M.P Productions

Posted by Lisa;-

Using Adobe Photoshop, I created a false Production Company Logo. Annabell and I agreed on using the name 'M.P Productions' , which uses the letters of both of our surnames.

After choosing an image, we created a Logo.

Here is the screen shot of the process;

And here is the final saved image that we will use in our Major Task;

We are quite happy with the final outcome.

costume design for major task;

I decided on simple, light coloured clothes to signify that she is a victim at the part when she is running away from him. Maybe dark blue coloured jeans and a white shirt. She'll wear her hair open so it blows in the wind.
The make-up is light, she only wear a little bit mascara and rouge. You can see the mascara coming down from her face, because she's crying.
By the shot when she kill her boyfriend I decide that she is wearing a red or black party-dress with black high-heels and a very dark make-up ; smoky-eyes and red lipgloss because it shows more her evil side.
The boy will wear black jeans and a white shirt so that you will be able to see the blood.

Dialogue and Audio

Posted by Lisa;-

Today, Annabell and I used our time to create the dialogue for our major task. This is solely because the weather outside was not on our side and we could not do filming on location today.

The way our storyboard is set up, we have shots 2 and 12 with black screens and the audio is speaking.
To do this, we will record audio tracks of our actress speaking.
We also need to record audio tracks of her breathing to play in the background of our 2 minute piece as this is the main suspense builder of our clip.

For shot number two, we are going to use the line;
'What have I done?'
A rhetorical question that intentionally with scare the audience and hopefully make them want to continue watching. This will be followed on with tracks of 'scared' breathing, which is irregular, and we will also use silence too.

For shot number twelve, we have decided on the line;
'He's back for me.'
This will be followed by a silence and a black screen which hopefully will have a jump cut to our Title page with some music that we have chosen.

The title we have settled on is 'Escape'.
Music behind this shot will be a track created and produced by a personal friend.
'I met the sun' - Hawaii Jupiter

This fits well and will hopefully be an interesting contrast to the silence and breathing throughout the first two minutes.

Planning Major Task

Synopsis;
A teenage girl has a horrible past. She has killed her overly-obsessive boyfriend one year before. She tried to forget him and that she has killed him, but he didn't forget her and now he has come back to be with her forever and make sure she doesn't forget what she did to him in the night. We will try to do this by fast editing, to make it more interesting and more scary. By editing all of our shots in Black&White, I think this will add to the scary story that we are trying to portray. By making our opening scene very catchy and quite confusing, we think that this will draw an audience to want to watch it, and we will try to do this effectively by cross-cutting shots and having fast editing.I am hoping that our filming goes as well as we plan it to so that our opening can be better as possible. We will be starting this very soon, but we wait for a little bit more nicer weather(Aka. Not raining) to film in. Our indoor shots aren't actually needed until later as our outside on-location shots are our priority for filming at the moment.

Locations;
Location-wise, we will only be using two different ones.One will be outside in a field, and we want this to give an eerie mood our opening, as it will be quiet and empty, making the audience ask questions.The second will be in Gordonstoun House, in the long empty hallway downstairs. With the correct lighting and filming/editing skills, we could definately make this location very spooky and this is why this place fits our movie genre perfectly.

Actors;
For our main character, who is female, we have chosen Phoebe Ritchie. For our 'victim/killer' we aren't quiet shure, who we want to choose, so we search for the right actor.

Mise-en-Scene;
We want our backgrounds to be extremely simple to add to the eerie feel of our opening. Possibly by using make-up on the girl, we can show that she is upset, by smudging her mascara or something, becuase she is runing away, and then she is crying and all the mascara is running down her face.

Props;
For props we will need:-A knife-some sort of substance for the colour on the knief, maybe ketchup or something else.
Our opening will be in black and white so it doesn't matter, what we choose for an substance it will be all black.
We want to keep our opening as simple as possible, so as not to give away our entire story in the first 2 minutes, but enough to make people want to watch more.

Storyboard

Posted by Lisa;-

I drew up a storyboard showing all of the shots we are planning to do for our major task (Horror movie opening).

Even as a draft, I think our planning looks quite good and if we do it correctly and the filming goes according to plan, it could be very good.

Here are some pictures I took of the storyboard I drew up;

Planning Major Task

Posted by Lisa;-

The film opening that we are planning has a mixed genre of thriller and horror. We are going to focus mainly on using the element of making our audience want to watch the rest of the movie (if there was one) and build up suspense.


Synopsis;

A teenage girl has a horrible past. She killed her overly-obsessive boyfriend exactly one year before. She tried to forget him, but he didn't forget her and now he has come back to be with her forever and make sure she doesn't forget what she did to him.


We want our movie opening to be fast and keep the audience wanting more. We will try to do this by fast editing, to make it more interesting. By editing all of our shots in Black&White, I think this will add to the scary story that we are trying to portray. By making our opening scene very catchy and quite confusing, we think that this will draw an audience to want to watch it, and we will try to do this effectively by cross-cutting shots and having fast editing.
I am hoping that our filming goes as well as we plan it to so that our opening can be as good as possible. We will be starting this very soon as we need the 'good' weather (Aka. Not raining) to film in. Our indoor shots aren't actually needed until later as our outside on-location shots are our priority for filming at the moment.

Locations;
Location-wise, we will only be using two different ones.
One will be outside in a field, and we want this to give an eerie mood our opening, as it will be quiet and empty, making the audience ask questions.
The second will be in Gordonstoun House, in the long empty hallway downstairs. With the correct lighting and filming/editing skills, we could definately make this location very spooky and this is why this place fits our movie genre perfectly.

Actors;
For our main character, who is female, we have chosen Kim Paxton. For our 'victim/killer' we are going to use Henri Yueksel.

Mise-en-Scene;
We want our backgrounds to be extremely simple to add to the eerie feel of our opening. Possibly by using make-up on the girl, we can show that she is upset, by smudging her mascara or something.

Props;
For props we will need:
-A knife
-Some sort of dark substance that could pass as blood. (Our opening will be in black and white so it is irrelevant whether the substance is red or not, it just has to be dark and as realistic as possible)

We want to keep our opening as simple as possible, so as not to give away our entire story in the first 2 minutes, but enough to make people want to watch more. (If it were a real movie).
Our idea is a very gripping, chilling story and if we pull this task off correctly, I think it could be extremely good.

Video

Posted by Lisa-;


Here is our final video for our preliminary task!

End of Preliminary Task

Posted by Lisa;-

We have come to the end of our preliminary task and overall I think my group worked well together from filming, editing and acting. We stuck to our original plan even though we did cut a lot of the scenes we had initially decided to put in our sequence. We cut it down with the good shots we had and we completed the task.
I was mainly doing the editing of our film, also I filmed a few of the shots of Vidur and the conversation. Kate also did a lot of filming. We had to cut lots of our footage but it was better to have the selection of lots of clips instead of the very minimal.
Annabell wrote out the dialogue and acted in our piece. She gave good ideas into our task and we all took these into account. Overall, I was quite please with the outcome of this task.

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Q1: At a micro, technical level, how well did you film the tasks required - match on action, continuity filming, shot/reaction/shot and exchanging dialogue?

A1: Whilst filming the preliminary task, I think we approached the task and completed it very well as a group. We have continuity throughout the sequence and the way that our finished film looks, it looks like it is all happening at one time. I think at some points our shots could have been a bit more stable with use of the tripod but this is something we won’t make the mistake with during the filming of our main task.


Q2: How many mistakes did you make, and what have you learnt about filming?

A2: After filming, we noticed that we had a lot of pauses before and after the actors began or ended the scene. This hesitation looks obvious, so we had to split the clip to get rid of that. Also, we had a problem with one of our dialogue clips of Annabell, as the audio was not working so we had to cut the clip where it was appropriate. I also learnt about the 180 degree rule which I think we applied but I was a bit unsure about this after Vidur walked inside the building.


Q3: If you had to do the task again, what would you do differently?

A3: First of all we would take some practice shots to get a feel for the way we would begin the dialogue in the shot and everything. This would probably take less time if we had taken the time to try it out first. All of our shots were kind of a first time so there was no rehearsal. This may have been a good idea.


Q4: Describe how you edited the footage, and any problems you encountered.

A4: I edited the footage using Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0. I used fade in and fade out effects to begin and end the piece. The only real problem I encountered was the audio in one of the clips which we ended up cutting in the end anyway. We could have re-filmed that shot but instead of wasting time and in order to meet the deadline, we had to cut it instead. There were no other major problems with editing, only the fact that the computer was so slow and it took ages to load up each separate clip making it very frustrating to edit!

Preliminary Task

1)n At a micro, technical level, how well did you film the tasks required – match on action, continuity filming, shot/reaction/shot and exchanging dialogue?

We had a few complixations within exchanging dialougue of shot reaction shot. Sometimes the timing of when it was time to record their acting had come a little to late. Other than that everything was all according to plan. The camera shots Lisa and Kate used were fine however when I was looking through the film that she had edited, I didn't so approve the way she camerad Vidur shoes. The camera seems to be very unstable-(unbalance) doesn't look professional however I can't blame her for it would hard to do a tracking shot.

2) How many mistakes did you make, and what have you learnt about filming?

I haven't make big mistakes, becuase I was only the actor in the film.
Okay, sometimes, I was sitting there and then I was thoughting, oh, you have speak to early or to fast, but the rest was very easy. And there wasn't many mistakes to made.

3) If you had to do this task again, what would you do differently?

I would change the setting and dialogue. It would be based on "relationships". An arguement between a boy and girl argueing about who cheated on who and him finding out that she's been playing with him all a long. The volume of the voice would be louder, the shot reaction shot would be faster,-(When frustration occurs of him looking through her phone), the music would be carmer. As he say's "give me 20 good reasons why I should stay" by Thirsty mirc, the background music slowly rises up with what he just said. As the song hits to a medium stage the two of them will be camerad individually. She'll be sitting in different positions-(shot, shot) on her chair and he'll also do the same however on the ground. The music will be edited on the computer. Why I want to film them in the same room, being in different positions of different shots is to show both of their frustration and how body language is portayed. There will be two cameras used on the both of them.

If I was to do it again I'd ask to edit it or both of us to edit it. If I was to struggle ask Lisa to help me do it with her. I would do the editing along her helping me out. So far I only know how to cut a scene. I want to know how to put the music on, change the volume to soft sound to a loud sound. What type of feature to use when an opening scene is about to come up e.g. A sqaure, fading etc. I had been watching many short opening films of how a conversation is started and the type of feature they use to go to a next scene. This intrigues me very much and I'm hoping and keening to learn more.

I feel I haven't gained an understanding how to edit a film on a DELL computer. What I've benifit from in this project is exploring the many different camera shots. There many I wanted to use however they wouldn't had came to fit with our project. For example a "pan"

4) Describe how you edited the footage, and any problems you encountered.
I can't describe how I edited it for Lisa felt that she was cable enough to do it herself. We all had different roles. My role was to write up the dialogue with Kate and do acting. Lisa's job was to film Vidur and edit.

1/10/09, Thursday, begin filming

Today my group began our filming. Without the help of Lisa's organisation of the type of shorts taken during filming, the plan wouldn't had been as successful. My task was to film Annabell working by using a variety of different angles such as and Lisa's task was to film Vidur. The filming took place at our own pace. The reason for this was to not waste time.
1. Fading in mid-shot of girl sitting down at the desk, taking out her books and things to work.
2. Close up shot of her pressing play on her ipod. (At this point we will use sound effects, and the song of our choice is the 'Pink Panther' theme tune). The type of sound effect is
diegtic/ambient where the only sound playing in the film is the music played by her earphones.
4. Whilst lisa does a tracking shot of Vidurs shoes and walking towards the building, I use a cross-cutting, then flicking to a closer shot of Annabell working.
6. We did many attempts to do an extreme close-up of Annabell's eyes. This is to show the audience of how much she is concentrated on her work.
10. Reaction shot of Annabell looking up at the boy. A close-up shot of her facial expression is used to show her body langauge.
11. She thens presses pause on the Ipod where an extreme close-up is taken. The use of music is not idenitfied yet. The sound is pre-recorded. Here I took many shots from different angles of her eyes. This was to show her body reaction to how relieved she was too see Vidur walking out of her site.

Overall our group found this task simple however my oraginsation didn't go as the group planned. When it came downloading the film shots, many of the small clips were more than we needed so Lisa, kindly deleted the ones that weren't relevant to our clip. My disorganisation was because I had mistakenly filmed 'Lisa's task', "shot reaction shot". This is were two people are having a conversation and the camera shoots at the character individual.

Filming with different type of shots is very Intriguing to me, however my ideas had led to shooting to many shots, having some that were relevant and some that were irrelevant

Written by Kate McIntyre