Tuesday 15th December

We think that we have nearly completed finished our opening, minor adjustments such as fine tuning the contrast, and editing to the music more we will do if we have time.

Today we decided on a definite rough plan for our cover:


We also decided that our final pan needed some sort ofd sound, so we decided to have a news report playing in the background as if our villain is listening to the radio, here is a rough first draught of it:

'And the search continues for the young girl who went missing from north london last saturday. The police fear that Amy Willis (this is where he is crossing 'Amy' out) is the latest victim of [insert villain's nickname here]. (Then as we pan to the new girl it says) The police warn any females in the area to not travel alone. (Then it starts to fade out on:) They believe that...

We have decided that the villain is going to have a nickname - as in the sort the press would give him for example 'Jack the Ripper' - i think that it should be related to the drugs somehow for example 'the anesthetist', and his nickname will almost also be the title.

Alix

Friday 11th January

We re-shoot our final shot today as our first one was too fast, very bumpy, the 'x' was awful and the last photo wasnt clear enough that it was a new girl (as we used the one as she is walking down the road). So on wednesday night Alix took some more pictures of our final girl from above through a window (as if she is just a passer by) and then printed them off the next day.

Alix

Friday 21st December

We have a new song, it's called 'Cold city', and it has a fantastically eery feel to it, the only problem os that although it starts slow it never reaches a crescendo of any sort, but this also indicates to the audience that she is going to be caught and that there's no point even hoping.

Targets for Christmas Holidays

• Find a medium sized red marker (one is too big and one too small) - everyone
• Take photos of girls for 'new girl' - Matt + Alix
• Brainstorm film titles

Monday 17th December

WEEKEND FOOTAGE

it was good, we got it all done, and i was happy with the shoot thankyou I was impressed with Alix's ability to fall over, and was pleased with her commitment. Nick's haircut wasn't too bad for us, as he was only in about 2 shots pre-shaving, one which we actually recorded over. He was very good, and we even let him have a go recording one of our trail runs, he was actually quite good.... The footage was overall quite good, so our only shots left are of the killer putting the photo of Alix up on the wall. We also need to figure out a name for Nick to call out, and record that, probably on the school field or in the nearby park to get the same diegetic effect that we would've had in the forest. The contrast, brightness and general colour of each shot varied, but this can be fixed in the editing process.
WOOH NO MORE GROVELANDS

liam

Friday 14th December

Our definitely final shoot is tomorrow, we are meeting at 9am and plan to finish by 12. We are going to re shoot the following shots of Nick because of his new hair cut:

• The first shot of him walking, he will now walk almost side to side in the frame to make it more obvious (that she is drugged)
• The aerial (ish) shot of her running in shot and then him running in shot, in our first take they run top right to bottom left, but it has to be bottom right to top left so that it makes sense (as she runs that way into the forest).
• We need a shot from her POV (just after she has looked round) of him behind her striding towards the camera - reverse track as if she is running obviously
• More low level tracking shots of his feet (and her feet)
• The entire capture scene, as in editing the shots don't fit together well due to different bodily positions.

We also need to shoot some other shots which are missing and some new ones:

• More POV shots - we need more anchorage that she is drugged
• We need to reshoot her feet running past the camera and then his as well (it wasn;t framed very well and Alix's feet need to stumble)
• A few more CU reverse tracks of Alix to show more emotion
• We also need a shot of her looking round (then cut to her POV)
• We are also maybe going to do our river shot AGAIN as it is still a little wobbly.
• We also need to get some panting/frantic sounds of Alix

Alix

Thursday 17th December

We have planned to shoot our poloroid photos tomorrow lunch time at the back of the great hall, so far 3 girls (and Alix obviously) are definitely coming, and we only have 1 or 2 more to ask. They will be in the white dresses and will be gagged (the back ground will be dark and therefor mysterious so you don;t know where he keeps him - therefore not giving away his where abouts yet in the film)

Targets

• Bring white dress + poloroid camera in - Alix
• Bring material for gag in

Alix

Wednesday 12th November

We captured our shots and we started editing it together, and it has started coming together. The main problem is the contrast between the shots, obviously as they come from many different days the lighting conditions are incredibly varied, but we are going to experiment with contrast.

Shots to shoot on Saturday

• More running shots of Alix
• Shots of Nick walking towards the camera
• More action matches between Alix and Nick
• POVs

We realised we need a lot more POVs to show just how drugged she is, particularly because even though Alix felt like she was acting very frantically + drugged, it didn't come across that way on camera.

Alix

Friday 7th December

After watching creating a short rough edit of our footage from the past 2 weekends, we realised that our footage wasn't quite to the standard that we would have hoped. So we discussed a new way of shooting with Ms. Blackborow and created a slightly different chase sequence (with much tighter framing):

• Establishing shots of the river
  
  
• A pan from the river to a shoe on the ground amongst some leaves
  

• A hand comes into frame, scrabbling for the shoe. Then the hand finds the shoe and grabs it and pulls it out of frame
  

• Girl puts shoe on (only hands/arms and feet/legs shown)
  

• Shots going up her body
  

• Shot of girl looking very startled (she has just heard the killer calling her name, or something similar)
  

• The killer's silhouette appears at the top of the slope. Then it cuts to shots of him seemingly 'jumping' forwards
  

• Girl scrambles up
  

• Girl falls again and grabs tree or maybe knee
  

• Running shots of her (the killer is in none of these)
  

• Matches of her and him (e.g. her feet come into and out of frame then his feet come into and out of frame, she runs past and touches a tree then he walks past and touches a tree etc)
  

• She's looking around to see where he is then crashes into him and he captures her
  

• He chloroforms her
  

• He drags her away (shot of her feet, maybe her shoe falls off, linking the ending to the beginning ? )

It probably also needs to be said that some of the shots Ms Blackborow suggested/liked were ones that Matt suggested a while ago but the rest of the group rejected because we thought it'd look too supernatural.

In this meeting we decided that we're definitely going to need to buy another white dress for the girls in the polaroids to wear.

Angelie

Thursday 6th December

We decided to stick to our orginal(ish) idea, we are still going to have the opening as the chase with Lara, but we will try to cut this down to 1min 20 secs. The last 40 or so seconds will be the slow fade to black, fade in and then out of the films title, then fade into the pan of the different girls omn the walls, he will then cross out in red laras face and will add a new photo of a new girl. In this meeting we also decided on the schedule for the weekend (i.e. different scenarios depening on weather) which is shown below. We are also planning to take our poloroid photos on tuesday lunch time.

Alix

Wednesday 5th December

Serious problems changing ideas:
Well at the moment the footage we have from the two previous weekend shoots is pretty poor. The framing is not tight enough, and the acting is nowhere near the standard we need it to be. We also have some problems with the last section of the scene, the pan of the killers past victims and his victim to be, in terms of making the rest of the movie coherent. Add these to the fact that this weekend's weather report is very bleak, there is a strong chance we will not be able to shoot enough suitable footage to keep with our original idea.
Therefore we are seriously considering doing one of the below options:

• We shoot the scene in which the girl is captured by the killer.We make this section of the sequence shorter, and extend the killer's lair scene. However, we agreed that this could be difficult in terms of relevancy as to why we are showing a victim running from the killer. We thought we should start with a pan of the previous victims and see sections of their story, for example developing the killer as a photographer who gians the trust of models and then murders them.
• We completely change the scene and develop the killers background as a photographer. We have scene in which he takes pictures of models and gains their trust, and use these in the form of flashbacks and 'echoing voices'. Therefore we would probably cut the scene in which a girl is being chased through the woods as this does not makes sense together with this new footage. Only problem with this idea is finding a suitable location, and making it look like an amateur studio.
• We reshoot the whole scene with might tighter framing and better quality acting. We start much slower and build up the pace, revealing the killer much sooner. There will be several more blurry and distorted shots to connote the victim's state of mind, and we use a lot more diegetic sound to create tension and suspense for the audience. We then use the final killer's lair scene, devoted much less time to it, and making it altogether more simpler with no flashbacks or voice-overs. The scene ends when the killer puts the picture of his next victim on the wall.
  

Liam

Tuesday 4th December

Today we had 2 hours and we watched and captured out good shots and then started to put a rough cut together. One problem was the colours of the shots - it chages constantly from bluey to sunny, but we can easily overcome this by using contrast.
There was also another problem; we have to shoot some tighter framed shots because it jumps from POVs to ELS/LSs - and we thougth we could use this for effect but it just doesn't look right, so we will have to create some more shots in our re-shoot.

We also realised that for the poloroid photos the picture of his 'new' girl that he puts up can't really be tied up because then that doesn't leave much open for the rest of the film - i.e. he has already caught her so why didn't he just kill her (or 'cross her out') when he did lara.
However, if we used photos of all the girls just doing ordinary things (e.g. walking down the road) - as if he was stalking them, we wouldn't be able to anchor the white dress he uses for all his victims.
So we decided it would pan across to a photo of Lara doing something normal, and over the top he would put a photo of her gagged and then he would cross it out, then he would put up a photo of the new girl doing something normal. Therefore each girl has 2 photos, one from before they are caught and one from after.

Targets met from last meeting: Alix is getting poloroid film tonight

Targets set: Look further into contrast to change colouring of shots

Alix

Monday 3rd December

Today we had a short meeting in our lesson and we just watched back our footage, most of it was good and usable but there are still a few shots we need to reshoot - for example the POVs, sometimes just don't match up to where she ran. We aslo started to organise the poloroid photos of the tied up girls.
There is also a problem with weather this weekend for us to finish our shoot, 60% chance of rain on saturday and 20% on sunday. However if we leave it until sunday and risk it, and then it does rain we will have to reshoot everything that day, which would be impossible as Lara would get even colder in the rain - and she couldnt do everything last weekend in the sun.

Targets set: Alix to get poloroid film

Alix

Wednesday 28th November

We decided that our montage was just not practical so we changed our ending to one of our other initial ideas (we as a group felt that the shed waws not a sucessful location in the opening squence. Also the montage would mean lots of footage of the streets and garden would needed to have been shown-which the whole group felt could ruin the mystery created in teh opening):

As the false heroine is chloroformed there is a slow fade to black. From black there is a fade to a slow track (MCU/CU) of her feet. From this she is dragged out of shot, as another fade to black is used (very slowly). Here we decided could be a good place for the title to appear. This could be seen as an ending, however we have decided to give the viewer more information about the killer's habits/his character by having a fade up to a CU pan (left- right) of Polaroids revealing his habit of killing similarly aged females with similar looks (17yrs, white, brown or blond hair), all tied up in the same white dress (almost like a fetish of his). From this we see just how twisted he is and this is enigmatic as the viewer wants to understand his obsession. Further enigma is created as each Polaroid shown before the victim/false heroine shown in the opening sequence, is crossed through with a red marker. This signifies that he has succeeded in capturing and killing them. As the pan approaches the victim shown in the sequence (Lara), it stops- from here we see the villain's hand come in to shot and cross this picture out. - this signifies he successfully murdered her. The final shot is of the villain pinning up a new Polaroid on the borad/wall- a new victim! (who is obviously the protagonist in the film and more than likely will feature on the DVD cover) This shot will possibly be emphasised due to our editing, e..g the use of a negative flash.

Development of the idea:
We as a group have decided that sound could be used very effectively on the penultimate shot. We think it could be effective to hear a poloroid being taken in the background accompanied by the sound of struggling/mumbling (as the viewer lingers on the picture of Lara). Then the viewer sees the villain pin up this anticipated polariod, and it slowly develops to reveal the next victim. (time consuming- do we have this long?)



We also finalised how our villain was to disappear and then reappear:

Villain Disappears

• Reverse track of girl LS-MLS, tree comes into shot and she rests on it, move into her face – MCU/CU
• Reverse shot – she peeks around tree and looks panicked
• POV from girl, shaky whip pans around
• LS she looks so scared, even more hysterical, stumbles looking around, we move around to a MS
• Jumps to MCU
• Jumps to CU – emphasises her fear
• MLS/LS she realises she need to carry on running and stumbles away

Between disappear and reappear

• Lots of cuts – even more fast paced, heightens her hysteria
• Tracking of her feet + lots of other strange angles etc – general disorientation
• 15-20 seconds of general confusion then he reappears
• During this time there will be no titles – too distracting, detracts from atmosphere

Villain Reappears

• PAN R-L, Girl comes into shot and Villain jumps out from behind tree, she is struggling
• Cut to around 60º to the left, MS girl (Villain’s head is cut out) he is in control – arms round her
• MCU, (pulls hair out of way?) he whispers in her ear ‘you look lovely in this’
• BCU, rag is slowly put across her mouth, eyes flutter shut, she goes limp
• Shot of her feet, she is being dragged

Matt and Alix

Tuesday 27th November

We watched our footage from our test shoot today, after doing a quick test edit we were quite happy with the results but have still decided on a lot of changes:

• Lara needs to look completely hysterical because during our test shoot it wasn't believable that she had been/is about to be raped, so we decided to make sure that; she runs faster, is a lot more clumsy and stumbley (making it obvious she has been drugged), she has to look a lot more scared, and we are also going to mess up her hair, smudge her nmake-up, and put mud on her legs/arms and dress.
• Nick also needs to be further away from her otherwise it is so unbelievable that he hasn't caught her already, and he also needs to take bigger more confident strides.
• Our framing also needs to be tighter in order to really focus the audience's attention on Lara's emotion.
• We also need to start recording before we say action, and leave it runnign for a little afterwards and have our actors run in and out of the frame to give ourselves more choice when editing
• During the shoot we didn't concentrate on shot logging and using the whiteboard, so this weekend when shooting one person will do the whiteboard, one will shot log, one will film, and the other will direct the actors. And obviously we will switch roles all the time to give everyone a fair chance.
• Our POVs also need more variance - e.g. looking up and down, and we are also not going to unfocus the camera on shoot but afterwards when editing so that we can fully control it.
• We also realised that we don't have enough shots, so we are going to take a lot more of her just running and stumbling to give ourselves more choice in the edit room - almost like filler shots, we also want more shots of her falling over.
• We realise a big problem of ours is continuity - i.e. the background matching up, so next time we are going to carefully choose a path through the forest. Then we will do POV shots all the way along the path, to again give us more choice when editing.
• Lara also got increidbly cold and unconfrotable - particularly between shots when she couldn't put her shoes back on, so this weekend we are going to bring an old towel (or some form of material) for her to stand on, and change on, and sit down if she wishes.
• Our main problem was our initial shotlist was also not very helpful so our main priority before this weekend is to create a perfect one which we can just follow and therefore avoid time wasting. We are going to talk through every single shot and therefore get any disagreements out of the way before hand.

Alix

Friday November 23rd

We had group meetings before and after school to create a shot list for our shoots.

We also had a meeting in our Media lesson, in which we created a list of key possible problems that we might face as a group. Since we've already blogged a few possible problems in our 'Tuesday November 20th' blog, this is just a list of the ones that we didn't have before.

• Lighting
  Weather conditions will probably have an effect on our lighting, and as we're shooting over different weekends, we may have some problems with continuity as well as shot quality. If it seems like our shots will be too dark, we'll have to try and use artificial lighting to improve the light quality


• Continuity problems
  Since our actress would be wearing a white dress, as she runs and stumbles through the forest, her dress will probably get quite muddy. So, we'd have to make sure that the mud/dirt looks the same throughout. In order to do this, and avoid other continuity problems, we should probably take still shots of our actress to make sure she looks the same from week to week.


• Being thrown out of the park
  Since we don't really have permission to shoot in the park, we could be thrown out quite easily


• Full reccie
  Some of the group haven't actually been to the area we're shooting in. But we can avoid this problem by getting to our test shoot early to go and look around the park.


• Not sharing tasks
  We could possibly have some problems with not splitting the tasks equally between us.

~ Angelie

Monday 19th November

Just a short meeting today in our Media lesson (Period 1)

Another idea for the ending of our opening sequence has been developed, so most of the meeting was spent discussing this idea, since it was slightly confusing.

The new ending
The female victim would be caught and chloroformed, as previously established. Then the scene would backtrack in a montage style, and the audience would see a few shots they had already seen (but in reverse order) and they would also see some takes which they haven't seen before (i.e. the girl running into the park). Then the opening would end with the girl being tied up in the villain's shed and then the title screen. This then sets up the location for the rest of the villain's kidnappings/killings that will take place during the rest of the film.

Targets from last meeting
Everyone was to search for chase sequences in thrillers (on foot) so that we can see how they did it, and to get ideas for different shot types. (All of these are blogged below)

No targets were set at the end of this meeting

~ Angelie

Thursday 15th November

We had a group meeting in our Media lesson today (Period 6). It was just a short meeting, but we had some discussion about possible songs and also potential actors for the male character in our opening.

Targets set for next meeting
Alix - try to find costumes
Angelie - try to find more possible songs
Liam - find out if one of our possible actors would be interested
Matt - try to shortlist other possible male characaters

Update of targets from last meeting
Songs we thought would be appropriate:

• Alix
- Comfortably Numb, Scissor Sisters
- Somewhere I Belong, Linkin Park
- Spitfire, The Prodigy

• Angelie
- Distort and Merge, Glasgow Coma Score (see, this is one that no-one will have heard of, ever. But I think it might just work...) . You can listen to it here: http://www.myspace.com/glasgowcomascore or here:


• Matt
-Angel, Massive Attack
-Insomnia, Faithless
-Insomnia vs. Funky S**t, Faithless & The Prodigy
-Glasgow love theme, Craig Armstrong
-Blinded by the lights, The streets

• Liam
- Theme from 28 days later

Wednesday 14th November

During this meeting we decided definitely on our Grovelands idea being our final and that we would each go away and think of songs we could use and any other details/solutions for our problems.

Targets for next time
For everyone: brainstorm ideas for backing music

(This post is short as everything else is shown below, we only just realised we have to blog meetings)

Alix