Week 1
This week, the class was put into groups so that we could do our practical tasks. Our first task was the preliminary task to which we had to produce a 20 second clip focusing on three areas which were match on action, shot reverse shot and 180 degree rotation. We each assigned ourselves a role of directing, camera man, and two actors. I was acting, so was Ashley, Awal was directing while Mathew was the camera man but we all gave our inputs in the roles, giving ideas and suggestions. When we were filming, we were careful in how we were recording, and the timing, and were told that we had to leave gaps in between each scene so the director had to say ''3, 2, 1 Action'' before pressing record, then ''3, 2, 1 Action'' again after we stop acting and we just freeze. This is done so that its easier for us to edit the clip, which is what we did next. we uploaded the short clips onto the mac, then referred the clips to Final Cut Pro where we could edit the clip so that we could get it to flow so we put all the clips together to become one full clip.
After the editing, we uploaded the clip on Youtube.
The next lesson in the week, we were given the instructions of our main task where we were told that we had to create no more than a 2.10 minute film opening. So within the group, we discussed what genre we were going to do, we were on the verge of doing comedy or horror, but in the end we decided to do horror. We stared playing our opening scene, brainstorming on what it could be about, and what type of horror the film would be. We discussed the setting of it, where we would like to film it, somewhere that would fit in with the scene. We all had different ideas, and really good ones too, but we also wanted our cup to be different, and we tried to be creative with our ideas and so far, i see a lot of creativity in our ideas.
After the editing, we uploaded the clip on Youtube.
The next lesson in the week, we were given the instructions of our main task where we were told that we had to create no more than a 2.10 minute film opening. So within the group, we discussed what genre we were going to do, we were on the verge of doing comedy or horror, but in the end we decided to do horror. We stared playing our opening scene, brainstorming on what it could be about, and what type of horror the film would be. We discussed the setting of it, where we would like to film it, somewhere that would fit in with the scene. We all had different ideas, and really good ones too, but we also wanted our cup to be different, and we tried to be creative with our ideas and so far, i see a lot of creativity in our ideas.
Week 2
This week we started the research. I researched different horror film openings to get ideas and useful suggestions that would help for when we film our opening. The film opening that I focused on the most was The Woman in Black. I found this film opening very interesting, and it led us as a group to come up with a decision of doing psychological horror. We had a lot of influence from it as we then wanted to include young children in our film opening as we thought it was very effective in The Woman in Black and we also liked the soundtrack of the clip because it was children singing yet it had a very dramatic, spooky element to it too which interested us to also do something similar to that in our film opening. While watching the opening of The Woman in Black, I took notes on the mise en scene, camera, editing and sound just like we were taught in the beginning of the year in media, so when doing this, it was easy to take notes and identify the different camera shots, camera movements, and editing and diagetic and non diagetic sound that represented the horror genre which also helped us to come with ideas for our own opening.
Week 3
This week was more research and we focused more on the audience so we created a questionnaire on Survey Monkey to guide us with the right type of audience and a type of horror film that would interest people. We felt that we definitely wanted to stick with psychological horror because from our surveys, it was the most preferred and we wanted to make our film opening unique and original compared to others who chose to do body horror films, or slasher films which conclude of gory, bloody scenes which we as a group didn't really want to do much of because we didn't think that it filled the elements of a psychological horror convention.
Week 4
This week I published my survey monkey and i've started asking people to fill it out. It will take a couple of days to get all our results in so our group can begin to start analysing the data we will get back. This is the link to my survey i created and finished http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7VD8PN. Also I has started looking at some production companies that we can use for our opening for example Hammer productions and Momentum Pictures. My group and I are going to start to creating a pitch idea for next week because we need to get the 'Green light' to be able to start film the opening of our film. We will also recieve some feedback and constructive criticisms. We started looking at the possible ideas you can have in an opening of the film and I brainstormed the different ideas of an opening and researched too. I particularly liked the Flashback idea which gives an idea of what has happened to them when they were younger or any other previous past time events. It could even be a flash forward where you have the start of the film showing you whats going to happen at the very end which creates a suspicious frame for the audience.
Week 5
After presenting our pitch we were given useful feedback as to how we can plan for our film. Our initial ideas had potential but I think they have been improved after the pitch. An example of a simple correction we could make was our logline which was at first unclear to the audience. Also, we were told that filming in the school would not be very successful so we had to rethink our location setting for our opening.
Week 6
This we started talking about the filming of the film and we was doing some draft drawing of how we going to film the opening of our film. The first idea we came up up with is an idea of Isaac the main character being pushed in a wheelchair in a mental asylum. The Next day we did a practice run of our idea by getting costumes of white coats and a prop that is the wheelchair. Our actors were Ashley as Isaac and me as the mental asylum officer , on the camera was Raouia and Awal being the director and the crazy doctor. On the next lesson we took a camera and started taking some still image of our location. We then started taking a couple of mid shots of Ashley who plays Issac in the lift so we get a basic idea of what it would look like in the real clip.
Week 7
Next we discussed where we are going to film our film and we changed our film title to 'Demented'. Tuesday we went to the hall to start the opening scene but when we got back to the Mac and saw that the camera quality of the one we used was not very good so we said that we are going re-shoot that part on Thursday's lesson because then we would have more time to do it. That is when we have a double lesson to be able film that part along with second part which need the props that we want to use which is a knife and some food colouring for the blood that we put across the shirt.
Week 8
We got permission and supervision of staff and collected a knife. We Added red food colouring to it has made the knife seem bloody so we managed to get a few good shots of that. We also filmed clips of myself 'stalking' someone in an outside location. This was an idea for our flashbacks we were going to include in our clips but after observing the large cut from an inside location to an outside location it seemed poorly done and uninteresting. However, we realised that maybe we shouldnt use any bloody scenes, because it did not work very welln so we decided to start focusing more on our wheelchair scene.
Week 9
We started focusing more on the indoor scenes of the wheelchair now. Our editing has come together really well this week, the opening scene has been put together with excellent flow after good suggestions from staff. Being given the task of finding suitable music for the scene I have gone through CD's under the horror category and found a perfectly fitting non-diegetic sound clip. After adding this to the editing it has been decided as a group that it will remain. We have also considered using dialog by maybe doing a voice over that runs throughout the clip. We shall also begin working on this after our filming has been perfected in the editing process. We have also implemented introductions to the actors into the opening scene as it plays which has come out outstandingly well.
Week 10
We have finalised the editing process and overall we're happy with the progress we've made. Finishing perfectly on time with the deadline. Looking back at our preliminary task video we have made huge amounts of progress in our camera, editing, sound and mis-en-scene work. After getting feedback from various students in the class and teachers about our opening scene with have made further improvements and finally uploaded the clip to YouTube and our Weebly accounts. We have been a little unorganised at times, but thankfully, we pulled through it.
Week 11
This was are first week back as a group from the holidays. we started our evalution of and at first we all took notes down of the questions as a group .We thought to leave question 1 until the end and had completed all the other questions because we discussed that it was the hardest questionto do, by the end to this week we hope to have complete the evaluation. The next lesson, our evalutaion questions had been recorded and put together efficiently with the video and was very successful. We uploaded it on Youtube, and then to our weebly's and thankfully, we finished on time.