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.