KS : Progress Update

We completed a rough cut of our film opening, exported and presented to our group. Feedback was good, our peers thought visually our peice was great with particular sucessful editing techniques such as the mirror shots. However the narrative was not clear so we need to work on our order and cuts to help this, we must also re check all stills and footage are taken landscape. To make sure our narrative is clear set we aim to have flashes of the possessed girls face, how she was before the doll obsession, before each change of scene. This will allow the audience to keep relating back to her more stable state of mind. 

LH: Story Boarding

KS: Storyboarding

By storyboarding our film opening we were able to work out the order and each particular shot we will take. We could draw out the transitions we will use, the angles, duration and sound each still or film will be. Below our images of the graveyard/ruins scene, the wallpaper scene, the close ups and the dolls house scene.

Wallpaper

Dolls house, interior and exterior

Graveyard and ruins

Mirror shots and laughter

KS: Editing update

Todays editing went very well, we experimented with the editing technique 'mirror' which we chose to use for our playground footage, also picking out the colour red against the plain black and white footage and stills in our wallpaper scene using the technique 'colour pass' to draw attention to the blood as a horror connotation. Although some of the black started to come through the colour red, I think the footage still looks very good adding dimension to our piece. We experimented with the technique used in 'Black Swan' in the mirror scenes, where the figure turns yet the reflection of her in the mirror stays stationary facing the front. This however did not work as we planned, due to the fact we did not use a  tripod for this piece of footage, the still image and the film did not match up in the position of the mirror so we aim to re-shoot this in our final shoot tomorrow, 29th March, we will upload and capture this footage in tomorrows lesson and continue editing!

KS: Film research and ideas

To continue with our film editing and filming process I have researched further films based on the prop doll and the theme and genre of our film, psychological thriller. After finding an excellent site for film clips, 'movieclips.com' and using 'Youtube.com' for further research we were able to gather influences from previous films.


This clip from 'Saw' shows the prop 'Jigsaw' a very creepy doll with great use of voice over and montage editing, similar styles to our film opening. I particularly like the use of zooms into the face, and cuts from different angles of the prop to establish it but also create a disjointed sense. We previously never considered using stills as flashes cut during our movie footage, apart from just flashes of the dolls face, here however through the handy cam footage, stills have been edited in very successfully, a technique we should consider using. I also noticed when watching, the use of 'old film' editing effect has been overlayed throughout, we discussed using this for some of the footage, rather than all, however it has proven to significantly decrease the quality of the images.





'Child Play' is a similar thriller film based around the doll prop which torments people. I like how the is a static prop then suddenly turns to life, the movement in the eyes is something we aim to portray in our final shoot tommorow, 29th March.

Chucky Doesn't Run on Batteries

Child's Play at MOVIECLIPS.

After researching on 'movie clips' I also found the film 'The Shining' which has many of the same locations and props we chose for our film opening. This clip I found below shows very sinmilar footage to our 'wallpaper scene', a strong wallpaper setting with blood dripping down it. The costume used for the possessed style girls, rein-acting dolls are the exact style we aimed to create. The use of the jump cuts, so the girls progressively move forward is a technique we used for our 'Wilderness Woods-The Hooded' film, and a technique we will consider using as we continue to edit. The zooms, directional light and strong use of the prop blood are very sucessfully used both here and in our film opening. The flashes also work very well here, however we aim to speed these up, similar to how compression of time is used in the begging of this clip, as the young boy rides around.

LH: Call Sheet & Risk Assessment

Before we could go on our shoots we had to compose a risk assessment and a call sheet. For our shoots we only need two cast members (ourselves) so the call sheet was fairly simple. After deciding who would look after each piece of equipment we began looking at the risks that our chosen locations may have. We have to anticipate any possible accidents that could damage the equipment or ourselves. The main risk that we found was consistent at each location is that one of us would fall or drop the camera.

2 Weeks to go!

With two weeks to go it is important we assess our progress to ensure we know what point of our project we our at. Lilli will need to post up the mind map of ideas and the audience research and the risk assesment sheets. We will also need to upload pictures of the storyboard with a comment on why we did this and how it helped with our production.

In terms of checking blog posts to meet the deadline we must read through and spell check posts, ensure we have each commented on others' work, check there is enough pictures and those which are up are still able to be viewed. We need to check our clips and videos are embedded correctly to play on the blog.

We have filmed most of our opening footage, however next week when we continue with editing we will check if any scenes need to be reshot or if we are missing areas, for example we must shoot the dolls house footage and a few of the close ups and laughter of the doll early next week.

We must upload risk assesment sheets, and comments about actors. Our sound will be composed and edited to the final draft of the opening on saturday and sunday the 2nd and 3rd of march in which we will spend our last 3 days doing final edits and ensuring the sound fits.