Our Film Opening 'Cruoris'

This is the new version of our film opening 'Cruoris'. 

Evaluation - Question Seven

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Evaluation - Question Six

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Evaluation - Question Five

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Evaluation - Question Four

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Evaluation - Question Three

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Evaluation - Question Two

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Evaluation - Question One

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Changes have now been made...

Since the crit. session about 2 weeks ago, myself & Shazna have made all the changes that were needed to be made on our film opening. The conversation scene has been edited out which has improved our opening a lot. Since watching it back without this particular scene, I've really realised how much it wasn't needed and how much it ruined the rest of our opening. Another point that people brought up was the typography of the names that come up throughout the sequence. We've edited these out, and now have the names of myself, Shazna and Lucy coming up on a black background and written in white in order to make them stand out. We also decided to no longer have the titles on our actual opening images as during the crit. session I realised that they took the attention off of the actual scene, and just ruined the atmosphere that we were trying to create.

Another issue with our film opening that was raised in the crit. session was the title of our film. It was originally 'He's Coming After You', but after the responses about it from people we decided to change this to something more original. I thought it would be a good idea to have something like 'murder', 'stalker' or 'following' in Latin. We looked up the translation of all these words last week, and decided that one of the translations for murder was the best choice. So now, our film is called 'Cruoris'! Now that all of our editing has been completed we're both happy with the results, so now all thats left to do is the evaluation due in for this Friday!

Crit. Session

In Friday's media lesson our film openings were shown for the first time. When ours was shown, I was quite nervous as I had no idea what everyone else would think of it. We did get quite a lot of positive feedback from it, and got some good comments back from our teacher about what we'd done. When watching our opening back I did notice some things that I wasn't happy with that I hadn't really noticed when editing on the macs, and the people in our class also noticed these and suggested we edited them to make our opening better. These include: editing out the conversation scene, changing the title of the film & changing the typography of the credits. It was pointed out that the title (He's Coming After You') gave away the plot of the film, and it was suggested that we possibly change the title to something in Latin. I really like this idea, and will talk to Shazna about what she thinks in our next lesson. The typography also really does not fit in with the sequence, and ruins the atmosphere. This is one of the main things I also realised when it was shown, so we will definitely be changing those when we can. We are planning to start making these changes in the next few days in time for the deadline at the end of next week. Fingers crossed we will get it done in time!

Influences for our film opening

One of the main film openings we looked at for ideas for our own was 'Se7en'. When we watched this film opening in lesson, we both liked the images of the opening which give the audience the idea that the stalker has an obsession with religion and is intricately planning how to kill his victims. This is done in Se7en by the audience seeing the character of the murderer putting a great amount of detail in creating a religious symbol from the Bible and finding out information about the Seven Deadly Sins, a clear sign to the audience that this character is very religious and is planning to kill. We liked the idea of seeing a stalker planning to kill his victim, as like it did when we saw the Se7en opening, it creates tension to the audience and makes them want to keep on watching. We also liked how the opening of Se7en was in black and white and how it gave the scene an eerie and mysterious feel. Again we thought this would be a good idea for our own film opening, so to give our stalker scenes the same eerie feel we edited them to be black and white as they are in Se7en. Our music choice was also influenced by Se7en. The music in the film opening is fast paced but has an edgy feel about it, and as the scene goes on it gets louder which helps create an eerie atmosphere to the audience. By using similar techniques to the Se7en film opening we hope to have created a similar edgy feel and build the same tension to the audience as Se7en did to us when we watched it.

Animatic

So this is our animatic for our film opening 'He's Coming After You'. We decided to draw out our storyboard pictures onto post it notes so that we could move scenes around if they didn't look right. Some of the ideas we have drawn out in our animatic have changed since we originally drew them due to some last minute changes we made when it came to filming. However this only affects a few of the scenes and everything else is pretty much the same as our film opening.

Script

This is the script from our film opening. I forgot to post it on here around the time we were filming, so here it is now:

(victim walks up to friend, who is standing in the park waiting for her. They start a conversation.)
Friend: Hey, are you alright? You look a bit worried...
Victim: Yeah I'm fine, just thought I was being followed again, thats all.
Friend: What, again?! Thats like the fifth time in two weeks.
Victim: I know, but its probably nothing. Nothing to worry about.
Friend: I'm not so sure. I don't think you should walk through here on your own anymore, its getting too freaky.
Victim: Its fine, honestly. As I said its probably nothing. Now come on, lets go...
(as they walk away, victim looks over her shoulder to see if anyone is behind her, with worried expression on her face.)

Pretty much everything is complete...

We've been able to edit the sound on the conversation scene so that now the audience can hear myself and Lucy speaking and still hear the music in the background. Now that we've done this our editing is finished! Yay!
All that is left to do now is to add the animatic onto our blogs. I will be trying to do this over the weekend so hopefully by next week it shall be up on here (at last!).

Continuity Sequence

This is our continuity sequence that myself, Shazna, Lucy and Chris did quite a few months ago.

Got our music at last!

In todays media lesson we finally found our music and imported it into our film clip.
We looked on a copy right free music website (http://audio.lgfl.org.uk/) and searched for thriller music. There were 10 choices of thriller music clips, and our favourite two were 'In Memoriam' and 'Hidden Threat'. These two stood out to us as they went well with our stalker theme, built up suspense and gave it an eerie feel. We didn't take long to choose what music we wanted, and after listening to both clips a few times we decided that 'In Memoriam' would be the more suitable music for our clip. We think it gives our film opening a mysterious feel and builds up the suspense and tension that we want to get across to the audience. We've imported the music into our sequence and thinks it goes very well with our film opening. In scene 10 (the conversation scene) we need to change the volume, as even though the audience can hear myself and Lucy speaking, the musics volume is still quite loud and goes over the conversation. We need to find a way to make the music volume in this clip quieter so that the audience will be able to hear the full conversation but so that the music can still be heard in the background.

Conversation Scene Editing Stuff...

So in Wednesdays media lesson we edited the new shot of the conversation scene into our film opening. We'd filmed it three times to make sure that we got a good shot of it, incase the tape corrupted again and just to give us a choice of which shot we preferred. Both myself and Lucy were able to remember what clothes we wore on the original day of filming, and we used the same umbrella again so as not to ruin the continuity. The umbrella was also used to disguise the background. This scene was shot in my back garden like before, and the umbrella helped disguise any signs that we were in my garden and not the woods where all of the other stalker shots were filmed.

New conversation scene...

So this morning we re-filmed the conversation scene between the stalkers victim & her friend. It went well and playing the scene back on the camera it seems to have not come out bright like it did last time, so thats a relief! We decided to film the scene three times, just incase the tape corrupted again or if something didn't come out right from the first shot we filmed of it. The weather was pretty much the same as it was the day we originally filmed the rest of our film opening, and both myself & Lucy were able to remember what we were wearing so our continuity will hopefully not be ruined. We also took some pictures of us filming, as we didn't take any when we filmed our whole film opening a few weeks ago. The pictures we took are below...



All that needs to be done now is myself & Shazna need to edit the conversation scene and add it into the rest of our film opening, go onto a copy-right free website and find music that will go well with the stalker theme of our film opening, add that into our film sequence and then everything should be completed!

Re-Shooting...

Myself and Lucy will be re-filming the conversation scene between the stalkers victim and her friend tomorrow (Saturday 7th February). We will be re-filming this scene in my back garden as this is where we filmed the conversation scene originally. We are having to re-shoot this scene due to when we uploaded our film onto iMovie, this particular scene for some reason came out very bright. Our teacher Nina thought that the brightness on this scene ruined the rest of our film opening, and advised us to re-shoot the conversation so that it wouldn't ruin the rest of our film opening. So hopefully this time the scene will come out well, and we will just need to edit it into the rest of our film opening.

Yet more editing stuff...

So we carried on our editing today in our media lesson. In the end, we decided to change the last shot of the blood covered pictures & knife to black and white. We did this as the titles that come up in this scene are in red, and if we were to have kept the shot in colour, the red titles would not have had as much as an effect as they would have coming up over a black & white shot.
We've also made the decision to re-shoot the conversation scenes between the stalkers victim (Lucy) and her friend (me). This is because for some reason these scenes came out very bright, so bright that our faces couldn't be made out. So I will have to check with Lucy to see if she can re-shoot these scenes over the weekend so we will have the footage ready to edit and put into our film in next Wednesdays lesson.
Once this scene has been re-shot and added into the film opening, we should have all of our scenes and we can finish editing it all.

More editing stuff...

Since my last blog myself and Shazna have done a lot more editing on our film opening. We've now edited out all the re-takes and scenes that we don't need and got all of the scenes that we do need in the order we want them to be in. We've also changed the scenes at the stalkers house to black & white, though we've decided to keep the final scene of the blood covered pictures and knife in colour. We've done this as in previous scenes of the same shot, we didn't think that the full effect of the blood on the pictures and writing of the word 'Die' in blood over some of the pictures would be got across to the audience if all shots of the scene were in black & white. So by leaving the last shot of the scene in colour, the effect of blood that we want to get across will hopefully be put across to the audience.

We've also started to add our titles and names onto each scene but still need to finish those during the week. For our titles we've decided to use a 'wipe' effect and have written the text in red. By using this colour font and the 'wipe' effect, we are trying to give the impression that the titles are written in blood, and that the blood writing is being wiped on and off of the screen. This goes well with our stalker and possible murder theme.

Animatic Pics & Changes We've Made...

These are the pictures for our animatic. As of yet we haven't uploaded them into imovie to make them into an animatic. We are planning to do this next week once we've finished editing our film opening, which we will have finished during next Wednesdays lesson.

There have been some changes to our film opening since drawing these. Some of our changes include: the way the titles appear on the screen, instead of having the stalkers reflection appear in a knife that they have picked up, we decided to instead have a light shining onto a wall behind the stalker, and on the wall you see the stalkers shadow, and the shadow of the knife being picked up. We think these changes have made our film opening look better and they've also been easier to do than our original ideas for these scenes.

Film opening is starting to take shape...

In todays lesson we started editing our film opening. We were both quite surprised at how much we got done in such a short space of time! We were on the iMac for around an hour but managed to get most of our scenes together, and we don't have many scenes left to edit and put into our sequence, so hopefully by the end of Fridays lesson we may have our film opening completely edited with all our scenes in order.
Once we've got all of our scenes into order, all that will be left to do is adding in the music we've chosen (but still not got! Hopefully we will have it by Friday), adding in all the names and titles in the right places in each scene, putting in transitions between each shot and changing the scenes at the stalkers house to black & white.
So far, everything is going well, and hopefully this will continue and we will have everything finished soon.

So our filming has now been done...

Unfortuanately we did have some problems during our filming. The first was the fact that it was raining. Thankfully it wasn't torrential rain so we still were able to film, though while myself or Shazna were filming my Dad was holding an umbrella over the camera so as not to get it wet and this seemed to work well. Our second problem we didn't realise until we were looking back at our footage once we had finished filming. For some reason, the part of the tape had become corrupted and wiped off our last scenes from filming at Abbeywood Ruins, including the conversation between myself and Lucy, myself and Lucy walking away and Shazna as the stalker watching us walking off before disappearing into the trees (we changed this scene from our original plan, which was to have Shazna walk over a hill after watching us walk away. This was changed when we came to filming as it was more convenient due to the location, and thought it would give more tension to the ending). Because of these scenes being wiped due to a technical fault with the tape, and the fact that we would not be able to go back to Abbeywood Ruins to re-film these scenes as we were running out of time, we instead filmed the conversation between myself and Lucy in my back garden. For this scene we had the camera on close up shot and had the umbrella used by Lucy in the walking scenes to cover up the trees in the background. This was all done so that it will hopefully not be noticable that our location had changed, so as not to ruin our continuity.

The decision was also made to change the ending of our opening. Now, instead of seeing Shazna watching us walk away before disappearing into the trees, we instead decided to have the conversation end and then have a shot of the pile of pictures of Lucy covered in blood with the blood covered knife lying on top of them. We chose this idea over our other one, which was to have the stalker holding the knife in one hand, and a picture in the other. We did film both of these ideas, but decided that this one would be better for our opening.

4 days to go...

Only 4 days left till myself and Shazna film our opening sequence, and apart from a few more things we're all ready to go. I went to collect the fake blood we ordered from the shop the other day so thats now all sorted. All thats really left to do before Sunday is I need to find a number of pictures of Lucy and print them out to use in two of the scenes at the stalkers house, neither myself or Shazna have anything like a black mask at our homes, so in our lesson on Friday we will have to go to the schools drama department to see if they have a black mask we can use for the weekend, we also need to book out a camera from the school for the weekend, this we will also be doing in Friday's lesson, and I still need to find a copyright version of Pendulum's Granite. Hopefully I will be able to find it within the next week so we have it in time for editing our film sequence, plus we both thought it was the perfect music for our film opening, so it will be a real shame if neither of us can find it copyright free anywhere, but fingers crossed we will be able to find it somewhere! Apart from those few things, we're all ready to film on Sunday, which will hopefully go without any problems too!

Shooting Schedule

This is our shooting schedule for our filming.

Date: Sunday 25th January 2009

Filming Hours: Shazna and Lucy are coming to my house at around 7.20am. We are leaving my house at around 7.40am and my Dad will be giving us a lift to Abbeywood Ruins. We are hoping to get there at around 7.50am, to start filming at 8.00am, and we will try to have finished filming by 10.40am.

Day/Night: Day, during the morning.

Internal/External: Scenes at Abbeywood Ruins will be external filming, while filming at my house for the stalkers house scenes will be internal filming.

Location: Abbeywood Ruins and my house

Cast: Shazna Khalique as the stalker
Emily Peachey (me) as the victims friend
Lucy Taylor as the victim

Props & Cast Stuff

We've finally got all of our props ready for filming and have decided our cast.
I will be playing the victims friend who she meets at the end of our sequence, Shazna will be playing the stalker and one of my friends Lucy has agreed to play the victim for us.
Our filming date will be Sunday 25th January. We originally hoped to film on Monday 19th January, but because Shazna and Lucy both have lessons at 11.00 and I was unable to get out of my English lesson, we decided that it would be best to film on a weekend. We then planned to film on Saturday 24th, but again this would have caused problems as Shazna would have to be at work before 11.00, and Lucy would be having a driving lesson early in the morning. Sunday 25th was the only weekend day that would work for all 3 of us where none of us would have to rush filming to get elsewhere.

We've also got our list of props and apart from a few we have them all ready. Our prop list includes:

• Black clothes for the stalker (Shazna)
• Black mask
• iPod
• Knives
• Fake blood
• Pictures of the stalkers victim

Shazna has all the black clothes we need for the stalker, I have the knives we need for the stalkers house scenes, we will be using my iPod for the victim walking through the woods scenes, and we will need a number of pictures of Lucy for the scenes at the stalkers house showing the stalkers obsession with her character. We were both able to find ingredients and instructions on the internet for the fake blood we need.

These ingredients were:

• 1 pint of clear corn syrup
• 100 drops of red food colouring
• 1/4 cup of water
• 1/4 cup sifted flour or corn starch
• 8 drops of blue food colouring

Unfortuanately we were unable to find all of these ingredients, and after searching on the internet my Dad was able to order a bottle of fake blood from a fancy dress shop in Bexleyheath and I will be going to collect this in the next few days. We also need a black mask for Shazna. Neither of us have a mask or anything that resembles one so we will be going to the schools drama department in our next lesson to see if they have a mask we can borrow.

Some final changes & music...

Today in media myself and Shazna made some last minute changes & decisions to our film sequence.
We listened to both of the Pendulum songs that I thought would be good for our film opening, and we both agreed that Granite would be the best song to use. We decided on this song over Axle Grinder because the music has an eerie sound to it, particuarly right at the beginning of the song, which we thought would help build up the tension in our film opening. The words in the verse we also thought would be appropriate for our film, as they're talking about 'being watched' and 'getting closer', which go well with the stalker theme of our film opening.

We've also decided to change one of the scenes at the stalkers house. Originally, we were going to have a shot of a door opening which would reveal a room covered in pictures of the person the stalker is following in the woods. The camera would film all of the room and all of the pictures. Talking about it today though, we've decided this may be too hard to get a small enough room that we would be able to completely cover in pictures. We're still keeping the idea of a door opening and there being a number of pictures of the person, but now we're having a door opening, revealing a table in the middle of a room which will have a number of pictures on. The camera will be in the stalker's point of view, and will walk into the room up to the table and look over at all of the pictures. We think this will be an easier way of doing our original idea and that hopefully it will still give the audience the idea that the stalker has an obsession with this girl. We haven't made this change to our storyboards, but when we do our animatic in the next few days we will be putting this new idea in instead of our original idea.

Storyboard...

Here is my storyboard for mine & Shazna's film opening sequence. On the side of each picture we've described whats going on in the scene as well as the camera angles we will be using when we film it. We've also included where we will be adding titles and names on our shots when we come to editing our sequence, so when we come to adding them in we will know exactly where we want them and how we want it to look. The first scene of our opening sequence is a close up of an iPod screen, which we are going to try and have our first title or name on. The rest of our titles & names will come up at various different points during our title sequence, and we plan to have the name of our film come up right at the end of the sequence once the stalker has disappeared over a hill. We're planning to have the title drip down like blood onto the shot of the hill as everything goes dark, and by the time all of the letters have dripped down it will make up the name of our title. We thought this would be a good idea to do as it builds up tension for the audience and gives the sequence an eerie ending.