07/04/10

Below is a presentation discussing the representation of social groups in our product. Simply click on the arrows to view the next slide or watch it at this link: http://prezi.com/fcqpo_nl2ilk/beck-evaluation/

06/04/10

I created the title in Photoshop. I used a downloaded font called broken74 because I thought it reflected the approaching horror of the film.



The line underneath the text was part of a downloaded title. I changed the colour to a dark red that looked like blood. I then added a black outer glow around it to make it stand out and look creepier. I included the line because I felt it gave a sense of finality and strength to the title, increasing the tension of the film.

06/04/10


I used this part of the new line cinema logo design and got rid of everything else in the image in Illustrator, so I ended up with this:




I then transferred this image to Photoshop.

I found the picture below on the internet then flipped it horizontally so that it faced the right and resized it to suit the image of the filmstrip. I then deleted the white background so that the camera was all that was left.

I wanted a dramatic sky effect in the background to add an eerie mood to the logo. This also reflects the type of films our company would make – horror films. I used a layer mask in Photoshop by dragging the cursor from bottom to the top of the page. It starts out white so that the ground disappears and gradually starts to go transparent at around half way up the page. So it still allows the sky to be seen but not the ground (which is what I wanted).

I created the filmstrip manually on Photoshop by making a black rectangle then putting smaller rectangles in the middle of the big one, but changing the colour to white. Then I made smaller squares to put above and below the white rectangles and made these white as well. I changed the opacity of the small squares and smaller rectangles to 5% so that rather than being completely transparent it gives the appearance of a real filmstrip.

I then added the text – a single letter, in capitals and herald font so that it is bold and stands out, to each small rectangle. I changed the colour of the text to a wood background, then added a pattern overlay filter, under bevel and emboss, of a fire effect.



I put a white background as a mask over the top of the sky but behind each letter to make them stand out. I then applied a wave filter by clicking on filter then picking distort from the drop down menu then clicking on wave on the second drop down menu.

So by doing all of this I created this film strip:

I then used the smudge tool on the end of the film strip by clicking on the black film strip and dragging it into the camera lens. I did this in order to give the effect of the filmstrip emerging from the camera.



I added the text shown below in herald font so that it stood out and put it at the bottom next to the new line cinema logo underneath the camera and filmstrip.

Below is an image of the finished logo:

Once we put this into IMovieHD we added a dark fog to make it look animated and also to make it scarier.

06/04/10

Below is our finished product. Overall we are quite happy with our work, except for the sound moving out of place when we put the credits up. Please feel free to take a look:

06/04/10

Below is a voiceover of our answer to the above question:




Below is a transcript of the voiceover above:


K: There was a main problem that we attempted to overcome, that we experienced in our preliminary task - the sound. In our preliminary task, the sound was too quiet because the only microphone we were using was on the camera, which was too far away from our actors.
B: In our full product, we had no dialogue to worry about so this wasn't a potential problem. However we were still conscious of certain diagetic sounds that we included in our opening sequence.
There was also background sound that we had not desired to appear in our preliminary task, so we were very careful when filming out full product.
E: We learnt how to do match on action shots proficiently. The match on actions we used in out preliminary task turned out very well, so we were confident enough to use a couple in out opening sequence when the opportunities arose.
C: We aslo learnt how to use special effects on iMovie HD. The preliminary task that we did, enabled us to explors this and the different possiblilities within this. In our preliminary taks, we used a slow motion of a pen dropping, this persuaded us to use a flash forward in our real product and for it to be in black and white.

06/04/10

Below is a voiceover of our answer to the above question:




This is a transcript in case the video is not working:

K: We made a film company logo and even made it look animated through iMovie by putting a fog effect over the image, making it looks more mysterious and scary.
C: The credits were in a simple white font at the bottom of the screen like most other films. This is because it is easy to see even though it is not the focus point of the shot.
E: We used a high angle when the character is running in the woods. We felt that it made her look vulnerable and though we don't see anyone running after her, the handheld shots and higher angles following her suggests that she is the victim and a killer is after her.
K: Another high angle is used on Lily when she wakes up, which is almost oppressive and shows that she's insignificant. We didn't do the point of view shot like we planned to do when she wakes up because it looked odd and too shaky. So we tried other ways to position the camera, for example, on her level, but we had the view as if we're standing over her which is almost suffocating.
C: We used a low angle on the character Kate - the girl who gives Lily a bad look - to show that she is insignificant when compared to her.
E: We used an ellipses by fading out when she walks to school and fading in when she arrives to school.
B: A common point of feedback we recieved was that the film ended suddenly. But we think that as it is supposed to be the first two minutes of an hour or two long film, it shouldn't conclude itself like a trailer. Instead, it should just cut to the next scene.

04/04/10

This is the feedback we recieved from our media classmates on our opening project:

02/04/10

This is Omar Hay, he is twenty-three and works in an estate agency in London.
In his spare time, he plays a variety of sports such as football, ruby and basketball. On the weekends he likes going out with his friends to the cinema and shops at stores such as Top Man, Office, Burton, River Island, Footlocker and Next.
Omar enjoys mainly horror, action and comedy films when he goes to the cinema with his friends. Some of the past films he has watched and enjoyed in the past are Bourne Ultimatum, Mirrors, Be Cool, Rush Hour, Role Models, The Matrix, Paranormal Activity, The Omen, Hangover, 28 Days Later, American Pie and Scary Movie.
Omar mainly enjoys listening to popular music that are in the UK Charts. He mainly listens to Rap, RnB and Pop but also sometimes listens to Rock. He regularly listens to the radio in his car however does not listen to it outside his car. The stations he likes are KISS 100, Radio One and Choice FM.
In his spare time after work, Omar also enjoys watching television. His preferred television programmes are CSI, The Fresh Prince of Belair, Law and Order, Heroes, 24 and The Wire.

02/04/10

Below is a presentation about the representation of social groups within our project. Simply click the link below if nothing shows up then use the arrows to view the next, or previous, slide.

29/03/10


Lily's costume was picked because the costume had to be casual but smart to show that she is going to school. We picked the colours because we thought the black reflects the gloom and danger ahead whilst the white reflects Lily's innocence. The colours and normality of what she is wearing also makes it seem more realistic.


We chose the music because it is not too depressing, dark or scary and yet not too happy or out of character for a typical horror film, it also seems like music that could be heard on a radio so it goes with the scene of Lily turning on the radio. We decided to make it ourselves because we found it very difficult to find non-copyrighted music that suited our film. We also added scary non-copyrighted music to go over the title to make it more dramatic.

29/03/10

Below is a presentation about the institutional issues for our project. You may also view the presentation at this link: http://prezi.com/wedy1yjo1ldm/
Simply click on the arrows to view the next slide.

12/03/10





Above is the first draft of our opening sequence. We still need to work a lot more on it. For example we need to finish cutting in places like the forest scene because we want to make it have a faster pace to create a scarier scenario, and also we need to cut down Lily walking out of her house because the scene is very long and not that interesting.

With the forest scene we also need to reduce the volume of the digetic noise and put non digetic sound over the top. After talking it over in our group we have come up with the idea of putting a heartbeat that gradually gets faster with a voiceover of Elly breathing deeply over the top of this scene. This will, in our opinion, increase the tension and suspence making it overall a lot more terrifying.

We also still have to add credits however we are going to wait until we have finished everything else is finished first. We want to start the credits on the scene where Lily wakes up and have them continue as she gets ready for school. Within this scene Lily clicks on the radio at which point we want music to come on. We haven't yet found the perfect music, so this is something else we still have to do. We are thinking of usingthe music we have already created ourselves on garageband rather than search for non-copyrighted music on the internet.

We did not follow our storyboard completely: we included a few more shots in the first scene such as a high angle long shot when she's running and we are going to move the shots around so that there is a constant switching to different perspectives as she is running. We also did not use a point of view shot for when Lily wakes up and rubs her eyes because it was much too difficult to do it handheld without it being extremely shaky, which is not what we wanted. So we decided on having a high angle shot of Lily's face as she wakes up instead.

05/03/10

Today we filmed scene one of Lily being chased through the woods. Bareen and I had decided where we would put the camera and what type of shots to use there when we explored the woods earlier (when we were deciding which wood area to use). So we got through the shots pretty quickly.

We attempted to include a point of view shot but it looked too strange and we had many other shots to use so we decided not to spend a lot of time on filming this shot. Here is a picture of Elly attempting the shot:





However, we had a few problems with this filming session:

• Elly was practicing what she had to act out for the shot where she turns around and screams. However Bareen and I did not realise she was practicing so when she screamed we both jumped. This was not the problem, however, after Elly screamed a few children further in the woods started screaming as if having a competition with us, so we had to wait until they finished so we could film the shot without having noise in the background.

• We also found it very hard to film the handheld shots steady. I found it difficult to film a panning shot using handheld camera. Bareen also found it hard to film with handheld as she was running with the camera so she had to focus on where she was going, what she was filming and keeping the camera steady. This took several tries to get right, but we are happy with the outcome. However I think the occasional unsteadiness created a scarier feel to the film and added to the tension.

01/03/10

Today we filmed scenes two and three that we filmed over in session three. So we redid the scene in her bedroom, the scene of Lily walking down the stairs and Lily walking out of her house and down the road. We had already filmed these scenes before so they were much easier to film again and it went a lot quicker than the last ones.

We had a problem with the weather again when we were filming Lily walking down her street as it was a really windy day. So when we filmed the scene the tripod kept moving slightly. However we managed to film the scene without the camera moving in the end. We didn’t redo the point of view shot of Lily waking up which we had lost because it didn’t work well the last time and it didn’t look how we imagined it to. Instead we did a high angle close up of Lily waking up and sitting up in bed.

In conclusion we had a very productive session that went really well.

25/02/10


Today we went back to the drama corridor with the lockers to finish scene six. We only had two shots to film - a shot of Lily slamming her locker door shut and a shot of Valerie and Sophia (Marina and Bareen respectively). We decided to change the close up of these two characters laughing because the camera was far too close and it looked as if the two were actually looking into it instead of looking at Lily. Also, it didn’t make sense to laugh intwo different shots because it was only supposed to be a short laugh.
Instead we filmed a close up of the two, acknowledging the fact that Lily had entered the corridor by looking at her then looking away again. We put this before the shot of Lily’s books falling out. We only had one problem during the filming session which was the tripod; however this was not my fault. The tripod was too stiff in some places and too loose in others and no amount of tweaking would fix the problem which meant using pans smoothly was impossible.
There was another problem however we found out about this after we had filmed; we had unfortunately filmed over some of our filming session two that we had not imported onto the computer yet. So we have to reschedule a filming session to redo the shots we lost.

16/02/10

Today we woke ourselves up early and trekked through the unrelenting rain to Elly’s house to film scenes two, three and four. However due to the aforementioned poor weather conditions we couldn’t film outside (the scene of Lily being chased through the woods) as it would be far too much hassle to keep the camera dry and we wanted the weather to be anything but wet. Here are some photos of us filming the bedroom scene:










We were considering improvising on a new scene of Lily going into her kitchen to make breakfast and finding a letter from her mum saying she can’t pick Lily up. Lily would then burn the toast to show that she is having a bad day and also foreshadows the upcoming horrific events. However, and i admit it was completely my fault, i am hereby bowing my head in shame, I had I had accidentally pressed the record button twice after one shot so from then on I was filming everything we didn’t want filmed and not filming what we did want filmed. Then the battery ran out halfway through our filming so we decided to stick to the plan rather than rescheduling another filming session just for this scene. Plus we didn’t know if the scene would really work anyway. Below are two pictures of us filming this scene:








We tried to film a point of view shot of Lily waking up in different ways, for example having Lily filming it herself and having Chesney holding the camera in front of Elly’s face whilst she sits up, however it was quite difficult and shaky. Below are two photos showing us filming this scene:








This filming session went well and we managed to get the filming done that we needed to do.

11/02/10

Today we had our first filming session ever and really it was almost enough to put you of filming for life, okay so I’m exaggerating but still it was very frustrating. We chose to film in a corridor within the school that holds a number of lockers, because it is an easy location to get to and for the first filming session a perfect place to start (or so we thought). We filmed the last scene where Lily (Elly) walks to her locker, opens it and finds that her books fall out. We decided to include this scene in order to foreshadow the unfortunate events that happen to Lily later in the film and also to introduce the other main characters for the first time. We had originally planned to film this scene after school, however it seemed easier for us to film during our lesson time. That was a mistake! Because we were filming during lesson time we assumed the corridor would be relatively empty and that there would be few interruptions. Unfortunately we were very wrong. We encountered a number of problems, including:
• A lot of people kept walking through the shots, so we had to start again several times.
• Another group of people interrupted halfway through by filming in the same corridor (causing our stress levels to rise considerable) which cut our time short, but not by a substantial amount as they left soon after.
We overcame these problems well enough and managed to film most of what we had planned to before our lesson ended.

10/02/10

Elly, who is a fellow member of our group, will be playingthe main character, Lily. We thought that she would be great for this role as she can easily act serious and listens to every idea our group has and plays the role to the best of her ability. Elly is always free during lessons and after school when we need to film so it is easy to film on the days we planned to. Plus she can scream without bursting into laughter!

Another member of our group, Bareen, will be playing the role of Sophia, who is one of the three other main characters who are introduced nearer the end of the opening squence but do not make a proper appearance until later in the film. We decided that the main focus should be on Lily because she would appear throughout the whole film and the other main characters die later in the film. We chose Bareen to play the part because she can act natural and can laugh easily without making it sound fake. Furthermore, she was, like Elly, free to film during lessons so we had plenty of opportunity to film.

Our friend, Marina, is playing Valerie who stands along with Sophia (Bareen) by her locker and laughs at Lily when she drops her books. We chose Marina to play the part because she has an amazing ability to laugh completely naturally at any little thing but can also wait until the appropriate moment. She is also has a very bubbly and enthusiastic personality which suits the character perfectly and so it was easy for her to play the part.

Bryony, another of our friends, is playing Kate, who simply rolls her eyes at Lily for dropping her books. Bryony was free when we needed to film this scene and is great at keeping a straight face and natural look no matter what is going on which is why we pleaded with her (she gave in reletively quickly - that's how good we are) to act in out opening sequence.

We are all very happy with our choices for the cast because all four cast members are of different ethnic groups, therefore giving a wider range of races and therefore can interest a wider audience and all of them were able to play their roles flawlessly with few mishaps.

08/02/10