Evaluation of Filming - 2/2/14

When we first filmed the chase scene, there were a lot of aspects that we weren't happy with as mentioned in Annie's post.

When planning our second attempt at filming we took into consideration all of the aspects we wanted to change such as the location, time of filming and costumes.

 ~ We decided to film in Bexleyheath as it was a local urban area and would fit in with the storyline.

 ~ We aimed to film in the evening, when it was completely dark as the street lighting would be sufficient enough for our characters to show up clearly on screen. 

 ~ With our victim, we changed her outfit from the dress to the black skirt and red top but kept the bruise and her extreme makeup. We also decided against her wearing a fake stomach as it would be more obvious in the next scene that she was pregnant. 

 ~ We also didn't like the fact that we could see the villain's face and the outfit he was wearing so he would wear just casual dark clothing with a hood and a white mask.

How it turned out:

We had planned to meet in Bexleyheath, travel to my grandparents house to film the death scene and then back to Bexleyheath for the chase scene. 

The main problem was that one of actors had a family emergency, on the day of filming and so was unable to join us for the chase scene and the scenes in the garage. As we wanted to get a majority of the filming done on that day, I had to play the villain for the shots we had planned out. 

'Back-up villain'

Candles

Annie taking the candles shot 

Doing Emily's makeup

Annie's 'killer' hands

Raman setting up the camera 

Preparing to film

Fake tears

Raman filming

Annie filming

When looking at the footage from the day, I really wasn't happy with myself playing the villain as it didn't look right and would be much better if it were our preferred actor. Although I liked the location that we chose (the alleyway) it was extremely difficult to film in as the lighting was too dark for the camera to stay focused for a long amount of time.

This also meant that our villain didn't show up on the screen as well as we would have hoped. It was quite dark and blurry and I didn't think this would look good enough for our final coursework. Also with the location that we had chosen, we didn't realise how many people would be walking past on a Sunday evening which interrupted the shot a lot.

Here is a selection of screenshots from our footage, showing why I wasn't satisfied with the result.

While we were filming the chase scene, the camera ran out of battery due to the amount of times we had to film the different shots and this meant only part of the chase scene was filmed. Therefore as we would have to set another day for filming anyway and after looking at the footage, it would make sense to re-film the whole thing.

Editing Candles and Jars Shots:

When we went to my grandma's garage on Sunday we set out the candles and the jars and I used a variation of different camera movements to film them. Some of them looked quite good but others were not as effective so it depends on the editing as to whether we use them in our actual piece.

I imported all the shots I thought could look good onto Final Cut Pro with the aim of editing them in a similar style that Annie and Raman had edited the flashback shots. I decided to go against using transitions and would just use simple straight cuts for the moment.

The video below is the original video that I took of the candles, a simple panning shot of the shelf, with the sound removed because as we plan to put sound over the top, we didn't worry about being completely silent and you could hear the talking in the background.

~ For the first panning shot, firstly I trimmed it down so it was only when the camera actually moved, rather than having the stationary section at the beginning and end. On the effects section under lights, I chose "Flashing" as I liked the way it made the candles stand out even more, I also added the "Film Grain" style afterwards. It was still really slow and boring so I re-timed it so it was 400x faster.

~ Next I decided to edit the zooming out shot and did the standard procedure of removing the audio and trimming it down. As the zoom is naturally quicker than when I did the panning shot, I only felt it was necessary to make it 200x faster as when it was on 400x, it went so quickly you barely saw it. I then added the cross hatch style effect over the top.

~ I decided to put the tilt shot next, which went upwards, after removing the audio and trimming it down I sped it up by 400% again as it looked a lot better when it was faster. I added the "Keyer" effect and the "Old World" effect as I thought the end result of putting them together was ideal.

~ The second tilt shot originally went upwards but to make it different from the previous shot I reversed the clip 400x faster so it looked liked it was going downwards and moved it to the beginning so it wasn't straight after the first tilt shot. I then added the "Luma Keyer" and "Super 8mm" effect to darken the image.

~ The last shot I used was a pan shot but I rotated the camera slightly as I moved it to make it slightly different from the previous angle. I experimented using the speed ramp option to re-time this section and ended up going from 400x - 200x - 100x - 50x throughout the clip as I liked the way it slowed it down, in addition to this I decided to add the "Prism" blur effect as I liked how the jars had flashes of green light on them.

This is the final version after the editing changes I made, I'm happy with how it went but I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with the end result and whether it looks successful or not. It depends on my group as to whether we actually include it in our coursework or maybe shorten it down slightly as 7 seconds is a lot of time for just one piece of mise en scene and there are other shots that we have taken which I could edit in a similar way to this but with the different objects.

Evaluation of Filming Flashbacks - 18/01/2014

On Saturday 18th January, we had planned to go to my grandparents house and use their garage as the location of our villain's hideout. We met at Bexleyheath as arranged around 1, where Annie and Raman had bought some extra things that we needed such as plastic to cover the table, candles and a red top. We already knew we were on quite a tight schedule due to the times that we were all available so we aimed to be done by 4.

We had chosen to change the actor we wanted to play our villain as we felt she looked too young and it didn't fit in with our storyline. As we also chose to completely disregard everything we had filmed over the Christmas holidays, it meant we had more choice with what happened in this scene.



Emily, our victim

For example, we realised it would be more appropriate for our victim to wear a top and a skirt rather than a dress as it would make is easier for the villain to get to her stomach. We kept in mind about how the colour red represents love and passion and decided to have her wear a red vest. Emily's dark hair is naturally wavy and she had already tied half of it into a ponytail so we decided to leave it like that and just mess it up a bit more.


Me doing Emily's hair

I then did her make up, aiming to make her eyes as dark as possible. I first applied eye-liner, eyeshadow and mascara before smudging it to make it look messy. I added blusher to her cheeks and used a combination of red lipstick and pink lip gloss for her lips.


Me doing Emily's make up

Annie then created the stomach wound which our villain would be making to get to the baby. She has evaluated this is her own post. (link)

Annie preparing to create the stomach wound

and again

Blood smears on Emily's arm

Side view of the stomach

Annie also used her special effects make up and fake blood to create a bruise and blood splatters on Emily's face. I felt this look was effective and suited the character well.

Creating a bruise

Adding the fake blood

Not much of the villain is shown so we didn't need our actor to be present so Annie put on the purple surgical gloves for some of the angles we used where the villains hands were in shot.

Annie wearing the villain's gloves

For the lighting in the garage, we decided to use my grandmother's lamp as it cast an orange light which was better than the bright white light from the torches, although we used them occasionally to create an even brighter light.

Raman holding the lamp

Raman holding the torches

We also used black bin-liners to eliminate the natural light coming from the window as it created a more gloomier atmosphere.

Raman and Hayley sorting out lighting

Blacked out windows

We also lit numerous candles and put them on the shelves in the corner, the next time we film with added mise en scene we are hoping to put more of them around the garage as they looked interesting and added another light source as it made it more creepier.

Raman lighting candles

Candles 

I felt the mise en scene that we added to the garage was appropriate as the shots we were taking on that particular day would not show that much of the room. We just added a plastic covering to the table and floor as we felt our villain would want to be clean with his murders and would use it to protect the blood splattering everywhere.



Plastic covering the floor and table

The main problem was the timing, as we only really had a few hours to get everything set up and filmed and we knew it would be tough but I thought we did quite well considering the amount of make up we had to put on our actor and the mise en scene in the room that was needed.
Another major problem was that the camera ran out of battery half way through filming, but luckily we overcame this by realising we were able to film while the camera was plugged in charging, although it made it slightly more difficult. Often the camera would take a while to focus, due to the lighting and this ended up wasting more time than we would have wanted.

However, I do feel this filming session was a lot more successful than the first and hopefully the footage we have will be okay to use for the real film opening. 

Practise Shots with Camera:

Originally our plan was to have our indoor scene in Raman's garage, but recently decided to change it to my grandma's garage which I had evaluated before in a previous post as it was better for the idea we had in mine. Over the Christmas holidays, I decided to go and do some practise shots using the actual camera we would be using for filming, as before I had just used the low-quality camera on my phone. I decided to use one of the pre-set effects on the camera as it looked more effective compared to the normal setting.

I also took some pictures using the camera around the area near my house as I had an idea of having our villain walking towards his house when it is quite dark but as I personally don't think they were successful, we probably won't use the idea in our actual piece.