28th February 2010

Today we spent the lesson finishing and posting the start to our evaluation pieces, making sure we had included everything possible. This was done by Casey and Abby, as Amber wasn't here. 

We then went through our folder and attempted to scan in a few of the sheets, but we couldn't get the scanner to work, so we will do this again next week hopefully :) 

We then started to run through our already filmed items and decided which shots we can keep and which will be re-shot. We are filming this Saturday, but are unsure whether we will have to re-do all of it as Tom may not be able to make it.

Half term evaluation- Question 2 (Casey's Question).

     There are many different forms and conventions of the Horror sub-genre we are using. Basic conventions include blood, secluded areas, the dark, and death. These are included in the films "Bram Stoker's Dracula", "Let the Right One In", and "The Lost Boys." We used the research in to these conventions to help with the making of a horror film so we knew what different conventions we could use so that our film fit in to the sub-genre of vampire films. It is important to do this so that we know what sort of things are used to define a vampire film and keep it different from a psychological film for example.
     In our horror film, we challenged the conventions to make our film different to films that have been made before. Some of our ideas we were influenced by the television program "Being Human"; the way that our vampire can go out in the sunlight. This challenges the convention that vampires burn in the sun, or as Twilight interpreted it; sparkle. Making our vampire able to go out in to the sun also made it easier to film and meant that we were able to do more with our characters and choice of location. 


This is a picture of John Mitchell from BBC show "Being Human." Our character design is based on him and the fact he can go out in the daytime:


http://media.photobucket.com/image/being%20human%20mitchell/melancholySky/Mitchell-being-human-3972968-426-63.jpg?o=9

Evaluation Question Number 1 (Abby's Question)

Introduction
We're making a Horror Film with a sub-genre of Vampires. we're having the vampire out in the day to go against the normal stereotypes of a vampire. We did a lot of research into films including the BBFC for what can be shown in a 15 and 18 classified film. We went into more depth research in the horror genre - by looking at the start to some well known horror films to get an idea of the conventions that come up quite frequently in each film.


To carry out our research we used the internet and notes we already had from lessons. This helped us a lot to know how to create the certain effects needed to make our horror film good and exciting. We also thought that creating a vampire film would be good as at the minute a lot of people are watching vampire films due to the Twilight Saga, so we thought if we did one it contrasts well with Twilight and so people would want to watch it to see how they feel about it compared to Twilight so a lot of people would be intrigued to watch it. Especially because we're making our introduction very sharp and mystical.


The start of Dawn of the Dead inspired our idea, because there was a really good radio news broadcast on over some images of what is going on which we thought was really effective and so it inspired us to use a radio broadcast coming through the headphones of the jogger running in the opening. We're trying to keep an element of mystery going about in the opening to keep the audience intrigued in the film and want to watch the rest of it. 


The group consisted of Abby, Amber and Casey which worked very well because we all get along really well and so can actually compromise and tell each other if we don't think an idea is working etc. Our production has worked out well so far, we've been out to film once and we got a lot done in the time that we were there repeating all of the shots so we had a range to choose from when it came to editing. 
We had a problem when our Dead Body actress wasn't available for filming so we had to pull our heads together to find a replacement actress which we did quite quickly so we resolved the problem quickly and efficiently.


This is the intro for Dawn of the Dead which inspired our film immensely:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdPWrAMXGGo

14th of February (:

Today we began to edit down our footage. We haven't chosen many of the shots yet but are looking through so that we can begin to add our credits over the top of them. Some of the footage we can't use because of little errors we have made such as chopping Tom's head off in the middle of a shot, or not using the Golden Mean correctly.


We have planned to go filming again on the 5th March hopefully, if we are able to get all of our actors together on the same day that is. This should hopefully go ahead as the three of us have the day off work, Mitchell is booking it off, and hopefully Gabrielle and Tom will be available too. :) 


We have also started having a second look at our soundtrack and began thinking of suitable people to record the voice of the news reporter. We decided that it definitely needs to be a male voice with a firm tone to it. Casey's dad was mentioned but we decided that he would be unsuitable. 


Since our dead body has died her hair, we now need to re-shoot the shot we managed to film with her in so that we don't have continuity issues. We spoke how we need to have the same clothes for Tom, but since thew shot with Gabrielle is being redone, it isn't important that she's in the same outfit. Hopefully our vampire, Mitchell, will have clothing similar to what we designed when we first went through his character.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__fLd1bCSRs   <---- This link is the video that we used for our make up design for Nathan (vampire). We will exchange the proffesional make up for bits found in your average make up back such as a pale foundation and powder, and dark eyeshadows for the undertones. We will be sticking to this quite thoroughly when doing Mitchell's make up, as we think it gives a more realistic look to vampires, but still makes them look paler and slightly dangerous than humans. 

Todayyyy :)

We filmed our first shoot on Saturday the 5th February and we got a lot done despite not having our   Vampire!
We managed to get a lot done with the jogger and a bit with the dead body but need to go out and re-film a lot of it because some of the shaping of the frame isn't down to a T.


We uploaded our footage today and went through it picking which shots we would use and which we wouldn't so that we don't have a lot of footage that we won't be using. We're going to film again in a couple of weeks, most likely being in the half term holidays so that we can get everything right. 


:)