Audience feedback

Our final cut of our piece were shown to an audience of 12 people and whilst the opening was playing each person was asked to give an estimated mark. the mark were set between 1-4, 1 being the lowest and 4 being the highest. There were seven different aspects of the mark schemes set. The total marks for each were 46.

These catagories were:

Camerawork- 37/46

Editing- 38/46

Sound- 35/46

Mise-en-scene- 33/46

Narrative- 37/46

Suitable for genre- 40/46

Entertainment- 36/46

So overall our grade from our peers would have been a bottom grade A. Although our film was very low budget our film would have been disturbuted through low budget English disturbutors Celador. The certificate for our film has been rated a 15 because the content within it isn't explicit enough for an 18 but it is suitable for children under the age 15.

Film inspiration.

In order to get some creative ideas for our short film we got inspiration from other big films and blockbusters. The films that gave us the most inspiration were.....
- Silence of the lambs
- American Psycho
- The shining
- Cape Fear
- The good son
- Seven
- Girl Interrupted
These gave us the most as they were based around the same idea as ours. By seeing how other people presented phsycho's in their films we could get an idea of how we wanted our to appear.

Evaluation

The idea for our opening has been changed from a superhero opening to a psychological thriller. The reason for our idea changing came because we felt it would be too difficult to have a superhero opening that had things of importance happening without it turning into a 2 minute complete film.

We started our filming on the local park and filmed the enviroment around it whilst being laid on a roundabout with it spinning. The effect we got gave a creepy feel to our opening and along side with the music the opening to our film works. The speech to our film was then recorded cut and edited to make it fit our limit. We than got sarah to sit infront of the camera for 3 minutes to assure we had plenty of footage we could use. The speech was then added to the shots of sarah and cut to make the music fade into it.

The flash backs will be put in the middle of the two sets of speech to break up the sequence of Sarah. The flash backs will be of her dad in the hallway of her room, a flash back of her mums grave and a flashback of a hand on her shoulder.

Final editing and final shots

The final shots for the filming will be filmed on the 25th March 2010.

The final shots will be the flash backs that occur in the middle of our sequence to break up the shots of Sarah. The final shots will be mainly of the father in out story to portray a clearer picture of past events to build on future events.

Evaluation.
The evaluation will be written and the spoken by charlotte and myself and then put on to our film. since we had already kept our blog upto date on our progress we decided that making another website wouldn't be as effective as the voice over.

Voice Over Recording

The voice over recording has now been done instead of recording it on a microphone we used the digital camera but kept the lense shut so there was no picture being captured, the audio was then extracted and added to the visual of sarah that was filmed at close range with a black background put up behind her. Using basic shots of sarah looking straight at the camera we portrayed the idea of her being disturbed or needing help. The use of flashbacks will show past experiences and to distinguish the character of her father.

The speech we wrote for the character gives a basic overview of the story line, the audience will be on the side of the main character but the ending speech twists the thoughts of the audience as the main character reveals that something is going to happen between her father and herself, this creates a cliffhanger type of ending which is perfect for the film beginning as we arent giving to much away information but still keeping our audience engaged.

Filming the speech

The speech is going to be recorded on the video camera but have the lense shut to stop any picture coming through. the audio will then be extracted and put on as a voice over for the opening scene with the main character (played by sarah). The voice over will stop the complications with characters speaking and music. But will also add a sense of mystery to our character.

The Opening and Closing Speeches

Girls opening speech: I was normal once, or at least I think I was. When I was younger when my mother was alive everything was fine and everyone was happy. But then my mother died and everything else changed. My grandparents abandoned us, they blamed us for her death. Blamed us...well blamed me. And my father did also. My grandparents approach didn’t affect me as much, not speaking to me was a much better reaction than my fathers. At times it was like he wasn’t there, that everything he was doing to me wasn’t him or that it didn’t register in his mind. Stupid I know. After all this time I’m still making excuses for him. The burns, the scratches, the scars and worst of all, Oh god worst of all...when the lights went off and everything was quiet I’d hear the squeaks of the floorboards and my door opening. He would be stood there in the landing, breathing heavily, staring at me, I could feel his eyes on me. But feeling his eyes on me would be the last of my problems. First his eyes.. then his hands...


Closing speech: I’m 16 years old now, I’m a women. But by law I’m still a child. By law I still have to be here with him, I’ve left school and could hack college, everyday it gets worst...I want this to end..completely...its him or me...

First day of shooting begins...

After planning, changin the idea, talking through shots and taking the camera out on parks, around town and in sixth form. Our first day of shooting for the final piece will be the 18th February 2010.

The inside shots will take place at charlottes house and a number of the outside flashbacks will be taken from the practice shot that was filmed over the last few weeks.

Digital Storyboard! (Still Images)

Our opening shot for our presentation will be like so. Mid close up shot so that the head, shoulders and some of the clothing is in shot. The background will be completely black and the actor will look straight on at the camera.


In the middle of the sequence there will be a series of flash shots showing inside a traditional home, a father, shots of the family to show signifiance in these characters.

Storyboarding!

Our ideas have changed and developed after looking at different films and directors, as well as watching previous attempts by media students working with different genres. After watching all these we decided that we were making things harder for ourselves so we have re-grouped our ideas and tried to make it simpler, without taking away any quality.

So the main shots we're going to use is...

* Establishing shots
* Mid close ups
* Panning shots

Using Girl Interrupted as inspiration we decided to use simple shots to show a simple storyline.

Storyline:

Young girl who has been abused starts off the opening with a close up of her face with a voice over saying her thoughts. Shots then shoot back to shots of her family and her father to suggest that her father holds significance to the story without giving away what role he plays in this. The voice over will be very dull and plain, won't give much insight to the audience and will confuse the audience so that it appears that she may have some sort of mental illness. Her facial expression will be completely blank, and nothing about her seems very interesting.

Shoots in the middles of the sequence will be quick, 5-10 seconds long at the most showing a simple but significant picture, before the camera reverts back to her where she saying a simple one line to express her feelings and intentions...

Shot Practice

For our first shot practices we decided to shot all around the sixth form centre to get familiar with the cameras. These are some of our location points through sixth form:

All different shots were shot throughout the space of 30 minutes as a practice.

possible settings and locations

We have been looking at not only the shots that need to be used but also the setting and location to add to the mise-en-scene of our opening. We had considered using shots from the woods, countryside, local town, cities, graveyards, farms and our houses.

We decided that since we have not shot any of our final work that we would take pictures using my digital camera and decide between us which location fits best with our parts of our filming.



Local town of Burnley:
Using the idea of filming within the centre is one of the easier options because it is accessable to us at all times. However with the centre being quite crowded its not that suitable to shoot as people can and will often walk infront of your shots.



The woods:
The woods again is an easy option as it is assessable to us easily and won't have the problem of being over crowded or populated. However in dense woods the lighting may not work to our advantage and carrying equipment through the woods carrys the risk of breaking it.

Our Own Houses:
Permission from parents and family members of course, using our own houses doesn't limit is with risks of breaking equipment or having people walking in on shots, however it does limit the amount we can do as their is only so much that can happen within a house for an opening without giving the whole story away.

The countryside and farms:

The countryside is less assessable as we would need transport up there on more than one occasion to film more than once, and to film on farms we would need permission from the owners land, all these factors we will be thinking about when we decide on our final location for shooting.



Graveyards:

Graveyards work very well for the horror genre films however it will be hard to work around graves without being disrespectful and trying not to make it look too cheesy.




Cities:
Nearby cities are blackburn, preston and manchester, all of which are not as assessable to us apart from on weekends which restricts how much we can film. If we decided to film in a city the filming would have to be done in one or two days which doesnt give us much flexibility.

This week...

This week we had our first chance at taking the cameras out around sixth form, giving us plenty of space to run around and practice shots. During which we were given a hand out sheet showing us each shot that would be expected to appear within our first few practice openings.


We did establishing shots, tracking shots and mid shots of people talking. We added credits to which included mine and charlottes names as the director and included Michaels name as we used him as an extra for our practice. He will also be appearing in our short film.

We cut out most of the shots taken as they didnt fit in any way with the rest of the production and found it difficult to make the material fit. In conclusion to this I decided that it would be easier to shoot each scene we do 3 times and take bits of each take out and see which fits better allowing us more variety in the shots we have.

Changing the idea....

We built on one idea of a superhero film, however we found that it would be too difficult to portray each character enough in the space of two minutes. We watched a series of different films and jotted down ideas for genres that we thought would work along side the budjet and the use of the cameras we have. Genres such as comedy and fantasy prove difficult to distinguish against other genres in the first few opening minutes and as our film opening needs to have a strong sense of genre we decided to go with an orinigal idea of a horror or thriller film as it is easier to show what is happening and draw the audience in...

Editing Ideas

Shots:

Opening credits- dark background with white ‘type-writer’ writing to introduce actors, director, producer and Frock and Frolics Productions inc, Design Picture Studios.

First shot- Close up of mobile that will have a phone call incoming on it with “Head quarters” as the caller ID. Over voice of the instructions to the superheroes about a crime happening, this will include the police also.
“Good morning. This morning at 7 hundred hours 30, Detector Louise Whittaker informed me that there was a break in at the royal armoury centre in London. The body of Doctor Colin Phillips was discovered at the scene and there is evidence that the culprit has also taken several things of high value. Find the culprit and return the missing items. You have 24 hours until this case is dead. Don’t let me down.”
Police and heroes shot- Low angle shots on the police investigators to show they are in power and that they control the investigation, high angle shots on the heroes to show that they are not as dominant as the police because they do not have as much information as the police. The shots will flick back and forth to show the information being delivered from the police to the heroes. (This gives the audience an idea of what is happening)

Final shots- Point of view shot through camera to show stills of the crime scene, the opening scene will end on the stills. Four crucial pictures at the end to finish the piece.

First Thoughts.

Our first thoughts on this project were to do a crime film; However, as we are only going to make the first 2 minutes of a new film being released we realised we wouldn’t be able to show much (as this would give away one of the main scenes of the film). Also we found from watching previous students work that a crime film can turn out looking cheep or unrealistic. Another problem we found with this idea was that we couldn’t use any objects like a knife or gun etc. We also couldn’t show any scenes that people my find taboo. With this in mind it would be hard to create a crime scene for our beginning, (as the beginning has to hook the watcher).

Another idea we thought about doing would be a comedy. This at first seamed like a good plan as we wouldn’t need a large budget or fancy scenery we could set it were we pleased. However, when it came to planning it properly we realised that our humour might not be the same as others. From watching comedy films with fellow students, family and friends; we began to see that peoples humour is different and it would be hard to write something that everyone would find comical.


In the end we decided upon our third idea, a super hero film. We decided that with the right shots, editing and actors we could make our film beginning look realistic. We also realised that if we created the right lighting, sound and camera angles we wouldn’t need a large budget, but could make it appear as though we had one. Another positive part of this idea was that as its only the first two minutes we wouldn’t have to show many effects so even though the idea would sound complicated, for us it isn’t.