26/03/2010 Evaluation

Evaluation:


Final Film: Damnatio



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIN8NJY-2z4

22/03/2010

Editing:
Today we did the last editing for the film. We decided to make the shot flash when we saw the ghost girl (Amy) several times throughout the film. This made her appear more freaky and more unreal. We also added a distorted screetch when we did this. The effect of this was to make her apperance more shocking to the audience. We did this effectively.

15/03/2010

Editing:
Today we edited the footage of Steph lying dead on the flood. We changed the saturation of it to make it look more drainy and distorted. We also slowed it down which had a good effect. At the end of the sequence we faded the shot to show she was going to hell. This looked effective.

12/03/10

Filming:

Setting: Radnor avenue (Road)

Costume: Stephs dark clothes

Today we filmed our final sequence. This was a high angle shot of Steph lying down dead in the road. We achieved this by using a crane as it allowed us to get the shot from higher up and it meant that there wouldn't be shadows over Steph as we didn't need to lean over her. In order to get a believable shot of her dead we adjusted her body in order to make her look awkward. Unfortunately the floor was wet so we did this as quickly as possible. Luckily our shots didn't look rushed.

It soon started to rain so we covered up and protected our equipment and headed back to school.

We then uploaded our footage. As the crane was handheld some of the shots looked shaky. We immediately dismissed these shots and used the better shots.

11/03/10

Editing:

Today we continued with editing the film. The footage we filmed of amy (ghost) was turned black and white and added as a flash as Steph walked along the bridge. We also sped up these clips in order to make them more distorted and shocking to the viewer. We also edited the shots where Steph walked out the house, saw the ghost and ran down the street. with these shots it was not a matter of making them freaky, just a mater of not making it look jumpy. The aim of these shots was to make it clear that Steph saw the ghost (Amy). We did this by doing an over the shoulder shot from Amy (ghost) watching Steph as she noticed her and then ran off. We chose an over the shoulder shot instead of a point of view shot as it would look odd and unprofessional if Steph was to look directly at the camera.

We managed to edit these shots very successfully and they worked very well in the film.

10/03/10

Filming:

Location: Michaels house and road

Today we shot the scenes of Steph leaving the house and running down the road, in order to better the continuity of our project as the scenes did not connect very well and made the narrative difficult to understand. We used Michael's house because we were able to get there during school time. During the filming we also took a few shots of Amy to add into the flashbacks to make the narrative clearer.

We then uploaded the shots ready to edit on 11/03/10.

09/03/10

Editing:

Today we continued with our editing, however we found that our film was 40 seconds over the designated time, with one more shot still needed. We therefore had to painfully started to cut out shots we thought were less important.

Once we had done this, leaving enough room for the last shot, we finished of the title sequence by choosing a font for the opening titles. However, we had trouble here as well. We found that the font we wanted would only be in black, which would camouflage with the black background. So we experimented with different coloured backgrounds but they did not look very effective. In the end we ended up changing the lighting of the font to make it white against a black background.

We then began to add transitions between the flashbacks and the bridge scene to make it clear that they were memories. To complete the flashbacks we then cut out all diegetic sound and replaced it with non-diegetic music.

Whilst editing later in the day we realised that the last shot where the camera pans down from the bridge to the ghost and the dead body was not a particuarly shocking or memorable way to finish the beggining of our horror film. We then decided that we would re-shoot a new shot on the 10/03/10 to end the film with.

08/03/10

Editing:
Today we had to upload and start editing the shots we filmed in Thamesmead and Kelseys house on Sunday (7/03/10). As we was looking through the shots we found that in a lot of shots there was far too much light. Too much light to the point where we was unable to edit it out. Therefore we cut these shots out of our film straight away. We then cut other shots thar didnt make sense to the film. For example a shot through the trees made it look like the character was in the woods rather then running down an urban pathway. Although we had to cut out a lot of poor shots we found that when it did get darker that the injury inflicted upon the ghost actress (Amy Ling) did not effect the quality of our other shots. We then shortend our good shots and added them appropiately to the film. After this we added more flashbacks as the main character (Steph lau) walkes down the bridge then even more flashbacks at the end of the sequence when she closes her eyes. This made the film as a whole far too long, which was a problem we would have to overcome

7/03/2010

Filming:

Setting: Bridge, roads and pathways, House

Location: Thamesmead, Kelseys house (selsey crescent)

Props: Costume, picture frames

Today was our final big chunk of filming. We had to do this in a relatively deserted run-down area to show isolation. However as the area was run down we had to take special precautions and make sure the cameras were not damaged or stolen. We had to take a variety of shots from different angles so we used the many sets of staircases and walkways in order to achieve this. We also filmed through bushes and trees in order to get interesting shots.

During the day of filming we came across a big problem when the "ghost actress" Amy Ling fell over onto concrete, cut her knee and damaged her clothing. This put us in an awkward situation as we had to take into account the well-being of our actress. However she insisted that we finished off our last few shots (Bridge shot, motorway shot). Although we was still able to film our last few shots we could not film from the front of her body due to the damaged costume. Fortunately we was alble to overcome this problem by filming from behind or not filming her legs. Some shots were a bit rushed but as we took several of each shot, this did not effect us too much.

Also today we had to re-shoot the picture frame shot. This is when the main character (Steph lau) walks past pictures of her friends and then they change to the face of the ghost. We had to re-shoot this as the original shots looked very jumpy and were not good enough to be used in the film. This time we made sure the camera did not move at all and took two shots of Steph walking past the picture frames. One were her friends were in the picture and one were the ghost was in the picture. As she walked past the camera and blacked out the screen, we cut the shot and switched to the shot were the ghost was in the pictures. This gave the effect that the pictures changed as she walked past.

This was a good day of filming and we overcome all of our problems successfully.

4/03/2010

Filming + Editing:

Setting: Woods

Locaton: Danson park

Today we filmed our final woods scene. This involved the main character running away from the death through the woodland areas of Danson park. Firstly we took an aerial shot from a tree showing the character. This was awkward to film as it involved taking the equipment into an unsecure tree. We also took an over shoulder shot of the main character running and a close up on her face when she was running so we had a variety of shots.

The set was relatively muddy which made the running shots harder to film. However we dealt with this problem efficiently. We then uploaded the footage and edited it accordingly.

2/03/2010

Editing:

Whilst editing the film today we realised that the "phone text shot" was not successful. It looked amateurish and had no relevance to the film. However the shots and the idea of being woken by at item was good so we decided to change it to an alarm. However this did mean that we had to re-shoot a couple of shots. As we now had a lot of new shots to film we decided to write up a new shooting schedule.

3/3/2010- House scene Re-shoots and establishing shot of house.

4/2010- Walking shots of girl.

7/3/2010- Outside shots, (running scene, suicide scene)

We also added credits to the beginning of the film. This involved sped up flashbacks followed every few seconds by a blacked out screen showing the production details. This was done very well and with slight development will be very effective in the final piece.

1/03/2010

Editing:

Today we continued with editing the film. We added the uncanny track "Some things" as our music during the house scene until we saw the ghost. When this occurred we layed more freaky music "mystery accent" over the top to emphasise how shocking the moment was. This was when the ghost was seen in the mirror, through the stair case and in he cupboard. We also changed the appearance of all the flashbacks (woods sequence) in order to make distorted. We added the dream effect and changed the saturation in order to make it black and white. We also started cutting down the length of some of the first few house shots and we noted down were we needed to re-shoot and where we needed to add a shot. This was the shot after the girl wakes up and the bathroom shot.