Screening Promotion..

We decided as a group today on Friday for definite as the day we hold our screening [we also finished adding in the new credits], so I thought it would be a good idea to start promoting it as soon as possible to give people enough notice, so we can get as many people as we can for some super-duper feedback :]

I set up a group on Facebook, the current favourite social networking website - I literally just did it and we already have a few members! Here's a link to the group [I'm not 100% sure it'll work so I may have to change the link later].

- posted by Mia

Screenings

Once we add in our new credits tomorrow, we're officially (although we've said it before and been wrong..) finished on the production side of things! Then we just have to screen our opening, both in school and at home for other feedback, which'll help us with our evaluations. Wooh :)
I think Facebook advertising is a PLAN and a HALF, so we'll set up a group once we're all certain & decided on the date, which'll be some time this week.
- posted by Mia

Not quite finished...

So we haven't actually completely finished yet - there's always something!!
We have to sort out some stuff with the credits because we didn't realise they weren't going all the way through the sequence - and they should be, thus [had to use that word!] making it look like the film has begun after the title - which, conventionally, it probably would, but we're all for breaking conventions [within reason of course]!
So on Monday we're going to use lunchtime to sort out some more credits - and also change the order of the ones at the beginning - but without the black title screen behind. Hopefully this will improve our opening even more, and then maybe we'll actually be finished!!
-posted by Mia

FINISHED PRODUCTION!!

Firstly, 100% agreed with Bisma :)
Good reflections too - other things I'd say I think would be that in the future, we should always properly check our footage whilst still on the shoot - and STORYBOARD PROPERLY!! Then maybe so many reshoots can be avoided - we had 3 'final' shoots!! But it was all a good learning experience, and I'm actually quite sad we won't be having any fun editing sessions together any more!! What are we gonna do with our time??? Haha
But I just wanted to say, good work everyone :) We're finished!!!! I know we're not done yet with all this evaluation stuff etc., but it's been lovely working with you all and I'll miss it!
Love you all!
Mia xx

Lighting Equipment

Hey guys, it might be a good idea to possibly find out if one of you can take the lighting stuff home on Monday because my mum won't be able to give me a lift on Tuesday. Also, she's not sure if she'll be able to pick us up on Monday (whoever is coming) because she has a meeting at work... so I'm not sure how that's gonna work yet... Just to let you know
Mia xx

Today's Editing

What we have is looking a lot better now - Bisma and I added in a music track that Mary [I think] downloaded onto our edit suite, and we made the cut from the knife pan to picking up the knife a lot less weird-looking, as there's a sudden bit in the music that makes it work really well.
We also played around with colour, brightness, and contrast to try to make the shots look the same, which we achieved with the lipstick/blusher shots :) Yay!

Problems

Aggh, Bisma and I were editing yesterday and cut together all our footage - the shot/reverse-shot worked really nicely, but we realised the lighting is completely different in shots in the same room, as we had to use a desklamp to make the knife get that nice glint. We could probably sort this out with brightness & contrast on Premiere, but the shots just don't link together properly, from opening the drawer to taking out the knife. Oh dear.
We still don't have music, although we found a lot of good possibilities yesterday - there's so much to choose from, but it's hard to find something that will specifically go with our sequence, as it changes quite a lot - the main issue is the dialogue.
We asked Miss Thrasher for feedback, and she gave us some pointers - she said that:
1) the flashes in the beginning 'suddens' are too long - they should either be really short or not there at all
2) the echoing in the nail-painting shot is a bit weird - what's the reason for it?
3) the LA shot of Bisma going upstairs is too long - put in one of the different angle ones
4) the dialogue shots are cut together really well and the match-on-actions are good, but it looks weird that the killer is in the left of the frame rather than the centre - we will probably have to reshoot
5) sort out the cutting with the knife shots
So there's really quite a lot to do. However, she was very positive and also said that it didn't matter if it wasn't quite 2 minutes if it was good quality.
We have two more editing slots today, so I'm hoping we can sort some of that out, including getting some music and adding it to our timeline - once we add that in it will all look a lot better and we will know what we're doing more.
We also need to choose a title fonts and decide what the titles are actually going to be - and think of a title for the film! But these are obviously not our priorities right now. We're a hardworking group so I'm sure we can work everything out : )
- posted by Mia

4.30 at mine tomorrow?
-Mia xx

Yesterday's Shoot (Friday 13/12)

[Twelve Days Till Christmas!]

Unfortunately, Bhavika was unable to make it to the shoot yesterday and we wish her a speedy recovery - hopefully she'll be well enough for our shoot tomorrow.

Despite the absence of Bhavika, filming was really successful - hopefully there won't be any problems when we look back at our footage on Monday. We got all the shots we'd planned completed - the dialogue between the killer and the housemate and the shot of the housemate knocking on the door and going into the room - we also shot the killer saying "Come in", which we hadn't planned to do but realised it would be a lot better to... We reshots the shoes shot with different shoes too, and hopefully it'll all fit together nicely :)

All that remains now are the pre-entering the bedroom shots for Bisma - going up the stairs and across the hallway, with the crane/HA shot, and the killer picking up the knife from the drawer and something along the lines of caressing it fondly and creepily. And then that's it, unless we need to reshoot but here's hoping we won't!

- posted by Mia

Possible Problem

Um, you see how we're using my sister's room... she's coming back from Bristol for Christmas next Saturday (13th I do believe) sooo is there any chance we can get all/most of the shots in there done before that?
It's also worth mentioning that the Latymer Christmas Concert is next Thursday the 11th.
- Mia xx

Gettin' Jiggy With It

So, with our inspiration from Se7en, we've done some experimentation with the fonts and making them 'jiggy'/jittery/jumpy - whatever you want to call it. We tried out making two seperate titles, one with white text (saying 'directed by Bhavika Popat') on a black background, the other with the same text and background, but in red; we made the one with red really short and put it in the middle of title screens with the white text, which when played created a flashing effect. It's quite a good effect for now, but we're sure there are better ways to do it, and we're definitely going to explore this further!
- posted by Mia

'Se7en'

We watched the beginning of Se7en (David Fincher, 1995) in class and we were really inspired by it. I've embedded the opening of the film from where the titles start, after the little bit at the beginning where Brad Pitt's and Morgan Freeman's characters are introduced and the setup is established. We really liked the whole style of it - the title sequence was designed by Kyle Cooper, and is really original and is very memorable, from the music to the font.

The soundtrack:

• diegetic sounds - traffic, creaking, clattering of keys on a typewriter?
• steady drum rhythm that sounds like heartbeat
• electronic-sounding
• screechy bits
• features song 'Closer' by Nine Inch Nails - lyrics heard are 'You get me closer to God' -> the film is based around two detectives on the case of a series of murders inspired by the seven deadly sins, and the word 'God' is one of the words we see being cut out of a newspaper in quick flashes
• crime thriller sort of music

Credits/Text:

• jumpy/jittery
• white on black
• scribbled handwritten style font
• image comes after they're shown, and they stay on screen for a bit before fading out
• big names first - David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwenyth Paltrow - audience knows this director and these actors -> acts as guarantee, quality seal

Transitions:

• dissolves over shots
• fades (into opening)
• numerous, fast-paced clean cutting

Camera Work:

• BCUs and ECUs showing detail of killer's work
  

We loved all these effects combined to create such an impressive opening - they really help to build a sense of unease and jumpiness, and to give an impression of the killer. We want to do something similar with the credits and music, so we'll see what we end up with!

- posted by Mia

Mrs Thrasher Feedback

Mrs Thrasher kindly gave us some feedback in our lesson today, and said basically what we need to do is:

1. decide on final shooting dates that everyone can make
2. remember we can shoot at times other than the weekend
3. carefully & finally plan what we're going to do and shoot
4. carefully plan what each person needs to bring & do it, so no more valuable time is wasted

V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, 2005)

Ok, so this is the opening for V for Vendetta as talked about in my previous post. The getting ready bit is from 1:44 to 3:36 minutes - I think that makes 1 minute 52 seconds but my maths is truly terrible so you might want to check that... This cross-cuts between Evey and V getting ready, has lots of cutaways to the TV news thing - again, fairly similar to our idea - but obviously we're focussing on a killer getting ready so it'll be much more sinister, and from what we discussed today we know we're going to have a lot of ECUs and BCUs in the actual getting ready bit. Also, we're going to have title screens in between, and the housemate conversation. Anyway you might wanna watch a bit before and a bit after the getting ready bit - afterwards there's a low-level pan of her feet as she's walking - quite similar to our idea of a shot of the housemate's feet as she goes upstairs? I'm sure this will be helpful to us so do watch it :)

-Mia xx

Inspirizzled!!

So I was very kindly leant Se7en by Selina & I had another look at that just now for the opening, and Eamonn leant me V For Vendetta at some point so I thought, well, what's the harm in having a look at the opening for that too?
AND to my pleasant surprise what did I find but a girl getting ready!! AND THEY DO THE LIPS AND THE HEELS AND STUFF TOO!! I know right, wow-wow-wow-wow.
So I'm gonna find it on the wonderful youtube and post it up on here with some notes at some point 'cause I think it may be rather helpful to see how they do it. I know we've changed it a lot but I think this will still help, it's all quite close range I think.
So yeah, keep yo' eyes peeled liked a banana for it appearing soon!!
-Mia xx

[also, why is there not a bright pink font colour to reflect my extreme excitement & enthusiasm??]

Possible Idea

I know it's not necessarily going to be a problem at all, but I just had a little idea just in case and knowing me I will forget it! Basically if this isn't taking up enough time, we could possibly have a bit of cross-cutting to the housemate, maybe sitting downstairs in the dark watching a horror film - we wouldn't see the TV but would see her on the sofa in her PJs with a mug of tea or something, looking a bit scared, with the light of the TV flickering over her face. She can mention it later - 'I was just watching Pyscho' or something... but got too scared so went up to see her lovely [killer] housemate instead....
Just an idea... :D Don't wanna make it too complicated or anything
- Mia xx

Mise-en-scène

Good grief, that room is cold! No wonder she's a killer.

[I don't know why the toilet roll thing is there... ignore it..]

Before we started filming yesterday, we took some time to make sure the mise-en-scène was right...

...so we had a think about what kind of person our killer character is.

Because we're going to have a housemate in it later, she couldn't be too obviously psycho so we tried to construct something...

...that would convey the idea that she is very vain and cares a lot about the way she looks...

...that perhaps she's not happy with the way she looks...

...and aspires to be like the models she sees and envies in magazines.

In fact, she is so envious of these beautiful women that she kills them.

To do this, we cut out some pictures of models from some magazines...

...and stuck them around this fabulous mirror sitting on the desk...

...which is scattered with all sorts of makeup & hair products.

Some of it is in a rather pretty little pot, because that's obviously what girls do...

You can also see a mug in the reflection (it's not in all the shots because my mum had moved it and I had to put it back) because, well, she is human...

Our shock shot is a pan across this very drawer (filled with innocent girly things that also fit the character) to a knife!

Apart from nail varnish and an ipod, there is the Complete Beauty Book...

...and a reading book, because you might keep one in your desk drawer, with a lovely fluffy bear bookmark and some nail scissors on top...

...in case you didn't see before, the book is Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, which we thought was rather fitting. This is where the knife is meant to be, but alas it was needed in the kitchen :( However, I will take a pic of it at some point, although we may be using Bisma's instead, because it wasn't shining properly... unlike the scissors!

This is that darned window with its silly reflection...

...which you can't see in this one! Apart from the camera's flash.

The windchimes which we use for our opening shot (the bottom window will be open too).

Yeah Bhavika, it's a man.

Mia's Response to Bisma's Response to me..

Oh wicked :D Okay, so for next shoot if you could bring the killer heels (lol) & the pretty knife, that would be woooonderful. And some PJs! Preferably really cute ones if you have some, I reckon, what d'you think?
And yeah, that's a good point, we'll see what it looks like then. About the reflections, it might not have been in all the shots, I really can't remember - tbh I might have dreamt it... like that other thing :P which I may not have. Again, we'll see when we're editing! Hopefully there will be something we can do in that stage about reflections if there are any.
I agree about editing and script-writing - it'll be quite good to see how much time what we have so far takes up as well. What do Bhavika and Mary think?
Mia xx

Actual Shoot

Well, I've posted my reflections and stuff on my own blog. I still think the drawer looks a little too empty, like you can see a bit too much of the wood? If we just put some random paper in the bottom it might be a bit better, possibly paper that's been written on? I dunnoooo, and also, I really want the knife to gleam properly & I think you agree. There was another shot where you could see the reflection in the window - I think it was the bit where I get up and turn on the radio? I can't remember but there was one :s We'll see on Monday anyway.
Oh yeahhh when you'd all gone I was watching CSI while I was blogging so I wouldn't hear anyone breaking in, and at about half ten there was this tapping on the window, but it was just my mum. Phew. Yesterday was a brilliant day guys, well done :)
Mia

Second Test Shoot

Here are a few pics from our second test shoot at mine yesterday, which went so much better than last weekend's!

It was so helpful and I think we all have a better idea of how it will look now we've done some filming in a location we've decided on and have tested out some shots and props.



They're a bit blurry... but I'm sure you can see that we had loads of fun setting everything up!