Filming again

We fully edited all of our footage together, the result however we were very upset with. We didn't have what we wanted interms of effect and clairty. We took the decision to go out and refilm, not only are we refilming but we have also gotten a new actor for out main character, he also fits the character well and is not a student. Instead of getting a student this time around we just went outside into our friend circles to find more actors and this turned out well as we now have a new actor who we believe will be better. However, only time will tell.

Advanced audience research

A very small audience sample

Our group got together and started to do more in depth research on our audience. We defined our target audience as being a range from different ages and status. We originally only wanted teenagers from around 18, but we made a choice to make the audience have more variety so that we can have more people interested in our production. Our audience now ranges from social grades E(being unemployed/receiving benefits) up to  C2(being skilled working class)

The ages we wanted defiantly started from eighteen as the films that are scariest from the horror genre usually will have a viewing age of eighteen. The max age for out audience will be around twenty-twenty5, as the themes and situations in our production will be more suited to a younger generation rather than having people over thirty.

We decided that we would use a slightly urban area in our piece purely for the reason that it would be relevant to the ages of our audience, we made sure that we got the whole of the area we filmed in an establishing shot, as our audience may feel towards the area, making the production feel a little more life like.

Roles of the group

                                    Roles of the group

We all had different roles within the group; this of course was the make the workload spread out among us, saving valuable time.

Dee – she worked mainly on the storyboarding, although we helped she did most of the drawings on the storyboards.

She also took a hand in the screenplay, I threw ideas at her and we collaborated with Simon to all write out the screenplay. She also allowed for us to use her house as the main location. She also did some of the filming when she was not involved in acting as she was the main actor also.

Simon- Simon worked mostly on the music for our piece, he used programs on the macs to create and construct music and sound effects that was fitting to our piece. These included dark musical tones and even a heartbeat. He also did the majority of the editing for the preliminary.

Me- Although we all did some editing, I took major part in the editing, I did a heavy amount of research on editing techniques and tools of premiere pro (the program we used to edit) I also did the majority of the filming in our production. During the times I wasn’t filming I was doing continuity checks, making sure the lighting and actions of our characters stayed the same and relevant during different takes.

Audience pie chart

We did a survey and found that 70% of the 100 people we asked said that our production would be something that they're interested in watching. We went around our school as well as asking a few people on the street, we looked for people who were in the ranges of our target audience and tried to see if we had tailored our production towards them. We found out that we actually did a pretty good job, since over half of the people we asked said that they would be interested. This i great news for us since we have reached the target that we wanted, we hope that when we film again for our second draft that we can get significantly more people interested in our production.

Screenplay for main production

SCREENPLAY OF MAIN PRODUCTON
Key: Ext=Exterior.
Int=Interior 

NIGHT TIME-WIND BLOWING- NON-DIAGETIC SOUND OF HEARTBEAT

EXT: ESTABLISHING SHOT OF FRONT DOOR

CUT TO: MAN WALKING THROUGH THE ALLEY WAY NON-DIAGETIC SOUNDS OF LEAVES CRUNCHING AND LOUD SLOW FOOTSTEPS

CUT TO: INT: STILL LATE AT NIGHT DEE’S KITCHEN-DEE ON THE FLOOR LAYING SIDEWAYS COVERED IN BLOOD WITH SIMPLE CLOTHING-PAN OF HER FROM HEAD TO TOE

CUT TO: LONG SHOT OF MAN WALKING THROUGH THE ALLEYWAY

CUT TO: MAN GETTING CLOSER TO FRONT DOOR STILL MAINTAINING SLOW MOVEMENT

CUT TO: INT DEE’S KITCHEN

DEE: (GASPS FOR BREATH WHILE STRUGGLING TO MOVE)

DISSOLVE TO: CLOSE UP OF CLOCK TICKING-SPEED UP OF CLOCK ANGLES MOOVINGBACK IN TIME-WHITE BRIGHT BLINDING FLASHBACK (POST PRODUCTION)

INT-DAYTIME NO NON-DIAGETIC SOUND SIMPLY OF DEE HUMMING WHILST COOKING IN THE COMFERT OF OWN HOME

KNOCK AT DOOR-EXT: OUTSIDE DEE’S FRONT DOOR

ZOOM IN ON MAN’S HANDS HIGHLIGHTING RING- PROP

INT:FRONT DOOR/ KITCHEN

DEE OPENS DOOR FREE HAND SHOT NATURAL FLOW PAN SHOT OF DOOR-OPEN HANDLE SLOWLY

MAN: HELLO THERE

DEE: HELLO

OVER THE SHOULDER SHOT

MAN: IVE JUST MOVED INTO THE NEIGHBOURHOOD, MY NAME IS JOE PORTER

MID SHOT OF DEE CONCENTRATING ON HER FACIAL EXPRESSION-FOLLOWED BY TWO SHOT OF BOTH MAN AND DEE

DEE:OHH! NICE TO MEET YOU JOE 

(SHAKE HANDS- BOTH MEMBERS SMILE)

ZOOM IN ON SHAKING HAND- STILL HIGHLIGHTING RING- PROP

CUT TO: BIRDS EYE VIEW OF GIRL LAYING ON THE FLOOR

INT: OF DEES KITCHEN BACK TO NIGHTTIME SCENE

CUT TO: EXT- HOODED MAN PLACES KEY INTO THE FRONT DOOR-ZOOM INTO SHOES TO SHOW STEPS WALKING TOWARDS THE VICTIM

MAN: (WALKS THROUGH AND LOOKS DOWN AT GIRL)

HIGH ANGLE SHOT OF GIRL-TWO SHOT OF SCENE VICTIM AND MAN-FADE OUT

HEADING-SUBHEADING-PRODUCER-EDITOR-DSD

DEE DANIEL SIMON 

Step 6 analysis

Step 6 

We all met up again and finished our final step of analysis for our piece. We finalised all of the shots and edits possible and available to us. We discussed everything that we're going to use we also decided that when editing is finished we are going to straight away re-film as we have some brand new and fresh ideas to implement, such as during the opening we wanted to have cuts during the killers walking, these cuts would go to the victim, showing them both at the same time. We also believe that this will save time greatly as we are combining two scenes together through the means of editing.

We use the establishing shot of our killer walking to intrigue the audience and have them question why he is walking and where. We used the night time to help create a slight tension, as the night time is generally scarier than the day time, we took the inspiration for using the night from pretty much any horror film but our source was the movie 'Scream'

We also made note of the sound and sound effects. We previously had already chosen to have footsteps but now we have decided to have a heart beat when she screen is fading to black as he enters the house, we believe that this will help build the tension and put some fear into the audience, which after all is our overarching main goal.
On top of this we wanted to use some non-diagetic music during the walk. The music we want to use will be a dark low tone melody, to help set the mood up for the audience.

Like we have previously stated we are going to use a clock going backwards to show a gap in time, we originally wanted to use it but we found that it took up too much time, so before we re-film we're going to film the clock so that it doesn't interfere with our main filming.

The last thing we spoke about was the zoom into the ring, the ring on our killers finger is how the audience is going you link the connections between the scenes of daytime and night time, being able to put the pieces together, letting them realise the killer and the neighbour  are the same person.

Step 5 analysis

For our fifth step we came up with some finalised ideas that we wanted for our main production.
First of all we decided on having cuts during the walk cycle of our killer, we're gonna cut to and fro between the killer and the victim, to add pace and tension. This helps keep the audience interested, making them wonder who these people are and what they're doing.

Another choice in editing was the cross fades, we're going to be doing this during the longer walking cycle of what we have, making our killer get further down the road after every fade. This again adds more pace as we don't just have to watch him walk all the way down the road.

We want to have a flashback in our production too, with use of a clock going backwards in order to show the audience a clear indication that there is flashback going on. We're also going to use a white out here too, just to make sure that the audience is fully aware we are now going back in time.

Finally for music we decided on having a scream at the end, just to signify that our victim has been killed, also it's a final scare before our production is over.

Screenplay research

Screenplay research

Firstly our group was unaware of how to construct a full screenplay, we sat down together around the computers and began to do research. We found out that scripts and screenplays were two different things, a screenplay being for a film and a script being for a play. We found many useful pictures including the two above of which one of them is the hit film 'Die hard'. These pictures made it able for us to be able to follow the ways in which a screenplay is constructed. We've started to construct our screenplay (we have had previous 'scripts' which weren't detailed) with a lot of detail. We're going to post our results soon.

More editing!

The editing process has been going fine, I've become more experienced in using Premiere Pro. I am now able to edit  with more efficiency and I am also familiar with all the aspects of the programme. I am able use things such transitions and effects to be able to create an interesting setting int he scene. With things such as dissolve I am able to make the cutting and motion between two shots a lot smoother which over all gives a nice polished effect to the main piece.
I have also learnt to be more careful with the filming, in terms of allowing three seconds to pass after pressing the record button. This process is dubbed as 'Editing time' as it makes cutting the clip simpler. I have nearly finished the editing process, as the majority of clips are edited and fully cut the parts that are needed. All that is needed is just for me to collaborate them all together and make the transitions smooth.

Mirror effects

We are able to see Tariq and not the camera 

We was curious to find out how about people used mirrors in films, we viewed a couple of films that used them just to try and grasp how it's done. Our answer was angles, they use specific and special angles in order to make it so that the camera will only pick up the person in the mirror and not the camera crew, we did a small tester on this with a picture (as we originally planned to use a mirror shot in our piece) we found that we was able to achieve the effect we wanted.
We did this just so that we knew that we were able to do some interesting effects with the equipment that we had. It turned out to be a good idea and we are planning on perhaps using a mirror effect in our actual piece.

Third day of filming

The group after we had filmed.

Because of the unsatisfactory quality of the last bit of filming we decided go back and film, so we got our actor back and headed back to our location. We took a higher consideration of continuity and even had to go out on a weekend to film our day time shots as it gets dark rather early since it's the winter.
We added a bigger variety of shots so we could have more to work with in terms of editing. We checked back over the footage to find that we was happy with it, we took into account editing time by waiting at least 3 seconds after pressing record to start acting. After we finished we treated our actors and had a moment to relax as it was still the weekend, the editing process will start today as soon as possible.

Behind the scenes: make up

We had to do some make up for the ending scenes of our piece, so Dee (being obsessed with make up) took matters into her own hands and used eye shadow and smudged it under her eyes, on her neck and her head in some places to give the effect of a bruise. We personally feel that it was pretty good as it did look mostly authentic making the scene look a little more realistic. We thought we would upload a video of the make up just as a little extra for behind the scenes of our piece.

Sound effect research

During the editing of the first half of our groups clips, I decided on a few sound effects to use. These include sound effects such as a heartbeat and footsteps. We hope to use these to add an atmosphere to our piece and even make it slightly more creepy. With this in mind I went internet scouting for a website that was able to grant me with royalty and copyright free sound effects, this search led me to the website http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/pir/PIRsfx.shtml which has a large variety of different effects. This site has been helpful in the editing stage in providing me with a huge arsenal of non-diegetic sounds.

Changes needed to be made

Today the entire group of DSD came together with our actor involved too and decided on what needs to be changed when we go out to re film, as we were rather disappointed in what we had. We planned to use a different variety of shot types just to keep things fresh and new, as we found ourselves sticking to familiar shot types that we're some what comfortable with. We plan to step outside of our comfort zone and go with some more of the obscurities in media, such as tilts. Overall we just hope to improve the quality of our piece drastically! As currently we feel at a loss of the time that we took to produce what we have. So we need to have a longer time so we decided to meet up on the weekend to get the daytime shots as it was rather hard as it gets darker a lot faster during the winter, we also are going to pay more attention to things such as background noise and try to get out early enough that people won't really be around. With this changes in effect we hope that we can use our time and produce a piece of much higher quality than i previous one,

Behind the scenes of filming

We wanted to do a couple of extras towards our piece, so we decided to have a few behind the scenes pictures and videos. Here we have a picture of Dee who is our main actor, she is holding the items used in our piece (ketchup jokes aside) this was on the second day of filming, during our final scene. We found the use of radio static to be very effective and plan to use it again when we re film as it created a very unique and creepy atmosphere. Within the next coming days we should have more behind the scenes footage and pictures to keep you all informed on how we are doing during our creative process.

Second day filming

We went out again yesterday and began filming, we filmed the day scene as well as the ending scenes, we are however disappointed with the quality of the shots and the lighting, so we plan to go out again and re-film. We plan to make our shots of much better quality and have the lighting a lot more clearer so that the end result is a lot more up to scratch. The problems came from the cameraman, the actor however we had no problems with, we also had a couple problems with sound and in that we have now decided to use some more of diegetic sound. We are starting editing on the first day of filming as we were really happy with the end result of that, we do plan to go back out and begin filming as soon as possible. Next time we go back out to film we'll be a lot more careful, this we are one hundred percent sure of. We are going to be keeping a much closer eye on continuity as well as the lighting so that two scenes right next to each other do not have radically different light effects.

First day filming

We finally grouped up and went out to film, we gathered up the group and got out actors and headed off to our location. We arrived when daylight was still out, due to this we waited around for an hour or two. (as it's during the winter so it gets dark rather early) We filmed the first bunch of scenes and used a couple different shots such as Birdseye shot, POV shots, low angle shot and a few other interesting shots including some intresting camera movement thrown in for good measure. Overall it was a pretty successful day, we got a fair amount done and was all rather happy with the results as it was what we hoped to have filmed and the quality was good too. When we got back we went onto the computers and began to edit the first half, so to save time later on when we finish the rest of our filming as we won't need to edit the whole thing.

Costume conclusions

As a group we decided to go against what we had previously stated, as we are having all of our shots at nighttime and having our actor walk through an alley way and a small estate we decided that a all black clothing selection wouldn't seem too out of the ordinary. It also covers our actors appearance and since we do not want to show his face to the audience we decided that he looks more concealed within his black attire. We decided for him to wear a black hooded jumper with a black bomber jacket (also we didn't want him to freeze on the cold winters night, so the bomber jacket was added for two reasons) he also wore black trousers and black trainers. We hope that the audience can see the effect that we are going for, hopefully they can see that he is "hidden" in a way. Some more costume research may have to be done on this.

Actors

So now we're getting into the filming stages of the course, we ran a couple auditions between some school friends and friends outside of school to see which person would fit the idea we had for our character. We chose one of our fellow students as he had a build similar to what I invisioned the charcter would look like, this would be a rather stocky man, fairly tall and appear rather threatening. We think that this would be a good choice as he seemed to be competant at following instructions from us.

For the female charcter we actually chose a member of our group. We chose Dee as she fit the bill of the female character really well, when she did her audition we saw that she could act vunerable, frail and frightened. This of course is exactly what we needed in our scenes.

Now with our actors ready we are going to begin filming really shortly, check back soon for updates.

Step 4 analysis

We had our group meeting and drew up our step 4 of our analysis plan. we took in to consideration some camera effects and ligthing effects that we could use in our piece, we decided on using a time lapse of light to signify time passing during our scene. We also come up with the structure of our story, giving the beginning middle and ending of the scenes, listing the shots, sound effects and even the camera position in our scenes. We structured our piece to have a tension and some obscure things, such as filming a clock going backwards to signify time going back. We hope to be able to impliment all and everyone of these ideas into the piece we are creating to make a truly intresting and obscure horror/thriller piece.

Our logo

We came out with the logo name for our group, we looked around on the web and found some creepy fonts that have no copy right and are also royalty free. We chose a font named 'mothman' which we found has some connection to the horror urban legend of 'the mothman' which is a genuinely unsettling to hear/read about.

Vlog:killers costume

Our group went around the school with a camera and did small interviews with students and teachers talking about and taking advice on what costume our killer should wear, we had some interesting suggesting and a rather obscure suggestion, we each took a video and put it on our blogs, we all came together shortly after and are in the process of debating to which idea will shall take.

Step 3 analysis

Third step

So we finished step 3 of our analysis. we had a focus on some of the post production methods we can use like flash backs and my idea of a time lapse involving some lighting effects to create some interesting atmospheres. We are also intrigued in using some more of the obscure shots. all of this boils down to the simple fact that we want our audience to react, we also want to be able to control these reactions. We wish to make our audience feel fear as our main emotion, we want to break away from some of the conventions of horror such as a killer all in black or a twist ending, we want something a little more plain (i guess you could say) with possibly a killer in standard  clothing such as jeans and a t shirt possibly a bomber jacket too. With saying this we still want to have our piece set in the night time, purely just to amplify the fear. we were considering using a POV shot of the killer, for two reasons, it conceals the identity of our killer as well as the audience are forced to watch his actions, including standing over the girl as she struggles. we hope these factors will combine to make a genuinely creepy atmosphere.

Half term holiday is over.

After a week of time off, everyone's all bright eyed and bushy tailed for the new term, our group hopes to get back to work as soon as possible and get back on schedule. We hope to increase our work flow this term and to be more on top of our filming as well as editing after we've done the filming, we hope that this term will be very productive and to get all of our work finished before the christmas break.

Costume

To a horror film with a murderer, the murderer's costume is a very important piece which needs extensive planing (considering horror films wouldn't be as scary if the killer was were a ridiculous get up now would they?) so we have begun the planning for our killers costume design. With this in mind we do not want to fall in to the genre staple 'trap' of having a ridiculous amount of 'creep factor' in a place where it wouldn't seem as subtle, subtly is key here or at least in my personal opinion. So I believe the best kind of costume would be something subtle. Done to perhaps make the appearance slightly obscure. One case of a film using this (even though the director took it a bit extreme) is the nightmare on elm street films, in where the main antagonist haunts the dreams of his victims. His appearance is rather off putting, he has the body of a man just all burnt and scarred. (here is a picture of him)

Audience research

Since our group is going to produce a horror/thriller we're tailoring to a specific audience, not only is it about gender or class etc but our main concern is the age. Like I previously stated we're producing a horror so we have to determine what age rating we want since we could have a 15 and not have too much of the darker side or we could go with an 18 rating and have almost no restrictions as opposed to content. After some research I discovered that the most successful horror movie tend to be aimed towards 18+ I believe this is to the lack of constraint towards content, it makes the stress of things deeming 'age appropriates' become absent.

With this we have decided to make our production an 18, with this in mind we have to keep an age limit for our audience, I would say somewhere between 18 and 25 seems to be our best bet, as a persons viewing tastes will be very similar during that time period.

Research on these 'young adults' became rather useful in that it gave me a sense of direction on how the script and scenes should be created and crafted, people love to scare themselves they love to feel the adrenaline rush, this is especially the case when it comes to the younger adults. The rush of a scare is something we can harness rather well in order to keep our audience on the edge of their seats in fear of the next 'big scare'

We hope to be able to get into the minds of our audience, further research has revealed more on our audience such as their hobbies and interests, these include things such as -sports -going to clubs/pubs -socially watching movies i.e cinemas.
 

Programs going to be used

During post production with the editing there will be  few programs that we are going to use, two of these in which we'll defiantly be using are Premiere Pro and Logic Pro.
Premiere Pro is a program used to edit videos, it comes with a large amount of effects to use in editing such as transitions and filters to add a specific effect to the video you're editing.

Secondly Logic Pro is a tool used in editing and creating  your own music, it comes with a bunch of set sounds and melodies to use in combination with each other in order to create a specific piece of music tailored to what you deem fit, there is a lot of creativity involved here which ultimately makes our two minute intro feel like a great achievement since we have all brought our skills together and kept the creativity flowing smoothly. 


Here are screenshots of the programs above the first being Premiere Pro and the second screenshot being Logic Pro

Step two analysis

The second step in our analysis

Today we planned out our step two analysis of our main task, we came up with more details towards our piece, we decided on some factors of filming, editing and lighting with such things as a clock going backwards in a time lapse to show how the piece is going backwards showing a flashback almost. We also said that we want our killer/kidnapper to have something of significance to be able to distinguish him and make him obvious to the audience so that his something of significance could connate to the audience his evil nature.

The naming of the group

Our choice 

Today the group came together to discuss the name of our group, we came up with multiple ideas and even had ideas from other members of the class. Each of the names were rather well suited to us, we crossed out all the ones which we thought we didn't want and from the remaining we chose the group name of 'DSD Productions' this simply is just a combination of our first initials of all of the names of the members of our group, yet it has an obscure ring to it in which we all agreed upon to make this our name.

All the names we had

Finding our actors

We had started to hatch ideas together, so in light of this we decided to start finding our actors early, since we decided on our idea together we found that we needed a rather burly broad shouldered man, we looked around our school and friends and found our actor named Tariq (he is still un named in our piece) He is rather tall and is broad shouldered, this in turn makes him perfect for our role.

For the female lead we couldn't find anyone willing to be put in a position of weakness, so a member of our group Dee volunteered, she gave a short audition just to show us what she could do and we was pretty happy, she could make her self look like a weak character who could be easily overpowered (especially by our main lead Tariq)

Overall we believe that we have the right choice in the actors that we chose as they fit the roles in which we had created rather perfectly.