods as the film is centred around her. We also thought about the recent film Chloe that has been brought out which uses a similar technique for the name and we all thought it was quite effective. After thinking about names and looking on baby name websites, as a group we decided on the name Leyla for our film.

This is our forth edit:

Shutter Island

Last night I went to see the film Shutter Island with Leonardo De Caprio and really enjoyed it. I had heard reviews about how good the film was but did not actually know anything about the plot apart from that it was based around a mental institution on a remote island. I think that because I knew nothing about the plot this made the film even better because everything came as a suprise. There was a really good twist at the end that was unexpected and really well put together.

The storyline was at first quite hard to understand and was one of those films that only came together at the end when everything was revealed. I still really enjoyed it though and would recommend it to everyone but I think it would be best to see it in the cinema as it wouldn't have the full effect on a TV as some parts were quite jumpy.

This is the trailer to Shutter Island:

Copyrighted music

For our film we have been told that we are not allowed to use anyone elses music if it is copyrighted and this is what it means:

'Copyright protects creative works and enables composers, literary authors and other creators to be paid for their work. Copyright is the means by which those who create and own works (e.g. music and lyrics) can control who makes use of each work and the circumstances in which it is used, to ensure that the integrity and value of the work is respected.'

'Copyright in a song
Every song comprises two copyright works:

The music itself (a musical work)
The lyrics/words (a literary work)'

'Rights of the owner
Subject to certain limited exceptions set out in the CDPA, if you own the copyright in either type of work, you have the sole right do any of the following, or to authorise another to do so:

Copy the work
Issue, lend or rent copies of the work to the public
Perform, show or play the work in public
Communicate the work to the public (i.e. broadcast it via television, radio, online etc.)
Adapt the work'

Casino

Another film that has a voice over to open the film is Casino with Robert De Niro. The opening to this film is very simple but it is explained using the voice over and it is also quite similar to our film in the way that the beginning does not make sense until the end of the film when the same scene is repeated again and the viewer then understands why it has happened.

This is the only video on youtube I could find of this opening scene. It is only 19 seconds long and it's hard to hear what he is saying so I also found the trailer -

Opening scene:



Trailer:

Voice Over's

Our group has been discussing the idea of possibly using a voice over rather than just music for the opening of our film. We think this will be effective because it will make the story easier for the audience to understand as it may be quite unclear at the moment. It has also been successful in other films such as Mean Girls and Usual Suspects.
We were thinking about what the voice over could be and some of our ideas were
* Charlotte explaining to a friend her night
* Charlotte's thoughts
* A police interview
* Narration

We all agreed that the police interview would probably be the most effective type of voice over so we could have them asking questions about her night and she can either explain each flashback as it happens or she could remain silent for the whole interview and just say something at the end that stuns the audience.

An example of a voice over used in an opening of a film is Mean Girls. The main character Kadie has to explain her first day of school and why she is only just starting at the age of 16. She uses photographs from her past to illustrate it whilst she is talking about it over the top.

Mean Girls -



Another film that I just recently watched was "The Beach" with Leonardo Di Caprio. I really enjoyed this film and thought all of the camera angles and movements made it a really interesting film. It also related to research for our own film because the beginning starts with a voice over. This voiceover is crucial to the opening of the film because without him explaining where he is and why he is there the opening would not make much sense to the viewer. At the moment this is the kind of problem we have with our film, that it is hard to understand what is happening so by having a voice over in our own film hopefully it will create a similar effect and help our audience understand the film.

This is the opening to The Beach with the voiceover:



This is the trailer to The Beach:

Our film title

We have been thinking of ideas to what to name our film when it is completed and have tried to think of something effective and relevant to our film and what it is about.
Whilst we were on the font website looking for one to download to use for our credits, we saw that one of the fonts was called "Pulse". We thought that this could be a possible name for our film as there is a clip of Charlotte whist she is on the floor of her chest going up and down to indicate her heavy breathing. As we are hoping to film to be eery and quick paced we thought that Pulse may be a suitable name for it and we could also relate our background music to it by having a heart beat or something similar.
We have put this film name into our third draft and all think it looks quite effective but if we think of a different name that we all agree is better we may change it later on.

Credits

Over the past two lessons of editing we have completed making our credits and edited some more of our opening.
After hearing Miss Foster's comments on our opening draft we have changed some things to help to make it more understandable to the audience.
We have changed the very beginning by adding colour clips of Charlotte in to make it easier to understand that she is alseep and she is having a dream/flashbacks.
We also decided to play with the effects in imovie and see if there was an effective alternative to black and white as this is quite boring. We decided to use an effect called "Old World" and also turn down the saturation which makes the colour look drained similar to that in the film I blogged about earlier "Premonition". We cut out some of the driving car scenes from the film and replaced them with other things as we all agreed the car parts were repeated too often.
Another bit of editing we done was put short fades inbetween the colour parts of Charlotte and when it goes to the flashbacks almost as an ellipsis to show there is a time differece.

For our credits we tried to base them on the credits of the film se7en which we all really like and enjoy. The credits create an eery feel to the film and set the mood. The actors, directors and producers names all come up on a black background with white writing which jumps and jerks around the screen. In this picture you can see the type of font they used in the opening credits of Se7en:


We decided to try and create the same kind of effect for our film. As we were looking through the fonts provided on imovie we decided that they were all to basic and not effective enough for our film so we tried to see if we could download a font from the internet. We found the website www.dafont.com which has loads of different fonts to choose from. We were searching the site and all the different themes to find something that would suit the genre of our film.
Some of the examples of the fonts we liked were:






In the end after carefully looking at all of the fonts we liked we decided that the most appropriate one for our film is Sketched:



We downloaded this font to our mac and started putting together our credits. We used black screens and added the text to it. We made all the texts only appear for about half a second each and for each one we slightly moved it or adjusted it in some way so when it's played it creates a flickering jolting effect.
We're really pleased with our credits and after spending a long time on them all agree that it was worth it. We also like that they are longer clips so it contrasts all of our other short choppy clips and gives the film some variety.

This is our third draft of our film:

Second draft

We started to edit in some of the parts of Charlotte waking up into our film. At the moment this is very rough and we need to add lots more colour parts in and maybe slow them down rather than speed them up. We also need to take out the part with the clock as the lighting does not fit in with the rest of the film

Here is our second draft

Premonition

Today I watched the film Premonition with Sandra Bullock and really enjoyed it. I thought it was a really good film with an unexpecting ending and thought Sandra Bullock played the role well and convincingly. The film is about a wife who falls into a time slip and experiences her husbands death before it actually happens and then has to think of a way to stop it happening but unfortunatly can't.
Throughout the film Sandra Bullock has various flashbacks which are shown in a similar way to how we have shown ours in our film. They are quickly paced short shots and are not in the same colour as the rest of the film. Rather than being in black and white like our film however, they have the flashbacks in a different effect which is a bit hazy and a drained colour. I think this type of effect looks good and maybe our group could try this effect on our own film and compare it to the black and white and see which effect we prefer.

This is a clip that shows some of the flashbacks and the colour of them that someone has made with music over the top:


This is the trailer to the film:

Classification

These are the official guidelines from the BBFC on film certificates classification

Classification Guidelines

And this is the student guide to film classification

Student Guide to Bbfc


From this website I found the guidelines to the film Donnie Darko as this has a similar opening to our film. This film was rated a 15 and the website had this information about it:

"DONNIE DARKO
Feature Film
Classified 13 May, 2002 .
Run Time 113m 11s
Consumer Advice: Contains strong language and psychological horror."



For our own film we have decided that it is also going to be a certificate 15 as our horror and violence is within the guidelines listed for a 15 certificate film. By having our film at this rating it will be able to be viewed by a wider audience including our target audience of teenagers.

The BBFC guidelines for a 15 rating certificate are:

Drugs

Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must notpromote or encourage drug misuse. The misuse of easilyaccessible and highly dangerous substances (for example,aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable.

Horror

Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.

Language

There may be frequent use of strong language (for example,‘fuck’). The strongest terms (for example, ‘cunt’) may beacceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeateduse of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable.

Nudity

Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but withoutstrong detail. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context.SexSexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail.There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour,but the strongest references are unlikely to be acceptableunless justified by context. Works whose primary purpose issexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.

Violence

Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the inflictionof pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely tobe acceptable. Strong sadistic or sexualised violence is alsounlikely to be acceptable. There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violencebut any portrayal of sexual violence must be discreet andhave a strong contextual justification.

Second day of filming

Today we had our second and final day filming which we are all really happy about. The rest of the group came to my house this morning where we filmed some more of our flashbacks. We filmed the tea idea which had which hopefully turned out quite successfully. We had a cup of tea with the camera looking down from above, we then poured in milk and saw the milk cloud out into the tea and change colour which when we slow down are hoping looks effective. We then filmed me cutting up cheese into slices from another angle which was head onto the chopping board. Some of the other shots we did was a high angle shot of Charlotte typing on a laptop and another of just her hands scrambling on a shelf for a necklace. We also had a clock which we took the battery out of and put back in which made the hands go the whole way round, when we speed this shot up we think it will be another effective shot. As Charlotte was doing her makeup we also filmed her in the mirror with a close up of her face putting on mascara and blusher and then an extreme close up of her lips putting on lipgloss.

We then went to 40 Hall which is near my house to film the part of Charlotte waking up in the forest.
This is the location we used:


We took binbags for her to lay on as it was very muddy and tucked them in around her body so they couldnt be seen on the camera. We then took lots of different shots of Charlotte which we are going to add into our flashbacks but in colour to show the time difference.
Some of the shots we included here was:
* A close up pan of her whole body laying down
* Extreme close up of her eyes twitching
* Close up of her face
* A close up of other body parts like her hands, feet and knees also twitching to show shes dreaming
* A medium shot of her waking up and sitting up in a panic
* A close up of her eyes opening
* A high angle shot of her sleeping and also from various other angles
* A point of view shot from Charlotte as she wakes up
* A point of view shot from when she stands up and spins around looking up into the sky
* A pan follow of her walking off onto a path
* A long shot of Charlotte walking along the path that we are going to put slow fades inbetween to show her fading down the path.




We also had an idea for our credits which filmed. Each of us from the group had an extreme close up shot of our left eye looking around which we can fit into the flashbacks and add our names onto using imovie which we thought could look goood.

We are going to upload our footage onto the macs at school on Monday and start to edit straight away. I'm really plwased with how our filming went today and hope that we have all the footage we need to put our film together now.

Editing and our first draft

Today in our lesson we uploaded all of our new footage onto the macs to look at what we had and what we still needed. So far we have only really filmed some parts for our flashbacks but we decided to put them together to see what they look like and see if we liked them.
We started off by putting a long clip of when we were driving in the car onto imovie and speeding it up. We also put the clip into black and white because we want to have all of the flashbacks in black and white and then the person waking up in colour to show the time difference. This is simlilar to what happened in Casino Royale when all of the scenes before the opening credits were in black and white to show that it was from the past and then after the credits it went back to colour to show it was then present day.
After speeding up the clip of Enfield Town through the car window, we then started putting random very short clips of other things we filmed all the way through the car scene to break it up. We started off with the traffic lights turning from red to green but as the clips are all in black and white we are hoping to find a way that we can make the background black and white but make the colours from the traffic lights stand out.
After adding a couple of other shots into it we decided our shots were too long still so we started adding more and more in until the whole thing was very fast paced and choppy.
Some of the shots we added were:
* A person's eyes in the mirror of the car
* Sarah running into the phonebox
* The public footpath sign
* Sarah's point of view running through the field
* A point of view shot of someone walking through branches
* A close up of the steering wheel
* A close up of the radio and a hand changing the station
* A low angled shot looking up at the sky when a flock of birds flew over
* Me running over the camera into the distance
* Sarah from above in the phone box
* Some different people just walking through the street that we filmed from the car windows

This is our very first draft of our new film:



Our group was really pleased with this draft and I am already enjoying this film a lot more than our original. We need to film a bit more footage, including when the character actualyl wakes up which we are planning to do one day next week after school as we were unable to all make it on Wednesday.

First day of filming our second film

Yesterday after school our group met up to start filming for our new two minute opening. As the lighting was not what we wanted for the part of the character waking up, we decided to film the shots that we wanted to put together for our flash backs. We wanted just short random shots to put together in a snappy way just to give a background of what the character was doing the day before to show the lead up of why they are waking up in a forest.
We were driving in a car and decided to film our journey around town and other roads through the front, side and back windows which we can speed up on imovie and hopefully create a good effect. Also, although this shot was in daylight we are going to do it again when its dark so we can play around with all the lights from shops and houses and put the two different clips together. As we stopped at traffic lights we also thought it would be a good shot if we filmed the traffic lights changing from red to green.
Whilst we were driving we passed a phonebox which we thought would look good for another one of our clips so we filmed Sarah running from behind the camera into the phonebox looking stressed and desperate and typing in a number.

We then did the same shot but from a different angle across the road so we can cut up the clip. We then moved the camera to inside the phonebox and filmed Sarah frantically dialling numbers from underneath and again from above.
As we were filming this we spotted that one of the street lights was flickering so thought that would be an interesting shot to fit into our flashbacks, unfortunatly just as we set the camera up the light stopped flickering but we still decided to film the light just incase it looked good when edited into the flashbacks.
We then went into Hillyfields to complete a few more shots. First we had Sarah running and holding the camera so it is a point of view of her running through a field and then we placed the camera on the ground at a slanted angle to give the effect that the camera had been dropped. I then ran over the camera and into the distance so you can only see my legs running away.

I really enojoyed filming these shots and hope that hope that they look good when we upload them onto the macs and start editing.
We're going to have another filming day tomorrow when we can film our character waking up in the forest and maybe some more of our flashbacks.

Filming schedual

We have decided on different filming times which are suitable for our whole group.
As we now have the camera for 2 weeks we had to think about a few different days that we can all attend where we can film all of our footage.

We have decided that on Monday after school we will start to film some of our flashbacks as the lighting will just be starting to get dark and will look eery and effective.
Some ideas for our flashbacks are:
* Shadows of different people in alley ways and on walls
* Different points of view of somebody running, from behind and from the person running's point of view
* The camera left on the floor with grass in focus and a girl running past the camera slightyly out of focus and falling over
* A clock which we can film for a whole hour, or a couple of hours and then speed it up to represent the time through the day
* Different home video clips, for example someone filming their friend talking to the camera
* Shots of a person coming out from different buildings and places

All of these shots will show the persons day and what they did, leading up to them waking up in the forest.


Next Wednesday is another day our group has agreed to film as we have an academic review day at school, meaning we are only going in for 10 minutes at a time. This will mean we can film the shots of the person laying in the forest during the day in daylight.
On Friday's lesson we have also been told that we have the morning to edit, so for our group we thought this would be a good oppertunity to upload what we film over the previous days, see if there is anything we are missing and if so, finish off some of our filming.

Our new film idea - final

Over the Christmas holidays and the new year our group has been carefully thinking about our new film idea and have almost finalised the ideas for it. We recieved the cameras today and have been allocated them for just 2 weeks before we must hand them back and finally start to edit. We have also completed a storyboard for this new idea which I will upload a photo of shortly.

Our final film idea is:
* We will have a person (most probably one of our group members) laying asleep in a part of a forest we found at Forty Hall and thought looked effective
* The person will have flashbacks of the day before which will start to explain why they are asleep in this random place
* The person will then wake up and we will see their confused and bewildered expression of why they are there

The camera shots we aim to use are:
* A close up pan of the body on the floor so the audience can see the person is asleep but can not see their location
* Close up and extreme close ups of the person and different body parts such as their hands and feet twitching to show they are asleep or dreaming
* A zoom into their eyes just before the start of the flashbacks to let the audience know they are about to see their dream
* A range of different camera angles including wide, medium, long, low angled and high angled for different parts of the flash backs
* A zoom back out from their eyes to show they are coming out of the dream and shows their eyes opening
* A series of 3 shots getting wider and wider out, keeping the person in the middle of the shot to show their location and to represent their realisation of where they have just woken up

We also discussed the idea of having the flash backs in black and white or some kind of other effect whilst keeping the actual sleeping person in colour to represent the difference in time and to show it is a dream. We have decided to film it all in colour though and edit it in imovie so we have a variety of options when editing.

We feel that this will be a better film opening than our first idea and think it will look effective. It will also be more of a film opening than a mini 2 minute film which is what we did before as we concluded our story.