Harriet Newman's summary of Filming day 1 + Shooting

Uploaded By Harriet Newman

This vlog sums up our first day of filming. Our roles and responisblities:

Connor - Producer
Harriet - Editor/Organizer
Hannah - Head Writer
Beth(myself) - Director/Costume

Although we had these designated roles throughout the day  we found that we all shared responsibilities as when we combined our ideas and skills we found the out come was generally better. From combining our responsibilities I have also gain some more skills as I can now confidently use the camera on the tripod correctly.

Evaluation - Connor Barbor split screen

Uploaded by Harriet Newman. 

 This blog by Connor really helps put our idea into reality. We can see what potential the split screen has and helps us picture our actual idea.  However from doing some further research into split screens we have found that we no longer need to do this to portray what we want to. Overall this experiment helped us realize that we need to play around with our filming as the outcome may not be what we expected. 

Filming Schedule

Saturday 26^th January:  

Female protagonist. We will need costume including black dress, heels and red nail varnish + heavy lipstick.

When filming we need: Camera, Tripod, Perfume, Mirrors.

Sunday 27^th January:

Male antagonist. Will need costume including denim jeans, white shirt, blazer, and cuff links.

When filming we need: Camera, Tripod, Aftershave, Hair gel.

Animatic final piece

Our animatic:

 

This is our animate. We have decided to use a wide range of jump cuts and fade out transitions. Our aim is make the setting seductive and with an ominous tone. The intro for the film ‘se7en’ like we have said before is our inspiration.

Deadline

Our first Deadline is for our Storyboard and animatic which has to be pitched on January 15th.
Mr Ford told us that we need to focus in the following questions to help us when pitching:

• How are you meeting your Genre?
• what are your ideas
• Technical Explanation (Including Camera, Editing, Sound and mise-en-scene)

Our filming deadline is for the 28th January however our first cut doesn't have to be finished till the 15th February. However our actual deadline for our production is on the 8th on march. 

Finally our individual evaluation has to be complete by the March 28th. 

Evaluation - Connor Barbor

This blog is brilliant from Connor as he has mentioned that our inspiration from our intro is from the film 'Se7en'. We liked the ominous tone it creates and ho you don't actually see anyone's face, its just jump cuts of things e.g. a picture to a man cutting his finger nails. Also its great how Connnor edited him talking about his blog and edited it into the 'Se7en' intro. Overall Connor its a fantastic blog!

Props and Costume.

List for the Girl:  

• Black/red full body-con dress. (we want it quick short as it make her look more seductive and more mysterious)
• Black/red high heels (depending on the colour of the dress e.g. of shes wearing a Black dress she will have Red Heels) 
• Black/red clutch bag (same as the above ^) 
• Hand Bag 
• Perfume 
• Mascara
• Foundation 
• Iphone
• Necklace 
• Lipstick 
• Knife

List For the boy: 

• White Smart Shirt
• Black Blazer
• Causal Jeans 
• Cuff-links
• Black shoes 
• Razor and Shaving Foam 
• Aftershave 
• Iphone 
• Wallet 
• Hair Gel 

Action Script

Action Script List: 

The screen begins black and flashes into frame

Establishing shot of a bedroom and mirrors with the male starring into the mirror, with a blank       expression on his face

Cut to a reverse shot of him doing his hair as his facial expression hasn't changed

Shot of female starring into the mirror with a blank expression

Again cut of female brushing her hair downwards as her face begins to look slightly more innocent as she looks down

Shot of male shaving his face as we have separate close ups to increase the dramatic atmosphere

Cut back to the female putting make up on as we have quick separate cuts of different make up, such as mascara and lipstick. 

We have titles in-between some of these shots and on top of some shots. Its in continuously various. If you have a look at the storyboard, you will see titles as small green strips.

Scene begins to increase in pace through editing

The male does up his buttons of his shirt as we will have very fast cuts between close ups of buttons and his facial expression as he does up his buttons

Trying to maintain the same lighting and position of each character as they cut between them.

Female doing up her dress, shots from front and back, quick son session

Male doing his shoe laces up on posh shoes, shot from the start and sped/cut to the end of the shoes being tied so we don't have seconds being wasted on shoe laces being tied.

Level to the ground one shoe is slipped on and jump cut to the other foot going into the other shoe. The camera does not move.

Both cufflinks being done up by male

Cut to females colar bone being very prominent, female then places neckless around her neck

Facial expression of the male begins to change as he is soon to be ready

Male sprays aftershave on each side of his neck, camera not showing most of his face, just his slight smirk

The female is the same but as she sprays perfume, we maintain the idea of an innocent look

The male looks at himself in the mirror then cut to female doing the same thing

Male walks away and cut to women walking away from the mirror

Male walks over to table with jump cuts skipping out his walk

Picks up phone and sends a text message "I'm on my way, better be ready."

As she clicks send, she receives it looks at the message, close up of her mouth smirking at one side

As she picks up her clutch bag, a cut of a knife entering the bag, close up of the knife in the air

The music hits a peak here as a high pitch screech enters the same time as knife is shot  

.............................................................................................

Action Script by Connor Barbor

From the action script we get a feel of what our final piece is going to look and helps us create more of an understanding. It also helps us a lot as within our intro there isn't any dialogue so this helps us understand that we need some sinister music to help create the ominous. Also the music will help make the piece more interesting as we will be able to change the speed ect of the music to connect in with the pace of the intro. Harriet is working on some music as she is very good at composing music so she will be able to make our own music with the help of Harriet. Also it won't be copyright. 

Story Board

This is our story board: 

Our idea is that a Boy and a Girl are getting ready and we have inter cuts between the two. We want them both to be seen as equal for the first couple of shots of them both but then after the first title sequence we are going to give the Girl slightly longer shot time of around 2 seconds so it starts to portray her to be more dominant slyly.

This is a close up of our 'Titles' which gives us a rough idea of where about's we want our titles to break up the shots. We are using the titles as our transition from rooms. For example say we start of in the bathroom and we see them both doing their hair, we are using the title to help with the transition of the rooms to  help it make more sense.

At the end we want to have a split screen of the two protagonists ready as we feel its a good way to show the difference between to two. This will help portray the female to look dominate. We need to makes sure that we pick our custom correctly which will help emphasize the Girl to be in control and the Boy to be a standard teenager just getting ready to go out.

Evaluation - Continuity Task

Filming: 

           The process of filming went really well and over we ended up with exactly what we had in mind for our final piece. At the start of the piece we felt that it was very good and we established the fact that Beth was obsessed with Connor shown through our variety of camera shots. However after the first 30 seconds the continuity started to fall as we realized that the audience would probably be a bit confused with what's happening as we didn't plan the chase well enough. Also we didn't use a big enough variety of camera shots. For example we could off done a low angel camera shot to help portray Beth's obsession and the how much more dominate she is compared to Connor. Because of this as a group we realized that  if we would have had time to re-film some shots then we could have got or final piece spot on. As it was only for our continuity task we felt as a group that we didn't want to waste anymore time on it as we thought that we could just take on board what we need to improve on with our actual intro. One main thing that we realized was that we needed to play around with more shots, and when it came to filming our actual piece we will be able play around with more pieces. The group decided that my strongest point was directing, so i have been allocated that role for our actual piece but obviously a its a group task we will all contribute ideas and try all them out. 

Editing:

           When it came to editing Connor and Harriet already had the skills to use premier pro whereas Hannah and I had limited skills. So we decided to go off into twos to help each other,  I was with Connor and we had to start off with the the editing. Because Connor and I had already worked together in a previous task I already had some idea with what to do so it was really just Connor supervising me to make sure  I was on the right track. We decided to do this as  Hannah and I realized that we were relying on the other two too much and if they weren't in one day we wouldn't know what to do. We have now gained the confidence and skills to work premier pro by ourselves with no help from the other two. Now thanks to the help of the others both Hannah and I will be able to also use these skill for our course next year when we have to do our own task. 

Evaluation - Connor Barbor

This blog is brilliant from Connor as it shows were we are as a group. Hannah and I have never done much editing but as Connor and Harriet have, they have taught us how to use 'premiere pro cs6'. Now both Hannah and I have gained skill so we can comfortably edit, Like Connor mentioned in his blog we will be able to work on our final piece without having to rely on the others.

Final Cut - Continuity Task

After closely analyzing both of our previous cuts for our continuity task we decided that this was the best final cut. We all enjoyed how smoothly it flows and we feel we have grasped what we wanted to portray well. Although as a group we all wanted to represent the female to be more dominating but because of time we couldn't re-film. From this we have learnt that when it comes to filming, you can never have enough shots to work with. Also we need to be more precise with filming shots. We will be able to take this on board when filming our actual final intro. We edited the piece as a group and used all our ideas to help finalizing it. Harriet got the non diegetic sound from a royalty free website and we felt it helped create an ominous tone within the piece.