Preparation for evaluation

As we have completed our filming for our rough cut, I am going to revisit the questions we will be asked on our evaluation. This will prepare me for the evaluation as I will be thinking about what to include.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product represents the sterotypical girl as we have dressed Charli in a white dress to connote purity, and made her blonde hair flow to signify femininity. This is reinforced through the fact she trapped in a room by a tall man. The man also represents a stereotypical man through his height and dress. We used dark clothes however to connote sinister qualities.

What kind of media situation might distribute your media product and why?
At the moment I would say our media product best suited Film 4 as similar films such as Shallow Grave compare to our thriller. However, I need to research further into this when I am in my evaluation.

Filming: 20th-23rd February

Due to unavailability of actors and unscheduled snow, we had to film on the last week.  This was stressful, however we managed to stay focused and complete what we needed as our footage. On Monday 20th, we filmed all of Luke's parts and all of Charli's. However, we when came back the next day to show Mr Ford, he didn't like one shot of Luke going up the stairs. This meant we had to re-shot this. This didn't bother us, as we were still scheduled in to film on Wednesday and Thursday. When we filmed on Wednesday we redid shots of Luke entering the door and going up the stairs. To enable success on these shots we filmed from loads of different angles to see which one would suit best.

On Thursday we showed out teacher's what we produced, however they didn't like the lighting of Charli. Due to us wanting a dark room, it meant the camera was struggling to pick up footage. This meant we had to re shot everything of Charli but in different lighting. To overcome this issue we put a light shining on Charli's face. Even though we didn't originally plan this, we liked the effect of the shadows coming off from the bars of the bed.

Now we have finished our filming, we need to produce our rough cut to show to our teacher on Thursday. I believe our group is ready and prepared for this as editing won't take as long than filming. We acted calmly throughout the filming, (even though we had one week) which enabled us to work together well, producing good footage.

Preparation for next filming: additional storyboard

For preparation for our next filming I decided to go over our storyboard. I redid some shots that I didn't think created a good enough effect, and changed some slightly as well. This has helped me visualise my storyboard even better now as I will know exactly what we will be filming. I did this by drawing out smaller versions of our storyboard which I will take round to the place where we are going to film. Hopefully by changing some shots and creating a different variety of camera angles, our group will be prepared and ready for our next filming so we won't make the same mistakes we made last time.

Preparation for next filming

As preparation for our next filming schedule, I have decided to briefly take a look at some of the past students work. I looked at things such as camera, as this was our main fault in our first filming. This is because we either panned too much, zoomed too much or generally didn't hold the camera straight. To learn from this and prepare ourselves for filming next time, I will note what they did.

• From 0:08-0:21 they have filmed the character walking 3 different times; but the camera stays still the whole time. This is something we need to work on- keep the shot static to avoid jumps
• From 0:54 they move the camera to track characters movements, but keeping the camera steady the whole time- we especially need to work on this as most of our pans turned out unprofessional

• From 0:10 the camera stays still to show character's movements
• 0:10-1:16 the camera also stays still to show the character moving up the stairs- this is something we need to think about when we film Luke walking up the stairs

This next clip has helped me think about how to film someone walking up the stairs:

Deadlines and problems

Due to my other group members going away in half term, we decided we would film most of our footage before we break up. However, due to unreliable actors, we were not able to film today. This has caused a huge step back in our filming process as we needed to re-shot some shots. We have now decided on a filming schedule that will take place in one week consisting of after school sessions and weekend dates:


20th Monday- 4:00- 7:00 pm  Charli and Luke
21st Tuesday- 4:00- 7:00 pm Luke
22nd Wednesday- 4:00- 7:00 pm Charli and Luke
23rd Thursday- 4:00- 7:00 pm Charli and Luke
24th Friday- 4:00- 7:00 pm possibly Charli and Luke


25th Saturday- 9:00 arrival with Charli- Luke arrives at 3:00
26th Sunday- 9:00 arrival with Luke- Charli arrives at 12:30


Days if needed:
27th Monday
28th Tuesday


Deadlines:

February 29^th Filming to be completed. Post-production should have started.

March 16^th: Rough Cut in Full to be presented

March 30^th Projects to be completed: Final Cuts

April 16^th Blog completed with finished Evaluation

Anamatic

*There is supposed to be music over the top... will edit this soon*

Evaluation

With our anamatic I feel we produced a basic understanding of what our thriller is going to include. By producing an anamatic it helped us to see how long our shots would have to last for. It also helped us through choice of music as we were stuck of what to include in our final piece. I feel we have worked hard on producing this, however next time we could have worked more on the transitions and used real black screens instead. This has pushed us forward in the filming process as now we can visualise our film when we are going to film.

Music and sound ideas

The songs titles Behind The Looking Glass, Dark Nightmare, Demented Dreams, Eerie Angle and Dreamscape:

• Dark Dimensions music ideas  - CLICK

I believe these songs could create the thriller effect we want. However, these songs fall into the stereotypical cliché role of thriller films which we have tried to avoid. So our group came up with the idea of using my flute to create eerie sounds, thus hopefully producing something original. 

After browsing through music ideas for our anamatic, I also came across some sound effects. Things we things such as human noises like a woman coughing. Therefore, I thought this might be a good idea to include in our thriller film quietly over the footage- when Charli is strapped to the bed:

• woman coughing - CLICK

I also found some sounds of babies and thought this could be an idea to use as sound in the background when Luke walks up the stairs as there is a built up of tension. While looking through these I also thought of Luke talking really fast- like his mind is spilling out all his thoughts. This could also be used over the top of the baby noises:

• baby noise 1 - CLICK