Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 7

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)

Our Ending Music

We were not satisfied of what was on offer for intense, psychological score, for the end of our film opening. So, decided to take the opportunity to make our own music on GarageBand.

GarageBand is a software application that comes on the Mac computers. This music generator allows you to create a huge range of style of sound, from upbeat and fast-paced, to eerier and quiet.

This app enabled us to mix different, obscure sounds with original pieces, we had gained permission from on YouTube.

GarageBand a software none of us had used before, but turned out to be clear to use, and although it took us a few tries to familiarise ourselves with the app, we managed to create the music which suited the intense atmosphere.

Filming and Editing Update

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

Production Companies for 'The Cellar'

We have researched into film production companies that often create and distribute horror and horror sub-genre films. These production companies would be the most suitable when distributing our gothic-horror film...

Previous films: Paranormal Activity, Insidious Sinister,The Purge, Dark Skies

Previous films: The Grudge, The Boogeyman, The Messengers, 30 Days of Night, Drag Me to Hell, The Posession, Evil Dead

Previous films: Seed of Chucky, Cry Wolf, The Return,The Strangers, The Unborn, My Soul to Take

Projects in development: Half to Death, The Strangers 2,White, Sacrilege, Faces of Death

Previous films: Thirteen Ghosts, Gothika, House of Wax,The Reaping, Orphan, The Apparition

Previous films: The Grudge, Ring 2, Dark Water, Shutter,Quarantine, The Uninvited, 

The Incident

However, we have ultimately used our own film

 production company, 'Apollo Productions', to produce and distribute our film opening.

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'

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)

Our Logo

We needed a logo for our production company for our film opening, so decided to reflect the theme of 'apollo' by using an image of the earth, including various special effects, we found on google. The picture of the earth connotes our film production's significance and dominance over others.

We will edit this into the start of our opening with a fade transition for the first draft, but look into further editing effects before the final cut.

Camera Techniques

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

Storyboard

Here is the storyboard we have created showing each step of our film opening visually in detail. We have also annotated the storyboard so that we know exactly how we are going to film each scene. We have included details about the types of cuts we are going to use so that we can refer to this during the editing process.

We know that we may need to change the storyboard during the filming and editing as when we get on set and actually film, things will change as we will have to make decisions about what looks best, regardless of the storyboard.

British Film Institute

On Friday, our media class went on a trip to London, visiting the British Film Institute to go to a lecture based on the Film Industry, studying TV Drama. This was perfectly suited for what we are learning at the moment. The lecture was based in this room...

Rob Miller, the main speaker gave us many new ideas and increased our knowledge in the topic, by watching clips and analysing them using advanced key terms. 

Following this, the Producer, Richard Stokes, of both Torchwood and Broadchurch, gave us a realistic and fascinating insight into the world of film, especially being interactive with the Q&A. 

Overall we found the trip really useful for our growing knowledge of media, as well as personally enjoying it.

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.

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...