Group - Rough Cut

This is the rough cut of our opening minus atmospheric music and titles.

Group - First edit of stairs

This is our practice of continuity editing, however it is not perfect as there are a couple of jumps. We also think the clip might be too long as it does not tell us anything vital to the storyline.

KG - Improving Blog

I don't know if you two have read this post on the main blog, but I thought I would include it here anyway for you:

These are things that all need to be completed on our blog:

1. Write reflections on your shoots - what technical issues did you encounter? Did you shoot outside of your storyboard? How did you come up with creative solutions on set? What worked and what didn't?
2. Ensure that your pitch slides with summary feedback and audience research are detailed on blog - Just need to add notes pages to this, but they are on slide boom, just needing to be embeded.
3. Go back through your posts and make sure you have commented on each other's posts
4. Look back at your research - are there any shot ideas you could add to improve your work?
5. Discuss and plan shoots and editing on your calendar sheet
6. Find and sample fonts - use www.1001freefonts.com. Post on blog
7. Spend some time reviewing possible sound effects and ambient music. Post on blog
8. Spend some time looking at other films on youtube. Post any interesting observations on blog
9. Complete any risk assessments / call sheets for weekend. In word, save document as jpg and upload onto blog as a sample of your "logistic organisation". - We completed this, but by hand so we may need to just copy them so we can include them on here.

I have put in red the ones that I think might be missing from our blog.

KG - Reflection on Editing and New Storyboard

We have missed quite a few lessons because of mocks and 'activity days' at TWGGS, and so haven't had as much time to edit as we would ideally have liked to have.

However, I think we are keeping on top of it, there is clearly a lot we need to do, with sound being a big issue. But we have planned our time this week to enable us to have at least 6 hours editing this week, with opportunity for more should we need it.

Editing has been going well, we have strayed rather a bit from our storyboard, the main idea is there, but when filming we decided that some of the shots on the storyboard were irrelevant and that some different ones were better suited in their place. As well as adding in a few shots that we had not thought of previously that when in the location seemed fitting.

Upon editing the beginning of the opening, we found that although it was good, it was a bit too much like a trailer and not an opening. We were revealing too much too soon, and didn't have enough of an enigma about our film, so we are having to re-do the beginning and cut it up further, and rearrange it to create our desired effect.

And so in aid of that, I have drawn out another [very quick, rough] storyboard, from the shots that we already have, just because it helped me visualise it, and should help us in editing during the rest of this week.

LS - Filming (16/03/10)

Last night we did filming so that we could do continuity editing. We also filmed some shots of Lydia's hands in order to create the horror feeling that something is wrong with her.

Problems we encountered
- In some shots the girl's hair is down, however in some shots her hair is up but there is no scence showing her putting her hair up. To overcome this we thought we could get her Mum to put her hair up, however we then remembered that her Mum is dead and the girl cannot put her hair up herself.

How we are going to overcome this problem
- To overcome this problem we are going to film a POV shot from the doll so that we cannot clearly see her do her hair, however her hair is put up.

LS - Evaluation of filming (10.03.10)

On this shoot we filmed the shots of the girl in her bedroom. One problem we encountered many times is that the doll would not stay in one position and as a result the continuity is effected. Another problem we encountered was the lighting outside the bedroom window as it got darker throughout the shot and our reflections in the mirror and window. Overall, however I think the shoot went very well and we did not have to change our storyboard very much.

Group - Walking Practise

After watching this back we noticed that the storyboad can be seen lying on the pavement. This is something we didn't consider and is something we need to remember when filming again.

Group - Animatic First Draft

ERT- sound samples

• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=71674
• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=39661
• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14355
• http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=44201

Here are a couple of samples of sounds i have found. Most of them i think will fit in with the scene in which she is walking to school.

What does everyone think of them??

KG - Target Audience

We have decided that our target audience is the 15-21 age bracket, with the gender divide being steered more towards females, as they will associate with the main character more than men.
We think that 15 is an appropriate age, similar to many of the films we looked at, particularly The Ring, as our story is of a similar style and the horror involved is more psychological as opposed to violent. This film is not suitable for anybody under 15, even though the main character is under that age bracket, however people above 21 may find this film enjoyable too.

KG - Summary of research on Sound and SFX

After reading up on Sound and Special effects in the Guardian guide to making video we have found that in terms of sound the most important things for us are:

• Not to layer too much sound, not to simply mask it with sound.
• Be careful with licensed and copyrighted material, so look for websites providing royalty free music and sound effects.
• We need it to sound as real as possible, as well as having atmospheric music in places, so we need to think about room-tone.
• We need to choose sound that doesn't have any previous connotations or links that may detract the attention away from where we are anchoring it.

In terms of Special Effects, there isn't much that we require for our particular idea, although many of them sounded very interesting and would have been fun to play around with. The section on horror was very useful and many of the shots suggested we had decided to use anyway, such as:

• The 'back of the head' shot - we wanted shots like this [more P-O-V style], but on reading this article we have decided to experiment with emphasising this in the horror style for effect.
• The 'Killer's eye view' shot - we wanted P-O-V shots of both the girl and the doll for contrast, so in the theme of our film it is debatable as to who the 'killer' is and so whose eye-view it is, but having both will help create this atmospheric ambiguous effect.
• The 'killer in the mirror' shot - we are attempting this in a way, in that the doll will constantly find its way into the shot, whether it be visible in a mirror or just slightly to the side, but either way it will always be visible.

ERT- evaluation of filming 4/3/10

Today was our first day of filming so it was very experimental with many of te shots we were amiing to use. We tried out different angles, movement and lighting in order to get everything the exact way we wanted it. We filmed the second half of our opening sequence which include 4 different locations (Bedroom, Bathroom, Hallway and Outside). We found shotting outside the hardest because of inconviences such as cars and people passing by, however with many different takes we managed to avoid such hassles. As well as trying to get all the shots done quickly so there wasnt a dramatic change in lighting.
Whilst filming we thought of other angles that would be more effective than what we had originally planned in our storyboard, as being in the location with our actor allows you to think clearer. So although we changed our minds and got other ideas we took many different shots so that we could compare them on a bigger screen and check that they all fit together well.

Over all i think our first filming session was a major success and hope the rest goes as smoothly.