Filmed footage at Scarlett's house

As I was absent on 28th March and that our group had to start re-filming our horror opening, Hayley and Scarlett went out of school in a media lesson and filmed at Scarlett's house where the start of the opening is located. I have been seen this filmed footage on the Mac and the different new shots they have filmed. They have filmed a variety of shots from an establishing shot outside of Scarlett's house as this would give the audience a sense of  location. They then filmed Scarlett making a text saying 'We need to talk. Meet me at 12 at Pleasure Park tomorrow.x' and sending it to Jamie using different angles to provide a variety of shots to edit with. They also filmed Hayley's phone receiving the text as though it is Jamie who is receiving it as the audience would not know that this was not Jamie's phone. They also filmed different shots and close ups of photos of Jamie and Scarlett to show to the audience the happy relationship they have. To make the audience understand the character Jamie's rage of thinking that Scarlett is breaking up with him, Hayley and Scarlett also filmed Jamie ripping up photos of him and Scarlett to show how distraught and heart-broken he is which leads to him being crazy and eventually killing her.

Having a new idea

As I was absent for the next two editing lessons, I have been made aware and updated by my group that after editing the basics of our horror opening and having a chat with our teacher, we have decided to re-film our horror opening, having a more simpler plot and less characters. This would make our opening more effective as it would be more scarier and easier to edit with. We have decided to re-film the opening to get better and more detailed shots, making it more of a scarier opening.

We have now changed our casting as we have a new idea of having less characters and a more simpler and more understanding plot.


From our original cast:

Scarlett Colson ...       Ellie (bubbly, confident and heartless)
Connor Hobbs    ...  Ben (short-tempered, mysterious and twisted)
Jamie Reed      ...              Matt (funny, friendly and smart)
Hayley Bell     ...      Friend #1 (happy, sociable and sensible)
Natatsha Weldon ...         Friend #2 (loud, sociable and bubbly)
Ellie Markie    ...    Friend #3 (trustworthy, honest and caring)

To just having Scarlett and Jamie in the horror opening. We have decided to use their real names as it would make it easier and less confusing.


Our new idea...

Scarlett and Jamie are in what seems like a happy relationship to Jamie but Scarlett then breaks up with Jamie in the park. He then turns crazy, killing Scarlett's friends and then eventually her.

We have not changed much with our original plot but continued with the idea of the boyfriend going pyscho and killing his ex-girlfriend and her friends too.

Starting to edit our Opening (9/03/11 - 16/03/11)

In the first couple of weeks of our Post-Production stages of our horror opening we started to roughly piece out the basic storyline of our opening using the filmed footage on our Mac. We began cutting and editing different shots from the footage we filmed, starting with the footage filmed in town as these scenes are what open our horror film.

In the second week of editing, Hayley had a really good idea of cross-cutting between the scenes in town and the scenes of the character Ben stabbing the photos in the dark. This looked really good for the opening as the audience would sense the horror and tension with the constant cross-cutting between the almost flashbacks of the situation in town and then the quick glimpses of the stabbings, sensing the darkness and horror. We also speeded up some of the cross-cutting to build up the tension and suspense for the audience, making them feel on edge when watching the opening of our horror film. With the scenes of the photos being stabbed, some of the close ups on the photos were not smooth and were quite blurry so we learnt a new technique of using the key frame, helping make the movement of the close up on the photo really steady and smooth. As the shot of the photo was quite blurry, we overcame this problem by adding an effect to try and make it look like it was supposed to be.

Moving forward into Post-Production stage

Now that we have completed our Production stage of our horror opening, this means that we can now move forward into the next stage, the Post-Production stage. Altogether, we have about 11 minutes worth of footage that we can edit with to create our 2 minutes horror opening. With the Post-Production stage, we would need to learn the basics of how to edit our horror opening like composing our own music to go over the top and adding different enhanced sound effects to create the tension and suspense in our opening. However, we would move forward into this stage and start editing the next lesson that we have which is on Monday 7th March as we would miss tomorrow's lesson, Wednesday 2nd March due to Skills For Life.

Downloading the footage onto the Mac

Today, me and Scarlett decided to download the footage we filmed of the scene of the stabbing of the photos onto the Mac. The footage downloaded was 7 minutes from 26 clips. This would be more than enough to edit with using that scene and other footage that we also have.

Props we used

These are the props that we used to film the scene of the stabbing of the photos.

These are the photos that Scarlett created and arranged on the noticeboard for Connor to stab into. There are different pictures of the character Ellie (played by Scarlett) for Ben (played by Connor) to stab into to show his anger and the start of his madness and revenge of wanting to kill Ellie.

This is the knife that Connor used to stab into the photos on the noticeboard.



Filming at Scarlett's

On Monday 28th February, me and Connor went to Scarlett's house at 3pm to film the end shots of our horror opening. To create a scary atmosphere, we decided to film the scene of the stabbing of the photos in the dark and using a torchlight to create some light. This worked really well as it made our footage more sinister and frightening which we are trying to create through the character, Ben. I filmed the footage as planned based on our storyboards and also filmed extra shots so we would have more to edit with. I filmed from different angles, from the side and also used over-shoulder shots of Connor stabbing the photos multiple times to have more variety when editing. I also slowly zoomed into the stabbing of the photos to increase the feel of tension and suspense of our opening. By using the torchligh, it created different spotlights and having this scene in the dark made it more scary and on edge as the audience would not be able to see clearly but only shadows, darkness and a bit of light. Scarlett also switched the torchlight on and off when I was filming Connor stabbing the photos. This made our footage look really good as when Scralett switched the light on and off, it created different blurred shadows of the stabbing of the photos and also reflections on the knife which made it look quite dramatic.

After filming these shots, we felt that we had a lot of footage to edit with so we decided to keep the footage we filmed in town. We also decided not to film in town again as some of our cast were busy with other work and might not have a lot of free time for filming.