Our original film beginning

This is the first draft of our film opening that we decided to scrap.
You can see from this draft that we have been playing around with imovie with different effects to try to edit our film.
After completing this first draft we decided we really did not like it.
Some of the shots we liked and thought could be quite effective, but others were just too long and boring.

The first shot where Sarah's dad opens the door to the dark room was quite effective because when he turns on the light it takes a while to focus completely which could be quite creepy as it takes the viewer a while to realise where he actually is.

The next shot from inside the dark room i really did not like. I don't think we focused enough on our board of photos that we made as we only really look at one. The pan that is used is not as effective as we thought as it is quite unsteady. It is also really hard to see what is going on in this scene when Sarah's dad is developing the photo's. This shot is far too long and boring and to make it better we needed to add in different angle shots of what he was doing to make it more interesting and understandable, which we did not realise at the time. As we had to edit this scene to make it lighter so you could see what was happening, the light went quite grainy which I don't think looks very professional or effective.

The next scene of the house and Sarah's dad walking into the shot had some good points and some bad points. I like the way that he just strolls into the shot and looks at the house as he walks past as I think it is quite eery. I do not like the effect we put on it however as it does not look realistic. I also again think that this shot is too long and we should have filmed it from different angles to cut it up.

The shot of Charlotte walking out of the house I thought was quite good because we placed the camera in a position so you could see Charlotte and her stalker at the same time which made it quite effective. The continuity in this shot however is not very good as when Charlotte walks out of the house she walks towards the camera and then turns which does not look realistic and we did not pick up on at the time.
For this shot we did film it from different angles to make sure it wasn't too long which was a good idea and I do think that part is quite effective.

The next part of Charlotte being followed down the allyway again is too long and boring and we found it really hard to try and match the two shots from the different points of view to make it look continuous which again makes it look unprofessional. It also changes effects each time the camera moves positon which makes it look wrong and uneffective.

The last shot where Sarah's dad is back in the darkroom is again too dark so we can not see what is going on and we positioned the camera in a bad place which meant that Sarah's dad was infront of the camera for most of the shot so we could not see what he was doing anyway. The photo's that we took of ourselves to use as our credits were far too dark so you cannot even see what the photo's are meant to be when we were filming it. The light we used in this scene was a phone light but it kept going off every few seconds. At the time that we were filming this we thought that it may looks quite creepy and effective but now that we have put it together is does not looke effective it just again looks unprofessional.

I think we have definatly made the right decision to re make our film as I hope we can do better than our first draft. We have gained experience and knowledge from our first go and now we know that we cannot make our shots too long and we need to have many different camera angles to add in to make it interesting and get the effect we are aiming for.

Editing

We've put our raw footage onto our mac at school and have started to edit.
After first watching our filming we realised that the lighting in the dark room is very dark and quite hard to see what is exactly going on. We decided to try and lighten the scenes and put a red tint over the shots to make it look lighter but still have an eery feel with the red lights. I think that this was really effective so we have written down everything that we have done to the clips so we can make it consistant throughout our film. We also decided that our outside scenes were very bright and did not really add to our scary theme. We also realised that the clouds from the outside scenes are not consistent because when each shot changes, so does the clouds. We edited this, again using imovie by making the scenes greyer and the sky white so you cannot see the changing clouds and the scenes have a more gloomy eery feel. We have only just started editing so we only have the first few seconds edited together but so far I am really enjoying and can't wait to continue making our film come together.

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.

Stalker research for our film - Skoda car advert

I saw this advert and thought it would be good for our research. The camera shots used in it are point of view and close ups of the people in the car who could be seen as the "victims". We could use these types of shots in our own film. I also liked the idea that in this you cannot see who or what is following and watching them, you can only hear noises which leaves it to the viewers imagination to who it is and what they look like. I think we should use this in our own film and not show the stalkers face so the viewer can make up their own mind on what he looks like.
Although this advert is not a scary one we want to make our film more mysterious and edgey.

Ideas for our 2 minute film and practising with the equipment

Our group finally decided on an idea for our 2 minute film that we all agreed on. We expanded on our stalker idea and decided we could use the dark room in school used for photography lessons to show how obsessed the stalker is by showing him developing photographs of all his victims.

Our opening shot is going to be of the victim walking through a park with a friend and then make an effect using imovie that looks like the stalker is taking photos of her as he watches.
Then we will show the stalker in the old dark room at school developing the photos he has just taken. We will also use certain camera shots such as a pan to show the stalkers many photos of previous victims he has stuck around the room.
Our next shot will be at Sarah's house where we will show the victim leaving the house and walking down an alleyway. We are going to use a point of view shot of the stalker as he follows closely behind her. He will then put out his hand as if to grab his victim but before he touches her the screen will go black and you will hear a muffled scream as we think that if we show the victim being grabbed we wont be able to make the reactions look realistic and if we show the screen going black it leaves it to the viewers imagination.
Our final shot will be once again be in the dark room where the stalker will replace the previous photo of his victim for a photo of the victim dead.
We are also hoping to include our credits in the dark room scene by having photos of our group up to show we were once his victims with our names underneath.



In our last lesson before half term each group was given all the equipment we needed to shoot our film over the next 3 weeks. We were then given the oppertunity to practise using the camera and tripod. Our group went into the playground and started practising a pan show and zoom which we want to include in the first scene of our film. We were also getting used to different types of lighting as we had to place the camera in certain positions to be able to see the characters clearly.
We also discovered the old dark room that nobody uses anymore which we thought would be really good to use in our film as it is only small, really old and really creepy which would add to our atmosphere we want in our film. It also looks like it could be a room in his house or possibly a garage he has converted into a dark room to develop photos of his victims.

We tried out different ligthing in this room too but thought the best way to film it would be with the night mode on because you can see everything clearly and it still gives a scary atmosphere.
We then went back to the media room and uploaded what we had filmed onto the Mac. We tried out our idea of the stalker taking photos by editing it on imovie and it turned out really well.
Were now really excited to start filming and look forward to start editing everything!

Our film research

Our group has been thinking of some ideas for our 2 minute film opening and have come up with something which we are looking to further research.

We thought that we could do a stalker type film where we could have point of view shots from someone watching a girl as she gets ready to leave the house and follow them down the road.

We have decided to research other stalker films that we know about such as Prom Night, The Watcher and Scream and see if we can get any more ideas from them and progress with our film opening.