FINAL POST

This is my final post for this blog, I have enjoyed working on this blog and working on my AS media course throughout the year.
This blog is now closed.

FEEDBACK FROM OTHERS

After the completion of our final film we showed it to some of the students in the sixth form, seeing as they fitted into our target audience category, 15-19 year old girls. Some of the feedback was really interesting, a lot of people enjoyed our voice over which I think the group found quite surprising, there was a lot of praise for our overhead shot of the candles and our establishing shot, which are two of my favourite shots as well. Over all I think the feedback was really helpful and enabled us to look at our final product in a different light.

MONTAGE PRODUCTIONS

We made up an institution for our film to make it look more professional we call it 'Montage Productions'

MONTAGE PRODUCTIONS

We decided to call it this as our original film was essentially just a montage of clips, this aspect of filming seemed to feature in a number of our drafts and so we decided it would be suitable name for our institution.

TITLE: CAITLYN

As a group we had a lot of discussion about the title of our film, some of the ideas included 'The Point of Infliction' , 'Theta Squared' but these were just some rough ideas. Thankfully we agreed that our film should be named after one of the characters although we did not yet have a name for either girl. After further discussion we settled fro 'Caitlyn' as we agreed the name itself fitted the character well, the girl played by Georgia Koureas, our secondary character as the film is based upon an incident cause by her. We also decided that the name was unusual, especially our chosen spelling, as we wanted to steer away from the conventional spelling as she is not a conventional teenage girl. After adding it to our film we decided it looked right and fitted in well with our film.

PICTURES FROM GARAGE BAND

Here is a picture of our soundtrack from garage band on our mac, the quality is not great as it was taken on a mobile phone, sorry.

PICTURES FROM EDITING

Here are a couple of pictures of our editing on imovie. This is a picture of our mac taken on an iphone, here we were editing the close up shot of Elizabeth and working on our soundtrack. If you look closely at the bottom left (purple screen) the purple background indicates that we added our soundtrack from garage band onto our film from the menu on the bottom right corner (with the blue bar).

EVALUATION

Here is the evaluation of my film, a short 9 slide power point presentation answering the main 7 questions.

Caitlyn Evaluation

CHANGES WITH THE VOICE OVER

After listening to the voice over for one of our final drafts we discovered that after the final sentence "a part of me will always want to be her" we discovered that somebody had said "good" following it. So we had to edit the voice over so we could shorten it to finish on the word "her" with a couple of seconds of an instrumental before the end of our opening.

FOOTAGE FOR OUR SECOND IDEA

Here is some of the footage we used for the second film idea which involved the planning of the murder.

FILMING THE OPENING SHOT

Here is some of the original footage before any editing that we took to get our establishing shot. Including some of the original editing for our first moors murders idea.

TUNNEL SHOT

In our film we had to change the shot where Elizabeth and Georgia run through the tunnel, as after showing our teacher the film she said it did not look professional speeded up and suggested that we change it in order to give our film a more professional look, so we changed to shot so that they walked through the tunnel at the same pace. We found that this new version of the shot not only looked better but the longer sequence made change in music in time with the voice over 'she's got what she wanted' which we think is very effective.

OUR FILM IN HD

The final version of our film in hd, unfortunately due to a problem with the macs our music would go out of sync so it came in too early which ruined the editing. We also found that the hd version of some of our shots in high contrast lighting came out unclear and not as defined as they in the normal setting.

ELIZABETH'S CREDIT

There was much debate amongst the group over Elizabeth's credit, originally it was 'narrated by ELIZABETH KENNELLY' however after researching a number of different film, which involve voice overs with discovered that it was not typical of thriller films to include a 'narrated by...' credit in their opening sequence so we decided to scrap it and change it to 'edited by ELIZABETH KENNELLY'.

FINAL AS PRODUCT

This is our final film that we cannot change, when we uploaded it in hd the music would go out of sync with the film and the only difference was the credits themselves so instead we decided to keep it in large.

CREDITS

when editing our film we had to change the 'Eleanor Wakeling' credit from the swing shot, we had edited it so that the music, shot and name came in at the same time and was really effective. However it was difficult to read the name on the light coloured background and it distracted the audience from the symbolism of the toy, we felt that this was more important and wanted the credit to be easily read so we moved it to the following shot.

SOUNDTRACK

Here is just the soundtrack to our film opening, we spent a lot of time choosing how we wanted it to sound, in the end we settle for this:



The music begins with a string instrumental, very slow tempo but a high pitch, this opens the films and gives it a typical thriller feel. The next big change in the music is the start of the main melody, which is a guitar instrumental we decided it fitted in well with our film, as both show modern elements it also highlights the youth of the girls and appeal to a younger audience. After Elizabeth says the words 'she got what she wanted' which is echoed on our voice over, this reinforces the message of Caitlin's power. however as this plays the music changes to a different melody, another guitar instrumental but this one at a fast temp and lower pitch, presenting the chaos of the our main characters emotions and thoughts as she remembers her traumatic past. Finally the melody fades out to leave a fast beat as the opening comes to an end.

CLASSIFICATIONS

We have decided to classify our film as a fifteen, seeing as there will be not be a lot of strong language in our film and little to no nudity but there will be strong violence we thought it would be appropriate to classify it as suitable for peoples of fifteen years and over. Having the lowest possible classification will also enable us to have higher viewing potential as a larger percentage of people are able to view it legally.

RESEARCH INTO FILM TITLES

Our Group had to decide whether to have the title of our film, once we have chosen one, either coming over an existing shot, or to have a black screen to show the title, or to have a specialist title shot such as our 'montage productions' shot at the start.

I decided to research into some different titles of films by looking a number of film openings and deciding which would suit our film the most.

The title of 'Ghost Ship' appears over an existing shot and does not cut of the sequence this allows a continual sequence of the opening credits. I think that this is effective as it does not draw attention away from the film, which is setting the scene, but also allows the title to stand out as it is in large pink font.

I think that a title over the top of our establishing shot would be best for our film.

SECOND DRAFT OF CANDLE SCENE EDITED

Here is the second draft of the edited candle scene footage with the new background story included. I am not sure about this draft and our idea may change again as it makes little sense to an outsider and there are continuity flaws throughout. Due to the sound and audio having not been included yet it is best to watch this clip in mute.

FINAL FILM IDEA FOOTAGE

This is a selection of our raw footage for our final film idea, which we are going to edit.

SECOND DRAFT OF FINAL FILM IDEA

This is the second draft of our final film idea, this film includes a basic soundtrack, which we are not planning to use with a voice over, which we have included to experiment with the concept of having the girl narrate the opening of our film. There is still more editing that needs to take place and the credits might be rearranged.

FOOTAGE FOR MOORS IDEA

Here is a montage of clips presenting some of the footage we have edited for our two minute film.

FIRST DRAFT OF OUR FINAL FILM IDEA

Here is the first draft of our edited final film idea. We need to add a soundtrack, and possibly a voice over (we are still debating on this idea) and the credits need to be edited.

THIRD DRAFT OF FINAL FILM

This is the third draft of our final film idea, we are considering removing the end clip of the girl and having the film fade out to black instead. We have added in more credits and edited them further, however there is still more editing to be done and these may change again.

NEW IDEA: CANDLE SCENE

After another unsuccessful editing session, the group decided to move in a different direction, we decided to film footage based on a girl in hiding from another, this ties in with our horror genre and enables us to pull together previous footage with the new footage. We spent the day filming the 'candle scene' which involves a girl sitting in a ring of candles obsessing over her past.

FINAL FILM PLAN

Finally our group has come up with a final plot and idea for our 2 minute film opening, this being the story of two girls, one of which manipulates the other into committing a murder when they were younger. Later in life the manipulated girl reveals their secret causing a feud between the two, resorting in the manipulated girl to go into hiding dwelling on her past.

We have combined our footage from the previous ideas with more new footage filmed with our new film in mind, such footage includes, candles scenes and the ring-a-ring-a-roses scene. Having begun our editing we are now pulling footage together and editing it into a story, all that is left is our soundtrack and the fine tuning of our editing along with the credits.

CLASSIFICATIONS

Classification Guidelines

STUDENT GUIDELINES

Student Guide to Bbfc

FIRST DRAFT EDIT

This is the first draft of our 2 minute film (best to watch in mute as there is some background noise on some of the clips) After finally completing the filming of all the raw footage for our film, we were able to start to edit properly. We took the footage from the candle scenes and added in the footage that creates the rest of the plot for our film. We are aiming for a flashback effect interlinked with the present day. This was a difficult task as we thought our audience would find it difficult to decipher between the present and the memory of the girl. We are planning to show this to a number of different people and ask for feedback as to how well they followed the plot and how effective they thought the opening credits were, we will then take any criticism into consideration for further editing of our opening.

NEW FILM EDITING

Here is a high quality version of our first draft, we have filmed and edited the footage for the candle scenes but we still need to include the other footage of the scene with the man and some other footage to introduce more of a story to our opening credits.

PICTURES OF FILMING

Here are some pictures of our group whilst we were filming some of the footage for our two minute clip.

FIRST DRAFT

These clips show a first draft of our new film. This is not the completed clip but it features a selection of our footage so far.

(Apologies for the poor quality)

More to come...

FILMING ON SUNDAY 20th

On Sunday we filmed the shots with Jason, in the study. We decided to film a number of different shots of him, shuffling through papers and photographs, looking at maps, searching the Internet and the msn scene.
We started by filming him looking through photographs and images of children and the moors murders, we filming this from a number of different angles, such as long shots, close-ups and extreme close-ups. We then filmed him walking around his study, pacing, looking at maps and generally planning, we could use these shots a 'space fillers' if we are unable to fill up two minutes with our main ideas. We then went on the film the msn shot from Jason's point if view. we had written a script from the woman's conversation so it was the same. We had Jason on msn typing the conversation. and filmed this as an over-the-shoulder shot to begin with, we filmed the entire conversation in three different angles, over-the-shoulder, close-up of his hands typing and an extreme close-up of the computer screen, this was easier to film as then lighting in this room did not cause any lines to appear on the screen.

FILMING OVER CHRISTMAS

As our group was unhappy with our original idea, we decided to re-film and borrow the camera for a further two weeks,over the Christmas holiday. We decided to film the footage of the woman in her bedroom first of all.

Filming on Friday 18th
As a group we filmed throughout most the afternoon, focusing on the shots of the woman in her bedroom and walking up the stairs. We started by filming the stairs shots, in three different angles, filming sideways over the rail, straight up the stairs and from the back. We thought that a variation of shots would add to the intensity and dramatic tension of this scene.
We the filmed her walking into the bedroom and opening her laptop, following on from this we decided to film the msn conversation. This shot was one of the hardest to shoot as we needed another person in a different room playing the part of 'Jason'. We needed a number of close up shots of the hands typing, her response and expression and of the actual conversation itself. Filming the computer screen was difficult as in some lights it cause lines to appear on the screen and ruin the shot.
After Filming the msn conversation we filmed the scene where the woman rips down the pictures of her and he friends to replace them with pictures of 'Jason' and his plan. This was the hardest shot to film as we had to set up all the pictures and due to the length of time it took to set up the shot, we only had one take, this added pressure for the actress to get it right first time. We filmed this in three different shots, a wide shot, a close-up and an extreme close-up. We then attempted to place the camera on the floor to film bits of paper falling down, I am not sure how this will look as the filming was not that successful.