Evaluation Task Number 1…

Feedback on Editing…

Throughout the editing process, Emelia and I showed our teachers and classmates our film opening so far. Each time, we received constructive criticism and also positive feedback that allowed us to fine-tune our opening. With the feedback being from so many different people, Emelia and I hoped that we could perfect our film opening due to the range of suggestions. Some of these suggestions included…

• Audio: Our diegetic sound was not consistent throughout our opening. This was because the volumes varied too much and so to fix this Emelia and I had to note down which volumes were too high or too low and had to alter them . For example, towards the beginning of the opening the young girl is shown to be opening the blinds. At first, the sound of the blinds opening was way too loud and so we had to turn this down. On the other hand, there were some diegetic sounds that we wanted exaggerated such as the footsteps crunching in the leaves; this is because this creates tension and depth into the shot.
• Time Frames: In our opening we show the young girl making breakfast. However, we include the shot of her putting the toast in the toaster immediately followed by the shot of her taking it out already toasted. Our classmates said that this confused them slightly as it does not take that short amount of time to toast bread! In order to get over this, I added a fade. This indicates time passing and so brings back a sense of time to the opening. I also added in a fade in-between the two shots of the young girl retrieving the tray as the immediate change of her walking direction also put off people. Once again, the fade displays the passing of time.
• Direction of Steps: In the outside scene, Emelia and I included various shots of the young girl’s feet walking. From feedback, it was clear that two of these shots were filmed the wrong way around in order for the opening to make complete sense. Although we could not go and film again, this could be easily rectified as we could simply flip the shots. When showing our film opening to the class after doing so, people agreed that it looked correct and made sense.
• Length of Opening: Emelia and I started out with a lot of footage, if not too much! Because of this, our 2 minute opening was looking as if it was going to be around the 4 minute mark. We needed to cut down drastically and so looked for advice into which parts to cut. We were advised not to include so many different angles of the same shot and not to have shots of unnecessary things. We were then advised to cut down the individual clips so that the film opening would flow more.
• Non Diegetic Sound: In our penultimate screening, it was suggested that Emelia and I turned up our non diegetic soundtrack slightly as in some places you could not hear it due to the exaggerated diegetic sounds. This was not hard to change but changed the tone of our film opening quite heavily… however, Emelia and I feel as though it changed it for the better.

As well as constructive criticism, the class gave us positive feedback. Overall, they liked the brightness of our shots and stated that the opening made perfect sense. However, the aspect that received the most feedback was on our final shot. People asked how we created it and when we explained they were fairly intrigued and impressed. Overall, Emelia and I were extremely grateful for the feedback given to us from our classmates and teachers. It allowed us to have various characters viewing our film and also allowed a fresh eye to pick out the silly mistakes that we may have missed from watching close up on the small screen. With this feedback, Emelia and I hope to create a professional film opening to be proud of!

Production Log – 14th of January

Last night I, once again, charged up all of the equipment and asked my Dad to clear my SD cards. I also messaged Tom to check that he was still okay to come and film. In a panic last night, I checked the equipment bag to find a partially broken sound recorder and thought that it had been me that broke it! Luckily, my teacher already knew about this and so knew that it wasn’t me! I also could not find the audio cable and thought that I hadn’t checked carefully enough when given the equipment that I had everything, however when telling my sister in a panic, she checked and found it in the front pouch! This morning, I checked all of the equipment once again and began to set it up as filming would take place at my house. I then messaged Emelia, who could no longer come and help film, to run through the new storyline. It then dauned on me that we no longer had a mother figure as my mum had to go to Yorkshire last night… I messaged my close friend about it and she offered to come and play the role, I was so relieved! It also then dauned on me that I would have to teach Tom how to use the sound recorder as I would be busy filming with the camera and couldn’t really do both! At around 10am, Rosie and Tom arrived ready to film. This time around, Rosie was wearing a onesie and had her hair in the same style as before. After a quick introduction to Tom on how to work the sound recorder, I collected various toys and teddies from my room and placed them in the spare room so that it would look more like a young girls bedroom! We were now ready to start filming. After a few shots of Rosie in bed, I noticed that the recordings were not saving onto the SD cards. Luckily, my dad had cleared three more and so I could use these. We then filmed the inside part of the film opening, trying my best to stick to rules and theories such as the 180 degree rule. We then checked that the sound was recording before we went any further, luckily it was! Just before we began the filming of the outside scene, my friend Sally arrived. She let me do her hair and makeup and we packed up a bag of equipment, makeup, clothes and dressing gowns! I then asked Rosie if she could wear her Wellington Boots, but she had forgotten them and so I lent her mine… they fit her perfectly! I am happy with this as they are pink and so fit in with the stereotype for a young girl. After this, I grabbed my bike for our last shot and Sally, Tom, Rosie and I began our walk to a field. It was then when Sally told me about an open field that is surrounded by forest in Woodhall Spa. This sounded perfect and so we made our way to this field. After a really long walk, we had finally got to the field and it was perfect! Here, Sally put on her dressing gown and took off her shoes. We then filmed various shots including establishing shots, close ups and long shots. It was then time to do the final shot. This took a few attempts to get right as I couldn’t hack the smooth movement of the wheel. However, in the end I got a shot that I was happy with. We then filmed some sounds such as leaves crunching and birds cawing to add in in post production. On our long walk home, we stopped off in a sweet shop and I bought Rosie some sweets to say thank you for being so patient and confident! I am really grateful of Tom, Rosie and Sally for coming to help as without them I’d have been rather stuck! In our next lesson, Emelia and I will once again try and upload the sound and footage onto a MacBook and begin the editing process. We will have to be quick and efficient with this as we are fairly behind everyone else!

Pictures taken at the end of a fairly long day of filming… Sally wore 3 coats in order to try and warm up after lying in the icy grass with no shoes, socks or coat! Tom is holding the sound equipment after a day of playing the role of the sound man and Rosie obviously fairly relieved to be finished… and fairly excited to be going to the sweet shop!

New Location…

Due to the limited time frame, Emelia and I do not have enough time to organise a fixed new location. Although my friend Hattie, whose house we had initially wanted to film at, offered her house to be the location, she could not do a day that Emelia and I could. Because of this, and the problem that we experienced before where we felt too awkward and so rushed our filming, Emelia and I decided to film at my house. It is fairly open, has many windows and would mean that we are in complete control of what is happening. My house is also a 10-15 minute walk away from Tom and Rosie’s house and has a bus directly from Emelia’s house to mine and so is not difficult to get to. Although my house may not have the country house interior decor that we had originally hoped for, we have a fairly large garden and can easily access a field. I intend to use a spare room in my house as Rosie’s bedroom in the opening as this room looks onto the garden and could easily be decorated with toys and teddies to look like a young girl’s bedroom. Here is a video to show the planned route for Rosie when filming…

Production Log – 8th of January

Last night I once again charged up all of the equipment. However, instead of me trying to wipe the SD card myself, I asked for some help from my Dad. He managed to free up lots of space and so I felt prepared for filming today. This morning, my mum and I went to collect Emelia from Boston. In the car journey on the way home, Emelia and I discussed what shots we could achieve without our main characters. We then got home, collected the equipment and went on a trek to find scenic fields and skies. After filming lots of footage of birds, fields, frost and isolated barns, Emelia and I felt as though we were wasting our time. Because of this, we decided to practise one of our main shots at the end of our film. To do so, we connected the camera onto the mini dolly and set out a course for the dolly using textbooks in an attempt to reduce wobbling. I then laid down on the ground and Emelia practised the movement.

Determined for this not to happen again, I messaged Tom to ensure that he is free next weekend. Luckily, he and Rosie are both free and are willing to film once more to help us out.

Research Into Fonts

Emelia and I decided to research into what sort of fonts are often used in film production. Here is a short blog post that Emelia wrote about the fonts often seen in horror film openings and why we chose the fonts that we did…

“We decided to research what fonts would be best suited for the opening title sequence of our film. We feel as though this is really important because it can be the reason for a film looking professional or not. For example we wouldn’t want to use Comic Sans as this would just look completely unprofessional.

We started our research by looking at other films title sequences and seeing what type of font they were using. We noticed that a lot of thriller films often use square looking letters that are only slightly noticeably tall and thin. We decided to use a font like this for our credits. We chose to have the credits quite small and in the centre of the screen because it looked much more dramatic and realistic that way.

For the idents we used much bolder fonts because we felt like they could seem more creative than the credits. For Lucent Pictures we just chose a large square looking font because it is similar to what other idents of that genre are like, for example Ghost House and Blumhouse. However for our Orchid House Productions ident we thought that the font could look a bit more eccentric because the ident itself was much more colourful than the rest of the film. So for this one we used a curly font to make it look much more extravagant and I think it matched quite well with the pink glow of the orchid.”

Production Log – 4th of January

Today, Emelia and I had intentions to start editing our 2 minute film opening. However, we faced various problems…

Firstly, we managed to upload our footage successfully. However, it took a very long time because we had to use DropBox in order to get the majority of the footage off of my phone. Because of this, we had to download each shot individually, one by one. We then attempted to upload our sound recordings. However, we could not find our recordings anywhere on the memory card… In the end, our sound had not recorded due to there being no space on the sound recorder. Although this was a major downfall, Emelia and I thought that we could re make the sound effects in post production due to the lack of them. However, when trying to do so and matching it up to the actions on the screen, Emelia and I noticed that we would need to film again. On the other hand, we did not want to waste our media lessons up until the weekend and so decided to make a rough cut using the footage that we had. Later on that evening, I messaged Tom asking whether or not he and Rosie were free in the upcoming weekend. Unfortunately, due to the late notice, neither of them are free. On top of this, we have just been told that Tom’s Grandma has gone on holiday to Australia for five months and so we will not be able to film at her house in the future meaning that we will have to re shoot the whole film! However, determined not to waste time, Emelia and I have booked out the equipment for the weekend and plan to get as much footage of nature, frost and fields as we can…

Title of Film…?

Planning: Weather…

The most ideal weather for mine and Emelia’s film would be a frosty, cold morning. We feel as though this would add a certain aesthetic to our film and would set the tone nicely. However, weather is unexpected and can not be changed, the best we can do is to cross our fingers and hope for the best! Our assigned date for filming is on the 28th of December. Here is the weather forecast for that day…

This weather forecast is almost perfect as there will be frost, ice and a bit of sun in the morning. Let’s hope that the weather forecast is correct!…

Screenplay Version 2…

For the second version of our screenplay, Emelia and I took on board the various points of feedback from our friends, family and teacher. We altered our punctuation, including apostrophes, and some of our wording that before did not make sense. Emelia and I have also decided to go along with our teacher’s idea of using ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic’ as a song for our character to sing rather than ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’ as it is creepier and will fit with the genre and mood of our film better. The largest difference between our first and second version is the length. Our version two is somewhat longer; this is because Emelia and I included the various pieces of plot that we had previously forgotten. With the added plot, we had to once again get feedback from our friends, family and teachers. For this version, our feedback was much more positive. People said that they could imagine our film opening clearly. They also agreed with the route that we had chosen for our characters. Emelia and I were happy with our version two but still did not have a title for our film. We planned to compose our own score but time pressures have led us to reconsider this idea…