Monday, 23 January 2012
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Editing Evaluation
We went through all our shots and chose the ones which we wanted to use, we made the choices by firstly discarding all the ones which were badly done, or had continuity errors or faults such as people in the shot or background noise we didn’t want, it was easy to find a good version of each shot as when we were filming we repeated each shot various times from various different angles or point of view, we chose the shots based on things such as; who we wanted to look in power or what we wanted to convey from the shot such as create tension or suspense which is a common convention of a thriller. We used editing techniques such as shot reverse shot at the door scene, and crosscutting when the mother is looking in the fridge and the policeman is looking through the drawers this created suspense for the audience as we could see what the policeman was doing but the mother couldn’t and this foreshadows he is not what he seems to the audience before the mother figures it out, we made sure we cut on the action such as the door scene which cuts from him closing one door to her opening another door, this graphic match looks good because we didn’t have to include them walking to another room, which saved filming time, and would’ve been quite boring. We found it quite difficult to find the right pace for our thriller but we sped up pace by cutting quickly on moments such as the key turning and the drawers opening to create suspense. I think we found the correct pace for ours as we don’t want it to quick as it isn’t high action but we don’t want it too slow either so we found the right balance between us this would appeal to an older audience who might like other slow paced films such as Dirty Pretty Things. To create perspective and show the binary opposition between the policeman and the woman, we used high angle shots on the policeman and gave him the majority of the camera time particularly at key moments such as him taking the phone or locking the door to show his character and to give him more power in the scene, especially at the end we focused more on him as he walks towards her to show him gaining all the power this also creates an enigma that needs to be solved by watching the rest of the film the audience are left guessing to see if she regains power or doesnt.
I found adding sound the hardest bit because we had to make sure that the dialogue was heard as well as adding suspense music, we went along to every voice clip and made sure they were equal in right and left ear, then balanced them by deleting the one that wasn’t as good and copying it and then panning it so we had the same sound for right and left ear. After this we found a suitable soundtrack for our thriller but we didn’t want it playing throughout so we cut it so it played in sections throughout, we didn’t add in any action noises as we managed to gain these when filming we added a slight low explosion noise to fill the silences and when turned down low it creates tension without covering the dialogue completely. We had a minor or a major key sound at significant moments to highlight them to the audience and to build up tension before the climax at the end this is a common convention of a thriller. I found the editing process quite challenging when it got to the sounds but I found it got easier as we went on, putting the shots together and cutting was simple and final cut pro was easy to use, if I were to do it again I would perhaps change the way we cut some of the shots and put them together as we did a lot of individual work which made it quite hard to come back to, so we ended up creating to versions in order to let everyone have a go at the beginning stage, I really enjoyed editing my favourite part was cutting all the beginning shots and coming up with a basic outline at the beginning because it gave us a basis to work from, it was also fun adding sound because we got to see it all come together and our idea was finally all put together. Our team worked really well together and we all knew how to edit but specialised at different bits I mainly did most of the video editing doing the cuts and the shot reverse shots and cross cutting, then others did more of the sound and pace side of it but we all got involved in every aspect we all gave ideas and tried different things until we all agreed to make sure our thriller reflected what we all wanted. The difference between editing our thriller and editing our preliminary task is that there was much more to do, we didn’t have sound on our preliminary task and we didn’t worry as much about pace and techniques, such as cross cutting also we didn’t have to add titles to our preliminary and we learnt about new tools such as markers, and rendering which didn’t occur when doing our preliminary. During this experience I think I have overcome a lot in terms of editing, before I knew nothing about final cut pro and had no idea how to cut in the right places in order to keep continuity we were able to use sounds and techniques in order to show our idea and convey the convention of a thriller and appeal to our target audience therefore making our thriller a success.
I found adding sound the hardest bit because we had to make sure that the dialogue was heard as well as adding suspense music, we went along to every voice clip and made sure they were equal in right and left ear, then balanced them by deleting the one that wasn’t as good and copying it and then panning it so we had the same sound for right and left ear. After this we found a suitable soundtrack for our thriller but we didn’t want it playing throughout so we cut it so it played in sections throughout, we didn’t add in any action noises as we managed to gain these when filming we added a slight low explosion noise to fill the silences and when turned down low it creates tension without covering the dialogue completely. We had a minor or a major key sound at significant moments to highlight them to the audience and to build up tension before the climax at the end this is a common convention of a thriller. I found the editing process quite challenging when it got to the sounds but I found it got easier as we went on, putting the shots together and cutting was simple and final cut pro was easy to use, if I were to do it again I would perhaps change the way we cut some of the shots and put them together as we did a lot of individual work which made it quite hard to come back to, so we ended up creating to versions in order to let everyone have a go at the beginning stage, I really enjoyed editing my favourite part was cutting all the beginning shots and coming up with a basic outline at the beginning because it gave us a basis to work from, it was also fun adding sound because we got to see it all come together and our idea was finally all put together. Our team worked really well together and we all knew how to edit but specialised at different bits I mainly did most of the video editing doing the cuts and the shot reverse shots and cross cutting, then others did more of the sound and pace side of it but we all got involved in every aspect we all gave ideas and tried different things until we all agreed to make sure our thriller reflected what we all wanted. The difference between editing our thriller and editing our preliminary task is that there was much more to do, we didn’t have sound on our preliminary task and we didn’t worry as much about pace and techniques, such as cross cutting also we didn’t have to add titles to our preliminary and we learnt about new tools such as markers, and rendering which didn’t occur when doing our preliminary. During this experience I think I have overcome a lot in terms of editing, before I knew nothing about final cut pro and had no idea how to cut in the right places in order to keep continuity we were able to use sounds and techniques in order to show our idea and convey the convention of a thriller and appeal to our target audience therefore making our thriller a success.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Account of shoot day
On the day of our thriller, we went to school to pick up our equipment and collected our storyboard for the day we went to our location to meet our actors and started to set up our equipment and we talked about the changes we were going to make, we decided to take out the baby mobile and use toys to symbolise the fact the female character was a mum. We also replaced the face licking with a whisper and this ended up being more effective as it left the audience on a cliff-hanger. We took pictures of all the shots we needed to obtain from the cameras point of view and used them as a guideline. One of our actors didn’t show up so I had to step into the role of “mum” and we changed the character to babysitter to make it more realistic, however after filming the first shot our actor arrived and we re filmed using her as we felt it was more appropriate to our idea and the research we had done, we wanted this to be a thriller and leave the audience on edge I think it was effective that the audience see the policeman is not what he seems before the mum does as this gives the audience a clue and leaves them waiting, using a young mum would attract a younger audience and also the male gender we obtained this by making her costume slightly revealing and the fact that she is young makes her naïve.
We set up at our location of Cornhill Manor we used the kitchen as we wanted to create a homely feel making the mother more vulnerable we used props and placed things around to symbolise the children this meant we didn’t have to actually cast children in our thriller, the kitchen is quite upper class which would give the killer an incentive to kill her, there was a mirror so we used the reflection to create shots of the mother making tea with the reflection of the policeman rummaging through her drawers, we used close ups which worked well and created suspense these worked well as they drew attention to his actions such as him locking the door, and this would create tension for the audience certain things we found difficult was the reflection shots as we had to make sure the reflection didn’t show our camera or equipment also we had to make sure certain things stayed in the same place due to continuity such as a toy couldn’t move and the tea had to be at the same level in the cup every time. We also had to find a door for the first shot and we had to travel to several locations to fin the perfect one in the end we settled on the main door at Hurtwood House.
We chose a Mac coat for the policeman and used a badge to show his authority and give the mother a reason for letting him in, we needed to make sure he looked genuine but not to formal as it had to indicate at the end that he is not a real policeman. We chose a low-cut top for the mother tight jeans and heels to attract the male audience and also give off an impression of slight naivety and make her look vulnerable her style would also contribute to attracted a young audience as she is modern and in style, we got our inspiration from films such as “Scream” and “When a Stranger Calls” she had a white top to signify her innocence. Cathy Cannon our actress is the mother of a student at our school we chose her as we know she would play the part realistically and she also is young and attractive which is important for our target audience, we chose Simon Wood to be our policeman as we have seen him in a previous thriller called “The Driver” and we wanted the character to be similar we knew he would look the right age for our killer and be able to pull of a slightly creepy edge but still look like a normal professional policeman we wanted someone who had the ability to look slightly menacing to fit with our genre.
We used natural light and the light of the kitchen, if we could have changed it I would have liked it to have been darker outside but due to our shooting schedule it wasn’t possible. However the fact that it was daylight made it less suspicious and stepped away from the typical scenario, it created tension and suspense because of the risk the policeman took, it also meant the mother would be more likely to answer the door and created a more realistic setting. We didn’t use much sound but made sure to capture the knocking of the door to create tension and suspense for the audience, we also got the sound of the tap as the mother is washing the mugs and making the tea, other sounds we used was the sound of the drawers shutting and the key locking in the door all of these helped create an atmosphere and foreshadowed what was about to happen and we intend to add in sound when editing our film, however sometimes the awkward silences and dialogue creates a feeling of isolation and emphasises that it is just them in the house this could relate to thrillers such as When a Stranger Calls.
My role was varied as we all decided to try all different aspects I started off with using the microphone and making sure we captured all of the dialogue and sound this is important as quite a lot of the time the actors where far apart and the dialogue is important to our thriller. Next I took my turn in being director I liked this role I had to take responsibility for making sure the camera was rolling, the actors where in the right place in order to obtain the perfect shot. Next was Camera I was in charge of actually filming the shot I had to use techniques such as panning and zooms and this was one of the most important roles as we had to make sure each shot was perfect so we did each shot twice or even three times to makes sure we have lots of material to edit, We had to obtain specific shots such as high and low angles, over the shoulder shots and extreme closeups so that we had lots of material to edit with, we did a closeup of our actors hand sliding along the worktop to show his menacing persona and to signify the change between policeman and psychopath. We all helped out with the focusing of the camera and setting up the tripod so the camera was straight and even for each shot I feel all the roles were essential to the success on our shoot day.
We all worked together well on our shoot everyone helped in setting up and taking all their roles seriously, we all contributed ideas on the mise en scene we all took our individual ideas and put them together to make sure everything looked how we wanted it to moving furniture and setting up props, everyone helped the actors telling them what we wanted to achieve and we helped each other when filming by suggesting ways of getting each shot and focusing on the set to make sure everything looked the same. We needed all four of us to be doing each role perfectly otherwise the shots wouldn’t have been right, there were times where we all had to squish next to each other by the door in order to get the shot and not have our equipment in the mirror reflection, we made sure the lighting and the props fit with the atmosphere we wanted to create.
I think all in all our shoot day went very well and although we had to make a few changes and think on our feet due to time limitations and location problems and the fact that we nearly lost one of our actors all in all I think there’s not a lot I would change about the shoot and I think it worked really well and look forward to editing it to capture the suspense and tension we want to obtain, one thing I think we could have done better is come up with more abstract shots and taken more advantage of the kitchen whilst we had it.
We set up at our location of Cornhill Manor we used the kitchen as we wanted to create a homely feel making the mother more vulnerable we used props and placed things around to symbolise the children this meant we didn’t have to actually cast children in our thriller, the kitchen is quite upper class which would give the killer an incentive to kill her, there was a mirror so we used the reflection to create shots of the mother making tea with the reflection of the policeman rummaging through her drawers, we used close ups which worked well and created suspense these worked well as they drew attention to his actions such as him locking the door, and this would create tension for the audience certain things we found difficult was the reflection shots as we had to make sure the reflection didn’t show our camera or equipment also we had to make sure certain things stayed in the same place due to continuity such as a toy couldn’t move and the tea had to be at the same level in the cup every time. We also had to find a door for the first shot and we had to travel to several locations to fin the perfect one in the end we settled on the main door at Hurtwood House.
We chose a Mac coat for the policeman and used a badge to show his authority and give the mother a reason for letting him in, we needed to make sure he looked genuine but not to formal as it had to indicate at the end that he is not a real policeman. We chose a low-cut top for the mother tight jeans and heels to attract the male audience and also give off an impression of slight naivety and make her look vulnerable her style would also contribute to attracted a young audience as she is modern and in style, we got our inspiration from films such as “Scream” and “When a Stranger Calls” she had a white top to signify her innocence. Cathy Cannon our actress is the mother of a student at our school we chose her as we know she would play the part realistically and she also is young and attractive which is important for our target audience, we chose Simon Wood to be our policeman as we have seen him in a previous thriller called “The Driver” and we wanted the character to be similar we knew he would look the right age for our killer and be able to pull of a slightly creepy edge but still look like a normal professional policeman we wanted someone who had the ability to look slightly menacing to fit with our genre.
We used natural light and the light of the kitchen, if we could have changed it I would have liked it to have been darker outside but due to our shooting schedule it wasn’t possible. However the fact that it was daylight made it less suspicious and stepped away from the typical scenario, it created tension and suspense because of the risk the policeman took, it also meant the mother would be more likely to answer the door and created a more realistic setting. We didn’t use much sound but made sure to capture the knocking of the door to create tension and suspense for the audience, we also got the sound of the tap as the mother is washing the mugs and making the tea, other sounds we used was the sound of the drawers shutting and the key locking in the door all of these helped create an atmosphere and foreshadowed what was about to happen and we intend to add in sound when editing our film, however sometimes the awkward silences and dialogue creates a feeling of isolation and emphasises that it is just them in the house this could relate to thrillers such as When a Stranger Calls.
My role was varied as we all decided to try all different aspects I started off with using the microphone and making sure we captured all of the dialogue and sound this is important as quite a lot of the time the actors where far apart and the dialogue is important to our thriller. Next I took my turn in being director I liked this role I had to take responsibility for making sure the camera was rolling, the actors where in the right place in order to obtain the perfect shot. Next was Camera I was in charge of actually filming the shot I had to use techniques such as panning and zooms and this was one of the most important roles as we had to make sure each shot was perfect so we did each shot twice or even three times to makes sure we have lots of material to edit, We had to obtain specific shots such as high and low angles, over the shoulder shots and extreme closeups so that we had lots of material to edit with, we did a closeup of our actors hand sliding along the worktop to show his menacing persona and to signify the change between policeman and psychopath. We all helped out with the focusing of the camera and setting up the tripod so the camera was straight and even for each shot I feel all the roles were essential to the success on our shoot day.
We all worked together well on our shoot everyone helped in setting up and taking all their roles seriously, we all contributed ideas on the mise en scene we all took our individual ideas and put them together to make sure everything looked how we wanted it to moving furniture and setting up props, everyone helped the actors telling them what we wanted to achieve and we helped each other when filming by suggesting ways of getting each shot and focusing on the set to make sure everything looked the same. We needed all four of us to be doing each role perfectly otherwise the shots wouldn’t have been right, there were times where we all had to squish next to each other by the door in order to get the shot and not have our equipment in the mirror reflection, we made sure the lighting and the props fit with the atmosphere we wanted to create.
I think all in all our shoot day went very well and although we had to make a few changes and think on our feet due to time limitations and location problems and the fact that we nearly lost one of our actors all in all I think there’s not a lot I would change about the shoot and I think it worked really well and look forward to editing it to capture the suspense and tension we want to obtain, one thing I think we could have done better is come up with more abstract shots and taken more advantage of the kitchen whilst we had it.
Shoot Day Timetable
9.00-9.20- Get To Location
9.20-10.00- Set Up Location
10.00-10.30- Sort Out Shots
10.30-2.00- Film At House
10.30-10.40- Shoot Door Scene
10.40-10.45- Next Shot
10.45-10.50- Door Scene
10.50-11.00- Hand Held Shot of Door
11.00-11.10- Close Up Of Mother
11.10-11.15- Hand Over Table Taking Phone
11.15-11.25- Mirror Shot
11.25-11.30- Fridge Shot
11.30-11.40- Shot Of Him Looking Through Her Stuff
11.40-12.00 Filming Him Walking Towards Her
12.00-1.00 Wispering In Her Ear
2.00-3.30- Film At School For Front Door
This is a timetable of what we did on our shoot day
9.20-10.00- Set Up Location
10.00-10.30- Sort Out Shots
10.30-2.00- Film At House
10.30-10.40- Shoot Door Scene
10.40-10.45- Next Shot
10.45-10.50- Door Scene
10.50-11.00- Hand Held Shot of Door
11.00-11.10- Close Up Of Mother
11.10-11.15- Hand Over Table Taking Phone
11.15-11.25- Mirror Shot
11.25-11.30- Fridge Shot
11.30-11.40- Shot Of Him Looking Through Her Stuff
11.40-12.00 Filming Him Walking Towards Her
12.00-1.00 Wispering In Her Ear
2.00-3.30- Film At School For Front Door
This is a timetable of what we did on our shoot day
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