Feedback

The idea and concept of our film opening has been proven to be good however after allowing the rest of the class to watch our film opening we got given some useful feedback comments:
- The handheld camera shots and point of view shots need to be cut slightly.
- The music is too sudden at times so another piece will be needed perhaps more of a 'tone' to help build the tension.
- Editing for a reason needs to be improved as the baby sitter character needs a reason to go upstairs and check on the child.
- The whole running section needs to be reshot.
- The end conversational scene needs to be reshot in order to be done more professionally.
- Too many running shots that begin to get boring and repetitive.
The main target when given feedback is that there is a lot of potential for a build up of tension that hasn't been taken advantage of. We need to re-edit with an aim to build tension as a main improvement for our film opening. 

First Cut

Titles

The horror genre often includes titles that suit the theme of the film. I had researched horror film titles and took this title as inspiration.

After analyzing the title and working on our own twists and ideas, my group and I came to an agreement on the one shown below. Notice the blood stains and red colour which are typical to the genre.

Further Editing and Sound Editing

Mollie had worked on cutting some of the new shots previously but today, Beth and I edited some shots. I found some sound of a news report to add. I recorded the news report sound, I cut it and edited it in. This worked much better than the original television sound already heard in the background of the film.
Some of the shots didn't quite run as smoothly as we would have liked to make them professional, therefore Beth and I edited the duration and sped as well as re-arranging the order of shots so that the sequence of shots could flow better.
We shall continue to work hard together this evening as tomorrow we are due to show our work so far to the rest of our class.

Filming Day 2

This evening (Monday 10th), my group and I got together to film some more shots. The filming which we rescheduled from Friday 30th November . We chose night time to film as stereotypically, scary things happen at night which is why the horror genre often chooses a night time setting.
The shots mostly worked really well. The house in which we filmed gave us the oppertunity to create some scary atmospheric shots, for example the scary figure watching through the window. I feel Mollie has done well with filming these shots. When she finished filming some shots, I asked her to show me and I was very happy with the way she had filmed them and did not need to suggest that we reshot any.
I was acting in the scenes but I also helped Cristi with the mise-en-scene. We had trouble creating a smeared mirror that lasted for a long duration of time. Quickly, our group thought of a shot that would work even better than the smeared mirror which was the camera being on a cupboard in the bathroom which, when opened, the scary character would appear. A problem occured with the smeared mirror but a good outcome came out of it and I was very happy with the result.
Due to low battery charge, we have some other scenes to film at a further time. These scenes are the outside scenes and we schedule these soon. However, most of the filming has been done and editing can be done during tomorrows lesson.

(Cristi helping with props, Molly setting camera up)

(Me acting)

Ideas for Editing

Our film is in need of some further editing in order to make the editing suit the horror genre. I have researched colour grading which is used to make films darker and highlight shadows to create eeriness. I will pass on this knowledge to Beth who has taken the role of editor so that together, we can work on the colours of the filmed shots and see what works to create the scary feel that our film needs.
The next section of filming will be at the evening time so the shots will appear darker than the morning scene we have begun to edit. This may mean that the scenes we will film needs less editing in terms of colour. The night time setting will suit the horror genre and the audience will be aware of what the feeling of the film is but hopefully scare them more also.

Me experimenting with Editing techniques 

Editing

Beth edited the shots with the help of Mollie. They worked on cutting the shots whilst Cristi and I filmed some sound effects. When Cristi and I were done, we gave our views on wether we felt the shots lasted for too long and whether the match on action flowed professionally.

Whilst creating sound effects, I recorded many options of each sound so we could see what worked best with the camera shots. I recorded different breathing paces as well as asking different people to breathe so that I could hear which recording sounded scary enough to create tension in the film opening through sound effects. I recorded some running footsteps (which I can be seen doing in the picture) but due to timing issues with the footsteps not going at the same pace as the feet moving in the film, I have not been able to edit that sound into the film in a professional way, instead it sounded odd and therefore I have not used them. I feel that it was important to record our own sounds and not just get sound effects from the internet so that I could commit to the role of sound editor and experience creating sounds from the recording stage until making sure the sound is edited in correctly for the final cut. I am very happy with how the music sounds when I edited that into the film opening. I made the music start at a specific time, when the scary character appears. The uncomfortable soundtrack lets the audience know that something scary is happening so that they are on the edge of their seat and want to watch on, which essentially is what a film opening is all about.

Music

I found a website for uncopyrighted music: freeplaymusic.com
On this website, I found a piece of suspense music called 'Black Widow' that suits the horror genre and would be perfect for our production.

Filming Day 1

On Thursday morning, my group and I filmed some of the end scenes of the film opening. It was important to film in the morning because we needed the light to be bright for this section. During the winter, there are not many hours of sunlight so this was a good decision. We chose to film Thursday morning also because the weather forecast said that there was no rain, and luckily, they had predicted right!
Molly took charge of the filming. As a group, we were very happy with her shots as the panning technique used to follow the running character was done very smoothly and professionally. She filmed plenty of shots in order to have lots of footage to make the final edit the best it can be with the best chosen shots.
Cristi was a big help with the costumes. For my costume, she brought black material to cover my face. It was a windy day so she helped tie it up tight before each shot so that when filming, the material wouldn't blow away. Cristi also took part in some acting.
Beth and I were both actors in this scene. I also held the camera in order to use the handheld technique when my character was running. We decided I would do this to show a point of view of what the scary stalker character was seeing. In the horror genre, a handheld shot is often used to create a jumpy effect that makes the audience feel like they are at sync with the characters, that they are actually there. We hope that our handheld shot will have the same effect in our opening however, we will make sure that it is done in a professional way during the editing process because we are aware that it is a technique that doesn't always work.

(Cristi holding equipment and costumes)

 

(My Costume)   

 

(Molly filming Beth jogging with Cristi's help)

There was some problems that occured because the place we filmed was a public area, many pedestrians and dog walkers walked past where we were filming. In order not to have them caught in our scenes, we had to wait for them to leave out of the shot of the camera. We could have filmed a  lot quicker if this problem didn't occur.

Overall, we were pleased with our work and progress on Thurday as it meant that several ending shots of our film opening were ready to edit. The non diegetic sound needs to be recorded for the editing of these shots also. I am responsible for sound and I am planning to record the non diegetic sounds on Tuesday. We had planned to continue filming on Friday night but due to a cancellation of one of the girl who we asked to act in the shots, we had to reschedule.