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.

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.

Second day of filming

On Thursday after school we got permission to film in the old dark room. We went to set up the dark room by pinning up photos of the stalkers victims with notes written about them including their name, age and any other information such as their hair and eye colour.
Sarah's dad then arrived at school so we started to film.
Our first shot was with all of the lights off and Sarah's dad opening the door of the dark room and switching on the red lights. We positioned the camera in such a way that you could see the door and the red light bulb which was outside the door which turned on when he switched on the lights inside. I think this was an effective shot as you could just see his shadow in the doorway and the door made a creeking noise which will add to the atmosphere of our film.
For our next shot we did the same thing but we moved our camera to inside the dark room so we had it from a different perspective.
We then put the camera to one side of the room and had Sarah's dad standing by the developing baths with his back to the camera. The shot started off by focussing on one of his past victims photos which was pinned to the walls and then when Sarah's dad dropped something on the floor it made a loud crash and the camera made a quick pan around to him which I think added tension. He then picked up the item that he dropped, turned back to the developing bath and dropped a photo of Charlotte in there as if to develop it. He then took it out of the bath and clipped it up to the line which already had photos of me and Molly clipped up.
Finally we filmed the last bit for the dark room which was for the very end of our clip. This was when Sarah's dad replaced the original photo of Charlotte for one of her gagged and tied to a chair, which showed he had caught her. He then pinned up a photo of Sarah next to that to indicate that she is his next victim.
As Sarah's dad walks away from the line the camera zooms in and pans across all of our group's photos which we had attached our names to, which will be our credits. As the light in the dark room was very dim we held a phone light up to the photos from behind the camera to make it a bit lighter but still have quite a scary effect.
I really enjoyed filming this part and hope it turns out good when we come to edit. The only problem with the dark room was that is a very small room with lots of equipment so it was hard to have all of the group in there at the same time giving directions when we were actually filming because we had to be in certain positions so that you could not see our shadows.

First day of filming

Over the half term we had our first day of filming and we got all that we needed done which we were all very pleased about. We shot the middle part of our film opening which was at a house down Sarah's road. In our film we used Charlotte to act as our victim as we knew she would be reliable as she is part of our group and we also used Sarah's dad as the stalker as we again knew he would be reliable and it was convenient as we were shooting down Sarah's road.

We ended up filming a lot more than we needed for each shot as we thought it would be a better idea to have more than less. As Charlotte was acting, it was me, Sarah and Molly behind the camera who filmed, made sure the shot looked right and directed the scenes as this way every group member had a fair role in the making of the film and we all had our say.

We started off by filming an establishing shot of the house which was a wide shot from the other side of the road and showed Sarah's dad walking into the scene and placing himself down the alley at the side of the house where he could see Charlotte but she couldn't see him.

The next shot was from right outside the house when we showed Charlotte coming out from the front door and walking towards the second alley and then Sarah's dad walking across the camera after her. We then filmed this same part but from a different angle. We placed the camera upstairs and filmed out of the window to give a different perspective. This also gives the feeling that Charlotte is vulnerable as is it from a high angle.


We then filmed a shot of inside the house and Charlotte walking out to give another view.

Next we filmed the part where Sarah's dad follwed Charlotte down the alley. At one point we showed Charlotte turning around and realising there is someone behind her and Sarah's dad putting his head down so she cannot see his face. After they walked a little but further Sarah's dad then put his hand out as if to grab Charlotte from behind. For this part we filmed it in two different ways. First we filmed a handheld point of view shot without the tripod and then we used the tripod again to film Charlotte walking towards the camera with Sarah's dad close behind her.


We managed to film everything that we needed to this day and we all really enjoyed it and can't wait to film some more when we get back to school so we can use the dark room. We learnt however that filming does take some time and you have to be patient with setting up the shots and be aware of your surroundings so no people or cars cut through your shots.