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.

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.

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

Shoot - more photos

Here are some photos from our shoot including photos of our cast and crew, behind the scenes, and screen snapshots to help when resetting a scene.

Editing stuff - feedback

i think that would make it clearer, but i suppose what we should do is try it where it shows her talking to "julie" and then show that to random people to get their opinions as to whether or not it makes sense.

About the "F word" - I KNOW!! im very confused, because if it was a certificate 18, then there definitely would be swearing, however, i suppose since it is a school project, the rules are different?

Try some different things, maybe swap the orders of the clips on another timeline or something...

Good luck!

Oh by the way, the film clip looks helpful, i like that film, but what language is it dubbed in?!?! Lol.

Laura

Conversations

Something I've noticed in watching film clips, and TV clips, is that when a conversation is happening, the camera isn't constantly on the person who is talking, it is also on the other person to see their reactions, while the first person is still talking. I think we should do this with ours because it makes it look more natural, and will show off our continuity skills.

Here is a film clip showing a conversation, which we can adapt by using cross-cutting, (shown in the film clip of "The Holiday" which is earlier on in our blog.)

Shooting script for Saturday 13th

Our shoot is scheduled for 10.30am - 4, on Saturday 13th December at my house. We will arrive at 10.30, King will arrive at 11 so that we are all set-up by the time he arrives. We need my Dad for one short scene (walking out of the cellar), so we will bring him downstairs to the cellar when he is needed. We need King, and Amelia, but we will do King's scenes first so that he can go, as Amelia has to be there the whole time anyway.

Location: Cellar

• King's lines from all the different angles (which will be decided on location)
• King retrieving the print out
• The two men leaving together
• Typing on the screen (King)

Location: My Bedroom

• Typing on the screen (Amelia)
• Re-shoot Amelia's OTS shot of her typing as it was on blogger and not our forum
• Shot of forum (can be done anywhere, but bedroom is easier as there is more room)

Hey guys, just thinking, since we need to do a group treatment, I've done an individual one, so what are your thoughts on it so we can make a group one and agree on a final idea? (It's on my blog btw)

X

Male actor number 2

Name: Kingsley Zachariah Ben-Adir

Age: 22

Height: 6ft?

Role: Man 1 (name tbc)

As mentionned before, King is an actual actor, so we are going to use this to our full potential and give him most of the lines.

Male Actor number 1

Name: Rick Allen

Age: 53

Height: 6ft

Role: Man 2 (name tbc)

This is my dad, who has graciously stepped in to be one of our male actors, alongside Kingsley Zachariah Ben-Adir (a.k.a King). He won't have to do much as he will just be sharpening the knives and filling the briefcase, with one line of dialogue (as he's not an actor).

Our shoot - photographic evidence

These are some photos we took on our shoot. This is the creepy bungalow, but it was slightly too dark to actually film it, but I thought I'd upload a photo just to give an idea.




So that we could match shots if we needed to re-shoot anything, we took photos of the frames on our camera. Here are some I have included.





We thought this was a great idea as it makes it really easy to make the shot look the same because we have photographic evidence.

Looking forward to our second actual shoot, as we will have our male actors and it should be great!

Reflections of the Shoot

Shoot 1 - Saturday 29th November

What Went Wrong

• Amelia forgot to collect the equipment (tripod and boom pole) from Miss B after her French Oral. Fortunately, she picked it up the next morning and we had it on time for our shoot in the end.
• In our footage, on some shots the microphone picked up mobile signals and this can be heard. We didn't realise this would be recorded - however it is only on some shots that are not too important, and we can just cut them out.
• Planning - we didn't plan our shots out in a storyboard style; instead we just shot from every angle that everyone wanted to and it worked out pretty well. In our sequence we want a range of shots from a lot of angles to give the impression that the girl is being watched, but it was very tedious to shoot the same conversation over and over again! We now realise we need to start drafting storyboards and we are currently doing this in the form of post-it notes on sugar paper, so as to move them around in different orders.
• We couldn't decide whether to film with music from the iPod speakers, as originally agreed, or whether to add it in later. We tried it with various music tracks then disagreed about what song to use - some were too obviously depressing, others too happy. A Radiohead track called "Just" was the best, but after this we decided not to include music as the continuity would be hard to get right. We will deal with it this weekend.

What Went Well

• We managed to film all the shots we wanted for the girl's part, and the footage looks realistic and not too staged.
• We stayed within the time limit we had, even having lunch inbetween!
• All our equipment worked and was used to its full potential - there were no accidents or misplacing of items.
• Costume and make-up looked good. We actually used eyedrops to make Amelia look as though she was crying before every shot, which worked really well.
• Everyone was there on time and left at the same time, and our actor turned up with an open mind.
• We tested the script and found it to be good - it wasn't too cheesey, predictable or over the top.
• We communicated well with each other, and voiced our opinions without needing to be bossy or rude. This came up when talking about the music and everyone was very rational and decisive.
• We always thought of what was best for the group

Script Draft

Our sequence is an online conversation between this victim and the murderer. The script starts half way through the conversation. We have decided the girls name is 'Emma', and the murderers screen name as the agony aunt is 'Julie'.

JULIE

(muttering) Oh, no...that must be really hard for you...Did you take your pills?...Yeah?....Hows your mum?.......Is she still drinking at night?...(continued)

EMMA

I feel so alone at school...I wish I could talk to you all the time...Things seem to be getting worse. I don't know what to do!

JULIE

You know you can always talk to me...I'll always be here for you.

EMMA

I know. You've helped me so much. How can I ever repay you?

JULIE

(Laughing, not typed) Yeah...that comes later, darlin'....

(typed) Oh, you know I love talking to you too. But you seem distant tonight...

EMMA

I know. I'm sorry (crying). I just want to end it all! I feel like I want to die...

JULIE

(not typed) Bingo....

(typed) No, don't say that. We can work it out together. I've been through the same thing as you, I know what it feels like.

(pause)

Don't think things like that, things will get better. I promise.

(pause)

Emma?

(pause)

(not typed) Fuck, where did she go?

MAN 2

What?

JULIE

She's fucking gone and topped herself, man. Oh, hold on, hold on. She's back. She's writing.

EMMA

Sorry. The phone rang but it was for mum. I mean, why would it be for me?

(pause)

Can I ask you something?

JULIE

Anything. You can ask me anything.

EMMA

A favour? Would you come over?