editing obstacles

13/12/10
today is our last day of editing, we have handed out questionaires asking members of our target audience what they think of the film and how they think we could possibly improve it. After seeing the results of these questionaires, what we can do to improve it has become obvious. The main thing that was brought up continuously was that there is too much background noise, so we are trying to figure out how to fix this.
Also, we've had comments about the swing scene 'not making sense' and some people feel it hasnt been explained properly, however that is how we intended it to be. We didnt want to give every aspect of the film as a whole, away within the opening sequence.

editing obstacles

our group had a few problems to do with who had creative control, but in the end we overcame these and decided to even out the responsiblities. we then ran into a few complications with music and how to obtain the kinds of sounds we needed but our teacher showed us some very useful computer programs so assist us.

production obstacles

25th november
the only obstacle we came across was that the zoom button on our camera wasn't functioning properly, however we were able to complete our filming quite quickly.

production successes

thursday 25th november
our last day of filming went extremely well, we had arranged with the drama technician to use a bed he had built for school productions and he set it up for us in a corner of the school and brought a large light with him to make it look more like a bedroom. we were able to get the range of shots we need quite quickly.

production successes

19th november 2010
despite all the problems we had experienced, we did successfully manage to get all the shots we needed on location.

production obstacles

19th november 2010
Last friday we began our filming process. Our group suffered from a lot of problems along the way. these include, two members of our group arriving late, then when we went to retrieve equipment we found there to be a problem with our boom mic and its connection to the camera. Therefore to overcome this problem our teacher suggested we use a zoom mic and record the sound seperately. Also a lot of the settings on the camera had been changed around, so we had to deal with them before we continued.
After we had resolved these problems we left to film in the cemetery across the road, after about half an hour of filming some really interesting and useful shots, the camera alerted us to the fact that the battery was about to run out. Because of this one member of our group had to run back to the school and get a new battery then run back to the cemetery which took a further 15 minutes out of our filming time. When our group attempted to use a tripod for a few of our shots we realised we didn't have what we needed to connect the camera to the top of the tripod, we made the decision to not once again run back to school to get the connection and just improvise instead of using a tripod so we didn't lose anymore time. Also, it had been raining the night before we filmed and the ground was soggy and slippery and a lot of our shots involved me running, which was extremely difficult and involved me falling over a few times.

The synopsis for our thriller opening sequence tells the tale of a teenage girl who, in the past, was friends with a boy. They used to play a lot in a park, especially on the roundabout but one day whilst they were playing with the boys younger brother, the girl accidently knocked him off the roundabout causing him to take a fatal blow to the head and ended up dying. From that day on, the boy threatened to get the girl back and take revenge on what she did to his brother. Since then, the boy was put in a mental institute as he went somewhat insane from what happened that day in the playground and it's impossible for him to get out of the mental institute. The girl however, sees him coming after her all the time to take revenge for his brother.

The opening starts with the girl screaming and running into a graveyard and being followed by the boy who is in fact a figment of her imagination however, the audience do not know this until the end of the film and they think that the boy is actually there. Once again, he states that he will get her. Shocked, the camera rapidly zooms in quickly to an extreme closeup of her eye where we then see a quick flashback she has of the roundabout spinning round and round with no one on it. Echoed voices and laughing children can be heard in the background that are all mashed up so all the words are not audible. The shot of the roundabout then flashes and we see, for a split second, the boy's brother on it. The camera then flashes again and the boy is gone, leaving the roundabout to just spin again with no one else on it. The camera then zooms out of her eye and we see her panicking and breathing heavily. The boy then turns and leaves the graveyard and the girl quickly turns and starts running out of the graveyard. She runs into her friend who asks her why she's running and looks so panicked. We then see a closeup of her face as she breaths really heavily and then the camera quickly cuts to her waking up from a dream.

The rest of the movie incorporates the boy, in her imagination chasing after her to take revenge on her. He starts to kill off all her loved ones as she slowly begins to lose her sanity as he kills off more and more of her loved ones.

In the end of the film we find out that the boy never actually existed away from the mental institute and he had never escaped at all, all the things that he did were actually done by the girl herself as she slipped into a state of insanity through out the film and begun to kill her loved ones herself but saw it as the boy doing it instead of her. In the very end, she ends up in a mental institute herself as we finally find out that she was the main cause of all the insanity and deaths through out the film.

3.1 What i learnt by doing the preliminary exercise.

The preliminary exercise taught me a lot about camera work and technique. As someone who has had very little experience with a camera the task has made me a lot more confident about setting up the camera and the shots and filming them. during the filming process i learnt how to frame shots so that everything that is needed to be seen is clearly in the shot. I also learnt how to use the camera, including how to play the tape back and how to record, which was all completely new to me. Also during the process i was asked to set up the tripod which at first i thought was very complicated but when i had a go i found it to be quite simple.
           The storyboard we used wasn't extremely complicated but there were quite a few complicated shots that we needed to set up. We worked as a team and the exercise taught me to work with people that i wouldn't necessarily choose too. As a group, at first we thought the prospect of filming this task to be quite daunting however when we relaxed and used our initiative we got on quite well and completed the task efficiently.