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

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

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

BLK Feedback 12/12/08

I showed our media teacher our sequence so far, even though it was not the final order and we still have some things to film/re-shoot
here is what she had to say:

• The girls part must be first-the narrative and story doesn't make sense; it looks like she's talking to her boyfriend. She should be first with an establishing shot of her house
• NO swearing in the scrip - it's not appropriate
• The close ups of the knives should go later, after the men have got her address because the pace of the action is begins to pick up and so it would lead in nicely into the quick montage of the briefcase.
• Also the titles may not be needed to break up the shots in the briefcase; a montage may be enough

She told us that our shots were really good and of a high quality which is good, but when we re-shoot we should get some more shots of King from the angle which you can see him in the mirror, as it is a really creepy shot.

Overall positive comments which is really good, and I feel we are prepared for our re-shoot.

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

Reflections of watching test footage

After watching the footage in the lesson, we realised some important factors to consider when doing our actual shoot, and made some observations and changes to the piece.

1. It wasn't snappy enough (but we realised this towards the end of our takes after reviewing them).
2. We don't have enough continuity, so we need to change the action so that it involves continuity other than the conversation online.
3. We decided who would play the girl.
4. After watching the different shots of the murderer with the briefcase, we realised which lighting looked best, and discovered that a mixture of different shots and angles could look really effective. We can cut it up to make it SNAPPIER and show some more continuity by matching-on-action with sharpening knives etc.

Test Shoot Evaluation

We had our test shoot yesterday, so this is just a little review of how it went and what we still have to do..

We were all pretty much on time (not that Laura had far to go) which meant that we had a lot of time, however after eating lunch, it took us a while to get into the working mood. We started trying to develop our story more so that we could make our opening sequence better.

We hadn't planned the exact shots we were going to take, we had just planned which locations to use. This meant we had to make it up on the spot, which surprisingly worked quite well.. We managed to find some good props such as a briefcase, kitchen knives, a wooden mannequin thing etc, that were effective and quite chilling. We didn't have our male actors, so me and Amelia had to stand in for them. This meant that you couldn't really get a sense of the contrast between the "victim girl" and "scary murderous men" as both were played by us..

We realised the importance of 100% commitance, because it is nearly impossible to film and act with just two people. This was especially evident when using the boom microphone, as we had to prop it up against things to get it in the right place.

Screen test result

After looking at the footage of me and Amelia as the girl, we decided that Amelia should be the girl because she seemed to fit the role better. We need to get Holly's approval before going ahead with that but I'm sure she'll agree once she sees the scene.

Also, thanks Holly for the pic of your dad! We'll get Amelia to upload one of her dad too.

BLK feedback

hope it all went well today girls, looking forward to seeing your footage :-)

BLK feedback

fantastic stuff so far girls! I love the website/girls idea, we can have a look at it a bit more in class on weds.

as for Laura's shed/cellar/art/studio/washing room - what a fab location -and the empty bungalow idea, that could work so well too

great research, great ideas, well done

BLK feedback

Girls - such a great start! All the teachers are enjoying reading your work, and looking at your group blog!!