Skills Audit:Creation of soundtrack

To begin creating our soundtrack we exported our title sequence to Soundtrack Pro. We then took some of the sounds that we had previously saved on our hardrive and went through them again and selected ones that would then appear on our title sequence.

Location shots/skills Audit (filming)

We began filming our title sequence at Imogens house as we felt it was best suited to create the mood and atmosphere for our movie.

We all brought together some of our own props such as lip glosses, nail, polish and so on.

We set up the props on the dressing table were our protagonist would be sat and where the title sequence would be shot. We covered porcelain dolls all over Imogens cupboard and used the camera to pan through the dolls, this emphasized her obsession with perfection.

The beauty products were in a sense our protagonists murder weapons. For example when she's place on a scarf the scene would cut to Imogen getting strangled and as she applies the lip stick the scene would be cut to Kayleigh on the ground (DEAD) with offensive words written all over her in lipstick.

I was the main actor for the sequence and my objective was to pull off a vain perfectionist and proud type of person. There'd be regular shots on my face smiling as I do something bad (This whom I had inspiration from Regina George in Mean Girls).

There were 3 different settings to where we shot the movie the first being Imogens bedroom the second being Imogens garden shed the third was another room in Imogens house where Filipas death occurred.

Live type and Sound track pro practice

Our group has now devised and planned a storyboard for our editing exercise. We have come up with suitable shot types and our storyboard. The prop we were given was a stack of cards and so our practice would be of a card game.

Regarding camera work we mixed up different shops in order for each to convey emotion. We had close up shots on Kayleigh and Imogens eyes in order to convey they're nervousness and some close up shots on the cards being taken and when I finally slammed the cards down (this conveyed shock). There was a medium shot pan on me in order to convey my confidence as I shuffled the cards.

As we progressed onto editing our work we used final cut pro. We added fade in transitions to give our short movie that smooth feel when cutting to a different scene and to give that time passing effect. We repeated some of the eye shots in order to convey more tension.

Our all we were pretty pleased with our end result.

Changes in light of feedback

We were given feedback by our teacher which was to shorten some of the shots further as it changed the pace of our title sequence which ideally is meant to be reasonably fast at times but normal at others in order to show that our character is unbalanced.

Rough Cut:Editing & Sound

Today we carried on editing our sequence by changing more scenes by changing the filters, saturation levels and various other effects to make our sequence more edgy. We also added more transitions to our sequence to make it clear that our character is unstable so the scenes almost slide over each other.

We also listened to the music we had selected previously and found others which were even better suited to our sequence and began to change the order of which they go in.

editing and sound

Today we continued editing our thriller by tweaking the order of the scene and editing in more filters ect to try to put across the meaning of the film.

We also started to organise are music.

Skills Audit:Creation of titles

When we created our titles for our title sequence we began by exporting our film to Livetype.

Then we chose our text type which is Goudy Old Style because it is very controlled which reflects our main characters personality as she is a control freak. We then chose our text colour which is white because it's very neutral but would stand out against our scenes which mainly have dark backgrounds. It also is the text colour used in se7en which inspired us mainly with our title sequence. Following this we added affects such as Lurch and Shaky to our texts which mimic the idea that our protagonist is unbalanced.

These are examples of the titles we used:

credits

today we created credits for our opening and started to put them on our film using livetype.

We chose the font Goudy Old Style because of it neatness which reflects on the main characters persona. We also chose the affects lurch and shaky to show how unstable the main character is but also because se7en used a similar affect which we thought would look cool in our film.

Skills Audit:Editing

Today we began editing our footage.
We went through our footage and selected the best ones and imported them into Final Cut Pro ( we left the rest as spares ). We then ordered our scenes and edited some of the lengths.
We then began to edit the scenes in which our protagonist murders her victims.
We added filters and edited the saturation levels and commanded these to the other scenes in which characters are being killed.We also sped up and slowed down a few scenes to further reveal that our protagonist is insane.

Location Shots/Skills Audit:Filming

Today we filmed our shots for our title sequence which were done at Imogen's house.

We first began by setting up our locations which were mainly in imogens room. We set up her dressing table (which was our main set) with loads of props . The main set looked like this:

We used this set up to do all of our panning shots for beginning of our sequence which were of our murderer's beauty products. We also used it for our Close Ups on our murderer's face features as she is getting ready.

We used the rest of Imogen's room for the shots of our murderer with her "Burn" book which contains images and trophies of her victims.

We also used Imogen's garden for a few shots outside when our murderer is killing or has killed her victims.

We all shared out the workload as we all helped with our mise en scene by decorating our location. We all advised eachother and gave opinions on which lighting and camera angles looked best. We also all took turns with the camera.

When I was using the camera I panned the dolls on the shelf, done a shot of our murderer painting her nails, gave a High Angle shot and a Close Up of one of our victims being strangled, done a Close Up of our murderer taking out her "Burn" book and putting them down, a Close Up of our murderer flicking threw her "Burn" book, cutting up another photo, then another Close Up her sticking the photo in the book and scrawling it out with a marker.

I also participated in the acting by acting as a victim of our murderer by laying on a pile of wood with words printed on my face in red lipstick.

location filming

Today we did the location shots for our title sequence which were filmed in my bedroom and various other places in my house.

We started the day by setting up the location of the bed room we set up various props such as the makeup and jewellery and the dolls on the other table. We then filmed a lot of the shots such as panning shots of the dolls and the makeup. We also used my room to film scenes of the burn book.

Other locations used in the house were from the garden and were we filmed 2 of the murders one a pile of broken wood and another in the shed. We also filmed a murder in another bedroom.

All of us in the group helped an equal amount with the filming, setting up the location, lighting, doing a bit of acting and we all had a say in how we wanted the film to be shot.

Pitch

In class we produced a pitch on powerpoint, giving a brief overview of our movie opening. We have chosen commented on things such as target audience, production companies, where we'd begin shooting, soundtrack and what the overall film would be about. We got some mixed feedback in the soundtrack as we were going for eery punk rock some went with our idea but some thought we should go for a more girly feel.

Art of the Title Sequence

Title sequences are important to analysis the basics of the film, kind of like a storyboard but of a real completely finished movie. Whilst searching for film openings to record on here, i found this 3D opening for a Dutch Science programme, the opening bases around an apple which incorporates science related topics coming in and out of it. I found it interesting and a little more exciting than normal film sequences. This was because it maintains one subject and background but the ideas and match cutting are exceptional, ending in a shot of the name of the programme.

There is a lack of words for the opening sequence except for the programme name, this makes the audience focus on the images instead of any writing and takes in the full concept.

Click to Watch SD

Animated Storyboard

This is our storyboard animated.

First Filming Exercise

Today we had our first chance of filming in our individual groups with the camera equipment. We had a brief of playing a game of cards. We initially thought of a mafia slash nervous players scenario and it did turn out like that roughly. I really thought the clip was a success, especially for first time filming. The editing was excellent, especially the match cutting and fading in and out of shots.

Focusing on certain body parts and extreme close shots were used, such of the eyes, hands shuffling cards and a mischievous smiles, these are all to the advantage of creating effect and intensity towards the audience. I did all of the filming and found it enjoyable but very stressful in the manner of being doubtful i had got the perfect shot in the angle i was filming it, so i had to film various shots of the same scene. I will proceed to use this skill in my real thriller opening, because then it is guaranteed we can work with the footage we have obtained.

We did have a problem with the lighting, we especially hired a lighting kit with a spotlight, that could be adjusted to focus on a small item or a large. We found difficulty in adjusting the spot light to be illuminating exactly what we wanted and creating the right sort of shadows. In the end it did work out and we were pleased with the end results.

MATCH THE CUTS

Today, we were again practicing with the cameras. The exercise was to develop our match cutting skills, we were given a brief of having to have someone walk into a room and creating a dialogue between the two characters. With this we had to have lots of shots that when edited and put together created a continuous scene that related to the brief.

We in a group decided that the main plot would be of a fortune teller and person coming in, who supposedly wanted their fortune told. The whole short clip in general did turn out to become a little disaster and only some of the last shots filmed were used because of the poor quality of particularly the setting of: a college. There were some good match cuts, especially in the walking through the room and sitting down and the speaking of the character and the immediate reaction of the fortune teller. Also, the lighting was mismatched, some parts light and others dark. This clip didn't work to our advantage, but the mistakes did make us realize what we could do better for our real movie. Especially in realizing how setting is very important.

Introduction to cameras/health and safety tutorial

As part of our Media filming we were introduced to the cameras and the ways they function as well as health and safety.

We were presented with a professional video camera. Our college Media technicians took the great pleasure of introducing us to a video camera tutorial. We were shown how to insert batteries and memory cards into the camera, how the cameras could be adjusted and changed in order to alter lighting, to watch playbacks of filmed clips, adjust focus, turn on the camera and record. We were also shown how to use and switch between digital and manual focus. Furthermore we were introduced the 'the tripod' which is an object used to stabilize and elevate a camera.

The tripod was pretty simple it was merely about changing the length of the legs and being able to place and lock the camera onto the tripod. The tripod in a sense creates that smooth effect during filming (in order to eliminate that hand held like feeling).

We were given a tuition on safety regulations during filming. We were told to keep liquids (ie drinks, alcohol) away from the electricals. We were also advised to carry the equipment around with care (not running, jumping, fiddling with buttons) around the equipment. We were told to take out two batteries with us incase we need it and the camera doesn't stop half way through filming (useful for out of college filming). We were also given two memory cards incase of the risk that our work fills up one another would come in handy. Finally we were to transfer our work to our group hardrive provided by the media technicians.

INTRO to Video Cameras

Today, as excited as we were to finally touch a 4-figure sum of a video camera. They looked as professional as you can get for a college. We were spoken to by the media technicians who over look and take to caring for the quality of the filming equipment. We were given a few cameras and needed pieces such as batteries and memory cards. We were then instructed and shown how to insert them into the cameras appropriately, a point made was inserting 2 memory cards at the same time to reduce the risk of filling up a card and then not having enough space to continue filming. The cameras had all little details that could be adjusted and changed with the aid of buttons, such as the lighting, if there isn't enough natural lighting in a room then this could be changed. Also, the lense of the camera has a manual focusing rim which allows us to manually handle the filming instead of putting it on the easy task of automatic.

Other important factors of the camera include knowing about the battery power left and sim card storage space left. Both of these are accessible by pressing the index button various times to find out which one is wanted. This would be useful for when filming outside of college, to check before hand if enough time and space is available to do shots.

Another thing we were taught was how to use a tripod, which simply enough was being able to adjust the legs, and importantly being able to place the camera on the tripod and locking it in so that it won't fall. This has to be done to insure that no damage to the cameras is done.