Merry Christmas

We have 2 weeks off for christmas now. We are pretty much up to date project-wise, and editing is going well. We have a finished sequence using old footage with only a few minor touches to be applied. We plan to shoot the first Tuesday back and maybe replace some of the shots with near-perfect ones, but all the editing is in place so this will not take long to fix up.

We look forward to it. Bye bye.

My Editing Schedule

Our group was given an edit suite to share with one other group, consisting of one computer with editing software and one normal computer to blog with. Our teacher devised an editing schedule for each group member for the last 2 weeks before christmas. These individual editing slots were in our free periods at school, as more editing time other than just the lessons.

This is my individual editing schedule for the weeks beginning 8th and 15th December, showing my individual editing time input for my group (Periods are 40 minutes long):

Editing Week 1

Monday - Period 1: present

Wednesday - Period 6-8: unpresent due to illness (caught up by using 3 cancelled lesson periods for editing, see week 2)

Friday - Period 1: present

Editing Week 2

Monday - Period 6: present

Thursday - Period 3 - present (cancelled lesson), Period 7-8: present

Friday - Period 4-5: present (cancelled lesson)

Our third and final editing week begins on Monday 5th January after our christmas holidays. This week will be more intense for editing, with our editing schedules taking up half our free periods, 2 lunchtimes and 2 after school sessions each.

Re-Shoot: Reflections

The re-shoot proved very testing for our group. First of all, we had organised the shoot for Tuesday 9th Decemeber only for one of our actors, Rob, to pull out on Monday due to various commitments. We resolved to shoot the entire thing again with me as the victim instead of Rob. However, the other actor, Matt, was not present at school due to illness from Monday to Wednesday so we had no killer. One option was to recruit Ben Tucker as a new killer but we were so impressed with Matt's acting that this was no option. We managed to resolve a new shote date for Thursday 11th December after some miscommunications with the media department, but this went ahead fine with both actors turning up.

So far, this had raised problems about organisation and communication, with our group learning that we should be able to get hold of actors at all times by a telephone number, that we should leave more time between informing our actors and the date of shoot so it is not such short notice, and that we have to communicate every single problem with our media teacher so she knows what is going on and when people are booked to shoot.

On the actual shoot further problems were evident. A highly inconveniant winter virus commonly known as common flu or a british cold had swept though our school leaving a large chunk of our year group bed-ridden! However Jack, Shaun, Rob, Matt and I had battled our way into school for the shoot, but our illnesses proved quite unproductive. Time was obviously wasted clearing out the space for our shoot quite slowly, and we were overall less motivated to work properly as we just wanted to get it done and go home. Generally, this made us miss some crucial continuity mistakes and filmwork was not as good as in the previous shoot. I was so ill I was barely able to take one shot! After the shoot we took our equipment back to the media department to find it closed, and so we had to leave everything in the school basement until morning. This was because one of our media teachers (who was supposed to be present at school that night), Miss Blackborow, was also incredibly ill and had gone home. This had left us with one more problem on our shoot and that was that our studio lights were without filters.

Looking back at the footage after we realised the lighting was strange, the continuity was terrible, the camera was slightly shaky and the acting was not quite as dramatic due to the actors being ill at the time. We thought one or two of the shots could be inserted into our old footage but none of them really fitted except for one cutaway. Therefore we created a sequence using mostly our old footage and this seemed to work well. However, we had originally re-shot because we did not like the flickering lights on our old footage, and we were told inevitably that we would have to do a second re-shoot to get this perfect.

In our re-re-shoot hopefully we will all be better from our illnesses and able to work more productively by shooting with order and purpose such as in the second shoot, but taking more care in continuity, lighting, acting etc. This should not be a problem, and hopefully this will all come together to gain the perfect set of shots to replace our old footage!

Itty Bitty things (bits & bobs)

Sounds

I managed to find some realistic free soundclips from http://www.soundsnap.com/, this being my job for an editing session.

I got a light buzzing sound for our first clip, a faint dripping water sound that can be turned up on the dripping water clip, a man screaming in pain for when Matt walks past a new victim and a general scary background sound full of bangs and echoes. The light buzzing sound proved unsucessful as it was unrealistic, so we will just use a buzz sound from one of the test shots of the lights. The dripping water sound worked after turning it up to absolute maximum volume. The male scream we tried to use on the slamming of the door but it didn't sound right, almost too comical, whilst the banging sounds sounded like patting water so we decided against using these 2 sounds in our final sequence.

Credits

In an editing session on my own I decided I did not like the content of the credits that appeared and felt these could be made better or more film-like.

Originally it started with 'directed by...' then 'edited by...' then 'produced by', whereas it is more conventional to begin along the lines of 'a film by...' then 'produced by...' then 'directed by...'. 'Edited by...' is not usually used in an opening sequence.

Also, the original credits had our 3 full names but this seemed a bit too straight forward.

I noticed alot of films had a film company and a production company to fill the first 2 credits so I made 2 up. I came up with the film company name 'Live Wire' to match the opening credit shot of the light turning on. "A film by Live Wire" sounded like a decent opening, not taking too much away from the atmosphere but adding to the anchorage.

After this I felt it was important to include all our names in opening credits still, but not in such a straight forward way, so for the production company I created the false partnership of 'Wall & Bayliss' (the second names of me and Shaun respectively), based in a group in-joke with both mine and Shaun's older brothers having worked on the same media project 3 years ago. I decided the phrase, "A Wall & Bayliss Production" worked well following on from the first credit, appearing around some cracks in a wall in a disjointed way.

This left one credit left, and having not included Jack yet and him having probably done most of the actual camerawork on shoots, we went for a simple "directed by Jack Downes" to appear alongside the dripping water on the third credit scene.

After this the film starts with a montage of clips showing the character waking up in the chair, and we felt this a mysterious and suitable time to introduce the 2 actor names in a faded kind of style one after the other in opposite corners of the screen in which the victims head dominates. These actor names were "Robert Demont" and "Matthew Doyle". The unclarity of which of the actors is shown at this point, and the fact there is only one character when 2 actor names are shown add to the mystery and enigma of the scene.

The 2 minute sequence then follows ending on either an image of the door with the hand, or simply fading to black, both of which will reveal the title of the film. We are still yet to decide on this title, which is the final thing I have to do in this blog post.

Title Ideas

- Guest
- The Guests
- The Host
- Host
- Blue Room
- The Chair
- Hot Seat
- Cast Away
- Cast
- Act
- The Act
- The Order
- Order
- The List
- Guest List

Hopefully, Jack & Shaun will have some more ideas because I do not particularly like many of these...

Lighting

Our group discussed the fact that we needed to change the lighting in the re-shoot and we decided this should be our main focus seeing as everything else (acting, location etc) was spot-on. Therefore, I conducted some mini-research and found this image!

I thought our lighting could be similar to in this picture of a basement setting. It is pretty much the same as what we were doing before with all the basement lights off and just the studio lights, but in the shoot we did not use this to best effect. In this picture there is a fairly strong studio light centered an a point of the room, and we could shine a studio light on the actor at a stronger intensity (with blue gel) in order to focus the attention on them and express their features and expressions more as well as sharpening their shadows. This I do not feel we did well enough in the first shoot as we tried to flicker the lights on and off but this only caused a blurred focus on the camera. We should always keep the intensity the same, and making it fairly high will be more effective within the pitch black darkness than the extreme dimness we tried last time. The lighting will still be low key but will simply be clearer and sharper such as in good films such as Saw.

ACTUAL SHOOT: REFLECTIONS

Our shoot went mostly well, with actors and helpers attending, location, props and costumes sorted out, and some decent footage being gained. However, we ecountered several problems along the way, so we discussed these in our groups and came up with this list of problems that can be sorted out or addressed:

- Did not ask for permission to move items around basement in order to prepare the location the day before the shoot, therefore making the caretakers very angry. In apologising and putting everything back to how it was we were told not to move anything until after 3pm on a school evening, and to move everything back to how it was after every shoot.

- The moving around of objects in the basement uses up alot of shooting time.

- Group members have not given long enough notice about them being late for a shoot because of matters such as medical appointments.

- When a group member was not present, action took place without this member knowing leading to confusion the day after (this was the moving of the items on preparing the day before the shoot, with one member not knowing about this until being told off about it).

- Shoots were done without using the shooting script for large parts, so the shot order was random and disorganised leading to missed out shots.

- Actors/helpers were kept a very long time after school without a real break, and sometimes without being needed at certain points during the shoot.

- There was alot of time wasting on shoot because of certain distractions and the novelty of filming in such a scary location in a mildly proffessional way.

- Communication between group members and actors/helpers was often hindered by jokes, unclear messages and short notice (the script being handed to them the day before).

- Using two lights with one on either side of the basement was tricky and one light was often left on for no purpose whilst we filmed using the other light, therefore wasting energy and time (to let the lights cool down before packing them away).

- We were not careful enough with expensive equipment, often acting before thinking, and trying to rush putting away the equipment in order to go home quickly. This resulted in an accident in which a £35 glass light filter was dropped and smashed because it was too hot having only just being turned off.

- Some props were not tested beforehand, such as the mixing of the fake blood going wrong, resulting in pure red food colouring being poured on an actors hand, which proved extremely hard to remove.

- The location proved very cluttered and messy, and all our paperwork, equipment and props were left strewn in random places (out of shot). This increased the possibility of items being lost and time was wasted at the end of the shoot, clearing up.

- There maybe a continuity issue with chains and rope the victim is tied up in and their positions, as well as pieces of black tape at different lengths being used in different takes.

We are going to create a re-shoot list of the shots we need to film (and those we need to film again). We are going to hold another shoot next Tuesday after school with actors, and film all the shots they are in using the shooting script. Any shots we do not need actors for we are going to film in a double media lesson this Friday (jncluding lots of cutaways) also using the shooting script. Here we can also record sounds. With these shots done before Tuesday, that shoot will be quicker and more precise, so actors are not held up so long at school and do not waste their time when they are not needed. Items will not have to be moved for the cutaway shots on Friday as they are all close up cutaways, so this moving job can be done quickly and efficiently at 3pm on Tuesday before the shoot (with some members having a free period then). I have an orthodentist appointment that afternoon at 3.40pm and will not be back for the shoot until 4.15pm. However, I have notified the group and this will cause no problems. We have decided that no helpers are needed for this shoot, and this will help speed things up as too many people present at the last shoot caused many distractions and time was wasted. This time we will be more serious, thorough and organised using the shooting script. All bags, props, equipment and folders will be kept at one part of the room together so that nothing is lost. We will be much more careful with equipment, and lights will not be left on unnecessarily. Furthermore, after the shoot actors will be allowed to go and we will turn the lights off to cool down whilst we pack away the rest of the equipment. This will leave the lights time to cool enough before we pack them away carefully without the possibility of dropping anything. Therefore, we can take this all together back to the media department so the teacher can go home too, leaving us with a clear basement in which we can move back all items to the correct positions before going home.

Overall, we are very happy with the footage and believe there are no problems with the actual project. We are fully prepared for all these problems now after 2 shoots, and everybody know fully what they are doing and what to expect (including actors who know their scripts fully now). We are also aware of the continuity issues and will make sure we know how to keep this the same as the other footage before going on our shoot. We will have better organisation, only bringing the paperwork we really need to follow, therefore allowing us to carry out the final shoot with more purpose and precision, speeding up the process and being far more productive. This will leave us with great footage to finish our projects with no major problems and a very exciting final production.