Todays Lesson - 29th February

In today's lesson we made progress when drawing up our storyboard. It is still yet to be completed but we plan that this will be done by the deadline of Friday 2nd March. The Wilderness Woods video was also uploaded to the blog, and now we can begin planning when to shoot.

We are not going to use any dialogue in our opening, we plan to use sound effects and screams of victims of our antagonist. We feel these sounds will be effective in reflecting our genre. The sounds we are going to use will be from the school CD.

Wilderness Woods Task

Above is our compilation of shots that we took on our recent trip to Wilderness Woods where we were given a shot list. We learnt alot about using the camera and became comfortable choosing suitable locations for shots.

The pans we captured in our trip were particularly good because we felt that these have improved since our preliminary task.

Moreover, the ECU was one of our strongest shots because we feel that this had the potential to create strong enigma.

We felt that we could improve on the editing of our reaction shot because it could be made better for continuity. Ideally, this is something that we can improve in our final production.

DS: Further location reccie

Due to the audience feedback we receieved from both our peer students and our teachers, we have decided it would be beneficial to change the location of our film opening.

As previously mentioned on our blog, we highlighted the problem that one of our locations was innaccessible to us. We feel it is key to have 2 juxtaposing locations in order to make our opening a success.

Leading on from this, we concluded we would use the war bunker in Hargate Woods in Frant as our second location, as well as using Josh's shed acting as the interior to the bunker.

However, Josh has fallen quite ill this week and we had planned to do this reccie this week and we require Josh's car in order to get to our location. We have previously visited the location but did not have enough time to take photos. Therefore, we are confident that this location is practical but unfortunately cannot carry out our location reccie in full.

Once Josh is no longer ill, we plan to carry out the reccie upon our first shoot, which is planned for Friday 2nd March, but it is unknown whether Josh will be able to make it into school and transport us there.

AS: Audience Feedback

From our pitch we had several ideas that the audience felt were good, whilst we also had ideas that we felt could be improved from the responses we got.

Strengths:

• The ideas for props and costume that we put forward to the audience went down well. They said that this was the strongest aspect of our concept. These included the mask, murder checklist and the bloddy apron.
• One choice of location was the woods in Southborough, the audience felt that this fits well with the genre of horror.
• The ideas also had strong potential to create enigma which is vital for concept

Idea Changes/ Areas for improvement:

• The audience felt that a second location may be useful because the concept could be further enhanced if we are able to find an alternative
• We could focus more on technical aspects. For example the loactions would then allow us to include various cuts between the locations.

Pitch

Here is our group pitch for our opening sequence: http://www.slideshare.net/AlexStedman/group-pitch-11716750

DS: Audience research - Quesitonnaire

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9MCDGKY

AS: Further Concept Development Ideas

Have found some good ideas of music and sound we could put into our opening:

Also have some initial ideas for names of the film:

• The Slaughter House
• The Bloodbath
• Execution

AS: Tasks for the pitch - 22nd February

For preparation for our pitch on 22nd February we have to complete several planning tasks that will help to draw together our ideas. Dividing these tasks up will be more efficient and successful. Therefore I believe we should divide the tasks up as follows:

Dylan:

1. Draw together ideas on costume, characters and props
2. Summarise findings from audience research - questionnaires to be set in tomorrows lesson (Friday 2nd February)

Alex:

1. Draw together ideas on fonts for titles and compile shots and technical ideas
2. Summarise findings from film analysis and research

Josh:

1. Expand on the initial ideas in the treatment and build on the idea itself
2. Consider the potentional institutional context eg.  budget and company

As a group it is best that we all attend the location ideas in the reccie so that we can all feedback. It is best that we try to visit the locations either next Thursday 9th February or Friday 10th February.

Over half term it is also essential that we meet to draw together all the above ideas and findings from the tasks and then compile them into a presentation for the pitch.

Tonight homework tasks are:

Begin to research and find examples of:

• Sounds
• Props
• Fonts
• Location (images)
• Potential Film Names

Post them to the blog in posts under the title 'Initial Pitch Ideas'.

AS: Pitch Ideas - Fonts for Titles

Initial Ideas on Fonts for Titles

DS: Technical Analysis

SAW II

Camera Technique	Duration	Mise-en-scene
POV	27 seconds	Shows the audience the situation (i.e. Set design and props) from the victim’s perspective
Reaction shot	1 second	Displays the victim’s anxious reaction to the danger (Use of low key lighting and Non-verbal language)
Birds Eye View	4 seconds	Allows the audience to get a full view of the situation (Costume and set design)
Tracking shot	2 seconds	Tracking shot follows the victim allowing the audience to trace his movement and identify the props he is using and the set design

 

POV

 

Reaction Shot



 

 (Click pictures for video link)