Filming: Day 3

Props used for filming

These are the props used by Ellie during our opening sequence. It was hard looking for a knife, as we went to the English department and they had no sharp knives, so I went to the humanities staff room and asked for theirs

Filming: Day 2

Our second day of filming proved to be our last. We had a lot of fun filming and we only had to film a few extra scenes in order to make our whole project.

Filming the dialogue was definitely the hardest part. This is because it was hard to tell our actresses exactly how we wanted them to act. However, after a few extra takes we managed to take the best shot we could.
After filming the actresses, we decided to film some extra location shots of empty corridors in order make our location isolated and eerie. This was inspired by some product research which gave me a few interesting ideas on how to make most of the fact that our location was quite limited.

Filming: Day 1&2

These picures are from filming scenes for our opening sequence. It was really fun getting into the cinemetography of this production.

Filming: Day 1

 Just like we planned, we started filming our film after school. We decided to take some pictures as we go along to monitor our progress and show what we've done so far.

We had a lot of fun during the shoot, but we noticed that the whole process was extremely time consuming. We had to make sure that our actors were aware of what to do and to act the way which we thought would be the most effective for our opening. The location, especially the corridor proved to be a bit problematic at times because a lot more people walked through it than we anticipated.

Unfortunately, we haven't finished filming the opening as we planned, so we decided to film in Thursday the 14th February as we believe that it'll be more beneficial for us to make sure that the filming process is done quite early on so that we can make sure that we can edit our film.

Experimenting with After Effects

For the past two days I have been trying to figure out how to use After Effects in case we wanted to use another program other than iMovie to make our credits. To be honest at first it was very complicated but after watching various tutorials on YouTube and knowing the basics I created my first set of credits.

This was my first try on Monday as a 'tester'. I chose a bold font and went through different types of effects to see what looked best in relation to our opening. I had gridlines to help me place the text in the centre so it looked orderly and in line with the background picture I would add later on which was of a bright shining light.



 

Today I stuck to the same background picture but made the colour of background black so there is a contrast of black/white throughout our credits. We also chose to keep our credits minimalistic with white on black because it will be more vivid and with the right font and effects it will be effective as the light symbolises ‘truth’ but contrasting the darkness with the black background this suggests the ‘hidden secrets’ which is to do with our opening’s storyline. I went through various animation text effects and found one that was interesting and suited the whole ‘light symbolises truth’ idea and selected ‘Light Flicker’. This not only gives a meaning behind the whole art of the titles but with the flickering it creates a distorted effect which is quite enigmatic.

 

This essentially is our idea for the credits but as blood is symbolic in our opening, it also may be incorporated into our credits aswell.

Blood Research

I have been set the task to find out how to make fake blood. The easiest thing would be to use ketchup, but seeing as that does not give off a real effect, we have to use food colouring, vinegar or red felt tip pen dye. In the end we decided to go to the famous Burntwood science department. They gave us a cup of blood (which you can see stains on the skin) so that we could use it for our opening titles. We intend to paint it onto the toilet mirrors saying the director, actors and editing etc. Our group thought this would have a big impact on the audience as its an interesting opening to a thriller.

Filming Schedule:

We decided to create a filming schedule in order to make sure that we can work efficiently and quickly, as well as making sure that we film the shots properly.
We will first of all brief our two actresses, on Wednesday 13th of February during period 3 and 4. This will ensure that when it comes to filming they will know exactly what they are doing. We also decided to do this because we have free time during those hours and seeing as it will be too light to film the scenes, we thought that we might as well make sure that we make the most of the time.
We will then film the whole sequence on the same day after school - from 4pm. We decided to do so because it will give us time to make sure that all of the equipment and technicalities will be sorted out. This also gives us the best opportunity to film because the corridors will be expected to be empty and there will be very little, if not at all, natural light which we want to use in order to create an eerie atmosphere.
In case anything goes wrong during the filming schedule, we decided to re film of Thursday the 14th of February.

Sound Research: Royalty Free Music Tracks

I have found some websites which I think we will be able to find a soundtrack for our film from. All of these contain either copyright - free, or copyright which has expired which will allow us to use it in our film.

1) Incompetech - This website allows us to search for the sound that we want based on the 'feel' of it. This would be very useful for our project as we would be able to tick the atmosphere we are trying to create in our extract as opposed to having to search for a particular sound which would take far longer.
2) MobyGratis - This website requires a log in, however it contains a lot of high quality soundtracks as opposed to simply sound effects. This could be a good website to get our soundtrack to the film from.
3) BeatPick - This website contains a lot of free, interesting soundtracks for our project, however one of the  disadvantages of it is that in order to download a track, you need to promote the website either through facebook or twitter which could be disheartening after a while.

Light Research

In order to make our film more effective, we decided to try and play with light and reflection. This would add to creating a sense of ambiguity for our film. This is also conventional of thrillers as it creates a sense of entrapment as the audience is only given a limited view of the scene, as opposed to being able to see everything in the shot. Our group decided to take some pictures in our location to view how we could experiment with light:

As you can see here, the corridor is lit very brightly, creating a clinical sense to the shot. We felt that this would expose too much of the surroundings as we want our opening to happen in an unknown location. This amount of light would make the film appear more like a drama rather than a thriller as it is simply not dark and limiting enough. However, the reflection of the light on the floor could be used to symbolise some sort of urgency; seeing as our opening will be more slow paced, we decided that this wasn't necessary. 



Although we weren't able to fully make the corridor darker, you can see a clear difference between the two pictures. The shadows in the dim lit corridor make it appear more spooky which is exactly what we want -  a remote, isolated location. The shadows make the corridor appear intimidating which is why we think that the darkness of it would expose the bold, formal structure to it, adding to the eeriness of the shot. The problem area of this shot is the fact that there is a lot of natural light coming in, despite the fact that we have turned most of the lights in the corridor off - this is something we should consider when filming.


Through looking at the use of light in our project we have come across some things which we will need to remember to do in order to make our work more effective:
1) Make sure that the light is evenly distributed - this means that we should probably aim for making sure that most if not all of the lights in the corridors are switched off
2) Make sure to film after lessons - this would give more darkness to the shot as there would be no natural light coming in to the shot. This is also important as we found that a lot of people were moving across the corridor, slowing down our progress.

Title research

I thought it would be quite interesting to look for past productions from previous media students. This opening intrigued me, especially by its title sequence. This could help us with our titles during the opening sequence because we aim to make the audience feel disorientated and suspense.

Product research

                                                                                 

                                                                                 I found the design of the title quite interesting. This is

mainly because of how each blood drop completes

the title of "Dexter".  The colour of the title also turns

more blood-red, which emphasises the  brutality Dexter does to his victims as he is a serial killer. 

This shot causes a big impact on its audience. The use of the blurred reflection of Dexter in the mirror may suggest his secretive side of people not knowing who he really is, as he is a forensic expert, who moonlights as a serial killer. This shot could be used in my  thriller opening, as it creates a sense of ambiguity , but the reflection in the mirror is also conventional to portray a different  perspective of a character. 

Titles Research

 Titles are essential in a opening and for our opening we need to create titles which is not only Thriller-like but in context with our opening. I researched some videos which are of help in order for thinking what font, effects and colour to use for our opening. 

This is a Youtube clip I found which illustrates the generic Thriller conventions clearly with the use of blood splattering from the words in the credits. I thought that this type of opening is good in resembling a Thriller which is about crime and murder as the red symbolising blood does this most effectively. The only negative thing about this opening credits is that it is too 'refined' and 'polished' because it shows some gruesomeness but the clear and vivid brightness deters the whole aspect in my opinion. But the fades to black and movement of the words create a paranormal and psychological Thriller feel to it which is useful.

This video shows many great titles from a variety films. This 'Art of the Title' video shows how many films have presented their opening credits in many ways in link with their genre. Many Thrillers are shown in this video such as Psycho, Cape Fear, SE7EN and Panic Room. The titles of the Thrillers shown in this video highlight the differences in how they are presented as the title is in association with the sub-genre and the storyline of film. For example, SE7EN is shown and the opening credits are of a unknown man planning a sinister act. The extreme close ups of the objects he is handling and working on give a sense that he must be the antagonist as his character is not revealed, even throughout the film until the very end. So with this in mind we have to make sure that the font and lay out of our opening credits and titles should be in sync with the context of our opening and most importantly the genre.

Sound Research

As we are now coming up to finishing our storyboards and start filming, I thought that researching soundtracks for our opening will be helpful as now we know what sounds we need in order to build up the suspension of a thriller opening but also sound that fits in with our storyline.

 

 

This is Youtube video I found which is a soundtrack to build suspense and I thought the composition of this soundtrack is really effective as the beats almost resemeble foot steps which can create ambiguity as a character in our opening is covering up their murder. This soundtrack gives us great insight on what to do when either sourcing or creating sound for our opening.

 

 

 

 

This is another Youtube clip I found of a running tap faucet which is also what we need to source/make for our opening but other than the sound I was looking for in this video, I thought that the editing of this clip is very good as the grayscale colour and distortion to the shot creates a dark and apprehensive atmosphere as there is some generic Thriller attributes to it. The shuttering of the lighting can help to portray a sinister storyline which is also an idea that we can use when editing our opening.

Treatment for 'Bloody Detention'

It's a Saturday detention at Willow High. A group of 6th form students are being kept in school the whole day by a teacher as a punishment. Everything is not as it seems as amongst this group of teenagers there isn't your typical teen. Stuck in room 148 on Saturday afternoon, Ellie, the not so average teenager, has something on her mind. Knowing that the school is empty, she decides this would be the perfect time to do what she had to do. The water fountain trip she asked for turned into a much longer one then planned.

Production Logo

This is the image I have created on Photoshop which will be our production logo. We decided that the name of the production will be 'STICK INSECT PRODUCTIONS' and that this logo will appear at the beginning of opening.