Screening

We had our screening yesterday lunchtime and we had a really good turnout, which was great as this means more feedback to use in our evaluations. We gave a questionnaire to everyone who came and Bisma will soon put up our findings on the blog. Our feedback seemed to be generally quite positive. Our audience was made up of 16 and 17 year olds of both genders, so we have received feedback from our target audience. More importantly we have got feedback from non-media students who will have looked at our sequence from a non-media perspective. They will not be focusing on continuity editing for instance, but will watch it as they usually would watch and enjoy a film. - Bhavika

Definitely Finished!

Right we are now definitely finished! It is official (I think!) The credits have been sorted and now appear throughout our sequence. Ms Blackborow was happy with them so it should all be fine. The screening will be tomorrow during lunchtime, which I am very excited about! Hopefully we will get a good turnout and lots of feedback. - Bhavika

Finished!

We have now finished all our editing! I have to say it’s been lots of fun and our group in particular has learnt a lot! I will just add/emphasize a few things to the list that Bisma made and Mia added to. - We definately have learnt that it is SO important to keep filming after the action you want for each take as this makes continuity editing so much easier. - The storyboard is REALLY important and really does save time when on the actual shoot as you know exactly what needs to be done. - Lighting was a big issue. Perhaps could have been avoided if we had planned for it in advance. Or we could taken some shots in a variety of different light intensities on our first re-shoot so as to avoid another re-shoot. Now it’s time for one last regretful goodbye to my amazing group. What good times! I will miss all our shoots and the much time spent editing! -Bhavika xx

To Do List

As our deadline is drawing ever nearer I thought I would make a list of what needs to be done so that we don't forget anything! (Just in case)

• Credits and title but these can only be done when we have been able to download the fonts
• Music for the end of the sequence?
• Also, I've just been editing and something seems to be wrong with track 2 which we added last week Friday so we need to sort that out.
• We need to reduce the fuzzy noise in the sound of Mia's side of the dialogue.
• This is not that important but I was thinking it might look better if we rearrange some of the shots of Mia getting ready. This won't take long and can be done later on. It isn't a major issue or anything.
• Fade from title into black and then from black into the sequence of Bisma going upstairs...or something like that
• After the re-shoot, we will obviously have to replace the two clips of the drawer and knife at the end with the one clip.
• Come up with a production company name.

So we'd better get cracking!

- Bhavika xx

Re-shoot

Hey Mia and all

I won't be able to give us a lift to your house tomorrow after school and I most probably won't be able to take the lighting equipment into school on Tuesday. Really sorry. But we'll sort it out tomorrow with the whole group and hopefully find a way to do it.

Bhavika xx

Feedback

Today we got some feedback from Ms Blackborow during our after-school editing session:

· The new close-ups in the getting ready sequence and the sequence of ‘suddens’ were good and the ‘suddens’ were really scary along with the music.
· We had a shot of Mia’s face after the title but told miss we were going to get rid of it. She thought an audience may think Bisma is the girl in all the previous shots getting ready if we remove this shot
Outcome: We will fade the title into black and then fade from black into the shot of Bisma switching the lamp off for the stairs sequence so that it is hopefully clearer to our audience this is someone else.
· Shots of Bisma going up the stairs had been moved and one was missing.
Outcome: We fixed this so that it is now fine.
· The two final shots: CU Mia opening drawer and CU pan of drawer looked odd.
Outcome: We now need to re-shoot this shot again! This time we are going to have Mia opening the drawer and taking out the knife all in one shot. The re-shoot will be on Monday and shouldn’t take long as this is the only shot we have to film.
· The lighting is much better in the dialogue section. I asked her if it looked odd because of the difference in lighting between Mia’s side of the conservation, which was well lit and Bisma’s side, which was not. She could see a difference that only after I had asked but thought we had done a good job with the brightness and contrast and lighting effects so that it was not too obvious.

The issue of lighting differences was worrying me quite a bit so I am happy that Miss did not pick up on it and think it looked odd. Yayyy!

- Bhavika

Re-shoot Shooting List

We just had our re-shoot and here is a list of our shooting list:

• CU foot (putting tights on)
• CU putting on shoe
• MS establishing shot
• MS dialogue
• MS turning round to open draw
• MCU opening draw
• CU pan of draw
• MCU face in mirror
• CU smiling face
• CU evil face

Hopefully we got all the shots we need and they all turn out to be great!

- Bhavika xx

Still not well

Hey guys

I'm really sorry but I'm still not feeling well. It's really annoying because I'm going to miss the shoot today. I will ring you again during todays shoot.

I most probably won't be in tomorrow because I doubt I'll be better by then. Good luck with all the capturing and editing if I'm not.

Make sure you don't forget any shots! I will speak to you all soon.

- Bhavika xx

Not well

Hey guys

Really not feeling well today so I’m not in school. That also means I won’t be able to make it to our shoot tonight. :( Really sorry.

Good luck with the editing in school and the shoot afterwards. Will ring you and keep in touch to see how it is going.

- Bhavika xx

Script

Hey guys This is the script we came up with for our opening sequence. It is a conversation between the killer (Emma) and the housemate (Yasmin). It will come after the titles in the second half of the sequence. Emma: (Knock on door) Come in Yasmin: (Opens door) Hey. You look dressed up. Your not going out at this time, are you? Emma: Um yeah…I’m just out to see a friend. (Pause) She’s dying to see me. Yasmin: Okay…well be careful, I’ve just heard some terrible things on the news. Emma: Oh, yeah, about all those poor women? I heard. It really scares me. Yasmin: Yeah, me too. Well I’m gonna go to bed anyway. Goodnight. Emma: Okay. Night. Yasmin: (Smiling) Have fun. (Closes door) - Bhavika xx

Inspiration from the Opening Sequence of Legally Blonde (Luketic, 2001)

Hey guys!

As our opening sequence involves a female killer (who is obsessed with the way she looks) getting ready I thought I might try to get inspiration from a film involving a girl getting ready. Legally Blonde is probably one of the most obvious choices and is very much about image and the way Elle looks and dresses. So, I have broken down the sequence and analysed shots and aspects that we might gain some inspiration from for our opening sequence.

The first shot is zooming out of Elle’s hair as she brushes it. It is effective because it starts as an Extreme Close-up and the audience is therefore not sure what exactly they can see. All of Elle’s actions appear slow and deliberate so that the audience can clearly see what she is doing and has time to take it in. We want the actions to be clear but also not really slow because we need pace. We could try using Extreme Close-ups at the very beginning in order to withhold information from the audience and make it slightly more creepy/sinister.

In general, lots of Extreme Close-ups and Close-ups are used as they effectively show Elle getting ready in detail. For instance, when she puts on a necklace and is painting her nails. The audience does not see her face until the end of the opening sequence, which is an aspect I particularly like. The whole sequence is a build up to this point. Perhaps we could have a slight build up before we see her face properly? Obviously, the actual build up is towards the draw being opened when we see the knife so it would have to be a smaller build-up before seeing her face.

Slow pans are used in between in order to tell the audience about Elle’s character and this provides the mise-en-scene. We have already thought about our mise-en-scene and are using pictures of models and beauty products to reflect the character’s frame of mind. We could pan these pictures that are on the mirror and the beauty products on the dressing table in between shots of her getting ready. We decided that we wanted it to be subtle but I’m not sure if the audience would necessarily understand or even take much notice of it unless we make a point of showing the beauty products and pictures. This would make it clearer that the main character is obsessed with her image and kills other attractive women.

- Bhavika xx

Response to Problem

Hey Mary

Ok don't worry. The only reason we weren't doing sunday is because everyone preferred to do the shoot on saturday. We were going to keep sunday as a sort of back up. If we have to do the shoot on sunday then we will. We need to have a meeting tomorrow so that we can sort it out together with Bisma and Mia too.

- Bhavika

Comments and Reflections

Yeah I've just read over the many comments/reflections that have been put up on the blog. We definitely need to do something about the emptiness of the draw and I'm up for trying out the paper idea. Aghhh reflections in the window! Did you guys find out if we can do anything about them yesterday when editing? And yeah Mia's idea about having the flatmate watching the film - we might be overcomplicating things again! I'm not sure if it is needed unless you guys all really want to do it. Plus we don't have to have the credits coming up onscreen over the shots we have filmed now. We can have then on a black background that comes up in between the shots or something if you get what I'm saying...

- Bhavika xx

Test Shoot and Real Shoot (Friday 28th and 29th November)

Reflections Both shoots took place at Mia’s house, as this is now the location for all of our opening sequence. We tried out plenty of different shots on Friday and did some planning. We got a lot of planning done on the real shoot on Saturday. We did all the planning and decided on the actual shot order in the first two hours and then filmed all of this in the next two hours. All in all it was very productive and loads of fun…I can’t wait to see the footage and actually edit it! Good work guys! - Bhavika xx

Sound

Mia, I think I know what you mean. When there is a song playing in the background that you think is non-diegetic but then it sort of becomes diegetic and is playing on the radio, which someone is listening to or something like that.

I can’t think of any examples of where it is the other way round, so it goes from diegetic to non-diegetic. I remember seeing a scene on Neighbours where somebody is singing and then you continue to hear them sing while they show clips of other characters but I don’t think that’s the same thing. It’s the closest thing I can think of.

We could try it out but I think there is a big chance our audience what necessarily understand unless we make it really obvious. If it doesn’t work and isn’t clear, it might seem a bit amateur. If the others want to I’m up for trying it because you never know, it might look really cool!

- Bhavika xx

Meeting Notes: Friday 28th November

During this meeting we made a joint decision to drop the location of the alleyway/carpark and instead stick to the killer getting ready in her room. We thought this would be a good idea as the idea was quite complicated and we thought having two scenes might be too much for the audience to take in in 2 minutes. We wanted to have some dialogue in the sequence and decided to have the killer's housemate come into her room at one point and then have them both exchange a few lines of dialogue.

We also came up with an idea which was inspired by the opening sequence of Seven. We are going to use loads of ECUs and CUs and add in effects such as flashes. We are also going to make the shots move/jig about. In between these shots we are going to have the credits as well as some pans of the beauty products and pictures of models. Now that the idea is simpler, we can now focus on building the mood and atmosphere through the mise-en-scene etc. Things are heating up...

- Bhavika :) xx

Test Shoot

I think we can book out the equipment tomorrow…well we’ve got no other choice!
Not to worry - I’ll print off the equipment forms now. Doing it as we speak!
Looking forward to the test shoot guys!

- Bhavika xx

Meeting Notes for Tuesday 25th November

• Discussed Enfield cinema car park as possible location. Too many obstacles and problems found when shooting there for the test shoot.
• Discussed alleyway near Southgate station. Everyone liked pictures taken by Mia of the alleyway. Decided we need to test out alleyway.
• Arranged a second test shoot for Friday 28th November after school.
• Use of car park as location means we do not extra actors.
• Discussed possible actors and actresses.

Individual targets to be achieved by Monday 1st December:

Mary
Focus on storyboard which is to be completed
Bisma
The Treatment,
Asking possible actors/actresses if they are willing to act in it
Bhavika
Update group blog with meeting notes etc
Research
Mia
Research

- Bhavika

Props

Heyy! I just thought I would make a list of the little props we are going to need so that we can start preparing for the shoots. We might not need them all but I've them up in case.

• Black gloves
• A weapon (knife?)
• Red lipstick
• Heels/boots possibly red
• Hair brush
• A photograph of the killer with her ex boyfriend

And I looked at Mia's slide show and really like the dressing table. Plus there is a long mirror which we wanted to use so it could work!

- Bhavika xx

Music AND Test Shoot

Hey guys! Music I really think The Tender Trap could work. I listened to all the ones suggested and like them all but think this one would work best. So unless we find anything else, a definite yes to this one from me! Test Shoot – What Did We Learn?? Although it was loads of fun J we have all realized there is a load of stuff we have to take into consideration/prepare for when we do the actual shoot. I know Mary has already covered some of this, I just thought I’d add my thoughts too and kinda summarize it. Firstly, next time we need to check the weather forecasts and prepare for the shoot according to this. We also need to think about the lighting and need to bring extra sources. Linking to that, we need to decide an appropriate time to film (when it is dark enough) and also when there will be less people and cars around so that we don’t have to keep stop filming. That is if we actually use this location. I liked the car park as our location but if someone finds something better I’m all for it. To sum up, it was all in all a very interesting and fun test shoot. And Finally, I think we all need to make sure we have set our alarms for the right time the night before and haven’t gone to sleep ridiculously late so that we only get like an hour of sleep!! (not naming names you know who you are) Bhavika xx