Call Sheet.

Holly has made the call sheet which we will find useful when filming our piece;

Name
Photo
Contact Number
Meeting Times

Production Schedule

By:

30^th November – Plan genre and ideas, decide group.

14^th December – Research into existing opening sequences, analysed in detail, notes on how it may be useful to you.

11^th December – Pre-production planning completed. Must include: storyboards, production schedules (this), call sheets, script etc.

1^st February – all material shot and uploaded onto media server.

17^th February – Rough edit completed and uploaded to blog.

15^th March – Final edit completed and uploaded to blog and media server.

22^nd March – Group presentations of video and evaluation.

15^th April – Blog entries answering evaluation questions, plus a video commentary.

Wednesday 5^th (first day back of term) – Book Camera.

Week beginning January 10^th  and week beginning January 17th – Shooting Footage.

Week beginning January 24^th – Edits.

Our final film pitch

For our final piece we have to create a title sequence and opening scene. Our group have decided to go down the route of a horror film, we also wanted to go down the sub-genre of teen horror. our title sequence is going to start of with four young popular girls walking round town shopping, the titles will be in a white font. As the four girls are shopping they walk past a darkened alley, the camera spins round and looks up the alley, there is a man standing there with his faced covered and dressed in all black and his hood up.  The camera then fuzzes, the camera is the following the four young girls, making the audience feel like they are being followed. Then one of the girls turn round feeling that they have been followed and the man has disappeared. The four young girls then decide to go home for there 'Sleepover' the camera cuts and fades out just leaving the title of the film. The opening scene then fades in showing all four girls sitting in the main characters bedroom, chatting, laughing all sitting round a big bowl of popcorn about to watch a film. Lauren the main character then phones for a pizza, once phoning for the pizzas 2 minutes later there is a big knock at the door, with the girls being represented as ditsy and dumb then don't realise that it couldn't possibly be the pizza delivery man, Lauren then runs down the stairs to pay the pizza man only to open the door and find the man in all black standing there with a knife, he pulls his hood down to reveal a gruesome clowns mask. Lauren screams and runs as she trys to run in the house to warn every one she goes to shut the door, the mans foot is in the door but Lauren has already ran away. The man takes big steps and Lauren slips and falls in the hallway screaming and crying the camera is at the point of view of the man and shows his feet and the knife standing over Lauren the scene then fades out into black.

Planning our final piece.

We've produced an idea of what we want to do for our opening of our horror film, which i will post later on my  blog: We've decided to avoid writing a script, as we've found that previous pieces we have filmed have seemed to planned, and the lines haven't been natural. It is essential that the impression of false speech is avoided, especially concerning horror, as horrors are designed to provoke your worst fears, and this can't be done if there is a low verisimilitude. We have allocated tasks to ourselves to do over the Christmas holidays in order to complete our planning, ready for production when we return. I am producing a plan of the film. Holly is producing a production schedule and also taking photos of potential settings. and Chloe is going to produce a storyboard to go with the plot.

 I found that the use of titles and the soundtrack together at the beginning of this film is very effective as it immediately sets the scene and also adds fear and tention. The font of this movie title sequence is white, which is highly noticable against the all black background. Then the font then changes to red, the fact that the font changed to red clearly shows that it has strong connotations of death, danger and blood. This instantly starts to build up a tense atmosphere, along with the sound playing this clearly further adds to the tense atmosphere. This is because the sounds consists of heartbeats, screams and a loud telephone ringing.
The use of the heartbeat sound instantly connotates panic and fear, however this is consequently making the audience feel this fear to upon watching it. Along side that the use of the screaming sound signifys terror, and fear and torture, which helps with the versimillitude of the scene. Then the fear highly increases as the fact that the girl can not see who is actually calling her, which helps add more tension and eerie feel to the scene, also the audience feels tension and fear to as they do not know who the voice belongs to aswell.
The repeated ringing of the phone builds up the fear , this acts as a sting as the ringing of the phone is connected to the fear of the unknown, this effects the audience more and more every time.
The shot of the house after the first two phonecalls builds up even more tension this shows to the audience that the 'unknown' caller is outside, watching the house. This shot is very effective as it is giving the audience the point of view shot as the 'unknown caller' making you feel fear for the girl inside as only the audience knows that the caller is outside waiting and watching. This help add extreme fear and tention.
This fact is verified when the caller says ''I wanna know who I'm looking at''. The house that the film is set in has a lot of windows and doors, which creates an atmosphere of tension as the feeling of being exposed is created. The tension created is always built up by the clever use of a close up of the popcorn ready to pop, like tension ready to explode. The use of music at the point in which the girl is rushing to lock the doors is very effective, as it adds a sense of drama to the scence, and makes the audience panic. The close up of the girls face when she says ''What kind of game'' is effective in inflicting fear on the audience, as the girls fear is magnified by the close up, therefore the audience immediately feels everything that she is feeling. The audience to this film would be an older audience, with a high age rating, as the use of sound and camera angles is effective in creating a high fear factor. This is useful to us as a group, as our desired plot is going to be in a house, with someone being watched, and therefore we can use a lot of the skills and techniques that the producers and directors have used in the opening to this film. This film is also useful as it is of the genre we have chosen - teen horror, and therefore various techniques such as the feeling of being watched will prove to be very useful when it comes to actually filming our piece.

Opening sequence to 'Ghost Ship'

This film is clearly aimed at an older audience, as the opening scene conatains a lot of gory content, which implies that as the film goes on, the content of the rest of the film will become even more gory. The opening to this film is very effective in provoking fear in it's audience. It starts off with a calm and relaxed environment, with the characters slow dancing, and a woman singing a soft, slow and relaxing song. The use of titles is also effective in help provide the relaxed tone, as the font is pink, connoting innocence. The scene suddenly changes, and things start happening on the ship without anyone touching anything, and the sound of the singing becomes distant, creating a sense of detachment, and changing the relaxed tone to a disconnected and disorientated tone. The fast camera movements also indicate that the relaxed mood has changed. The lingering close up of the wire with blood and flesh stuck to it magnifies the shock and horror the audience will be feeling at this time, and therefore exaggerating their fear. The lack of sound coming from the people, with a creaking sound in the background creates an eerie atmosphere, and a sense of abandonment. The screaming child at the end of the opening scene highlights her vulnerability and helplessness, as she is the only one left. The opening is extremely effective overall, mostly due to the juxtaposition of the tones included in the scene. We will include the unexpected element of this opening in our own if we feel the need, as it has an excellent shock effect on the audience.

Opening titles for Halloween

The opening of this film, is a classic horror thriller opening. The modern day horrors tend to have a 'normal' setting and do not back track on the past of the film the very beginning of how it all started.
However this film does back track and they tell you and give you the background story of the horror. The opening shows how Michael becomes a killer.
The camera shot at first is a point of view shot(Michaels P.O.V) and you see him putting on a mask and going to the kitchen. This has an eerie affect to it, as you can't see the person however you can see what he sees. The effect on the camera is that we can see through the eye holes of the mask however we can still see the holes. It's quite a low angle shot, showing he's either small or looking down. This adding an childlike effect.  When he reaches the kitchen. There is a medium shot of him opening the kitchen drawer and picking up a knife, which then goes to a medium close up of the knife, this signifies that the knife is significant to the plot. However Michael still goes unseen.
This gives the audience the killers point of view. This adding to the effect of the horror making the audience feel fear. This contributes as this film is a horror thriller, as our group wanted to film using this genre, it helped that we watched this as it will be use to us as we can be inspired and use the themes within our own film.

The Opening Sequence of ''Blade''

This is the first opening sequence to a film of our chosen genre (horror) that I am going to analyse. 

the music which opens the scene is very loud and upbeat, also it seems to be very overpowering this could be used to create a sense of danger and a compelling atmosphere. However the darkness and the strong use of flashing strobe lighting also further provides to the sense of danger and compelling atmosphere, as the lack of sight connotates a element of the unknown and a high amount of danger. also the amount of people in the opening scene also develops a sense claustrophobia and again also creating a sense of danger, this because the feeling of claustrophobia provokes peoples fears, therefore creating an effect on the audience.

The use of titles is very effective in terms of infication which genre the film is, as the fond is red, this helping connote danger, blood, and fire etc. tThe red liquid spraying from the ceiling also projects these connotations to the audience. Overall it's an effective opening, as the use of sound and imagery clearly declares which genre the film is, and straight away has an effect on the audience by creating fear. The audience of this film is obviously an older audience, due to the fear contained in the opening sequence. I assume from the opening that it's aimed at teenagers, as the opening doesn't contain content that is too scary. As a group, our chosen genre is teen horror, and therefore some of the content in this opening will be used as a useful reference for when we are planning our own opening. The immediate introduction of the horror genre is what we are aiming to do, in similarity to this opening .

Research into our chosen genre.

i am not starting to analyse some opening scenes and title sequences of out groups chosen genre which is horror/ thriller. However there are also many sub-genres to horror which i have found upon doing research to be teen horror, slasher, saranic, vampire, alien, evil children... etc. i also discovered that ther genre of horror is regulary crossed and linked with other genres, the most popular being science-fiction. Horrors are designed to provoke our worst fears, but at the same time entertain us. A man called Tim Dirks published a quote on his website of films saying ''the best horror films only imply or suggest the horror in subtle ways.".  I also found out that the earliest horror films were gothic in style, and usually set in mansions or haunted castles. The characters generally included vampires, devils, ghosts, monsters, mad scientists etc. During my research, I also came across a list of notable horror film directors:
- Dario Argento
- John Carpenter
- Roger Corman
- Wes Craven
- David Cronenberg
- Tobe Hooper
- F.W. Murnall

Continuity Task, Final Video

This is our final video for the continuity task. Overall, we're very  happy with it the overall outcome of the video. We've aimed to include all three of the criteria (180 degree rule, action match and shot reverse shot). We also aimed to make it more entertaining, and therefore decided to add music to the final piece.The music that we included was;
-Dizzee Rascal Jezebel
-Dizzee Rascal Fix Up, Look Sharp
 We had a lot of editing to do after the footage was shot, for example cuts and fades, but we managed to succeed in the end and achieved what we wanted to create.

Editing the Footage for the Continuity Task

We have just made edits to the footage we shot, and it's now rendering. If we find that any more edits need to be made, we will make them, and then render the footage again. The edits we made today include:
- cuts
- dissolves
- fades to black

Uploading footage to the media server

We have just uploaded the second lot of footage to the media server, and have found from out log sheet that the following files have no use to us due to reasons such as actors laughing, wrong dialogue and wrong actions or background noise :
- file 0120
- file 0121
- file 0122
- file 0124
- file 0125
- file 0126
- file 0127
- file 0128
- file 0129
- file 0130
- file 0131
- file 0134
- file 0136

The majority of files were discarded due to bad acting, and had to make sure we shot the scene numerous times in order to achieve what we imagined the shot to be like and make the film to a higher standard.

Script

Script

Hannah Harvey

Location: classroom, corridor, common room

Actors: Holly and Chloe

Camera woman: Hannah

Holly walks down the corridor and opens a door into the classroom. music is playing and fades out when she opens the door (action match)

Holly walks across the classroom and sits down at a desk next to Chloe. as she opens  the door another song fades in as she walks across the classroom, then fades out once holly sits down(180 degree rule)

Chloe is in detention.

They begin talking. (shot reverse shot)

Holly: Hiya.

Chloe: Hi.

Holly: What are you doing here?

Chloe: I’m stuck in stupid detention.

Holly: Oh, well I’ll just wait for you in the common room then.

Holly walks out of the room and in to the common room(music is playing) and sits down. (The music fades out as she opens the door)

She puts in her ipod. Camera zooms in on ipod, volume of music increases and then fades out. ( a different song is playing loud and fades out when the film fades out)

Production Schedule

Week 1 (20^th October)

Book the camera on Friday 22^nd for week beginning 1^st November.

Begin basic planning.

Week 2 (27^th October)

Finish planning (location, actors etc.)

Week 3 (2^nd November)

Shooting over the full week.

Update blog.

Upload footage on to the media server by the end of the week.

Week 4 (9^th November)

Shoot version two.

Upload to the media server.

Edit the footage.

Complete and upload on to blog by the end of the week.

Week 5 (16^th November)

Present task, and evaluate.

Update blog.

Review of shots

We have reviewed the shots we created last week, and have come to a desicion to start film again, due to the fact that we are aiming for a high level and want to create a higher quality piece of video. We ticked the boxes in terms of what we needed to include, however we would like to extend our film, and therefore we are going to film on either Monday or Tuesday night. We found that file 103 is completely useless to us, as it wasn't how we imagined it to be. The actor, (Holly) started laughing, and also as the camera was filming the door it was very shaky, as we didn't use the tripod correctly. The majority of the clips need improving, as the camera wasn't as steady enough as we wanted it to be, due to the lack of the use of the tripod and a steady hand.
 On Monday/Tuesday we will aim to:
- use the tripod when appropriate
- include the three criteria of the continuity task (action match, 180 degree rule, shot/reverse shot)
- we will have changed our script and production schedule slightly, as we are aiming to add more length to the clip, and more of a storyline, therefore we will need to choose another day to do more filming
- we will create an extended video with more conversation and a range of shots
- make sure that the film we shoot is not shaky and looks professional.

Shooting

We successfully shot the footage for our continuity task last week, and are about to upload to clips on to the media server. If we find that we aren't happy with some of the shots, we will rearrange our production schedule and find another time to re-take our shots. However, if we are happy with what we have produced we will begin to edit them in order to produce a short clip displaying continuity skills.

Planning

We are currently finishing off our planning for the continuity task , which includes the script, the storyboard and the production schedule. We have the storyboard left to do, which will be done on xtranormal.com. we will soon begin our shooting, and then load the footage on to the media server and proceed with editing the clips.

Shooting

On Monday night we filmed all of our footage for the continuity task and are about to upload the clips onto the media server, then after that we will watch them and if we are not happy with them then we will arrange to record it again. However if we find that we are happy with the shots then we will start to edit them in order to finish our continuity task.

Our final video.

This is our final video, over all we found this a very sucessful process as we developed our editing skills and we also found that the overall outcme worked quite well. although we had a few problems when editing the shots as it took to long to render but once rendered it was still eally jumpy so we edited it with the razor tool and then exported it as a window media file and once that rendered it wasnt jumpy.

Shooting and Editing.

We successfully shot our footage within the school facilities.However we had a lot of takes and therefore whilst uploading the footage to the media server, we had to delete quite a lot of scenes an example of this is the first shot took 8 takes to get right. The reason we had so many different takes was because the actors we chose had trouble with keeping a straight and serious face whilst filming, so we had to film a particular scene many times in order to get the one we wanted and one that was actually suitable for the film. We've deleted all the takes we don't need, and we now have all of the footage we need uploaded onto 'the prisoner' on the media server. To edit the shots we where using the adobe premier software to make it flow into a movie, for some of the edits we had to use the edit dip to black effect this helped as we didn't film before the start of our shot meaning we did not have enough time or space before the shot to edit to make it flow right also we had a few problems with the sound  as we had a click every time the shot started so we used to razor tool to delete that part of the shot and clicked ripple delete to move along the shot to make it flow also at the end of the film we looped the audio for to give the effect of continuous laughter and also added a echo to laugh to give it a better effect.

We decided to use xtranormal.com to create our storyboard, we were able to add camera angles, speech and movements such as crossing arms etc, also we where able to create setting different characters and also background sound. overall i found using xtranormal a quick effective way to create  a simple storyboard. I found this process very simple as all you had to do was write the script into the programme and choose your preferences for the movie and the programme created it for you.

Movement Shots.

Editing and titling  this video was loads easier than the last one, as we knew how to do everything and use the software (Adobe Premier Pro) alot more effectively. We had a slight error when rendering as the program kept freezing, but we solved it by closing and reopening the software these where just a few technical difficulties that where sorted out.

Shots

This is our video of still shots. Overall we had a many problems with the software (Adobe Premier Pro) at first, we couldn't get used to labelling or editing the video, but we did eventually manage to get it finished. However, the computer and the software kept freezing making the process very time consuming , which made it quite difficult. We managed to get there in the end though and hopefully we'll have better luck with the movement shots video!

Editing.

On Tuesday we began to edit the types of shots that we took outside previously, it was very hard when we started because we didn't really know what to do or how to use the software properly but we arefinding it more easy now and can do different types of edits.we particualy found using the software very challenging, and along with having technical difficulties we found editing quite hard as we have never actually done it before. we are now learning how to use Adobe Premier Pro and are finding editing our videos alot easier that when we first started.

Opening Scene To My Movie.

Steve and Dave are studying in their free period at University. Steve is updating his hard-drive, and Dave is thinking of ways to distract him, and steal the hard-drive he wants. Along comes Sally, a perfect distraction for Steve, considering a girl has never properly talked to him before. Steve is taken by suprise when she asks him out on a date, and Dave sees it as a perfect opportunity to steal the hard-drive, now that Steve has an excuse to leave it unguarded.

My Movie Pitch.

Genre -  Geek Chic

Steve and Dave are both geeks. Steve has the hard-drive that Dave wants, but Steve loses it whilst on his first date, and they both must find it again, as it contains the information on how to contact aliens in further galaxies.