CHRISTMAS BLOG CLOSURE!

This blog is going to be closed for two weeks, as it's now the Christmas holidays :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Final Shoot! - 12+14/12/08

So, we had our final (I hope!) shoots on Friday 12th and Sunday 14th (Mary's birthday!) December. I think it went well, and we got all our shots - including reshooting the shoes shot with a different pair of shoes... We got a lot of work done and despite Bhavika being absent because she was ill, it was really productive.
It was also a lot more interesting for me because we were doing the shots where Bisma was acting - which meant I could do a bit of filming! So we'll see next editing session whether we can use this footage or not.
Our shoots have been so much fun, and if we don't need to reshoot, I'll definitely miss them a bit!! But it's nice to have all our shots, even if they don't work, because we have a much better idea of how it looks. I'm still a bit worried we won't have enough footage to make up 2 minutes, but we will be adding in title screens too, and we don't want to overrun. Hopefully it's all fine though!

Editing

Editing is going well! Mary captured most of our footage in her free period 1 on Monday, and we then had a double media lesson so we got the rest captured and started arranging and cutting up clips. I had periods 4 & 5 to edit and I put the shots in order and trimmed them to the right bits as well as adding in temporary titles and playing around with some effects. Bhavika had 7 & 8, and found a really good effect to use on our shots - which you can see when it's finished : )
We had media again today and found some more strange echoey effects where the images overlap and it looks pretty awesome - just the kind of thing we wanted, so basically it's going pretty well, and hopefully we can make good progress when we get the rest of our footage too.
We decided we were going to have a lot of foley sounds in our titles mixed in with music - which we may or may not be creating ourselves, but it's looking unlikely - similarly to Se7en (see group blog), but we need to find some music to use as well. I think we really need to decide on this soon because it will be easier in the editing process to add the music in now rather than later, as we can then edit to the music, and make it all fit together really nicely. We also need to come up with a title for our film, although this is less important for now - but it would be nice to have some kind of anchorage to it in the opening, so we're keeping it in mind.

Shooting - Friday & Saturday 5+6/12/08

The shoots went well - seeing as we had to start again getting shots we had quite a bit to do, but we got a lot of the ECUs and CUs done as well as the 'knife pan' (the pan of the drawer across to the knife), and after everyone left on Friday I captured some random noises we can use for foley, like turning book pages, clattering makeup and stuff around, sharpening eyeliner etc. We also thought we could use the sound of the wind chimes that we were going to use in our original opening - we wouldn't want the footage to go to waste! We still have a lot to shoot but hopefully it should all go well, especially as these couple of weeks are super-busy.
We still need to shoot:
-housemate going upstairs
-crane HA shot of same thing/walking in hall
-opening door, match-on-action shots
-shot/reverse-shot: conversation with killer
-killer picking up knife

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changeeees!!

Yes, our idea has, once again, changed!! Well, not the idea so much, but the shots in the opening. It will have the same premise - the audience will see the killer getting ready - but it will be a lot more ambiguous and ominous, because we're going to have a lot of 'sudden's (as we decided to call them because we don't know if there's a proper term for it... see group blog) and the titles and ooh I'm rather excited, and I'm really hoping that this will work because we've re-storyboarded the whole thing quite enough!
This also means there'll be a lot more variety - the pace will be slowed considerably with the housemate shots, although I'm a little bit concerned if we don't do it right it will just be really stilted and confusing. However, I do really love the idea and hopefully we can make it work - we're going to do more with lighting which will have an impact, and a lot will rest on the editing (adding effects etc.).
What needs to be done:
- get red lipstick
- find music/make music
- construct a new shooting script
- make sure props are organised!

Pre-empting Problems

In class today we were talking a lot about things that could go wrong on shoots & had discussions in our groups about what applied to us. We were ok with most of it, although there were a few issues, like certain group members having other commitments such as jobs, as we were already aware of this before we began shooting it was not really a problem, and we're compromising on when we do our shoots - this week we're going to shoot on Friday and Saturday at my house again - and no one really minds about it, because everyone's putting in work.
No one really had anything that they wanted to get out in the open that they'd been keeping quiet, and our group dynamic is really really great - I think we're all really happy with how it's going, if a little stressed about getting everything done (in case we need to reshoot etc.). I didn't really like the lighting in the shots we took though, in that we didn't use the paglight to do anything different - but this was really because it was difficult to get what we wanted without whoever was holding the light getting in the frame - so we're going to try out some different lighting on our next shoot if we can. I'm a bit worried that we might take up too much time/make it really different and need to rethink, but I'm sure we'll work it out : )
Also, when we were roughly editing some of the shots we got from filming on Saturday, we realised that we won't be able to use the song, as planned, at the beginning of the sequence, as it just doesn't go - unless we can find some way to slow it down. So unless we do that or find some other way to fit it in, we're going to need a new song or just come up with our own music.
Other than that, it's all pretty good going!