Evaluation

Revelations: Final Piece

EDITING- Titles

On Friday Oscar and I were doing some editing, the main thing we had left to do was to add in the titles so we decided to do this. After trying them in a few places we decided that we would have our titles changing from both the bottom left hand and right hand corners; I think it looks better this way as this is how most films have the titles and it's more interesting to watch when they change places. 

After we did this I showed our work to Mr Michie who told us that we needed to re-record the very end of our title sequence when you hear the child saying 'Daddy, I taught the dog a new trick.' We all agreed that this line wasn't really good enough and wasn't conventional, so I went away on the weekend and re-recorded the child saying 'Daddy, please come and play.' I think that this now sounds much better, making the child seem innocent and naive, creating a contrast between the protagonist holding a knife to victims neck and his child wanting to play with him. 

EDITING- Titles

Charlee and I have been deciding our titles and which order to show them. We looked back at our research and the order which the titles come up in these films. These are our final decisions:

Lucid Productions

Starring

-Aidan Lever

-Lucy Wise

-Angelo Gizzi

REVELATIONS

Cinematography by

-Oscar Bath

Sound and Music by

-Charlee Murphy Frost

Editing by

- Oscar Bath

Written by

-Bethany Ainsworth Coles

Produced by 

-Bethany Ainsworth Coles

Director

-Imogen Welsford

PLANNING- Name of our film

A few weeks ago we decided on the name of our film, we came up with a few ideas but none of them suited the film. We finally decided on the name 'Revelations'. We decided to have this name because it fits with the thriller genre and it suits our film as it's about revelations. How the characters have had their secrets revealed. I think this name was the best idea that we came up with and works really well with our film.

EDITING- Final Changes

This week is our last week to get everything finished as our final cut is in for next Wednesday. We've spent this week editing and making the final changes; I think that we will get our work done in time and I'm really happy with how our work is looking at the moment.

Changes:
Yesterday we decided to change the music, we had originally made the music ourselves and we were going to use this, however when we edited it in with the film it didn't really fit and I didn't think it sounded quite right in the film as it was too fast and changed the pace of the whole film. Therefore we decided to look online for some more music and see if we could find anything more suitable. Oscar found some new music which we all agreed that we really liked and it suited the film as it's quite slow, sounds quite scary and is conventional for a thriller film.

Watching the film back and looking at some other thriller openings and other peoples work we decided that we should include an establishing shot of the house to include in the beginning to make the audience aware of the location. I went to the house yesterday and filmed it myself, I think this will add to the realism, and allow the audience to understand the location. 

RESEARCH- Se7en

Whilst researching for my evaluation questions I came across the film Se7en, which has a very similar storyline to our film. I decided to watch the opening sequence to look if anything was similar, which it wasn't really. Although it did have some similarities, such as it's all in black and white which is similar to some parts of ours, and it includes the protagonist obsessing over things, writing things down and obsessing over something which isn't clear in the opening. 
This will help me with my evaluation for the question on who would distribute my film, I will research films similar to mine (films like Se7en) and look who the distributers are for this.

SECOND DRAFT

This is our second draft, this is completely different to our first draft as we didn't use any of the same footage. I think this this has improved so much and is a lot better than our first draft, since making this second draft we've changed a lot and it's got a lot more effects and non diabetic sound. 

FIRST DRAFT

This is our first draft. Since we made this we changed a lot. We changed the location, changed some of the actors and we changed some parts of the storyline. We didn't manage to get any non diagetic sound into this as we ran out of time before this was due in. 
When we make our final film we will have more non diagetic sound, sound effects and music, and we'll also have more editing and effects included to achieve the thriller conventions. 

Evaluation Questions

In our lesson this week we looked at the evaluation questions and went though what we needed to write about. I found this really useful as I was struggling to answer the questions as I wasn't sure what to include, when I continue answering the questions I will be sure on what to write and know exactly what I need to include.

EDITING- Sound

Our film doesn't need many sound effects however we have found a selection of sound effects which we may be using. We've found a sound effect to use for the transitions in the beginning when it cuts from the living room to the garage; I think that the sound is really good and fits in well, it's a sharp sound which is conventional for a thriller film and it's similar to some of the sounds I heard whilst watching thrillers for research. We may also need sound effects for doors closing which we were going to record ourselves at first, however we found a website which has thousands of sounds to choose from so it's most likely we'll be using one from here.

For the music we've had a piece recorded especially, Beth spent a few lessons trying to find music online which we could use however none of us agreed on any of her choices so we decided it would be best if we made the music ourselves as it meant we were all able to describe exactly what we wanted and then go from there. I think that the music we've chosen really suits the pace of the film and helps make the tone more sinister, having a slow pace and times and then creating a faster pace. 

Evaluation Questions

These are the evaluation questions which I've decided to start work on as our deadlines are coming up very soon.

•  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?  

•  How does your media product represent particular social groups?  

•  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?  

•  Who would be the audience for your media product?  

•  How did you attract/address your audience?

•  What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?  

•  Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

EDITING

Ever since we began editing Oscar has been doing most of the work because he's the only one who has experience in editing and knows how to do everything. Although Beth, Charlee and I learned how to edit when we were doing our continuity task, editing is still something which I'm not very comfortable with doing, however I do want to learn so that I can help out more and do some of the editing for myself. I think that we should all start taking it in turns to do the editing, so this week and next week I would like to start doing some more editing. 

FILMING- Re- Shooting Vicar Speech

Today we decided to film for the opening of our film, the scene where the Vicar is being interviewed for the news. We decided to change this scene to an interview because we thought that it would work better as an interview so that we could address more issues in the questions. 

Beth and I filmed this scene with 2 different actors Finley Harnett and Luis Harding, however this didn't go successfully as we didn't have enough time to film. The actors hadn't yet learned the lines and on top of this people kept walking past us when we were trying to film.

We will be filming this scene again, next time at a time when there wont be any people about. In the meantime the actors will be able to learn the script so that next time our filming goes successfully. We don't have much time left as the deadline is coming up very soon so whilst we film we will continue to edit the scenes which we've already filmed.

EDITING- Fonts

(Revelations is spelt incorrectly in all of the images)

Yesterday myself and Charlee began to look at fonts to use for the titles. As we're making a horror-thriller I think it's good if we use a font which is fits in with this. A font that's quite large and masculine, therefore I think we should use a sans serif font so it appears masculine. 

This was the first font which we looked at, I think this this would be a good choice as it's very similar to some other fonts in thrillers which I've looked at. I think the capitals are interesting as they stand out and make the font look masculine and powerful. 

The second font we looked at is also quite spooky, the serifs make the font look like trees or sticks which makes it look scary but doesn't really fit in with the theme of our film. The fact that it's serif is another reason I don't really like this font is because it looks quite feminine which isn't conventional for a thriller film. Fonts in thrillers tend to be sans serif and quite bold and bright which this one isn't.

The third font which we looked at was this, it's very similar to the first one however I think that I prefer it as it's still sans serif and conventional for a thriller, however the letters are different heights which make it appear more interesting and appealing to look at. 

Overall I think we should use the final font, 'Dirty Headline' however it's something which we'll need to decide on as a group. 

PLANNING- Dialouge

This is the dialouge which beth wrote for the news shown on the TV.

Announcer:

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to Spotlight. Here today to explain to us the dramatic resigning of Pope Benedict due to the Saint sinner killings. The Lords messenger Arch Bishop Hartley.

Hartley:

May our lord bless you and keep you citizens of God we have received information about the dead sinners who whilst their sin was great their souls were redeemable without this violence.

Announcer:

What is the church doing about this situation?

Hartley:

Well we are obviously working with the police on these so called Saint Sinner murders and are trying to solve this as quickly as possible. There will not be a government enquiry but these murders are in no way connected to the resignation of the Pope.

Announcer:

I think the public will refuse to believe that, we all know what’s going on in the Vatican and no one here would be surprised if one of your alter boys turned and did the killings. We all know the treatment they get.

Hartley:

Obviously this has nothing to…The Vatican is in no way implicated, no minister or vicar is involved this is obviously a fanatic carrying out God’s work.

Announcer:

Are you saying you agree with the killings?

Hartley:

Obviously this is an observation upon the prophecy and the true Christians are being tested. I assure you everything is being done to persecute them but…

Announcer:

That wasn’t an answer to my question

Hartley:

Well obviously I don’t agree but in principle Satan and his hoards must be punished.

Announcer:

Final question then your Holiness.

Hartley:

Yes, fire away

Announcer:

Where is your God now?


Although we filmed this scene previously without an announcer, some of us agreed that it would be better if we made a new script, I'm still not sure if we should use the new script and film again or if we should use the old part which we filmed, however we can always decided which would fit better afterwards. 

EDITING

After our first draft we decided we needed to film the whole thing again which meant editing the whole opening again as well. Last time in our first draft I think that there were too many fades in between cuts so this time I think we need to do some more jump cuts and try some different transitions to create more of a pace and not have the whole opening slow. 

We've changed it so we now have cuts to the room where the torture victims are, so when the protagonist gets up and starts walking it cuts to the garage showing the victims, we've done this in black and white and have used an effect for each cut and each transition. I think it's great that we've used black and white as this was one of our early ideas and something that we've always been very keen on doing, we've juist never worked out how to include it before. The black and white is useful to us as it connotes that the room shown in black and white is a dark and dangerous place, which may be seen as unsafe, this juxtaposes with the other room used in the opening which doesn't have an effect and is bright and colourful. This creates a great contrast between the two locations, one being a safe, happy, family room and another being a dark, dangerous room; which will shock viewers as both rooms are in the same house. 

At first I was worried that this would look like a flash back or something that wasn't actually happening as opposed to something happening at the same time but just a different room, however we asked some of our peers and Mr Ford and they all said that they understood that it's at the same time. I believe that we've made many improvements and it definitely looks a lot more like a thriller opening sequence. 

PLANNING- New Actors and Locations

Protagonist- Aidan Lever
Woman Tied up- Lucy Wise
Child- Angelo Gizzi
Dead man- Reece Collins
Dead female 1- Cindy Sidhu
Dead female 2- Melissa Kerrison

Location-
Living room
Kitchen
Garage
Outside Church

Props-
Bible
Rope
Car





Reece- Torture victim                                                                  Angelo- Protagonists child





Melissa- Torture victim                                                                  Aiden- Protagonist

                                  

Lucy- Main torture victim                                                    Cindy- Torture victim









                   
 Living room                                                          Kitchen

FILMING- Third Time Filming

Myself and Oscar recently filmed again as we needed more footage, due to the fact that several actors and the location has changed we have decided to re-shoot the whole opening sequence.

Unfortunately it could only be myself and Oscar that could film this day as Charlee was away on the only day that we could film; Bethany was supposed to be coming however we waited for her but she didn't turn up. This made it a lot harder for us to film as she was supposed to be bringing the props so we had to improvise and luckily I had brought some props of my own.

We filmed in a living room with the protagonist on the sofa watching TV and a child on the floor playing with a dog, we filmed at a few different angles to see which ones we would need to use; we then filmed from the kitchen; the protagonist walking from the living room, through the kitchen. This also included a zoom into an open bible on a page about sacrifice. Oscar did most of the filming whilst I decided which angles to film at and what the actors would do; we did refer back to the storyboard however because the location changed some of the shots and the camera angles had to change as well.

As we decided that we weren't going to use the Polaroids anymore because the images and the names are blurry and it didn't really make sense, it meant that there would be more footage needed as there was now more time to film. We filmed a lot more in the garage and there was a lot more dialogue involved this time, whereas last time we had more footage of the protagonist walking towards the garage. If we were to film again I would change this so that we filmed more of the protagonist moving towards the garage so that it would build more suspense  and didn't get straight into the action. 

Problems during filming:
We had a few problems with continuity during filming, the scene where the protagonist walks from the kitchen towards the garage was very hard to film as there's actually another large room in the middle, with a completely different door so we weren't able to make it look like this room wasn't there. This is something which I'm worried about when it comes to editing because I'm not sure if it's possible for us to make it look like this room doesn't exist.

I think that overall this filming session went a lot better than it did last time; I think it's really good that we now have an interaction between the father and son, and that we now show the protagonists face.






Set in the garage



Filming in the kitchen 

PLANNING- What We Need to Change

After we showed Mr Ford our first draft we realised that there were a lot of things which we needed to change. We decided to change the scene where Lucy is speaking to the protagonist as we realised it wasn't very realistic and there was too much swearing. I looked at films which had similar scenes to this, a person waking up from being kidnapped and then speaking to someone else; I watched the film Saw which gave me an idea of what we needed to write for Lucy to say; we decided that she needed to act more scared. As well as this we have decided to add some violence to this scene and have the protagonist kicking Lucy and maybe throwing something at her, i think that this will make the film more scary and realistic, adding to the horror element. In our first draft we filmed the protagonists body and didn't show his face, we decided that this didn't really work so his face will now be shown and there will be an intereaction between the father and son.

We have also had to change the location to a different house as the previous house we filmed at is now unavailable, this means that we wont have the scene with the protagnist walking down the stairs; as well as this we have had to change the actor who plays the protagonist as he's unavailable to film any longer; however we have chosen a similar looking actor. Additionally we have had to change two other actors, the dead man laying on the floor, and the child. The child will now be played by a young boy and there will be an interaction between him and the father as well as some dialogue from the child.







This is one of the scenes which I looked at to see how we can change the scene where Lucy makes up and make it more realistic. From watching this scene from 'Saw' I've learned that it's a slow process and we should take more time having her actually wake up before she speaks. I've also realised that the victim needs to panic and not really speak much in the beginning before asking the questions.

What We Need To Change

We showed our footage which we filmed at the weekend to Mr Ford and he said that we could use most of it in our final film, however there were some parts which he thought we should re shoot. The main part which we need to re shoot is there scene where the woman being tortured has just woken up and speaks to the man. We all agreed that the dialouge needed to be changed as it wasn't really what would be said in a conventional thriller/horror film. We've decided that Charlee and I will go back and look at some horror thrilelrs which are similar to ours, particularly scenes where somebody has just woken up after being kidnapped, so that we can get ideas from this and then write a new script.

At the moment this is the only part which we need to re film, however we may also need to re shoot the whole scene showing the people who have been tortured as the setting will change and so will the actors makeup. Therefore we may need to film this whole scene again so that the continuity is similar.

FILMING- Second Time Filming

Today we filmed, myself, Charlee and Oscar were there but Bethany couldn't come so we had to make do without her. When we arrived we planned where we would film and what we needed to change or move in the rooms. We decided to use the garage as the torture room so we covered up anything which wouldn't look right in the film up with white sheets. We filmed the living room scene in a room upstairs, which the stairs then led down to where the garage was, this was the closest we could get to how the film was originally going to be.

One of our actresses Lucy does art and helped us doing the actors makeup, she did hers and Jonny's fake blood and cuts.

The first scene we filmed was the scene with the protagonist sitting in the living room with his daughter playing; this was quite easy to film as we had the storyboard with us so we knew exactly what we needed to film. After a few times film,ing this we got the shot which we needed, we then went on to filming the child playing which we decided to use a low angle shot which then tilted up; this was quite hard to film as we didn't have the equpitment to do the pan with so I'm not sure if this shot will actually work or not.

For the second part of filming we had to have a few shots of theprotagonist walking down the stairs; these stairs were different to the ones in our storyboard and they weren't straight which meant that we had to do a few different shots of him walking down, some filmed at high angle and some filmed at low angles; I think this scene was good as awe included a variety of different shots. We didn't come acorss any problems whilst filming this, apart from the lighting when he stood by the door as it was quite dark at points and the lighting did change. Oscar filmed the majority of the film whilst myself and Charlee decided some of the places to film, which angles we should use that were different to those on the storyboard. Itw as really useful having images of the storyboard with us whilst filming as it allowed us to check them every time we filmed and make sure that we were filming the correct parts and that each shot was different.

The last scene which we had to film was the torutre scene which we filmed in a garage which we had layed down white sheets splattered with blood on. The two actors, Lucy and Jonny were both positioned on the floor, Jonyn was layign down covered in blood, dead and Lucy was tied up to a shelf. This scene was quite hard to film as we decided not to show the protagonists face in the opening, which meant we had to use very clever angles, mainly either vbery high angles or very low.

Alsop in this scene we filmed out title sequecne which we had used polaroid pictures for; we had hand written titles written on polaroids placed on a table in the garage scene. Myself and Charlee don't think that we should use these shots as the names aren't written clearly and the images are blurry and hard to make out.


Overall I think that the filming went successfully as we managed to get all of the footage which we needed; I thinkt hat there are some parts which we will need to re-film, such as the

PLANNING- Shooting Schedule

We will be filming the scene with the Priest giving the speech on Monday the 14th of January and we will be filming the rest of the film on Sunday the 27th of January.

Charlee, Oscar, Beth and I will all be there when we film the scene with the Priest.
Charlee, Oscar and myself will be filming the rest of the film as Beth is unable to attend.

PLANNING- Actors and Locations

Actors:
Protagonist: Giles Westgarth
Girl being tortured: Lucy Wise
Boy being tortured: Jonathan Morris
Child: Rachel Mockler
Priest: Oscar Bath

Location:
Originally we were supposed to be filming at Bethany's house, however for reasons which she hasn't explained we can't film at her house anymore which also meant that we couldn't use her brother as an actor in our film so this last week has been a challenge as we've basically had to change the whole location and find a new actor. Instead of filming at Beth's we will now be filming at one of our actors Giles' house, this will mean changing a few things in the film, some of the shots will have to change and the locations. 


The child has now changed from a young boy to a young girl which will still work in the film and hasn't changed anything majorly. 

FILMING- First Time Filming

On Monday we started filming for our thriller. The film begins with a shot of the protagonist watching a priest giving a speech in front of a church on TV so in order for us to film the rest of our thriller we needed this to be finished first so that it could be played during the filming of the opening. We decided to film at a local church, we only needed a short scene of the Priest talking about the missing people so it was quite easy to film this.





We hadn't really planned where abouts we were going to film around the church before we arrived so we looked and tried various locations around the church until we decided where we would finally film. Beth had written a speech for the actor who was played by Oscar Bath; we decided to film him at a mid shot as this is what most people are filmed at when presenting news. Myself, Charlee and Beth all helped film and decide the camera angle and how we would film it. Considering it was our first time filming our thriller it was quite easy however it was snowing during the filming which meant that it was hard to film as we had to keep the camera covered and get the filming finahed as quickly as possible so that Oscar didn't get cold. It didn't take us very long to get the shots that we needed, after we had filmed we all agreed that the footage we had was successful and what we needed.

Overall our first filming session was successful, we didn't have any problems whilst filming and the footage which we filmed is really good and we will be using it in our film opening.

COURSEWORK- Dates

Last week in media we received the dates for the deadlines for each part of our coursework.

15th January- storyboard and animatic complete
28th January- filming finished
15th January- post production, rough cut
8th March- final deadline, film complete
29th March- individual evaluations finished

Having these deadlines will be useful as it will give us something to work towards so we know what needs to be finished for when.

In a recent lesson we planned what each of us need to do to prepare ourselves for filming.
We decided that Oscar would do most of the animatic, I would create the new shot list and make changes to the old one, we would all decide final locations and photograph the location and actors, create a shooting schedule, Beth would come up with the costumes and props.

PLANNING- Revised Shot List/Storyboard Changes

1. Close up of TV, slow zoom, shot of protagonist on sofa.
2. Zoom of previous shot,
3. Long shot of table with religious items and Polaroids
4. Close up of Polaroids, title, jump cut to next shot
5. Medium shot of child playing on the floor
6. Close up of Polaroids, title
7. Mid shot of protagonist from behind watching TV
8. Mid shot of child playing with toys, zoom up
9. Close up of Polaroids, title
10. Medium shot of TV and sofa
11. Close up of Polaroids, title
12. Medium high angle shot of door
13. Close up, low angle of door handle
14. Close up of Polaroids, title
15. Low angle, long shot of door from the bottom of the stairs
16. Long shot of door
17. Extreme close up of lock on door
18. Close up of Polaroids, title
19. Long shot of boy playing with toys
20. Close up of Polaroids, title
21. Close up of male torture victims hands
22. Extreme close of of victims face
23. Close up of Polaroids, title
24. High angle, extreme close up of protagonist and victims
25. Long shot of female torture victim
26. Close up of polaroids
27. Blurred medium shot of protagonist
28. Blurred but then changes into focused extreme close up of protagonists eye

Since we made our first shot list and story boarded, we decided that we needed to make some changes to the storyboard. We changed it by adding in a few more shots and more shots of the Polaroids in order to fit in more titles. After we changed this we made additional changes such as adding in a wider variety of camera angles as we didn't have many angles it was mainly camera distances so we made some more changes. As well as is we changed some of the timings of the shots, some were too long and some weren't long enough; I still need to write the timings on the shot list which will be done once we have decided. We still need to make some changes to the storyboard and the shot list such as changing the shot transitions to make it more interesting and to change the meaning of some shots. We can still make changes to the storyboard after we have done the anamatic so I think that we will change the transitions once we've seen what it looks like on the anamatic.

This is the story board from beginning to end.

Continuity Task- Evaulation

How has the continuity task aided your understanding of the film making process?

The continuity task has helped me understand the process of film making and it's made me realise that the whole process of film making is a lot more difficult than it looks and seems; it takes a lot more time and effort than it appears. The task has been really good practice and I know it will help me when it comes to filming and editing our coursework film. The problems we faced in this task will help us improve in our coursework as we will be able to make sure that we don't make these mistakes again, any mistakes we made in our continuity task are a good thing because we are now able to look out for these mistakes and make sure we don't make them again. 

What problems did we come across during the continuity task and how did we overcome them?
During the continuity task we came across a few problems but honestly not as much as I had expected. One of the first problems we came across was the location of the first place we filmed. As we had chosen to film in school we needed to make sure that we filmed during a lesson so that there weren't many people around, however as we were filming near an entrance to a busy place there were a lot of people who needed access via our location. This meant that we had to wait and sometimes even stop filming so they could come through, wasting our time. This has taught me that when we come to filming our coursework film we will need to make sure our locations are reliable and we don't film anywhere that will be disturbed whilst we are filming. Another problem which we came across was that when we edited it we hadn't really planned the music beforehand or the sound effects so it was quite hard to find non diagetic music suitable. When we film our coursework I think we will have needed to plan the sound before or have more of an idea of the type of music we want to include. 

What did you do well on in your continuity task?
I think that the camera angles we used throughout our task were really good and worked really well within the film, I think this was because we spent a lot of time planning them on our storyboard so we didn't have to decide which shots to do there and then, this made our film more successful as well as making it easier to film at the time and saving us time. This is something which we will continue to do when planning our coursework film, I think that story boarding is very useful and I will definitely make sure we continue to spend a long time story boarding for our coursework. I also believe that our editing was really good, we spent a lot of time on editing and it had helped that we had previously edited a video so we were familiar with  Adobe Premier Pro which was what we used to edit our video, I'd still like to spend a bit more time learning to use this before we make our coursework so that the editing can be as good as possible. I'm pleased with the fact that we didn't break the 180 degree rule as that was something we had only recently learned about so I was worried that we would struggle to follow the rules but we did so I'm very happy with that and we will continue to think about this in our coursework. 

COURSEWORK- Actors, Props, Locations, Equipment

These are the final decisions, lists of actor, locations, props and equipment:

Actors and Actresses:

Protagonist - Giles Westgarth

Child - Still Need Naming 

Male Captive - Connor Barbor 

Female Captive - Lucy Wise 

Priest on TV - Oscar Bath

 

Locations:

Basement - Giles Garage

Stairs - Beth's House 

Living room - Beth's house

Church for TV Segment - St Joseph's Church

Props:

Religious Paraphernalia: Beth

Children's Toys: Beth 

Chains: Myself and Oscar
Sheet for Basement floor: Myself

Table: Myself

Tatter clothing: Everyone

Preacher costume: Myself

Equipment:

HDV Camera 

Boom Mic 

Tripod 

Lighting Rig

Adobe Premier Pro CS6  Editing Software