Overall

Well this is the last post before our work gets frozen. Looking back on this experience I felt I have learnt so much from it and have gained a lot from it. There have been tears, laughs, taxi driver strikes, a LOT of technological problems and many many many computer crashes. After all of it though we have come out with a final media project and I am extremely pleased with the feedback we have received from people. I am happy with our final result and due to an excellent team of people have come out with something that I am confident will help us towards our target grades. I know a lot of effort and patience has gone into this so I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has contributed towards making mine and Hannah's project a success :)

Jill's comment

Olivia Elliott's comment

Leanne Renwick's comment (does not do media)

Cathii's comment (doesn't do media)

Kathryn Wadge's comment

Manny's comment (in my AS media class)

Due to issues with technology I have had to type up my personal commentary. I have also added the link to Mr Earl's blog to the interview that me and Hannah did about our video.

Personal Commentary

I feel that overall our final project was a success. It isn’t perfect but I feel like we did an excellent job given the problems, technology issues and lack of time that we were given. I felt like Alex as an actor did a wonderful job especially as I wasn’t too good under pressure and the weather was atrocious and under normal circumstances it would be completely inappropriate to go out in a dress. She froze for 3 full days and had to run over and over again for every shot and retake we did but didn’t complain once and we are extremely grateful to her for being such a good sport. I found that because the music was fast paced it fitted in well with the video. Edward wasn’t given much time to think of anything to compose so we’re grateful that he too worked well under pressure. Although we worked really hard and put in a lot of effort into editing, we couldn’t really do much about the shaky camera work and if we were to do it again, we would definitely use either a different camera man or use different angles to ensure that the camera did not shake. I thought that the use of various camera angles increased the verisimilitude of the video and engaged the audience more as it meant the video was more interesting and didn’t just use mundane techniques. I definitely think that we gained the effect that we wanted by not showing the killers face as it didn’t make it obvious what was going on and it left the audience wanting to know more and asking questions. It left an air of mystery about it and also built up a lot of suspense which was the effect we were after. The point of view scene was effective as it built up tension and I feel like it would leave the audience on the edge of their seats almost holding their breath. Our use of the colour change and the transition between the two time periods was shaky and could have been vastly improved given the time as the wall looked false and it almost didn’t match the colours of the rest of the scene. Saying this I think that the sound effect and the flash put together created the sci-fi effect that we wanted. There could have been less footage of our actors feet and I felt it got a bit repetitive after a while but the music in this half of the sequence and the special effect that Hannah put on the 360 degree turn were very useful in creating the sense of confusion that we hoped to achieve and made the audience aware that our main character was not in a world that she was familiar with. The acting from me wasn’t exactly Oscar winning and we could have really done with re filming the last couple of scenes to improve the sound and quality of our video. The scene where our character see’s the date could have been improved as her reaction didn’t change but I really liked how our actress presented forward confusion and panic.  I think that throughout the video we needed to improve a lot on the smoothness of the camera work. The tripod could have been loosened up a little so that the camera man could have turned the camera with ease rather than having jerky camera movements. I think that in the scene where she is in the crowd we could have focussed on Alex a lot more and still have given the sense that she was lost in the crowd and we could have also focussed more on the shots of the conversation so that no heads were cut out and we could have made the conversation sequence a shot-reverse shot sequence rather than all one scene.  Overall I feel like our video was a success but it could have still been vastly improved with a bit of re filming to improve the audio and better acting on my behalf.
I’d like to give thanks to Alex Toes, James Stephenson, Edward Fawcett and Mr Earl for their patience and contribution to mine and Hannah’s video. They all did a wonderful job and we couldn’t have done this without them.



Link to Mr Earl's blog - http://vimeo.com/22188579

Lucy's comment (did media at GCSE and does media at AS and A2 level)

Rachel Fairburn's comment (doesn't do media)

Imogen Paterson's comment (doesn't do media)

Alex Edmond's response (he did media at GCSE level, Btech at college and does gaming related media at university)

Liam Stainsby's comment (did media at GCSE and currently doing media for AS and A2 level)

Audience feedback

For audience feedback I have sent people the link for our video via facebook and MSN messenger and have printscreened their comments. I have asked mainly media students with a couple that do media at university and a couple of others that don't do media so I get a mixed response

Evaluation

Rachel Mole

Media Evaluation

AS Media Studies – Evaluation Programme (22^nd March – 15^th April 2011)

1. How does your media product:
   a) use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our film uses various different forms and conventions of real media products to build up a sci-fi/time traveller effect. One of the conventions we used was the black and white to colour effect similar to that of “Wizard of Oz” to show how our character travels from time and ends up in a completely different time to the one she is used to. The music that we used is fast paced and sinister so it keeps in time with her running and builds up tension keeping the audience on the edge of their seat and throwing them into action straight away keeping their attention. The first scene opens up so many questions so the audience’s attention is grabbed straight away and keeps them watching the film to answer these questions. Our shots hide the person our main character is running away from so it builds up a sense of mystery around the character and keeps the audience interested as it makes them want to find out who our main character is running away from and why.

      b) represent particular social groups?

Our project represents teenagers as being vulnerable but stubborn at the same time. It reinforces the idea of females being victims and men being the dominate gender. Our film has three actors in it that are all teenagers. Our main character is being chased and is running away from something or someone that she find fearful. She manages to run away and escape the person chasing her which represents teenagers as being clever and street smart in the face of danger. The intention in the second half of the film was to represent teenagers as being stubborn as the two girls don’t seem to be listening to each other. Our main character believes the other girl is trying to help her which again, reinforces the representation of teenagers being vulnerable as well as being easily misled as she is putting her trust in a total stranger. We tried to make it seem like the character that she meets in 2011 is suspicious and not to be trusted giving the impression that teenagers can be quite twisted and misleading as they are still in the stage of life where they do not really take others into consideration as much as they should. They only have to look after themselves so have not really got a caring nature towards others.

2. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?
   I think that Warner Brothers would be perfect to distribute this film as they would distribute it really well. The majority of the films produced by Warner Brothers are family films and most have a sense of fantasy about them. For example, “Harry Potter” is a fantasy, family film and “Sherlock Holmes” is a family film with a murder-mystery storyline. Our film has fast paced music and sci-fi mixed with murder-mystery and it’s a family film so Warner Brothers would be perfect to distribute our film. 

3. Who would be the audience for your media project?
   The audience for our film would be mostly teenagers but it would appeal to the older audience as well giving it a wide audience. This would be due to the complex mystery that surrounds our main character and the action. Our film is appropriate for all ages but a young audience may not like it as it is a more serious film with no humor or comic qualities but may still appeal to teenagers because of its sci-fi nature. We chose to make our project attract the younger, teenage audience because it was something we could easily relate to and through our own personal experience of the cinema, realized that it is normally the teenage related films that bring in a large audience and spark up more hype. Teenagers are generally more interested in the cinema as it is a social activity that they can enjoy with their friends and they usually have more time to go than an older audience.
   
   
4. How did you attract/address your audience?
   All of our actors are young and the modern day girl is wearing casual clothes instead of a smart business suit making the audience feel more at ease with the character. We tried to ensure that our project fitted in well with the codes and conventions of a typical teenage drama film as well as being a sci-fi/mystery film. We stuck to the stereotypical views that teenagers cause trouble and are a nuisance to society by trying to make Samantha (the girl in 2011) selfish and suspicious but went against it with our main character as she is vulnerable and scared and needs help rather than trying to cause trouble. This attracts teenagers and an older audience as it allows them to see the characters through their own eyes and make their own judgments about them.
   
5. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
   Technology is extremely unreliable and requires more maintenance than originally thought. I have learned how to use premier pro and can now put together a film easily without many complications. I have learned a variety of different shots and techniques to use when filming and how to put together an efficient sequence. We have learnt how to edit a film so that the continuity runs smoothly and it looks professional. We have put in a lot of time and effort and regularly saved our work as we quickly learned that the software we used crashes a lot. We learned that the camera's were not as efficient as we expected them to be so we had to be very careful whilst using it so we didn't pick up much background noise which, as you can see by the video, was a problem as we normally ended up picking up more background noise than we did speech. If the camera's were of a better quality and we had a boom mic maybe we may have been able to pick up the speech of our actors better and there might not have been an awkward buzzing created by the camera itself.
   
6. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product. In the preliminary task we didn't put in as much effort as we should have so we failed to make it look professional and creative as we would have liked. We did not use a varied amount of camera angles so the final preliminary task had poor quality. If we put more thought into it and more time and effort we would have definitely made it look a lot better than it actually was. We took the time we had for granted and realized quickly that filming took a lot longer than we originally thought. It isn't something you can just film with one quick and easy shot and have the video look perfect, you need to do a lot of re-filming, experimental shots to ensure you know exactly how the shot has to look like and you have to pay attention to the little details so that the continuity flows smoothly throughout the video. In the preliminary task we broke the 180 degree rule but we were not aware of this at the time so in our continuity project we took great care not to break it again and it improved the quality of our video greatly. We have had to use lighting to the best we could as in our preliminary task we filmed outside in the dark so Hannah had to make use of any light, torches, artificial lights we could find and put them to good use. We learned that we had to be precise and extremely patient with anyone that may help us as we used Lucy, Hannah's little sister, as a camera woman for our preliminary task and it did not go well as tempers flared up quite a bit. We didn't take our preliminary task as seriously as we should have but we learned from our mistakes and in the continuity project and final project we put a lot more time and effort into it, improved our camera skills, patience, knowledge of camera angles and knowledge of how to edit our videos so that the continuity was spot on. I have learnt how to overcome a fantastic amount of obstacles and how to organize a group of people. As one of our actresses dropped out at the very last second we had to organize last minute actors under pressure and had to quickly think on our feet so that we could use the limited time we had. I have learnt new skills involved in working in a group and individually and I have learnt how to use various different kinds of technology and limited resources to an efficient standard. My skills improved in all aspects of the project from drawing up a story board with detailed annotations and writing an effective script and editing it to fit with the effects we wanted to present forward to the audience. I have had to work under pressure a lot so I have gained more organisational skills that I perhaps did not have at the start of the year. I have also learnt that personal issues should never interfere with work so I have had to work hard to keep a positive and professional attitude whilst working in a team when there were some issues outside the classroom that involved conflict between the team. As we didn't let any conflict interfere with our work we were able to still keep up with what needed doing to a good standard. 

Here is our final product. The audio is a bit off still but this is the best we could do given the time.

If we had more time we could have vastly improved the audio at the end and the acting but taking into consideration all the problems we had, I am happy with the video we have produced.

Never work with people or technology :|

First Hannah now Premiere... One leaves me and one breaks on me. Bad day.

Plan of action

Well.... as I have been left ALONE to do all the work YET AGAIN

My plan of action for the day is to replace the clips that need replacing due to continuity errors, fix the clip where she is walking away from the bush so it is black and white, add titles to the video and render the final product. All of this in three hours.... should be fun. We couldn't film on the bridge because of all the scaffolding that appeared so I have deleted the first clip where she is wearing the belt. This will improve the continuity and make the video shorter. I have cut the music down so it fits in with where I want it to be and I feel it is very effective in building up tension and creating the fear factor that I wanted in the video.

Progress so far

We have so far been successful with filming with only minor setbacks that can be overcome rather than massive problems. We have refilmed some of the parts of the film that was full of continuity errors and we have music recorded I just need to strip the video from the audio and place the music over our film. I'm going to find a lead for the camera (as whoever used the camera last did not return the memory card or computer lead) and upload the clips that we have now and play about to fix any errors that may occur and improve it. I am staying back after school (on my own.) as well so I can make good progress and meet the deadline. I have a lot to do before tomorrow and as I have a limited amount of time and only my own judgement to go by right now I want to put in 100% and work with what we have to make sure I can get it as good as it can possibly be.

Disasters and taxi drivers....

As yesterday was a complete disaster and we never really got round to doing anything due to the fact that our camera did not have a memory card and the path we were supposed to be filming on was closed. This means that we have to yet again reschedule when we re film and we can't film as much as we would have liked. We figured out that because of the lack of memory card, we only had 50 seconds to film in. (This was discovered when Hannah decided to film the amusing taxi protest in Durham yesterday. We heart taxi drivers.) We really need to get a move on with the filming however as we have a lot of work and very little time left. We will probably be spending out frees and lunch times editing as our deadline is on tuesday giving us about three hours of time in school to edit so we deperately need to hurry up and get on with the editing.
On the plus side progress has been made with the music. Our friend has written some music for the video and we are going to talk to the music teacher today about when we can record the music. The music that he has written will build up the tension in the video. The music will be played over the part of the video that is in black and white where our character is being chased. The music changes from the scenes where she is being chased to the scene where she is hiding behind a bush to change the mood of the video. I think the music fits in well with the shots and will definatley improve the video.

and.... ACTION.

Today me and Hannah both have a free before and after lunch so we are going to use those three hours to re-film some of the clips that desperatley need re-filming. We are going to priorities with the filming as we have a limited amount of time. The films that really need filming are the ones at the start of the video where she is wearing a belt. This is because these are the only clips where the belt is present. After these scenes she is not wearing a belt and this is a huge continuity error. We are going to improve the scenes when she is walking across the bridge as there is a continuity error when she stops. These are the scenes that really need doing as well as the audio in the last scenes. Our actor is getting a train from Newcastle to Durham at 11 so we shall meet her in Durham. This gives us at least 3 hours for filming.

Progress... brick by boring brick

We have found a heartbeat sound effect that we have placed over the clip of a point of view shot when our actress is hiding behind a bush. This adds tension to the scene as it shows the characters fear. We have also added heavy breathing again, creating a sense of fear and having an effect on the audience. For the scenes that are black and white we have played about with the lighting and the contrast so the colours look more bold and it gives it a "noir film" effect. This makes the film look more vintage and gives it a more 50's feel. We have added titles to the film but as we need to refilm those scenes anyway they are more templates than anything else. We have shortened down some of the clips where she was walking as they were too long and boring and seemed to decrease the tension rather than building it up.  We are currently in the middle of rendering the film again so we can see clearly how we're donig without premiere making the film jumpy and we have made a list of all the clips that we need to re-film.

Plan of Action

We are aware that our video needs a lot of work to get the standard up to scratch and we are aware that a lot of time and effort is needed. We will be re filming some of the shots to improve continuity, sound and the effect we want to create. Here is a plan of action....

1. We are going to use the audio from just one of the running shots in order to make it sound consistent so that any unnecessary jumping with sound can be avoided. For instance, the sound of the river changes throughout the video so we want to make this continuous and there is a man sitting on the bridge we were filming on with an instrument so we need to either cut all that sound out and layer over the scene with sounds of street noises and footprints or find a way of getting a continous piece of music that can be heard in the background of the clip.
2. We are going to make the beginning and ending of shots are more tightly edited; otherwise we will lose the tension of the chase. If it is short and snappy it will create more of an effect and will keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
3. We are going to get Edward to record some music for our video to add to the tension. He will probably be using his electric guitar to record the music so this will give us edgy music that sets the scene.
4. Our Titles/Credits are going to be put in when we re-film things as all the scenes we chose to put the titles in are the ones that need to be re-done.
5. We are going to smooth out some of the edits (either by cross-fading sound or by lifting the audio from one clip and adding it to another)
6. The shot of the feet where she is walking across the bridge is held too long so in our editing we have been cutting down some of the clips to make them shorter so that it keeps audiences interested and doesn't become boring.
7. The POV shot after this is held for too long so we are going to cut that down by a few seconds as well
8. The dialogue needs to be re-synched or re-shot; it's inaudible. We are going to focus on this when it comes to re-filming so we can make sure the dialogue can be heard and the audience are able to learn about the main characters story a little bit.
9. We may shoot the dialogue sequence as the continuity project, with shot/ counter shot, action match and a range of CU/ 2 shots. Also, the dialogue will make some reference to her being followed, setting up the mystery. This part really depends on time though as we have a limited window to get it finished.
10. There are occasions on the video where we break the 180 degree rule so we really need to be careful whilst editing to try and make this seem either unnoticable or re-film those parts so we don't break it.

Rants Rage and Missing scenes

We appear to be missing a very important scene from our video. We have no idea where it's gone, why it was deleted or how it dissappeared but we now have to redo the scene. It was the scene where our main character is walking up a set of stairs and enters a portal to get to the modern day. This scene took a good 2 hours or so to edit to the standard that we want as it is very complex and included a lot of sound and light effects. It's safe to say that we are not impressed in the slightest as it will now add on another hour or so to get it back to the standard we want it. Apologies if this effects our rough draft (below) and updates will be soon.

Here is a link to our rough edit.

http://hannahsasgreatest.blogspot.com/2011/03/rough-cut-yey.html

We have a lot to do still and a lot of work is going to be required to make this film up to standard but I think we have done well so far

Problems and other things

So far we have not been able to upload our video as the servers are useless and keep crashing on us. Technology is causing various issues that we have not yet overcome but we will try and fix these issues ASAP.
We have also found problems with the sound. In some of the clips there is the sound of the river but it keeps getting louder and then quieter but not smoothly. Also, we have found that in the scenes shot in Silver Street, there's a man with an accordian which causes problems with sound when editing. What we might do is record a long clip of the river for the sound and a long clip of the accordian. We'll make sure we only record the sound and this will ensure we have sound that is continuous rather than jaunty.
We are definitely going to re film the scene of our character running across the bridge as she is wearing a belt in these scenes and not in the others. We also still need to record the music and put it over the top of the video.
I have come up with an idea to make the beginning of the film look more sinister. Where she is running across the bridge, I thought it might be a good idea to show a couple of seconds of the clip then a black screen with the titles on then another two seconds of the clip then another sequence and adding in the sound effects that you find in horror films where it sounds like a squeaky scratching noise. This would build up tension and set the scene more.

This is our production logo :)

(follow the link)

http://mediaframas.blogspot.com/2011/02/rayray-ident.html

Sound Effects

At the minute we are trying to find a sound effect that fits in with the scene of our character walking through the time portal. We wanted a sci-fi effect but one that doesn't sound to cliche or cheesy. We thought that the sound of hundreds of birds flapping their wings might be useful or a "whooshing" sound that sounds similar to space ship doors.

Take a break

Here is a link to Charlie Brooker's, "How TV ruined your life." It amused me :)http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y6mz2


This one is "If.... Pens got hot" on Mr. Earls blog
http://mediaframas.blogspot.com/2011/01/charlie-brooker.html#comments

Music and such

Today we have been thinking up ideas for the music that is going to go over the top of our video. We have let Edward watch the video and come up with some ideas. He is going to use his guitar to compose some music and we will record it and put it over the top of our video.

Hannah has also come up with some ideas to improve our video including playing about with the lighting in the sequence in the town so that the colours do not contrast as much and taking out all the audio with the acordian in the background and replacing it with special effects that sound like footsteps or street noise to improve the continuity.

We are also aware that we may have to reshoot various scenes as she is wearing a belt in the very start and it dissappears due to different filming days

Title research

I have been looking at fonts and how different directors use different fonts to represent the genre and the mood of the video.

 In this particular film, the typography fits the film as there is the use of blood splatter across the words and the typography is silver and is all in capitals. The typography fits the movie as it makes it look creepy and keeps with the mood of the video telling the audience that it is a creepy, gory film.


 This film is a family friendly film and although it is animated, it is set mainly under the sea. The title of the film keeps with this theme as there is the wave at the bottom of the word and the words are blue. In this particular picture there is a mixture of blues swirling about as if it was light shining on top of the ocean and the O has a little fish in it which tells the audience what it is about straight away. The colours are bright which shows it is family friendly and that it might be a light hearted film.

 This films title is a mix of bright yellow, oranges and black. The typography looks quite metallic and robotic which suggests straight away that it is a sci-fi. The mix of colours and shading tells the audience that although the film may be lighthearted in places and may not be a very dark film, there may be parts that are dark and may show danger which might provoke fear into the audience.


We want to show our audience that our film is all about mystery and that we try to keep the audience on edge. Our typography needs to represent our film as being a psychological/sci-fi/thriller so we will probably use white typography on a black background.

Progress

Hannah has returned from her disease ridden state and is continuing with the editing. She is improving the continuity of the video as best she can and is cutting and editing clips as is appropriate. Our film (which we have decided shall be called Running out of time) so far, represents the contrast between the two time periods and how she teleports from one to the other. The black and white is to show the 50's and the technicolour is to show the modern day. I am going to research title sequences as when we add in the titles we want the font and the typography to fit the mood of the video.

Special effects, rendering and what not

Our video is supposed to show the contrast between being in the 50's and being in the modern day. To do this we have made the first half of our video black and white. There is a scene where she goes up a set of stairs and we have added a flash to it so it looks like she is passing through a time portal. This flash has been added between clips on the stairs. After this we have kept the rest of our video in Technicolor to show our main character entering the modern times. I have also found that the video takes longer than the required 3 minutes so to add everything else in such as the titles and the film production logo and various different things that could be added would take the video up to five minutes roughly so we may have to cut our video and delete clips that we may not need. The clips are being rendered at the minute so we have a clearer view of what needs cutting and editing and what we can do to improve it. I can tell that it will take a while as there are 6797 frames that need rendering but hopefully I am able to leave it unattended (with a nifty DO NOT TOUCH sign) and it will render successfully before I come back at dinner time. I made sure I saved the work before hand so even if it is unsuccessful I will be able to redo the rendering process without many complications. I am also going to stay back after school so will hopefully be able to make some great progress with the editing and make sure everything looks as good as it can be.

Editing process

We are editing our rough draft and have encoutered a number of problems. Half of the editing we did, didn't save so we have had to do it again and we have noticed continuity errors that cannot be fixed but some, with proper editing, can be covered up. We are also tweaking our logo as the original was quite small so it would pixilate and look bad in the final piece. We are making it bigger and changing it slightly so it will look better and will not pixilate as much when we add it into our video. We have also noticed that there is music from an accordian in the background of some of the clips as well as street noises. The music does not fit in as there are 3 different clips where it can be heard so there is no continuity at all. We are going to take away the noise and replace it with effects that sound like street noises so there is continuity with the sound. The drilling noises in the background of some of the clips interfere with the dialogue but we will figure out how to fix that once we have edited it and have put all the clips together to make our video.

Filming our project.

We encountered a lot of problems including problems with locations, actors and when we are going to film. We overcame these issues and successfully filmed our project.
We filmed in Durham next to the riverside and Silver Street.
In the end our final actors were Alex Toes as the girl from the 50's, Mariella, James Stevenson as the murderer and me as the girl who finds Mariella, Samantha.
Whilst we were filming in Silver Street, there was work going on round about the statue so we could hear drilling in the background. If this affects our footage too badly we will record the dialogue again and put it over the top of our footage.
Whilst we were filming, instead of stopping the camera if a mistake was made we just kept filming and tried again so we have a lot of cutting to do and in the editing process we will be careful to not delete any of the clips as I made the mistake of deleting ones we needed when we were creating our continuity task video. Another mistake we made was cutting the videos too much so even though only a second was cut out of some of the videos it was more than likely a second of footage that we needed. We will be careful to not do any of this for our final video. For another one of our projects we filmed our footage but did not leave enough time in between shots for editing or cutting so we have made sure that we left enough time before the footage starts to edit properly, add any effects that we need and cut properly.
We have taken great care to make sure that our film will run smoothly and will start the editing process to produce our rough draft very shortly.

Extra research

Today me and Hannah have been studying projects from past pupils. We have looked at what kind of editing they used and what they have done to create certain effects. We have looked at errors and what we need to gain the highest possible grade we can get. We have found that in past projects, black and white has been mixed in with colour to show fear and create tension which is what we want to use in our project. We have looked at how the projects present fear and confusion and have taken note of these things so we can adapt these techniques into our own project.

Problems and solutions

So far ….

So far we have came across a number of problems related to filming. Our main actress, Emma Dixon, dropped out 2 minutes before filming so we had to spend a lot of time stressing and finding new actors. We found two actors to play mariella and the murderer. Mariella will be played by my friend, Alex Toes, the murderer will be played by my friend James Stevenson and Hannah Taylor will still play Samantha. (Alex and James travelled from Darlington just to help us. We love them.)

We are still filming next to the riverside and in the market place but have had to change the date we are filming because of the mix up with actors. There were a lot of people on the bridge when we finally got round to filming the scenes on the bridge so we will try and find a day when it is quieter and there are not as many people about as there was only one person that acknowledged us and actually stopped.

We also had very little luck with the timing. We chose to film on the one Sunday of the month there was a derby match on. This meant that Durham was full of drunks who probably thought the camera was after them. We were scared for Alex's safety (due to her height.... or even lack of) near all the drunks so we chose to stay away and go back when we didn't think she was going to get stabbed.

We encoutered a lot of problems with lighting as we only really had an hour of light by the time we got round to filming so we only really managed to film the first few clips. We need to film in the daylight so we can show the contrast between the black and white scenes and the colour scenes. Because of this, we need to film during the day so we are going to get our actors together on a day that we are all free.

Cast and Crew so far
Rachel Mole - camera, production
Hannah Taylor - actress, production
Alex Toes - actress
James Stevenson - actor
Edward Fawcett - music

This is the first edit of our production logo

Our Film So Far

So far …

So far we have made a story board, script and have figured out that our main actor will be Emma Dixon. Hannah will act in it as well as the girl who looks after our main character. We have decided where we are going to film and have made a start on the script so we have a clear plan what we are doing. 

Actors
Mariella – Emma Dixon
She is the girl that is teleported from the 50’s to 2011. She is being chased by a murderer and passes through a teleport which sends her into the future.

Samantha – Hannah Taylor
She finds Mariella and convinces her that she is going to help her. She convinces her that she is going to look after her and help her get back home but later on the audience learn that she is up to something sinister.

For Mariella’s make up, it will be kept simple with eyeliner on top of the eyes red lips and we will use eyeliner pencil to make her eyebrows bolder. Her hair will be curled in a way that looks very fifties to make her stand out from the rest of the characters. She will be wearing fifties styles clothes that are very different from the other characters clothes. Samantha’s clothing will be modern and her hair will be straightened to show the contrast between her and Mariella.

Me, Hannah and Emma will all be operating the camera at some point. There is a shot where Mariella is running and there is a close up of her face. To do this effectively, Emma will hold the camera herself similar to the effect in the “Blair Witch Project.” This will show Mariella’s fear and desperation.

Location

We are shooting our film in Durham city. Part of it will be filmed in the city centre and part of it will be filmed in the market place. All the shops have bright lights and modern signs which would be completely unheard of in the 50’s so Mariella’s reaction to all of these things is important when it comes to showing that she is in a time that is not familiar to her. The river side is important as that hasn’t really changed through time so we can easily make it look like it’s in the 50’s by simply making the riverside scene’s black and white. The shops, market place and general city centre however is normally full of cars and building works and LED lights so we can make these scenes full of colour easily so the contrast between the two can be obvious.

Filming times

We are filming in Durham on the 16^th of January. This is a Sunday so we can ensure there won’t be many people around anyway and we will start filming early in the morning so we can avoid any crowds that might be there during the day. The river side is normally deserted even at the busiest of times but Sunday mornings are the perfect time to go as there will be nobody there at all. The shops all open later on a Sunday so we have plenty of time before crowds start gathering. Durham is usually quiet on a Sunday so filming people we don’t need can easily be avoided and the camera will be safer than if we were filming on a Saturday when a lot of youngsters are in the city.

Music

For our music, we are going to let Edward Fawcett watch the film first and compose some dramatic music using acoustic and/or electric guitars. This will add to the tension and the dramatic effect and any copyright laws would be avoided as the music will be Edwards’s piece and not a copied piece. We are going to do this last as then we can film the sequence we need then let Edward watch it and come up with music that is appropriate for our sequence.