Fraser's Evaluation

http://youtu.be/gTUmmzy-G6E

EVALUATION

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Are media product 'Playtime' challenges or develops dominant ideologies portrayed in similar existing media products. The narrative is constructed to challenge the representation of teenage girls. As in existing media products such as Skins, Coming of Age etc have a negative image of teenage girls as they are either drinking, taking drugs etc. In playtime the two victims are teenage girls and when Becky sees the injured teen in the park she attends to her straight away to see if she needs help.
Playtime challanges the representation of teenage girls but develops the negative stereotype given to black people as the offender is of black origin.

Playtime like a working title film challanges the priniclpes of modern day film as tried to attract an audience with a stunning narrative rather than spend millions of pounds on visual effects.

Finally when producing are media product we used the same rules and shots existing media products use. For example: when we played back our filming on i-movie we noticed we had broken the 180 degree rule which meant we had to reshoot. We used close-ups to show facial expressions, long shots to set the scene etc. When coming to edit our media product using i-movie we also used a range of transitions which similar productions use to murge their different shots e.g  cut,wipe etc.

Tom

Choosing our production company

We sat down as a group to think through names that we could use as our production company name. These are the following ideas we came up with:

1) Scar Productions
2) Forbidding Productions
3) Tapwork Productions
4) Flamework Productions 

We then discussed and concluded that we should use 'Flamework Productions'. This is because it's the most unique for our British film. The word 'Flame' also has negative connotations of agression, hate, death and mysery, all of which will reflect the story of our film. We then used LiveType to create a moving sequence. This are screenshots of what it looks like:

The begginging of the sequence

 We used flames over the font so it relates nicely to the work 'Flame'.

How the sequence ends

The fire dies out and reveals the production company's name. We also used red writing that goes along with the connotations of death, evil and hate.









By Sophie

Props included in our opening sequence:

 

The Gun used by the unknown villain

 We decided to use this gun to emphasise the violent nature of the villain. We also wanted to end the opening sequence with a dramatic finish in order for enigma to be present. This therefore draws the attention of the audience in to make them watch on, for their questions and puzzles to be answered.

The bed Rebecca wakes up in

We used this bed to start the opening sequence. We made the room appear really tidy in order to give the impression that shes a lonely girl that doesn't go out much. Typical teenagers have really messy rooms, so we wanted to show the audience that this girl deviates from the perceptions of teenagers.








Mobile phone used to call her friend


This mobile phone is used by Rebecca to call her friend. We decided to use this phone as most people in Britain now own either an iPhone or a BlackBerry, and we wanted her to appear as if shes trying to fit in with a social group by going along with the norm, as she already finds it difficult to fit in at school.










Bag used by Rebecca


We chose to include a bag within our opening sequence as Rebecca walks because we wanted to make it clear to the audience that she was on a journey heading somewhere. We also wanted to keep the realism alive as much as we possibly could, and most people who are on a journey take a bag with them.








By Sophie

Background to our characters

 Rebecca:

This is the main character for our opening sequence. Rebecca (Becky) is a very quiet and lonely girl, who struggles dearly to stick up for herself. This is mainly due to her deprived upbringing and childhood. Her father was never there and her mum struggled, being an alcoholic. She doesn't have many friends, finding it very difficult to connect and fit in with others from her school. The main reason why she was targeted by this unknown villain is because of her vulnerable personality and weakness. Her personality make people fear what is going to happen to her.

'Injured girl'

The audience are unaware of who this character is, but this character is similar to Rebecca in terms of her situation. This girl has be badly beaten by this violent dangerous villain, so severely that she is near to death. The audience are left unaware of how this girl has got into this situation, but could guess that she also has a very weak personality to be targeted by this 'unknown' character. It therefore suggest that the villain targets weak young teenage girls.

The Unknown Villain

In the opening sequence the audience never get to see what this character looks like. Therefore, we as the audience are unaware whether it is a human or some sort of creature. This character has the most dominant power over everyone else in the film, and the story follows this villain and his violent mysterious ways.

By Sophie

My Evaluation (Sophie Herridge)

I had some difficulties uploading my evaluation video onto the blog, so instead, I uploaded it onto to YouTube which you can watch using the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk4cjwux_PI



By Sophie

My research into Media Institutions

Film4 Productions is a British film production and distribution company that is owned by Channel 4. It’s responsible for producing a wide range of films all of different genres and is well known for backing a lot of films that are made within the UK, and is commended for its films as of the past 25 years of British cinema history. From this, it attracts some of the world’s most stimulating national and international innovative talent.

Film 4 Productions main aims and objectives are to welcome new talent. On their website they state, ‘Film4 develops and co-finances films and is known for working with the most innovative talent in the UK’. One of their older, much loved films is, ‘My Beautiful Launderette’ (1985). This film started off as a low budget British film (of about £650,000). This film ended up making a gross profit of about £1,550,000. Film4 Productions take a huge interest in new and fresh talent, and is proud of its original talent. Not only do Film4 Productions produce films but they also present them on the free view channel ‘Film 4’, so fresh talents can be pushed and motivated, and perhaps even for cinema release. An example of a film that started off as an extremely low budget film is ‘Wish You Were Here’ (1987) that ended up with a gross profit of about £2,100,000.

To conclude this, Film4 Productions would be an ideal production company for our type of film because they would welcome our fresh talent, as well as creating a type of platform for us so we would be able to escalate with our film. Also, many low budget British films have turned up to Film4 Productions with not that much of a budget, but end coming out the other side with over a £1 million profit!

By Sophie Herridge

Annotated deconstruction of 'The Strangers' poster

By Sophie Herridge

Link

Our Final Media Task - Play Time     <----------- Click to see project (On YouTube)

Our Main Task - Play Time

My Evaluation (Tyra)

Problems with uploading my podcast

Today I had the task of uploading my podcast so I could meet the required deadline. However, I came across many issues that prevented me from doing this. While uploading my footage, parts of these got deleted as there wasn't enough space on the hard drive, so once i opened my footage into iMovie, the last few answers to my evaluation were not appearing.

Even though this is extremely annoying, I am going to over come this by re-doing the parts that got deleted, and to get my new answers up on the blog AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!


By Sophie Herridge

Textual analysis of ‘Drag me to Hell’ (Tyra Cooper)

The opening sequence that I am analysing is from the film ‘Drag me to hell’ (2009) which is directed by Sam Raimi. Drag Me to Hell won the award for Best Horror Film at the 2009 Scream Awards and the 2010 Awards; in addition it made a gross amount of about $90 million. The plot revolves around a young woman who’s trying to impress her boss by refusing to extend a loan to a gypsy woman. This resulted in the gypsy woman cursing the young girl which, after three days of escalating torment, will plunge her into the depths of hell to burn for eternity. This film helped me to come up with ideas for our opening sequence as its one of my favourite horror films.

The sequence starts off with eerie music then a skull jumps into the shot, which is ghost house pictures logo. It then goes on to a long shot of a house this represents a beginning of a story and for the audience to familiarise themselves with the surroundings. When the characters in the shot start to speak we realise there speaking a different language, and there’s subtitles on the screen. This grabs the audience’s attention and from there frantic voices were eager to know what the future holds for these characters. The young boy has come to a gypsy woman because he has got cursed. As he lies down we see the surroundings from his point of view and how twisted it is. This causes tension to the audience and makes them wonder what happened to the young boy. Suddenly the door blows up with a faint growl in the background which makes the audience jump. The quiet atmosphere has now changed to a loud setting where the boy is being chased around the old decrepit house.  It ends with the boy being thrown over the stairs, only to be dragged to hell. This gives the audience a rush of surprise and bewilderment. The people that seemed to be the main characters have died which the audience confused and wanting to watch more.

The next thing the audience see is the titles, which create a build up of tension as the music is getting louder and little pictures of monsters are appearing on the screen. The front of the title represents the genre of the film and hints to the audience the significance that it contains. It then goes on to show a blonde haired, blue eyed young women driving in the car, with just silence. This is very dramatic as the music has gone from loud to quiet suddenly, and after seeing a young child being dragged to hell the audience are wondering and dreading the same thing might happen to her. The director chose this girl to play the role of the protagonist because she has a sense of innocence upon her, and the audience will feel attached to her. The woman is shown driving herself to work and helping people out with a smile on her face. This shows that she is a nice person, we can also tell by the calm and happy music playing in the background.

Later on in the film the gypsy woman comes to the young lady for help. It begins with a close up of the old woman’s gnarly hands tapping on the table. This represents inpatients and that there’s only a matter of time until something bad happens. The old gypsy woman is represented to be very ill and poor. This is shown by her coughing into her tissue, her discoloured eye and her, trying to steal all the sweets on the table. This shows the audience what her characteristics are like and for them to sympathise for her. However the young woman under pressure decides to kick the gypsy lady out of her house, just to impress her boss. The old woman begs to her on her hands and knees whilst kissing her skirt. This represents how desperate she is and shocks the audience as to how far she would go to stay in her house. Unfortunately the so called innocent girl pushed the women to the floor and called security which only aggravated her. Dark music starts to play in the background when the old women entered the scene and it died down when she left it, which represents and warns the audience that she’s a dark character and we haven’t seen the last of her yet. Whilst the women was walking away the music died down and when the audience had just relaxed she turns around and charges at the young lady with sudden loud music in the background. This makes the audience have a rollercoaster of emotions, and creates confusion as to what it’s all going to result in.  I feel that the reason this film did so well is because the audience were constantly having there emotions and thoughts put to the test. The main thing that I took from this film was how to create tension and when it’s the right time to release it.

I have also decided to analysis the poster that they used worldwide for this film. The poster involves an element of the supernatural which establishes to the target audience the kind of evil or villain that is in the film. The poster conveys the horror and pain that can be expected in the film in a simple yet effective way. However the only bad thing I can find about this poster is that it gives away the end of the film. In the poster she is seen being dragged into hell which insinuates that’s how the film ends. This can also been showed by the title of the film; in addition this might stop people from watching the film as it may seem too predictable and like all American horrors. 

Actress

Rebecca Pratt - The Main Character

Sophie - The injured girl

 We chose Rebecca Pratt to be our main character because she's a white middle classed young lady, ideal to represent the innocence normally shown in thrillers. We also knew that she did drama at college, therefore her acting skills would benefit and make the realism of our film much more apparent.

We chose sophie because she has a look of innocence upon her, and thought that seeing as the narrative of our film was to be a young innocent subordinate girl getting targeted, in order to continue the realism of the film.

By Sophie and Tyra

Actresses costumes

Rebecca - The main character

Unknown name - the injured girl

By Sophie and Tyra

Planning our actors/actresses

By Sophie and Tyra

Location Ideas

By Sophie and Tyra

SCHEDULE - planning

By Sophie and Tyra

The Final 'Play Time' script

By Sophie and Tyra

Our rough sketch of the set

By Sophie and Tyra

Our Draft Script

By Sophie and Tyra

Photo shoots of location

The path the main character takes

Foliage where the injured girl is found

The surroundings where the events take place



The path in which the main character takes



This is where the villain hides behind the tree

Entrance, where the character goes into the park.

By Sophie and Tyra

Synopsis : Play Time

Playtime is a thought provoking, mind blowing thriller that constantly keeps you on the edge of your seat. The film follows the life of a average female teenager who suffers through everyday life, the main reason being her alcoholic abusive mum. It takes its toll after her recurring nightmares and constant problems at home. She storms out the house to meet her friend in a hope for a breath of fresh air, but this deviates suddenly and turns for the worst. She senses someone is following her and as she proceeds to walk she shockingly comes across a beaten young lady, sprawled and hidden in a bush. She tends to the women however this was a life changing mistake as an unknown villain points a gun directly at her.

The narrative then follows the life of the murdering psychopath, and what he has planned for his future victims.

By Sophie and Tyra

Researching our location

About the Park

The Park has changed little over the centuries and, although it is surrounded by human habitation, the varied landscape of hills, woodland gardens and grasslands set among ancient trees abounds in wildlife.

Richmond Park has been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a National Nature Reserve. The royal connections to this park probably go back further than any of the others, beginning with Edward (1272-1307), when the area was known as the Manor of Sheen. The name was changed to Richmond during Henry VII's reign.

Opening hours:
The park is open from 7am in the summer and 7.30am in the winter, and closes at dusk all year round.

There is also a lot of wildlife in Richmond Park such as deer, swans, grebe, mallards and gadwalls, pike... and even 1000 species of beetle!  

We found this a good location because the surroundings created a good atmospheric setting that follows the generic conventions of thrillers. For instance the mise en scene was eerie and the sounds of nature in the background created tension. It was an ideal location because it was close to the house we were previously filming in. Due to its secluded setting it was a perfect place to film, as it also suited the storyline.

By Tyra and Sophie

Planning Costumes

These were the costumes the group decided would best suit the characters in the film.

By Tom

Basic Draft Version Of Script

This is the first script we came up with. It was short and snappy. It was later developed into a full script with all speech and camera shots included.

By Tom

MORE DETAIL!!!

We thought we knew what we were doing when answering the evaluation questions, but after having a lecture from out teacher we discovered that we really really really don't. When answering the question to do with what kind of audience our film would appeal to, it turns out that our answer of it appealing to 16-18 year old's because it had 16-18 year old's in the film is not a good answer and we need to have a lot mote detail to it all. Our group now needs to knuckle down and answer these questions well.


Fraser :)

THE MORNING AFTER

After finishing the film on Friday the group are positive about its outcome. We have watched it a few times making sure nothing needed adding.

We are now focusing on completing the podcast and evaluation before the deadline.

Over and Out.

By Tom

Today (17th March)

Sophie and Tyra continued to edit the music and sound effects for the opening scenes of the film. They did this by using Garage Band. 

The group now have:
                                    A production name (Flamework productions)
                                    A film name (Play Time)
                                    Titles
                                    Background music

Sophie and Tyra are currently working on additional sound affects needed to dust off the production.
Me and Fraser this morning have started our project evaluation podcast. We have agreed on the question list and so far both me and Fraser have answered our questions and will now start to edit the podcast and start to add titles. The group have decided that I will film and edit the podcast as the rest of the group did more editing than me for the main task.

For the rest of the hour (45 mins) Me and Fraser will add edit the start of our podcast and Sophie and Tyra will finish the sound effects so that tomorrow they will be ready to answer their questions for the podcast.

By Tom

Today, I believe that we made good progress in terms of trying to finishing our thriller opening sequence. Earlier, myself and Tyra spent over 2 hours creating titles for our production company to make our opening sequence appear as realistic as possible. We used LiveType to help create our titles which have good effects making our job much easier, however we did come across some problems. One example was that we weren't able to create the exact logo that we had in mind for our film institution company, however we overcame this by creating a logo using the resources on LiveType, making it look as identical as we possibly could compared to our original design.

Fraser and Tom then took over from us, transferring our titles from LiveType to iMovie and they proceeded with the lengthy process of editing.


By Sophie

Evaluation from thriller questionnaire

We handed out 25 of our questionnaires to friends, family members, neighbours and also people who go to our extra curricular clubs that we attend outside of school. Therefore, we were able to get an accurate and fair sample of results full of varying sexes, age ranges and even better, opinions.

From our questionnaire we found that on average males found thriller films more entertaining than females around the ages of 16-18 and 19-21. We also found that males watch many more films compared to females, with most people in this catagory watching at least one film a week. We found that people in the 10-12 age catagory (who are allowed to watch certificate 15's) did not find thriller movies as entertaining. We concluded that this may be because they may find the plot confusing or even a tad too scary. We also found this with females in general and people above the age of 30, perhaps because they do not have enough time to watch films as they may lead very busy lives with jobs and family. We therefore came to the conclusion that our film should be more aimed towards males in their mid-teens to early twenties.

We also observed other patterns within our questionnaire. We found that females found the frights and jumps the most fun and entertaining parts within the film, and the thrill of not knowing what comes next. However, for males they seemed to prefer the action, the twisted plots, and the gory side of thrillers. We discussed this as a group and concluded that our film should include things that will attract both male and female audiences, so our aim is to plan an opening sequence that includes all these thriller conventions to make it as successful as possible.


By Sophie 

Our Thriller Questionnaire (Audience Research)

In order to help us with the planning for our own thriller opening sequence, we came up with a thriller questionnaire to see exactly what type of audience get attracted to thrillers, as well as to see what they look for in thriller movies so we can apply it to our own. We came up with this questionnaire:

Thriller Movies
(Please circle)

1) Are you Male or Female?

Male      Female

2) What age catagory do you fit into?

10-12      13-15      16-18      19-21      22-24      25-27      28-30      30+

3) How do you find out about new films?

Posters      Trailers      From Friends      Adverts      Pop-ups (on your computer)      Other

4) On average, how often you watch films?

Every week      Every fortnight      Every month      Every 3 months      Every 6 months     

Every year      Never

5) On average, how often do you watch thriller films?

Every week      Every fortnight      Every month      Every 3 months      Every 6 months     

Every year      Never

6) What things do you expect when you watch a thriller film?

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7) What do you expect to see in the opening sequence of a thriller?

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8) How entertaining do you find thrillers on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most entertaining)

1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9      10

9) What do you enjoy the most when watching a thriller?

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10) What is your all time favourite thriller film?

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Thanks for your time. Please feel free to leave any other comments:

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By Sophie

The trailer to go with 'The Strangers'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lm2hZ50sN4

By Sophie

Textual Analysis of 'The Strangers' (Sophie Herridge)

The film that I have chosen to analyse is the opening sequence to a thriller film called ‘The Strangers’ (2008), written and directed by Bryan Bertino. The story is about a young couple who end up staying in an isolated holiday home during their romantic visit. However, they get dreadfully terrorised by 3 unknown intruders. This film has had a major impact on me and is one film that I always remember by its constant shocks and frights literally keeping you off your seat. From this, I was extremely influenced and inspired to create and make our own opening sequence as successful as ‘The Strangers’, which made a gross amount of $82.3 million at the box office worldwide.

The sequence starts off with the opening orange shaded titles fading in, in front a black background, representing a binary opposition. The colour orange is seen to be a passionate and energetic colour; however it is presented upon a black background which represents mystery and evil. This immediately illustrates slyness and deceitfulness, reflecting parts of the story ahead. The chosen font hints to the audience the sense of seriousness that this film holds, as well as revealing the genre of the film. The title sequence then stops and the beginning of the story is told through the use of a voice over. The man’s voice is very deep in tone and croaky which is chosen to cause fright as well as a mystical feel before the first scene is displayed. The audience is then left in anticipation that something bad is going to follow. In addition, non-diegetic music is heard over this to increase tension as it echoes and screeches, sounding like distorted church music, again being a binary opposition between good and evil, therefore giving a message that there will be a fight between the two ahead.

Following this, the text fades out the same way it faded in leaving the audience in darkness and anticipation. Diegetic sound is used to display a car engine starting up, implying that the characters will be going on some sort of journey and this is established when the first scene fades in to a point of view, long shot from inside a car, driving past a variety of houses. The camera shows this movement by tracking and moving along the line of action, therefore making the audience feel like they are a part of this journey with the characters. The mise-en-scene makes it clear that this story is based in America from the use of the traditional white, wooden American houses and the use of light illustrates that their journey had started in the morning. The scene is then quickly left by a fade transition to the next scene displaying a change of time and a change of place. The camera is left as a point of view shot, however, the houses are slowly getting further away and more disperse, suggesting that the characters are travelling away from a busy environment to a more secluded, isolated area.

The mise-en-scene also illustrates that the evening is approaching as the light is dying away.  A mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic sound is used within these scenes. The diegetic sound is the car driving whereas the non-diegetic sound is the screechy distorted music heard before, representing that they are heading away from a safe, civilised place and are now travelling towards danger. This makes the audience anxious and builds up the tension of where the characters are travelling to. The fading transitions carry on until the mise-en-scene displays a dark night with no houses or signs of life within the frame. The non-diegetic music increases in loudness, signifying that they are getting closer and closer to this danger.

The scene then fades out again, leaving the audience in darkness still unaware of where the characters have ended up. Diegetic sound of young boy whimpering is added which illustrates vulnerability and exposure hinting to the audience that something bad has already happened in this ‘dangerous’ area. Therefore, they are eager to see the location and the state the boy is in.  The whimpering also suggests that the boy has experienced something terrible. We soon come to realise that he has dialled ‘911’ for the emergency services, emphasising his vulnerability and suggests that what has happened is out of his own control. Finally, after leaving the audience wondering the scene fades in to exhibit an extreme long shot so the audience can visualise the setting.

The mise-en-scene shows a very isolated place with fields and forests and a half smashed up car with what looks like a gun shot through the windscreen. This illustrates that there have been previous violent events to cause this. The camera tracks sideways until the camera is looking through the hole in the windscreen. Here, the audience are able to see two young school boys. The fact that they are seen through this hole suggests that they have some sort of friendship or relationship and that one of these boys is perhaps the one whimpering down the phone. Contrapuntal, calm and peaceful diegetic music is used as the music contrasts dramatically with the situation and the image presented within the scene. It also shows the tranquil representation of the countryside and what people believe it to be like.

A cut transition to a low angle shot is used to show the two young boys walking into a house. They are dressed smartly in black trousers and a white shirt, suggesting that they are well behaved children by their appearance. The low angle shot suggests that they have power in this situation. The mise-en-scene shows an extreme close up shot of an old record player still spinning even though the house appears to be empty, suggesting that something has happened to these people in the isolated house or that they may have left in a hurry. Another cut is used to show a wedding ring box and petals lying on the floor illustrating that there was a couple staying in this house that may have a close relationship. The audience are therefore keen to find out what has happened to the couple who stayed in this house. It is then revealed by a cut and close up shot of a kitchen knife covered in blood. The audience can then make assumptions that the people living there have been killed as all their possessions are still in the house. Another close up shot is a splatter of blood against a wall, supposedly made by a gun shot, as the next scene shows a gun on the kitchen work surface.

It has now been made clear that the people who lived in this house have somehow been brutally murdered, and the audience are now left in tenterhooks to see how these events took place. The young boy’s voice at the end echoes as the scene fades out, suggesting that these events are in the past or events that will happen in the future. The title of the film then fades in with non-diegetic music that rumbles, giving a warning to the audience that the film will be situated around brutal violent crimes.

PODCAST DATE BOOKED

PODCAST

The group have decided that tomorrow we will film the projects podcast. Everyone will have the opportunity to film and everyone will have to answer a series of questions on how we think the film went.

Questions to be asked:

1. What was it like filming?
2. What difficulties did you come across?
3. What would you change if you were to do it again?
4. How did you find editing the opening sequence? 
5. How many marks do you think you will get?


Some additional questions will be asked to certain members of the group. 


This will be on the blog on wednesday.


By Tom

Dead Man Running

Harry Brown

Ideas For Opening Sequences

RELATED FILMS

As mentioned somewhere on the blog I began to look for 2 films similar to Playtime. These films shared similar issues to our film so I felt that the following selection would be suitable for the anyalsis of an opening sequence:

Dead Man Running - Shares the issue of gun crime.

Harry Brown - Multiple murders

By Tom

Filming Completed

FILMING DONE

Today Sophie, Tyra and Fraser finished filming all the shots needed to finish editing PLAYTIME.
The shot containing Becky walking up to the injured woman was reshot as the last effort did not flow with the rest of the shots. After continuing to edit the film the shot fitted in well and the group decided that their would be no additional shots needed as the opening sequence asked all the audience all the questions that we wanted  1. Wha

editing problems!!!

Today Fraser, Sophie and I (Tyra) spent our frees trying to finish the editing of our opening sequence. Only to find out that we broke the 180 degree rule. As a result we have to go back to our location tomorrow and re do some of the shots. We cant finish our editing without it so we've decided to use our time wisely today and start creating the music.

By Tyra

Evaluation of filming and editing

whilst editing we realised we should have filmed a wider variety of shots as we found it difficult to construct the shots together with what we had. We also came across additional problems during filming; for example we were filming near a stable which meant that horses were passing into our shot a lot of the time. In addition we had to carry the equipment around between the two of us which resulted in us having to be very careful and used up valuable time...

The written plans for 'Play Time'

Plan for characters and clothing

Each scene precisely written



Original plan and ideas

  By Sophie

Problems with our filming

On the 24th of February (the first whole day back from our geography field trip) we had planned to make a start on our filming. At first, we were pleased with the process we had made, as we were happy with how the camera angles and scenes were looking. However, half way through our filming, the weather decided to turn against us and started to rain quite heavily. Obviously, this caused many problems as half of our opening sequence had bright but cloudy scenes, and the rest the lighting was dark and raining. We discussed as a group that there was no way we could include a scene to show the start of rainfall, therefore decided to leave the filming for one day and to carry on with this the next day. In the long run this worked out better for us anyway as our HD camera ran out of battery too.

On the 25th of February, we carried on to film the rest of our opening sequence which appeared to be a success. As soon as we got back to school on the 28th of February we uploaded our sequences onto the computer to find that the beginning of our opening sequence had disappeared. This clearly frustrated all of us as we had given up a lot of our time to plan and film this sequence, especially myself, because I also had to clear my house (and the people in side) in order to film.

We once again discussed what we should do as a group and concluded that myself and Tyra (as well as our actress) should re shoot the parts that disappeared as soon as possible. We used our time wisely by using our free periods and lunch times in order to do this. Myself and Tyra finished in time so we could upload and start to edit before the weekend.

By Sophie

Playtime

PLAYTIME

After extensive talks about ideas for our film we decided on a thriller based on a story of a young girl who is followed and shot while walking. The title gives a sense of mystic to the audience as the title can be interpreted in many different ways.

The whole group took part in filming the opening sequence but after reviewing what we had filmed using i-movie HD we decided that we wanted to take the film in a different direction. As a result Fraser with some help from myself put together a scene by scene plan which was later put into a form of a storyboard to help reshoot the parts of the film which we felt needed changing or improving. We felt only 2 of the group was needed for the reshoots (Sophie and Tyra) as there were tasks which needed to be completed E.g. changing the scene by scene brief into a storyboard.

When Sophie and Tyra finished filming the second take of the film it was then again reviewed by Fraser, Sophie and Tyra making the majority of editing decisions consulting me on the most important ones. While the editing was going on I was busy finding a selection of 2 films which were related to the themes of film which the group could use for the analysis of an opening sequence.

By Tom

Planning our ideas as a group

As myself and Tyra had been away on a compulsory geography field trip, and Tom away on a cruise, our group were unable to start to film any of the scenes without all of us being there. Our ideas and plans had not yet been discussed as a whole and we needed to do this in order to improve the original ideas. We therefore thought that we would all benefit from meeting up on Thursday (the day before our filming day) to go through our ideas and to make last minute changes and improvements. In advanced, we had already planned who our actors and actresses should be and we had previously planned costumes and props. We all benefited from this as we then knew precisely what needed to be done the next day, in order to have a successful filming day.

By Sophie

New idea

During our compulsory geography trip we have used our free time appropriately to come up with and plan new ideas. We thought of a few establishing shots that would be good as an introduction for our opening sequence. We thought this through carefully and decided that we should use the general conventions for thriller movies. This way, we can create a lot of tension to grab an audiences attention rigt from the very beginning. Our ideas will follow...

By Tyra

They've abandoned us!!!!!!

Sophie and Tyra have let myself (Fraser) and Tom down by going away on a compulsory geography trip and do not come back until next Wednesday which leaves us with only around 4 days to film all of our opening sequence before the deadline. It looks as if it will be a mad and stressful rush as we need to storyboard the whole thing and then actually film all of our shots. You could then say that me and Tom could then just film all of the shots that involve us, but this cant be done as Tom is going on a cruise from Saturday to Tuesday, it's time for these people to sort out their priority's. Another dilemma is that we will have to come up with a simpler idea as we wont have anywhere near enough time to film our original idea, serious and quick thinking is required....... 

Editing

Editing the preliminary task

This is our first time blogging (Tom and Fraser) since we merged groups with Sophie and Tyra.

We used i-movie HD to first view then edit the preliminary task that Tyra and Sophie had previously thought up and shot. We had to make sure that the clip used continuity editing and it contained a narrative that interested an audience.

When editing the clip we came across the following difficulties:

1. The action had not started before filming which effected the fluency of the clip. We solved this by cutting the first part of shots so all shots ran smoothly into one another.

2. Some shots over ran what was necessary which slowed down the narrative and threatened to bore a audience.

Overall both me and Fraser felt we edited the clip effectively and created a fluent narrative.

Tom and Fraser  

Our storyboard for the Preliminary task

1st page of storybaord

2nd page



3rd page

By Sophie



Preliminary Task FINAL

The ACTUAL Preliminary task

Preliminary Task

Visiting our venue

On the 2nd of February, the manager of the office let us look around the premisis so we were able to plan camera shots, lighting, and then therefore create a storyboard for our task, before filming it. Doing this really helped us as we wouldn't have been able to create a successful storyboard without doing this first, as it gave us more of a clue about what will work and also what may not work. Below are some pictures we took of our venue and where some of the scenes will take place in our preliminary task:



The Office- Where the main events take place



Stairs which leads to the main office

Where the actress enters the building

By Sophie

Merging groups

On the 4th of January, we decided it would be a good idea to join another group of 2 (Fraser and Tom). We thought that we would all benefit from this decision in order to broaden our ideas and to get different opinions from other people.

By Sophie

Planning our Preliminary task

We made a plan of all the things we need to consider before we start to storyboard and film the task. By doing this, we realised there were numerous things we needed to plan and prepare. Here is our plan:

Sophie and Tyra - Written Ideas and Plans

By Sophie

Preparing for our Preliminary task and Foundation Portfolios

To prepare for our tasks ahead, we watch a few clips of pupils work from previous years to help us understand what works well and also what doesn't. We found that the well made clips used a variety of different shots and edits that blended together to create a smooth finish. It was clear that they planned their work well as some scenes were successful at building up the story they aimed to put across. We also found that found that the ones that needed more work didn’t use a wide enough variety of shots and edits weren't smooth like the previous ones.

We also became aware that close up shots were extremely important. What we gained from this is that we need to plan our work out properly and make sure our clips blend together to get the right message across to the audience.

By Sophie