Before and After Shots

Comparing our first draft and final cut, there are now many things that we improved and changed. Below are a few of the things that we altered and you can see the difference between all aspects in the clips.

Nine Frame Analysis

The nine frames above outline our film opening, identifying the key frames allows us to summarise our work easily and analyse the storyline. 
Looking at the image of the nine frames we can see a clear plot and we can also see how closely our finished product fits with the original storyboard we created.

Filming is DONE!

After looking through all of the footage we filmed last week, we have finally covered everything we need to make our final movie opening!

Scripting or Improvisation?

Initially, we had all decided that the characters would use lines, that we had a;ready planned and scripted, as we believed that this would enable the filming to be more smooth and professional looking.

But during filming it was made obvious that when the characters were filmed, they often were more focused on remembering the exact words, rather than attempting to make them realistic. This led us to the decision that we would scrap the idea of telling the actresses what to say, and instead allowing them to say what they felt was effective and hope that this worked!!

Luckily prior to editing and filming, we feel that this was a more successful technique, as it made the scenes more efficient and believable.

Camera Techniques

Here is a quick video, discussing the reasons for the 180 Degree Rule and why it is so important:

Filming Progress

On thursday, we continued on to film the second section of our film opening, the cellar scene. We felt this went really well and using an iPhone was successful. We had to add to Tamsin's costume, (the twin held captive) and exaggerate her make up. Here are some pictures of Tamsin and Grace when we finished their costume and make up...

We plan on not filming anymore of the cellar until after showing the first draft, in order to complete the other sections of the opening. Here are a few pictures of our chosen setting...

We filmed in my attic, in a roundel roof as it perfectly suited the atmosphere we wanted to create, isolated and dark. 

We had props of just 2 chairs and a small stall (we didn't use the larger table pictured above), along with the tray of food and drink.

We felt that the footage was as we wanted it to look, but may have to re-shoot a few scenes after the first draft.

Editing Schedule

In order to make the process of editing and putting together the final touches, as quick and efficiently as possible we thought creating a editing schedule would help make sure we all got a chance at editing  and help create our final production 

 

	Frees ( where possible )	Lunchtime
Monday	Emma	Megan & Milly
Tuesday	Bonnie	Megan & Emma
Wednesday	Milly	Milly & Bonnie
Thursday	Megan	Emma & Bonnie
Friday	Emma	Megan & Milly

Playing with Close Ups

When we filmed in both Megan's utility room and Milly's attic, we shot multiple close ups and extreme close ups. This was to experiment with the quality of our recording device (an iPhone 5) and give us a variety of shots to choose from when finalising and editing our final product.

Ultimately we were really happy with the quality of the shots, here is some of the footage we took...

Music and Sound Effects

Music will be an extremely important feature to our opening, it will be the primary trigger of anticipation and fear. We also plan to create a disturbing atmosphere with it, for example, we will have a non-diegetic sound of a small creepy child's laugh, against the shots of the photo frames with the two red-headed twins when younger. This will immediately present a connection between the characters, the sound effect of laughing reveals their happy, innocent past.

Additionally, a simple, yet effective lullaby will be playing simultaneously, to support the serenity of the twins as children. 

We plan to use both these music pieces and most likely more, we will have to test many different sound effects that reach our satisfaction for each shot. However, we will have a few lines of speech for Grace (our evil twin) to add diversity in sounds to our opening.

First Attempt

We have just finished our attempt to do the second scene. In this scene we needed a very steady and camera and lots of continuity, as this was one of the first scenes which would help set the feel we wanted to achieve for our opening.

We believed that the filming had gone very well, until we looked back at the footage! We found that a lot of the footage was blurry and unfocused and we somehow achieved different amounts quality in our array of shots. 

Our best shot: 

We believe that this shot was very successful, and we may possibly still use it in our finished piece.

One our our unsuccessful shots:

This particular shot did not work, as we can see that the camera only ever focused on the wine bottle. Whilst the rest of the scene was basically unseeable. 

To prevent this from happening again, as it has wasted a big chunk of our filming time, we could do the following:

- Better time planning - we need to give ourselves more time to produce the footage, but also to be able to look back on it and improve when we are there.

- Get a better camera! - we have decided that we will be using Milly's iphone, as it is easier to hold and transport to different locations and also it is easier to watch back footage, as we don't have to plug it into a computer each time!

- Over film scenes - we found that even when we tried to do a rough edit with out footage, it was difficult to create successful continuity, as we had stopped filming/acting to early to make it look smooth and continuous.

Hopefully, from this not so successful filming session, we will be able to improve on our filming as we now know what things we can improve on.