Merry Christmas Everyone!

As our good friends the shakin stevens would say...


"Snow is falling, all around me, children playing, having fun, it's the season, love and understanding, merry christmas everyone."


Yeah we are taking a break for christmas but more blog posts and keen media work will be back on track in 2 weeks time. See you then!

Kris, Shaun & Jack xxxxxxxxxxx

Title: Final Result

We have decided to go with the title, RESERVATION, as it looks good on the sequence.

Please call 0800-I-KILL to make your reservation with us...

Title: Final Result

We have decided to go with the title, RESERVATION, as it looks good on the sequence.



Please call 0800-I-KILL to make your reservation with us...

On-going Editing

We have pretty much finished our final sequence using the old footage, and may just need to fiddle around with sound and light levels for various clips during the dialogue. We may have to work on getting rid of crackle and background noise which is prodominant in clips that we have raised the volume on for Matt's dialogue. There does not seem to be too much more we can do with the lighting in the clips of Rob. At least by raising the brightness a little he is slightly more visible, matching with the other shots.. The last big thing we got done today was replace the feeble bang sound on the door in the 'bloody hand' clip with a more ferocious bang sound. We recorded this today in the English corridor by slamming the door shut. We slowed the clip down by 50% and put a reverb effect on it to make it low-pitched and long lasting as well as very loud. This gives the shocking effect that we wanted without taking the atmosphere away for an anti-climax after the sound and hand appears. This manouvre was very successful to give us a decent ending to the sequence along with the flickering title, 'Reservation'.

Kris

THR feedback

After watching our near-finished edited sequence, Miss Thrasher was overall convinced by it and was complimentary of the sequence as a whole. However she gave us a few things to work on, or as she put it... a few little "niggles". We have to work on the sound of the dialogue with Matt's voice being a bit too quiet compared to Rob's. We also need to work on the lighting in the clips of Rob and the entrance/exit clips which are all too dark. We can fiddle about with the brightness and balance of these without making the thing too grainy by adding too many effects. Miss also suggested tightening up some of the shots for better continuity and faster flow, working on the cut points and making them spot on. She thought the titles were perfect.

Title Ideas: The Semi-Final Results

The Host and Host had both already been done before.

The Service sounded too boring or church-like?

We like Reservation because it sounds like a good thriller.

Out of Guest, The Guests and The Guestroom we like the Guests the best as it anchors the meaning of the end part of our sequence.


So... its either RESERVATION or THE GUESTS.

The winner will be anounced on next weeks live show.

Title Ideas

Host
The Host
The Service
Guest
The Guests
The Guestrooom
Reservation

Which one shall we choose???? You decide, call 0800-I-KILL to have your say.

Re-Re-Shoot (problems and resolvements)

Once again illness managed to spoil the party today, with Matt our actor not turning up at school (probably due to illness - although he could have told us or at least turned his phone on!). As media students we are aware that by recruiting two actors outside of media who may not have the same commitment in the project as us that these problems may arise, as well as the possibility of illness and all other silly things.

We have resolved to give shooting a break until after christmas. We have organised so many and we are now very tired. The idea this week is to try and edit our old footage. We have already sequenced it together and there are a few editing techniques we think we could possibly use such as turning up the lighting or brightness on a few shots and blanking out a visible background studio light which ruins one particular shot. At the end of the day, if this fails or is not quite good enough for a final copy as it may be quite patchy, we are likely to hold ONE MORE SHOOT on Tuesday 6th January (first Tuesday back after christmas). Actors are confirmed for this date and hopefully everyone will have recovered from all colds by fattening themselves up over the festive season so they are nice and protected from these Arctic winds. By shooting on this date, we will be left with just 3 days to edit the sequence, but seeing as we have already placed a structure of how the sequence will run using the old footage, we already have done the titles, soundtrack and sounds and will only need to simply replace the footage and neaten it up. Some solid editing from Wednesday until Friday 9th January should see us through!

Let this be the last big problem pleeeease (I know we can't help illness).

Kris

Re-Re-Shoot

Shooting Schedule
Date: 16/12/08
Day: Tuesday
Time: 12.30 + (school finishes at 12.30)
Location: Latymer School Basement
Actors: Matt & Rob

Same old, same old...
hopefully the last!

Sounds

We managed to find some realistic free soundclips from http://www.soundsnap.com/.

We got a light buzzing sound for our first clip, a faint dripping water sound that can be turned up on the dripping water clip, a man screaming in pain for when Matt walks past a new victim and a general scary background sound full of bangs and echoes.

Jack

Credits

Here is what we will open our film with in credits:

"A film by
Live Wire"

"A Wall & Bayliss Production"

"Directed by Jack Downes"

"Robert Demont
Matthew Doyle"

"(film title)"

Shaun

Fonts

After looking at a large selection of fonts, on http://www.1001freefonts.com/ , we narrowed down our options to:

We chose these because they all seemed fairly sinister with 'Barbed Type' being similar to the 'Twisted Pictures' logo who make the 'Saw' films. In the end though, we decided we didnt want to be too similar to saw as our film is more of a thriller than an all-out gorey horror movie. The font we decided to go with in the end was '1942 Report' as this font look sort of old and dingey, much like the set for our sequence. It's also quite out-of-line with parts seeming to be uneven which accentuates the unnerving feel of the sequence altogether.

Jack

BLK Feedback

Same issues as Ms Thrasher with the lights taking away from the action. Doesn't think the re-shoot clips are as good though. Suggest another re-shoot which is done excactly the same only brighter for the killers entrance and without flashing lights. Light needs to be brighter on victims face in conversation as well. The end should also not have the cross disolving part and instead have something which anchors that there is more then one victim. Need to re-shoot exit without getting light in. another issue was the acting when the victim has his tape ripped off as she did not find it believable enough. If possible we should do another long re-shoot and get it all done perfect but if that is not possible she says most of the footage we have now is alright except for the tape being ripped off, the killers entrance and the first shot of the killers exit.
Shaun

Re-Shoot

Despite all 3 of us feeling rather ill, as well as our actors, we decided to go ahead with the shoot. The shoot went surpringly well and we were alot more efficient and productive than before, getting things done smoothly and quickly. We managed to get all our re-shots done and our actors were very cooperative despite being slightly under the weather. We narrowed down our shots into ones we needed and ones we didn't, helping with the productiveness of the shoot. We got the shots we needed done. Now we hav to incorporate parts of our new footage into the sequence we have made using the old footage, as certain parts need improving.

Kris

Music

After talking to one of the other groups, they said they had found a website which was good for copyright-free music. http://www.freeplaymusic.com/. We decided to have a look and see if we could come up with some music that would be appropriate for our sequence. After TRAWLING through the TONNES of music they have on this site, we narrowed it down to a few tracks:

• Darkstar
• Drones
• The Platform
• Stardust Collector

Eventually, we decided on 'The Platform' as we thought it would be a good track to edit to with some loud, abrupt sounds and mysterious feel. We felt it reflects our entire sequence with the victim being tied up and gagged, not knowing where he is and the entire set being very mysterious and the 'killer'/'kidnapper' having some sudden mood swings that we could use to edit to. We're also going to capture some sound effects in our next shoot. Sounds like dripping water, chains, the hand banging on the door etc.

Jack

Problems with the re-shoot (resolved)

As well as Rob not able to make it on Tuesday, Matt unfortunately fell ill and was not present at school - big problem! We had a stand-in actor (Ben Tucker) for the killer and Kris (me) to play the victim, but we decided that the actors we had already were perfect and to change this would be mad. We were also happy with some of the shots involving these 2 actors from the previous shoot and had worked had to edit these together in sequence for the time-being. Therefore we were able to change the shoot night to Thursday night thanks to the fantastic cooperation and consideration of Miss Blackborow and the media department, as well as the caretakers. Rob Demont is a definate for Thursday night, as is Matt Doyle unless he is still ill-striken (fingers crossed he won't be). If this is the case we will have to work around this either by using stand in actor Ben Tucker who is still being notified about the case, to change the shoot date again, or simply shoot Matt's scenes during lunchtimes and free periods. This would obviously not be ideal due to the time taken clearing out space in the basement to shoot, so we are desperately hoping Matt will get better quickly!

Things we have learnt through this series of unfortunate events:

- Notify actors of ALL shoot dates including re-shoots so we know when they are definately free and can book these slots in advance.

- Communicate better with the media department about problems that arise by notifying them of any stresses upon a shoot so they can be resolved within plenty of time.

- Always make sure you have backup actors and backup shoot times.

- Look after your actors as best you can and do your best to keep them immune from all forms of disease!

Kris

Shooting Schedule

Re-Shoot
Date: 11/12/08
Day: Thursday
Time: 3.45pm +
Location: Latymer School Basement
Actors: Rob Demont & Matt Doyle
Helpers: Barney Carter-Phillips (for continuity)?

Problems with the re-shoot

Due to Rob being incredibly unreliable, we now have to find another actor to play the victim in this sequence. Kris has said that he will do it if we can't find anyone else.

Note: Rob is unreliable!

Jack

THR Feedback

Work is coming on well however we can not use some of the footage is blurred due to the flicker of the light. Another problem with the flickering light is that it is too rhythmic so looks really unbelievable. Another problem is the light on each of the character varies so when we've edited the conversation it looks strange. So instead we are going to re-shoot again with a dim light but just constant instead of flickering. Next tuesday we are go9ing to re-shoot the conversation again.

Shaun

Lighting

I thought our lighting could be similar to in this picture of a basement setting. It is pretty much the same as what we were doing before with all the basement lights off and just the studio lights, but in the shoot we did not use this to best effect. In this picture there is a fairly strong studio light centered an a point of the room, and we could shine a studio light on the actor at a stronger intensity (with blue gel) in order to focus the attention on them and express their features and expressions more as well as sharpening their shadows. This I do not feel we did well enough in the first shoot as we tried to flicker the lights on and off but this only caused a blurred focus on the camera. We should always keep the intensity the same, and making it fairly high will be more effective within the pitch black darkness than the extreme dimness we tried last time. The lighting will still be low key but will simply be clearer and sharper such as in good films such as Saw.

Kris

Changes to be made

- No flickering lights, more directed light on actors faces but at a dim intensity.

thats it for now...

Re-Shoot List

Re-Shoot - Tuesday
- ECU victims eyes waking up
- CU victim conversation
- MCU killer conversation
- LA MLS conversation
- HA OTS MLS conversation (from behind)
- POV track killer entering and exiting
- CU victims hands and feet (and some struggle)
- MCU of victim tilt up from feet
- CU killers hand on chair arm
- CU killers hand reaching for weapon and stroking it
- MCU killers feet pacing around chair

To shoot at other times
- MCU weapons lined up on bench
- MCU killers feet walking downstairs
- POV track killer entering and exiting
- CU box falling to ground where a second victim lies
- Cutaways of random points in room (left and right of Rob)
- Cutaways for credits (drainpipe, lights etc)
- Sound clips (buzzing, banging, scraping, screams etc)

For Shaun

Yeah thats fine, in this lesson we are just going to finalise a few things, i doubt there will be many changes to whats happening tomorrow apart from the fact I (Kris) have an ortho appointment tomorrow afternoon but will be back for about 4:15-ish (brace-less!!!). However, I will help set up during free period 6. Other than that the only issues are that Matt may or may not be able to act, so if he can't one of us 3 might have to... and we still need some sort of jacket or coat for the killer. Everything else is taken care of.

Kris & Jack

Storyboard

Jack (and Shaun did a bit of drawing!)