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.