At the End Of Term

I wasn't able to get the rest of my film making done before the end of term. So I will have to get my filming done at the start of next term.

Films That Have Inspired Me

Dead Right by Edgar Wright
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The Hills Have Eyes by Alexandre Aja
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Coursework So Far

I haven't written on my blog in about a week so I thought I'd update how everything is going.
I've got the first half of my coursework filmed during the last week, I've been able to do Andy's phone conversation, although I ended up using Conall instead of Tom to be the other person on the phone, simply for the sake of convenience. I hope to get the chase filmed tonight as we have no activities but rather assessment objectives, which will be over quickly then I can film while it is still light enough for the cameras to work outside.
I have done a lot of work on the editing of the footage so far, as I've been unable to get the other part of my film made.

What has gone right:
I have inserted a logo of a famous production company (New Line Cinema), I also came up with the name for my own production company which was originally inspired from a joke I made in class, and thus VaJayJay Productions came along. I have also developed titles for the naming of my actors.
I have successfully edited a conversation between Andy and Conall, I originally had a single shot of Conall filming the entirity of his side of the conversation, but then when I filmed Andy I had him in several different shots, angles and him doing different things. So I cut Conall's conversation and in some places entirely altered what he says by editing, although this is not very smooth.

What has gone wrong:
At one point I realised that I didn't have enough shots of Andy doing things that illustrate him getting ready for the party and I am rarely able to get Andy at a time when he's free as he is always doing sports. Also it was during lessons, so I reviewed the footage I already had of Andy to make sure his hands were clean then I did the shots myself, simply focusing on my hands as I took some gel out of a pot for instance, however I didn't let the camera see my uniform either for the sake of continuity.
I have also made a rather poor choice of actors, because while Andy and Alex are both good they have the most unsynchronised timetables in the world and I cannot film without both of them. For the future I will try to make do with actors in the class.


What I still have to do:
I have to film the chase scene today, which I will try to get done before 4pm which is unfortunately when it gets dark. I will edit this as best I can trying to ensure that Andy maintains all continuity from previous shots through to the later parts of the film. I also have to come up with a title for my film with which I am surprisingly having difficulty with.

Shooting schedule

26/11/09 to 31/11/09- I’ll try to take some establishing shots from Mrs Hawksley's house, where I'm being being rusticated to. Maybe I’ll do some location filming too depending upon the location.

31/11/09- 04/12/09- I will try to complete the rest of the filming within this time so that my coursework is ready for the deadline

Treatment

In the first scene, which makes up the opening two minutes, one boy is going out to his mate’s house, where there is a party going on, and he has to go through woods to get there. We then move on to scene two where he goes walking through the woods, after a while he realises he is being followed, he remains calm to begin with. He walks on for a bit then stops, his follower stops, he then keeps on walking and his follower starts walking again. After this he stops and looks back at the follower, the follower stops, he will be wearing a dark hoodie and dark clothes so it will be hard to see his face and this will creep the main character out. At this point the film moves on to scene three, the main character has gotten too creeped out by his follower and has started running, the follower gives chase. The main character gains a lead and hides behind a tree, then he peers back arround, his follower is nowhere to be seen. The character relaxes thinking he has lost his stalker, but then a hand reaches round the other side of the tree and covers the main character's mouth and then there is a blackout which cuts to the credits and titles.
The remainder of the story follows the othe main character, who becomes concerned about the absence of his friend. Several other friends he had invited have all turned up and it has been almost two hours since they spoke on the phone. His friends then tell him an old story about how a tribe of cannibals used to live in the woods, but they are thought to be extinct. The main character with his other friends and his girlfriend get worried and decide to go searching into the woods for the initial character. Eventually one of the characters gets seperated from the group, he goes walking through the forest and he begins to hear things in the trees, suddenly he comes face to face with the stalker, who is now wielding a short hafted axe. He panics and flees but the stalker gives chase and takes him down quickly, but not killing him. The friend turns over and looks up into the stalkers face, we can't see what he see's but he starts screaming and the stalker starts to hack his body to pieces. They others in the meantime start to find evidence about what happened to their first friend who disappeared -part of his hoodie stained with his blood-. Eventually they find an old broken down shack in the woods and they start to discover more about the mysterious stranger… who has different plans for them all.
Inside the shack they find the body of the initial character, hanging by his neck with several deep gouges in his skin. As they stand in horror the stalker appears dragging their friend's body which he has hacked to pieces.
They flee, but the stalker it seems has set traps through the forrest including razor whire fence's, tripwires and trapdoors. Their flight quickly becomes a fight for their lives as one by one they begin to be caught by his traps, or caught by the stalker himself.
Eventually the other main character and his girlfriend are the only two left.
They are running together through the forrest. The main character takes a branch to use as a weapon, although he acknowledges out loud that it probably won't be very helpful. Eventually they have to stop to rest, a few minutes later the stalker reappears now armed with a sawn-off shotgun. The main character's girlfriend lunges at the stalker and starts fighting him for control of the shotgun, which goes off and the shot glances off the main character's leg wounding him. He then takes his branch and hits the stalker with it knocking him out, and then his girlfriend grabs him and they start running again.
Eventually somehow they end up back at the stalker's shack. The main character berrates his girlfriend for not shooting the stalker when she had the chance, but she says she was more worried about him. She takes the stick from her boyfriend who can't walk so well because he has been shot, and gives him the gun.
They start to move arround the shed but the stalker is waiting on the other side, still holding his axe. He swings at the girlfriend and splits her stick in half but misses her body otherwise.
The main character moves backwards into the shack with his girlfriend, the stalker follows them, In here the stalker starts going wild, he swings his axe in wide arcs overhead destroying the contents of the shack. Eventually he is standing with the body of the first character between him and his prey. He swings his axe and it gets stuck in the initial character's body, as he tries to pull it loose the main character -from behind the body- points the shotgun and fires. Blowing off the stalker's face, killing him dead.
The main character and his girlfriend stumble out of the shack and can see the sun rising between the trees.

End.

The film will be shot in the Round Square House and mixed com with the permission of Mr Tattersall and I will also be shooting in Dead Dogs Hill.

Shooting Dictionary

Preliminary Task with Sonja and Masie

Summary of the Preliminary Task

1) Our film was quite good, there was a bit of match on action when we filmed Maya's feet walking down the corridor and her hand on the door handle then opening it and we saw her moving through from the other side.
We maintained the 180 degree rule throughout our filming, our continuity was all good we made sure for instance that if Maya had opened the door with one hand she didn't close it with the other. We also included shot-reverse-shot filming to allow for an exchange of dialogue.

2) We made some continuity mistakes to being with and we also broke the 180 degree rule with one shot but we didn't use that in the final cut of the preliminary task. Also during a match on action shot of Maya's feet walking down the corridor we accidentaly got a shot of Sonja's shoes.

3) I'd just do all that we did in the end, the first time and I'd also make sure I didn't have things like people's feet in my final shots.

4) One problem we had at one point was that we accidentally deleted some footage so we had to re-do the beginning of the piece and edit all of that again, but other than that it was pretty good.

Preliminary Task

In the Preliminary Task I am playing a headmaster and Maya, a student, has been sent to me to be expelled. We used shot reverse shot when Maya and I were having our conversation which led up to her expulsion. We used match on action in a rather easy method for students, we shot a close up of Maya's hand as she was turning the handle of the door. And we maintained the 180 degree rule by not having the camera move further than 180 degrees in the filming of shot-reverse-shots. For me the creation of a storyboard was pretty simple due to the fact that I have done this before, nonetheless making a storyboard was relatively easy once Mrs Black had told us what to include in it.

Ideas from other trailers

From watching the trailer for the 2005 film “The Hills Have Eyes” I gained the idea of having the music that the main character was playing in his room to keep on going until he walks into the forest and past the stalker at which point the music would cut off and be replaced by a creepy silence and then perhaps some evil sounding music.

I also got inspiration from the opening minutes of Dead Right, a short film produced by Edgar Wright, director of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, in 1993. There are actually a lot of parallels between my story idea and this one, in that the first character that we are introduced to in the film is followed home and gradually gets freaked out and runs into their house at which point they are savagely murdered.

I gained some inspiration also from Edgar Wright, this time from his film Hot Fuzz which he produced in 2007. In my film there is a scene where the main character will walk past the murderer and this paralells with Hot Fuzz where both of the main characters walk out of the frame revealing the killer to be in the background.

Screenshots

Screenshots that I drew to outline the shots I would like to have in my Media Re-sit

Prep For Monday the 21st of September

Basically my new story for my As Resit is a horror. In the first scene, one boy -the main character- is going out to his mates house and he has to go through a woods to get there. The film will open with this guy getting ready in his room and then having a phone conversation with his friend telling him that he is coming now. We then move on to scene two where he goes walking through the woods, after a while he realises he is being followed, he remains calm to begin with. He walks on for a bit then stops, his follower stops, he then keeps on walking and his follower starts walking again. After this he stops and looks back at the follower, the follower stops, he will be wearing a dark hoodie and dark clothes so it will be hard to see his face and this will creep the main character out. At this point the film moves on to scene three, the main character has gotten too creeped out by his follower and has started running, the follower gives chase. The main character gains a lead and hides behind a tree, then he peers back arround, his follower is nowhere to be seen. I am currently deciding on the ending for this scene, my options are either that a hand reaches round the other side of the tree and covers the main character's mouth and then there is a blackout which cuts to the credits and titles. Or I am going to make it that the main character's mate has gotten bored waiting for him and he has gone into the woods to give his mate a scare, he has worn clothes similar to those of the follower and then the main character who has become seriously scared just leaps at his mate and beats him to death with a rock thinking that it's the follower and only once he has done the deed then he realises what he has done, then there would be a blackout which would cut to the credits and titles.

The mise-en-scene would have the main character in quite bright clothes, like a red hoodie, dark jeans and a grey t-shirt. The main character's mate would be dressed dark jeans, a bright shirt and a dark hoodie over it, just in case I decide to go with the second option and he has to be mistaken for the stalker and beaten to death. The stalker as I've said will be dressed in all dark clothes if possible and his face will not be very visable, giving him that spooky mysterious feeling because we can tell so little about him because we cannot see him. These character's clothes will show a contrast between the good guys and the stalker because obviously they are wearing softer and more gentle colours than the stalker who wears all hard and dark colours and is generally conveying an aura of evil.