Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 6

Audience Reactions

Today, we filmed a small group of people who fit perfectly into our expected audience category. This enabled us to see what sort of thoughts and feelings our opening stimulated.

The Cellar - Final Cut

After 6 months of preparing and planning our film opening, we have completed and published our final cut of 'The Cellar', we hope you enjoy our final product.
(Please watch in 1080p HD, for the best quality)

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!

Finalised Storyboard

When looking at our old storyboard we made when first deciding on our Gothic genre narrative, we realised how much our idea had developed and improved since our initial plan. 

So we decided to make a whole new storyboard, specifically following what we want our finalised cut to look like on screen. The details beneath each picture describe what the protagonists and doing, camera movements and special effects.

Concluding our Evaluation Questions

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.

Sound Effects

For additional detail and effect in our opening, we applied special sound effects, which makes the scene more realistic as these are the sounds that would be expected. To create a more subtle effect we lowered the volume, adjusting to the score.

Breaking the biscuit: 

Chewing the biscuit:

Our First Draft

Here is the first draft of our film opening:

'The Cellar'

Health and safety side of things...

During the filming, there were a lot of precautions that had to be undertaken regarding health and safety to help keep our actresses safe and also us!

When filming the first scenes in my kitchen there weren't as many hazards compared to our later locations, however there were still some...

- to establish our much needed high angle shots, we had to attempt to balance on a chair - which we had to make sure was stable, to stop any injuries or disruption to the set.

- to make the scene more realistis, we had to surround the room in candles, wine bottles, and a white tablecloth which if caught on fire could be a disaster! 

However, when we filmed our later shots in Milly's attic, we realised that it was not as straightforward as the earlier location. 

-firstlly we had to make sure that the attic was safe to be in with all our our props and equipment. This was checked by Milly's dad before we decided it would be our definite location,

- as we used this particular place to help create the isolation we wanted to represent in our product, in order to get into the room we had to climb a very small ladder...

This in itself had a lot of safety elements to be considered, such as trying to get all of the costumes and props up at once! 

This was, however solved when we decided the best way to do it was one by one, and putting the costumes on after we climbed the ladder to stop anybody tripping up.

When creating Tamsin's costume we made sure that she wasn't allergic to anything we would put other face or body & the same with Grace.

Improvements

Today we showed our film opening to the rest of our year and year 13. When they were watching it we handed out a questionnaire to ask them what they think we could improve on and they said the following:

- background music - to carry the music 

on throughout the whole opening.

- editing

- more 'arty' shots

- building a bit more suspense 

throughout the scenes

we also need to include:

- the panning shot of photo frames etc.

- the transition from the kitchen to the 

'cellar' (stairs)

Costs

In order to create our movie, we had to think about props and costume. These would be necessary to make our opening effective and realistic.

One of the main problems however with providing costumes and props and even location, was the prices.

For our costumes we bought an underskirt from ebay and we also bought a long white maxi skirt for Tamsin's costume. We decided that the main character (grace) would need the most detailed costume.

Tamsin's costume: 

- gloves: £2.99

- veil: £1.99 

- skirt: £6.99

Grace's costume:

- gloves: £2.99

- veil: £1.99

- skirt: £9.99

and then we already had both of their tops and the makeup.

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

Location, Location, Location

Today we decided on our final choice of location for our opening. We aimed to find somewhere that we could use, as small and isolated kitchen, which we would also be able to transform into a room that would fit to our queer and crazy image of our main character. This we found, could be created in Megan's utitlity room. We also needed to find some distinct stairs that would help link our two seperate locations without breaking the idea of creepiness, and we found this is a family's pub. Lastly we found the perfect place which could be used to create the room where the other twin will be kept 'prisoner'. 

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.

Our Storyline

Today, we sat down and decided on what we believe is going to be our final storyline:

Presentation on our Narrative Idea

Inspiring Directors

Today, we researched different directors that would help us get inspiration on our production. We aim to achieve something creppy and gothic but also something out of the ordinary, and overall we found two favourite directors.

Tim Burton

Tim Burton is famous for his making his films unusual and creepy. He achieves this by, using low key lighting and bluey effects, but also through the costume and makeup on all of his characters also emphasises the weirdness he wants to create. He is also famous for his disjointed quick - stop animations, where the characters are dress in dark colour and they all have distinct big eyes, which makes them seem deformed and unlike normal animations.

Lemony Snicket

Lemony Snicket is famous for his kooky sets and locations. Unlike Burton however, Lemony made only one of his characters in 'The Series Of Unfortunate Events' as someone who is distinctly out of place and weird. The other characters fit normally into the surroundings. He also uses Non- Diagetic back ground music, to create tension and suspicion in the most unlikely situations. This is what we want to create at the start of our Opening.

Iconic Sounds within the Genre

When researching the "norms" found within the genre horror and gothic, we discovered many of the  had sounds which were a common feature in their productions: