BLOG CLOSED

Au Revoir, mon cherie!

Oh, what a sad day.
Blogging for this project has been amazingly enjoyable, completely unlike any other coursework experience: it's colourful, creative and interactive. I'll really truly miss it.
I think in our blog a clear passion comes across for film...we all loved the subject matter.
Talking of 'we': Amelia and Laura, you've both been amazing partners, I was so lucky to be in your group, you were so supportive and if any problem came along, I could count on you to help.
Goodbye huge-chunk-of-my-life's consumption....I will miss you!
Lots of Love,
Holly x

Seeya blog!!!!

Its been so great, I've loved every second of it
(Even the moments i hated)

Thanks laura and holly for being such wicked group members and getting everything done. Cheers blogger for excepting our insane amounts of blogs and coping well. Cheers Mrs T and Mrs B for putting up with us and uor ridiculous requests/complaints

Its been a fab few months and i will miss it...

Love Amelia xxxxxxxx

Goodbye my friend

So this is the deadline for our blog...
I had originally thought that we would sign off together as a group, but I've actually been snowed in, so it's lucky my coursework is all online! SNOW SNOW SNOW.

Holly and Amelia, just wanna say, you guys have been amazing. I've had so much fun on shoots, planning, editing and everything! Even when we were getting bogged down with paperwork, we still managed to enjoy ourselves, resulting in producing a really good opening sequence!
And of course, thanks to miss T, miss B and Deansy (new nickname for the technician), they've helped us throughout the whole process, and it would have been impossible without them.

Gonna miss this project!

LOVE

Laura xxxxx

The Treatment

Our treatment was yped up from the document we hand-wrote in december...

1. The action: identify the event your idea is based around; what actually happens (discovery of a body, an illicit meeting, a witness seeing a crime being committed, a criminal act taking place, a telephone call, a chase, a short journey etc)?

Our idea for our opening sequence isbased around a computer (instant messaging) conversation between a young teenage girl and two older men. The identity of the men is kept mysterious, so the conversation is being interpreted in two different ways; the audience knows the truth, but our current heroin, the girl, does not. This is the first part of the action, as the second is more fast-paced of the men packing up their "kill kit" and getting ready to leave their flat to do murder. The rest of the film will be based around a detective tracing internet clues of the men to try and find them, and of more killings, more suicide notes and crime scenes. We would want to keep the rest of the film fast and montagey, mixed with slow suspense-building scenes, to create a nice contrast.

2. The theme(s): what should it make the audience think about or feel, what ‘issues’ will it raise (revenge, sexuality, voyeurism, stalking, obsession, greed etc)?

Our main themes are depression, sexual stalking and investigating. In our film as a whole, we wanted to create a continuous sense of being watched, of searching for clues and of knowing that there was so much that you didn't know - danger could be just around the corner. To convey this in the opening sequence, we will leave our main murderer's identity ambiguos, and make it clear to the audience that the girl has no idea what she was getting herself into. We will also make it clear that the issue of internet safety will be a central one during the film, as it is the first thing we will open with.

3. The narrative: how is it structured - classic narrative pattern or break with convention, real time or different time zones, flashbacks/forwards, dreams etc. Will there be dialogue? What about diegetic/ non-diegetic sound?

We have not chosen a classic narrative pattern as we begin with disruption, breaking you usual convention of beginning with safety and then straying into danger. However we have chosen to shoot in a linear, real-time way, with no flashbacks and crosscutting between a real time conversation, as memories do not feature as an important part in our plot. We want to include dialogue for most of the sequence to show cross-cutting techniques, and this forms the main base of our storyline, too. All the sound, apart from the music, will b e diegetic.

4. The character(s): who are they, identify their roles, what are their characteristics, including gender, appearance etc?

Emma: female, 17 years old, white, pretty teenage girl. She is clearly sweet and typically girly in her pink room, but very fragile (in tears) and expresses whiney desire to kill herself. She is the victim.
"Julie": male, 24 years old, half-black & half-white, well-built man. He is the clever, cunning man of the operation who lures girls into his clutches by wooing them. He wears a mysterious black coat and has deeply thoughtful eyes.
Man 2: male, 53, white, very tall and fairly stocky man. He wears all-black, black leather coat and a black hat, looking very thugish and does not smile. His voice is harsh and merciless. He is the muscle of the opperation, killing the victims.

5. The setting and choice of location: where is it set?

Our first setting is 'Emma's' bedroom, where she taps away on her computer. We will use Laura's actual bedroom to shoot this. The second location is the men's flat, where they talk to the women and get ready to find them. We can shoot this in Laura's art studio, which is perfectly dark and cobwebby.

6. The mise-en-scene: identify colours, lighting, dress codes, the overall visual look

The girl's part will be very pink, saturated, girly and inviting, with lots of pink fluffy pillows and her wearing jeans and a pink top. In contrast to this, the men's flat is dingy, dark, dusty and ominous. Their clothes are black and concealing, they see by desk lamp and hanging lightbulb, and there is a nearly-finished bottle of whisky on the table. We will see flashes of knives being sharpened, tape and matches, all being piled into a black suitcase. The lighting will also be very pale and ghostly.

7. The camera work: the style you are aiming for

We have decided to shoot in a range of angles, including CU's, LS's, sutch tilts and shakey P.O.V angles. This will give a sense of being watched, of a webcam, and be slightly disorientating. Only some shots will be static and normal.

8. The editing: edited as a continuous sequence, use of cross cutting, use of montage, or combination?

We will have a continuous sequence and then move into a montage at the end, to pick up the pace, and at the same time pick up the music. This is when the action begins. Before this, we will use crosscutting between the two screens and cutaways.

9. Has your idea been ‘tested’ against the key criteria (the 8 questions)?

Yes - we were able to answer yes to every question.

10. Group responses?

We had two other strong ideas that we could have moved forward with, but we all agree that this idea is the strongest. We are all excited about the uniqueness of the idea and the opportunity to shoot in some quirky,unconventional angles.

11. Teacher responses?

Great idea - original and chilling. But be careful to loeave enough time to film both sets of footage (male part and female part). Also careful of continuity between the two.

Questionnaires

At our screening for our film we asked each person to fill out a questionaire
Here are two examples picked at random


Example 1:

Example 2: These provided us with very good feedback

positive feedback:

• Music was very good
• Camera angles

Things to possibly change:

• Show the muderers face later and create more suspense
• lighting

Re-Shoot shot list...

Here is another example of a shooting script however this was for our re-shoot
Re Shoot List

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Shooting script

Here is one example of our shooting scripts which we printed out and filled in. We found these very useful on shoots to keep track of what we had shot, and what we had left to shoot. It also showed us that it was easier to shoot all shots from one location first, and all shots from another second.
Here it is:

Shooting Script1

Storyboard

This is a sample of our storyboard. We originally devised a storyboard using post-it notes on sugar paper, so we could easily move shots around, but this wasn't worth photographing/scanning in, so we remade it using screen snapshots of our actual shots.

Holly Amelia Laura Storyboard

WOW

Just been to South Africa for my cousin's wedding, and while there, I discovered something really interesting and good.

I was having my hair done, for the wedding, and i picked up a magazine from the middle of the pile. On the cover was one line describing a story about teen suicide pacts over the internet, and since I thought this was relevant to our film, I chose that magazine. I turned to the article, and the journalist had titled it "Caught in the Web" which is our film title that we had decided a week before that!

This finding made me happy because it proved that our title was really good and appropriate, since someone in another country had used it for their real magazine.

That's it really..

OH, and I watched our final film for the first time yesterday (as I was away for our actual deadline) and I really liked it! I watched it with my dad (who was in it) and he said "Ooh that's really quite good! It's amazing how quickly it all happens. Is there any more?" and then he said "the end part could have been a bit slower perhaps". So, first feedback is pretty good as it left him wanting to see more, and he doesn't even like horror films.. But I suppose ours is kind of a hybrid of horror and thriller because it doesn't have as much slashing as other horror films, and has the thriller aspect of a chase and is full of enigma.

FINALLY FINISHED

After so long of hard work, shooting and editing. Months of painful descision making about how it should be, we are finally done.
Our title sequence for our film called 'Caught in the Web' is finally finished!
We're really happy with it, and we took into account all the feedback and incorporated it into our piece

It looks really good and we're very pleased!!!

Disaster!!

When looking at our work to be signed off Miss B. realised that she hadn't noticed ours didn't have titles all the way through, and would need them to make it a continuing title sequence.

Now we have to make a few more titles and add them on through the piece.

Test Screen: Feedback

We had a test screen of our final sequence today, and overall it went really well. Both me and Holly were really pleased with how it turned out however the other members of our class had some things they would change..

1. turn down treble on master shot of me
2. cut music down at end-too distracting
3. quiet down sound of keys
4. needs a change of music as montage starts-change of music for change of pace-also too distracting..
5. drone too loud
6. printer quieter

All of these are fairly minor and are easily sorted. We are coming in tomorrow to make these small adjustments and then we will be done!

Overall I am pleased with the piece, and pleased with our feedback

Hi!!

cooltings holly
i think we've donwe a couple of them anyway?

I'm dead excited to finish now.
AHHHHH

The whole thing is looking really good
I'm really impressed, we've mangaed to create a piece that looks professional, yet simple and still really chilling: exactly what we aimed for!

Final To-Do-List

We're practically finished, but these are the last things we have to do:

1. Make one more title on the mac in Mr. Dean's office.
2. Make the drone (over the whole thing) quieter.
3. Stretch the music over the end a bit.
4. Change the colour temperature on some of King's shots so that the saturation is the same throughout - make it warmer.

And then we will be onto the evaluation!

Titles...

When showing our piece to the teachers they said everything was great (or 'wicked' as Miss B says) but they both did comment on how bland our titles were, they didn't fit with the overall feel of our piece.

Being the only member of my group available, i decided to work on them. I went to Mr Deans who introduced me to a program, iMovie, on the Mac computer that allowed us to create animated and excting titles for our film.

We looked at LOADS of different styles and managed to pick our a few good ones (this was done a week ago with the whole group). I then narrowed it down to a couple, and myself and Mr Deans checked out which ones worked best.
Our favourite (as a group) however was a title animation called 'Bad Connection'
Looking at it again i saw it really worked and looked very effective. But when looking at this style on a black background (which we wanted) it didn't work very well.

Back to stage one...
We had to go back and search through all of them again. Then Mr Deans remembered one he thought might work, and in fact one we had looked at last time.
It was called 'static' and created an effect where the letters appeared in a random order to then create the word, but the lettters came in one by one. It looked very effective and i really liked it.

Now to choose a font..
It didn't take long to look through as i liked one called 'Bank Gothic' which worked well and looked very professional. Then Mr Deans created the titles, with me assisting, and telling him how they needed to be. And Voila! Our titles were done

I put them onto our timeline, made them the right time and slotted them in place. When watching the piece as a whole it looked great. It looked whole, real, brilliant

I really like them and enjoyed learning how to make the titles.

Drone...........

Our piece is looking good but i don't like how disjointed the individual clips sound. Some shots have more static than others, and some shots are a lot louder. We thought a way to overcome this would be to add an omnious low pitched drone over all the shots, similar to that of a computer humming.

After searching through a CD of horror sounds at number 88 (yes number 88..) I found a low pitched, horror-esque drone. It worked really well but it was too short. I had to cut it down and copy it over and over again to fill the whole piece.

I think the drone works well to portray more of a horror/thriller theme.

UPDATE

So we're nearly at the end...and I'm so excited to see the finished product
Laura's now gone away so it's up to me and Holly to complete the final tweaks and perfect our piece

At the moment we are working on 'jazzing up' our titles as in comparison they are a bit bland.
We need to warm up some shots of King and make sure everything runs smooth. We need to try and add the drone (see how it works)

CAN'T WAIT to see the finish product
x

Film Title names

We have been trying to come up with a good title, but it's not easy.

Here are some we have come up with.

• Death.com
• Caught in the web
• Caught in the net
• The Web
• The Net
• Cyber_____
• ______messaging
• Web of suicide
• No Escape (No Esc.)
• Key ______
• Dangerous _______
• Shut Down
• Alt Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
• Ctrl + Alt + DELETE
• (The) Web Of Lies

Obviously some of these are awful, but we're just trying to get our creative juices flowing...

Company

We've chosen to call our company "Handprint Productions".

We had made a list of possible names, which we narrowed down to three;

1. "Blinding Light Productions"
2. "Glass Eye Productions"
3. "Handprint Productions"

The way we chose was by thinking of logos/animations for each.

1. text coming up, then being engulfed by a blinding white light
2. a 3D glass eye rolling accross the bottom of the screen
3. a handprint appearing on screen

After talking to the technician, we realised that the Glass Eye one would take too much time to do and was too complicated, the Blinding Light one could work but it was quite simple, so we decided on Handprint. It had a nice ring to it, and we realised that the animation was simple enough to look professional.

This is the image we manipulated in Adobe After Effects. We inverted it so that it was a white hand on black, then we tinted it a dark red colour to make it seem sinister, and indicate blood and danger and horror stuff...

We chose to have simple white text (in courier to look like typing) underneath the handprint logo, and added the copyright symbol and 2009 in roman numerals to make it look more realistic and professional.

We're all very happy with the company logo :-)

Feedback on film so far

Yesterday we asked Ms Blackborow to look at our film, and she said "it's really impressive!". She also said that she no longer sees it as a student film and so isn't watching for continuity errors, but instead thinks of it as a real piece of film. She found it very frightening, and at one point put her hands over her eyes saying "this is really disturbing". This made us very happy :-)

We have to make a few small adjustments, and come up with a title, but we're nearly there!

• make a larger dissolve between the "submit" shot and the first shot of amelia and overlap the shots
• separate the ghosted shot and make it two shots
• move the first log in shot to straight after the company logo
• alternately have titles and clips
• fade down copmpany logo
• warm up shot of king
• put drone on

Progress update

Hi, back from Christmas holidays, into this snowy weather..

We're deep into our editing, ploughing through clips and takes to find the perfect ones.

We're all going to start our written work now (ish) but the main focus is still on editing (of course).

We still need to come up with a company name (or choose one from a list we made a while ago) and make a logo...

Its do-able..

Laura x