Preparation for shooting day...

We have decided on a date to shoot, therefore we are acting upon things in preparation for a smooth filming day.

Costume

The girl who will appear in our film opening will be wearing a red coat and white tights with black shoes and ribbons in her hair. This represents the innocent look as well as the danger that is anticipated. We will be purchasing these items from a charity shop or a low cost store to save money. The idea of the charity shop also contributes to a less modern type of clothing. We are hoping to find a worn in coat that looks as though it has been worn by the girl a lot and is not shiny or glossy as this would disrupt the mood of the film. The white tights and the black shoes represent the stereotypical look of the girl as young, happy and innocent.

Filming

We had a practise day, making sure we are clear on how to use all of the equipment properly and planning out how we are going to use it for each shot. We made sure all of the equipment we need fits together properly and works well to save the expected panic on the morning of filming!

We have also written out a filming schedule so we know what we are filming and at what times in order to be able to fit everything in without rushing.

Sound

We have planned to record the sounds for our film opening separately to the actual filming. The sounds we need of the waves and the beach atmosphere will not be as clear and as loud as we need through the microphone on the camera. Therefore, we will record these sounds separately, closer to the sea to capture the clear sound of the waves and then add this in when we edit. 

The choir music we need will also be recorded separately to our filming schedule. We will record this at a church to capture the echoing sound of the music which will also be added to our film opening through editing.

Film Opening Plan

Me and Emma have chosen to combine two of the film themes and make a film involving both aspects…these aspects are:

·         Independent movie - featuring a young protagonist

·         Art house – appealing to adult audiences

We have decided to combine the above film features as we recognised a link between them which we thought would work well. Our film will be about a kidnapping/disappearance of a little girl from a wealthy family. With the beach being the setting, on an evening walk with the family, the little girl will disappear without a trace. Our aim is to create a mysterious/confused effect and we will do this with the use of music (both diegetic and non-diegetic), camera angles and effects.

The little girl will be wearing a red coat with the rest of the family dressed in pastel colours. This will help to show the presence of danger in the art house effect without being too obvious. Our idea is to include the constant, subtle diegetic sound of the sea as a background noise with the mumbled dialogue of the family and distinctive laughter of the girl whilst playing. We may include echo effects to her laughter to emphasise the art house effect.

We will use establishing shots of the family walking down the beach to capture the mood and tranquillity with over the shoulder shots of the parents looking out onto the children playing ahead of them. We will then contrast these shots with extreme close ups of the parents faces when the girl goes missing to emphasise the disturbance and horror of the situation.

Animatic of Film Opening

Analysis of the opening scene to Twilight

Shot by shot analysis of twilight

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Preliminary Task

Post Production

Putting our film onto the computer and premiere pro seemed an easy task. We connected the camera up to the computer and imported our film footage, ready to put together and edit. Our filming was spot on and we had all of the shots we needed in order to make our film fit together nicely. Editing did not get too complicated as all we needed to do was cut the beginning and end of the frames in order for it to flow nicely. There were some small errors where some frames were cut too much and the sequence was jumpy, however this was not hard to correct as we had the frames all backed up in order to replace the ones we had cut too much. We also added the jaws theme tune into our film as it fitted well to create the tension of the chase. However, we had to edit it in order for it to fit in perfectly with the action in our film and for the high, intense parts of the music to come in at the action parts. This proved relatively easy, with trial and error we were able to get the music in sync with our footage as we liked. The last part of putting this together was the finishing touches of the titles at the beginning and the end. This finished our film off and we then uploaded it to YouTube. Success!

Production Process

Filming the short film was quite an easy method at our school. My group and I were able to film during lesson time which meant that the majority of the school was quiet and the corridors were empty. We set out on the first lesson with the plan of filming in the English corridor and drama studio. This was ideal as the corridor was perfect for us to film the running sequences and the drama studio is on the same corridor which made it easy for us to film with continuity. We were able to construct our perfect set using the props in the studio which gave us a real head start in the process which also saved a lot of time. The props consisted of portable wall partitions which we used to create an interview room. We also found a cloak which was a perfect addition to one of the characters in our film. We had written out a storyboard in our pre-production to guide us, however we deviated from this quite a lot which was mainly due to filming to suit the set. We also made many changes to our ideas whilst filming which was positive as we were constantly improving on our production. We had no problems using the filming equipment and everyone in the group was involved in the both the acting and being behind the camera which worked really well.