Editing/filming ect

We finished filming everything on wednesday, however after we uploaded it all we discovered the shots of the feet were too shacky so we're goning to have to reshoot. Also, once we roughly put most of it together, we worked out it would be too short, so we've begun putting little flashes of the 'dark room' scene throughtout the begining that are going to be in black and white and will get longer as you get towards the end. Furthermore, this solves the problem of the images of the girl tied up being too shocking.
Hopefully, if Jo remembers my digisticks, we'll put the music on and whilst i'm in russia she'll film/record someone doing the vioceover so we can add that. (i like the idea of having a professional vioce doing the vioce over btw).
And if she does remember my digisticks then we can finally put some sample music on here and do the poll/audience research thing.

Preliminary task

So this is our preliminary task. Not great, but good learning experience considering Georgie and I are both new to this.

Taught us a lot of things. Was also our first experience of Garage band, you can probably tell we got a bit carried away. One thing we did realise is that the sound quality from the video recording is awful, which is why we'll be using a separate voiceover and none of the sounds from filming for our main task. Also realised that it's going to take us a long time to score any music to it, and it takes a while to edit. So it's got us working a bit faster.

Our filming's nearly all done. Corkboard/darkroom sequence will be done by the end of next week, and we've made a start on editing what we have so far. Voiceover's sounding good, had a few guys read it out. It's very likely it'll be my boss's voice on the final piece. Realised it might sound odd using someone from school, as we need a quite distinctive voice, and would rather people weren't just watching thinking "I know that voice".

Voiceover

Working on the psycopaths monologue. This is the first draft, need to work it over with whoever ends up being the voice of our psycho. Any suggestions?

"You know the old adage, 'it takes 43 muscles to frown but only 17 to smile?' People really ought to smile a lot more. Smiling does a lot for you. A smile releases endorphins & painkillers, like a natural drug. A smile can denote pleasure, amusement, happinness, and a whole array of positive emotions. If you're smiling when you're down, it can cheer you up. It relaxes you, cheers you up, and is so much better for you than any other drug. Now, let's not forget the main one. Smiling can make an ordinary face light up. Make the most mindane of people seem interesting, different, can fascinate you. And for someone like her, smiling really does make you beautiful.I couldn't stop watching her after I saw that smile. The perfect curve of those pink lips in a way she can't hide. Her laughter and beauty are so much more obvious when she smiles.I can't help it if I need her, if I want her. It's really not my fault at all.I just had to see her smile."

So this is our cork board which is the main focus of our film. We've been making stuff to put on it all week and i just stuck them on tonight. I've left a bit of a gap on the top right so he can stick the last polleriod on.

Hopefully we'll be filming all the dark room/ cork board things on saturday but we'll have to see if the polleriod film arrives in time.

Also we've taken the stills we wanted from the film we shot on sunday and Jo's going to photoshop them to make them look like polleriods this week so we have them for sunday (to add to the cork board).

Finally, i recorded a sample of some possible music but its a bit repetative and annoying but once we work out how (and make some other samples) we'll upload them onto here and have some audience research going. And we're writing/editing the vioce over Jo started today tomorrow.

This is just a picture from our filming on sunday. This may feature in a making off documentary if we do one...

location shoots

This is the wall where the girl is going to be tied up (the Dark Room as it were).

Once i've cleared the wood... this could be a good corner to put the table and cork board

This one i took because its like the shots in The Bourne Ultimatam.

And this is the bench where the 'friendly gathering' will be/was.

Prep task

Our prep task is completely finished now :)

We manage to film it in one day, it's all very basic. Editing was the hardest part but all the basic continuity's there. IT's all at a bit of a dutch angle, but if anyone asks, that was intentional :)

Scoring the music to it was difficult, neither of us have ever used garage band before. We got quite bored and probably put in more effects than we needed, but it came together pretty well.

Will upload it onto here later....once we work out how.

Filming

We've now finished the shot list and story board. We're planning to shoot on sunday afternoon for the nowton stuff. (Our two locations are Nowton Park for the friends bits and My garage for the dark room and cork board things)

For sound we're planning to have our vioce over of the smile definitions. This needs to be in a male vioce and have pauses so we can hear the camera noises. Also we won't use the sound from the origional film as the laughter may make continuity difficult and distract from the vioce over, ruining the tension. But to add to the tension we're going to have a solo piano in minor playing.

Ps. We've sorted out the problem with the party scene and have now changed it to a friendly gathering in Nowton Park. Our location shots will be uploaded soon. And instead of a pan over Norwich, we're now going to do a hand held shot of our main guy's feet (1. concealment, 2. Like the shots at the begining of the Bourne Ultimatum) walking through the forest.

Still needs to be done

1. watch more examples - actually write them up
2. finish the director profile - perhaps look at some more
3. make an example cork board (i actually have one now) - post sum pics on the blog
4. shot lists
5. find out where we're going to shoot- i sumhow dnt think we'll be able to do the party thing - might have to come up with a solution.

Audience Research

These are the results from the printed questionnaires we handed out. Jo also put the questionnaire on some social network sites like facebook ect.

We mostly asked 16-17 year olds although we did also question some teachers and older family members.













Most people watched thrillers rarely or 'occasionally'














Most people did enjoy the genre.













The majority of people we asked preferred to watch a psychological thriller although only 1 less person preferred to watch action movies.













The audience research showed that openings are important to the people we asked.













The majority of people did like to think about what going in a the narrative of a film in comparison to being 'spoon-fed' the plot.

Summary:

• Thrillers are watched occasionally or rarely by 16-17 year olds
• Action and Psychological thrillers are preferred
• Openings are important as they can set the atmosphere and explain a film
• And most people our age prefer to think about the narrative of a film
  

Rough Story Board

Click on images to enlarge.

We liked the idea of using poleriods in our film (like in momento) (hense why we want to call it smile) however, instead of being linked to memory we would use them to:

1. draw attention to our main character
2. represent the idea of stalking or watching someone
3. and also as a creative way of putting our titles on.

To direct the film towards our target audience of 16-17 year olds we wanted to use a party scene at the begining but because of having to find a location and money ect this may be difficult. Solutions might be to just to have it as a kind of birthday party in a house of maybe just a scene where some friends have got together. The polleriods would gradually focus more and more on one girl until in the final polleriod you see her mouth taped up as though she's being held hostage.

Transistions would be rapid flash to white linked with a camera noise.

We also like the idea of the polleriods being pinned onto a cork board hopefully with lots of newspaper articles and other little things that might tell the story or at least give a few clues as to what kind of character the stalker might be and his relations to the girl.

The pictures could be made from stills of motion picture and photoshopped to look like a polleriods. And the titles will be hand written on the bottom of them.

Plan of our Preliminary Task

Brainstorming

We did have a short film of this but no one can get it to upload so I've just scanned all our planning stuff in as images instead.
Click images to enlarge.



















Some of the A3 stuff had to be scanned in two bits.
This is the first thing we did but its been gradually added to as time has gone on. (The arrows nearest the middle are the things we first thought of, the little arrows coming off some of them are expansions of the idea and generally the further out the arrow is the later we thought of it.)