Group: 31/03/11 Progress

Today, we received some feedback on our rough cut of our opening sequence. We have decided to change the colour of our two lines of action during and after the murder, and also the scene in the Psychopaths bedroom will be re-shot as the colour is quite grainy and is a lower quality to the other scenes outside, which is noticeable when viewing them together.

Group: Wednesday 30/03/11 Group Progress:

We have now got all the footage we need, and majority of the sound. Our focus now is to sort out the music and also some fine tuning with the colour. All in all we have every shot we need and the framing is perfect. Also we have managed to convey the Thriller/horror genre due to the colour and also the silent murder with no blood. It is going well.

Group - Tuesday 29/03/11 work

We have decided that we are going to use the footage we shot on our first shoot, which at first we thought had some problems but we now believe we can overcome these problems by adding effects and carefully editing the parts of the scene we dislike. We have also made progress on our editing of our second shoot by adding all of the sounds we wished to use and are know finalising our titles.

Group: Ideas Movieclips.com

I have looked at a clip of a garrote killing, and I believe blood makes the garroting look much more believable.

Group: Editing

We have shot and edited the first 35 seconds of our opening, however after rendering we have realised that the fonts need to be changed to the Credits having just an "arial" font, and just have the "Ball Tongue" font for the Title "HITLIST" Also we have decided we need to take the redness out of the clip, as the wallpaper is orange and the camera picks up a slight pink/redness on each clip, as it gave the connotations of a female character and romance within our production. Thus we are changing the colour by taking out the red and adding blue; this needs to be done very subtly though in order not to reduce the quality.

Group: Wednesday/Thursday/Friday Lesson

During the Wednesday and Thursday lessons, as a group we were focusing on finding the sounds to suit our clip. We used the website www.freesound.org and typed in key words to help us narrow down our search. The sound files we found and wish to use in our clip are:

• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=33637 This sound will be used when the items on the Psychopath's bed disappear.


• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=716 This sound will be used at the end of our scene in the Psychopath's room, as it builds tension as the the scene fades to black.

On the Friday lesson with the sounds we had found we put onto our opening and it worked really well.

GROUP Storyboard Completion

Storyboard: 8th march completed for our first shoot on 12th march saturday, then second shoot filming the killers room on 18th march friday.

Feeback

Guys - I'm concerned that there has been no more progess on the blog. Despite being set this work, little seems to have been done this week and no posts since Thursday? What did you do all week? What did you do in the lesson on Thursday? Using this blog as a record of all processes is NOT an option for a L4- if they are not there, then I will assume you have done nothing.

Group: Final of the beginning of the opening:

Cameron filmed this part on his own within his bedroom, he found it both a success and a struggle.

We didn't believe he would need a tripod, and thus trying to keep the camera steady posed a problem, however he got round this by making the whole section as a POV with a few bird's eye views too.

Also another difficult factor was the lighting, which had to create a shadow of the killer walking around the room and looking at some pictures, but not to show the shadow of the camera being held. Cameron got round this problem by using a desk lamp, as the only source of light which created brilliant shadow effect, and also an sinster dark look to the bedroom, which is representational to the killer.

All in all the shot went well, however we have learnt from this reccie that we need to have at least two people at every shoot.

Feedback

First Shoot

• Our first shoot was overall, unsuccessful as there were some key issues we discovered while shooting and editing.


• We shot outside during the day, and it was too light for our production of a thriller/horror opening sequence.


• After editing, we have found that we use our time effectively, as we had over four minutes of edited footage which is too long for our production.

• However, our first shoot has highlighted the factors and issues we must consider when planning and shooting.

Group: Preliminary Task findings

From our Preliminary Task we have realized the hardships of continuity editing and also how many shots are needed in order to seem to follow a continuous line of action whilst keeping the audience interested in our film.

One major thing we have found is trying to use sound effectively, we have realized that it transforms a piece of footage, however we need to work on and execute the art of fading in and out of bits of music as to not add distortion effects where not necessary or wanted.

Another major thing we have learned from this piece of filming is the difficulty of portraying violence in this case a punch and a kick. We filmed the punch with myself (Cameron Moffatt) acting the punch out extremely slowly and tried in editing to quicken the pace of the punch however this didn't work in the way we had hoped it would. Also the kick didn't seem to convey or have enough power to seem real, thus we have deduced we need to attempt to work on the realism of our productions.

It is important for us to focus on realism as we are hoping for our production to be highly realistic and plausible in order to capture the audiences attention and keep them on edge throughout our opening which is a key part of a Thriller/Horror genre.

Location Reccie

Through our location reccie we have realized that lighting has a huge impact on the atmosphere of the production, due to our genre being a Thriller/Horror we will need the lighting to be dark and dull, nothing highly exciting.

Also the angle of shot is very important in order to insert a sense of distortion within our production.

Finally due to the fact within one of our locations there is a unmovable mirror we will have to be careful in order not to have shadows present or the film crew itself. This Location Reccie has made us aware of effects needed and also camera positioning both angle and actually were it is in the room.

Pitch

CM Preliminary Task Final: