Snatched - AS media final thriller

Evaluation - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back over my AS coursework I have become much more independent in my work and realised that you can’t depend on anyone or leave anyone to do it as I have noticed that the best way to get something to done it to set your group members tasks to complete as I’ve realised that if you’re all doing the same thing we all get distracted by one and other. I have also noticed that I need to improve my time management side of things as this was one of my weakest links as I didn’t meet the deadline. But I do think that overall from the prelim task me and my group have got closer and have created much better work as we worked more as a group.

As a whole I think that my skills have improved from when I did my prelim task, as I have done much more research and studied more on the camera shot and the different effects that you’re able to use when I was planning on what camera shots to use instead of just using the simplest camera angles and shots. I also have become more familiar and noticed how important the location for the lighting is and what a dark misty effect would have on the audience and by darkening the colours through the editing it would have on the audience. I also used about the usage of props and how the colours would have on the effect of the audience.

I think that I successfully improved on the areas that was suggested to be needed to improve for instance the narrative and that it needed to be understood. Also I made sure that the transitions were clear and easy to follow instead of it being jumpy and confusing. I also used music in the main task which actually fitted into our sequence meaning instead of our other whole sequence which was picked at last minute. Another point we learnt on sound was that we self-recorded sounds in our main task instead of simply altering the volume of the music which didn’t seem to work as much. In the future I think I would use more of a range of camera shots and improve the lighting in darker areas. I could also improve and add in more interested effects instead of using the simple effects so it would make it more interested to watch for the audience.

 

Evaluation - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Evaluation - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

From the beginning of my AS course work of contracting my opening sequence I have learnt a vast amount. For instance at the beginning of the project I knew about camera a little bit as a take AS photography but I didn’t know about a lot of the other equipment for instance of course in photography you use a camera but you don’t record so I learnt about how to record and move with the camera slowly in both tasks I also used a tripod which I do sometime use in photography but I haven’t ever came across the problem that it gets stuck in mud so this one was one problem I had to overcome whilst i was filming. Other point about the camera I learnt all the different camera shots which was a great experience for instance I got taught how to do a close up shot, wide shots, point of view shots and pan shots etc. which was really good as I knew if I wanted to make a great opening sequence I would have to involve a lot of these techniques. I also learnt all the different camera techniques such as shot reverse shot which is a basic technique to use during a conversation between two people, I didn’t use this technique exactly in our sequence as I didn’t use much dialogue between two people. I also learnt how to use the tripod to steady the camera which would therefore keep the came straight on uneven ground for a panning shot. As well as all of that whilst constructing our opening I also learnt that I needed to not only just record one time of a shot as we realised that when we got our filming on the editing software I wasn’t always happy with the outcome so learnt to record a lot of different versions.

Another piece of equipment which I used throughout the process of producing my thriller movie was a flip camera. This was used in order to record the sounds in my movie for instance the dialogue was recorded separately in order to be able to hear it clearer and louder over the music which was played through our opening sequence. Another example which we used a flip camera to produce sounds was the breathing of the man; this was recorded to add tension and add enigmatic to the man’s presence.
As well as camera work I also learnt some on the short cuts on the editing software to allow us to speed up the editing process as at the start of our course none of my group had used the editing software before so we didn’t know what I was exactly doing but after the prelim task and our first attempt of making an sequence we eventually got the grasp of things for instance how to add and cut sounds clips to get them in time with the rest of the movie and how to alter the sounds to make them quieter when dialogue was being used. Also I learnt how to overlay texts and titles onto the movie to give information which I created on software. From practise I finally got use to the editing software and toward the end I found it easy to cut and trim clip with the correct timings so that it would run smoothly which showed me that we had come on and learnt a lot, I also learnt how to use transitions effects for instance such as cross dissolves and fades to soften and switch from one shot to another so it didn’t look unstable. Below was our final editing strip when we had finished our sequence.

Evaluation - How did you attract/address your audience?

As I’ve already mentioned we carried out a survey which is one type of research we did to find what target audience we wanted as we asked a group of people what their favourite thrillers was from the selection given and grouped them in different genders and age groups, from that we realised who preferred horror films to action thriller films and questioned them on which location was suitable for thriller films as we really wanted to choose the right location as we thought we didn’t do this for our first attempt which was ‘Lost but Found’. Another type of research we did was that we watched other thrillers including, Taken, Seven and Casino Royale and grasped onto which made a good opening sequence for instance the dramatic music was one massive point which made us want to find a great piece of sound. After completely our final film we shared it to a numerous of peer and got feedback which was great as from that we knew what worked really well and what didn’t. It was a great feeling when we got good feedback from our target audience and that they enjoyed the film as from that we knew it was successful. They all agreed that our music worked really well and our self-recorded sounds was a great idea as you could hear them much clearer in comparison to when we filmed ‘Lost but Found’ we didn’t do any other recording of sounds so you could hear dialogue as much.

The Two thriller movies which my group mainly focused and was inspired by were ‘The Happening’ and ‘Taken’.  Both of these movies involved a tragic and horrible outcome of crisis which both involved a child which my thriller does also. I found that on

e way that my movie addressed the audience well was through the choice of the cast and characters. For instance a good thriller movie which I researched sometime involved young children to attract the audience through the innocence of a character, for instance in ‘Taken’ the young girl gets kidnapped after doing nothing wrong and the audience may have thought that the young girl was being punished for other people’s expenses. I have found that audiences normally attach themselves the young children in thriller movies and root for them to live and not get hurt, this was one reason why we chose to include young children as our characters as we thought that it would help to address the audience.

Another way we addressed the audience was through our location. We chose to set our opening scenes at a park as the park is scene to be a normal and warm location where young children are normally seen to play and have fun in comparison to where crises happen. The happening also includes scenes in their opening sequences where the location is a park (Central Park, which is shown in the image below).

 

 I thought that by taking a normal and welcoming location and tuning in into a mysterious and spooky location would be a great way to address the audience as they could feel shocked and worried. For instance a park is where children like to play and have fun not where young children are kidnapped and taken. We was able to as a group transform a fun an normal location to a mysterious and  cagey location by altering the lighting and colours and by also adding in sounds in the backing track to make the scene add tension. The two sounds of music we used was ‘http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynjmWX9rw7Q’ and ‘http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtDHnBh3ikE’ which was found on YouTube by typing is mysterious and wary music.

 

Evaluation - Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided to aim our target audience at a mixed gender aged between 15-30 for people who are interested in thriller films. Our genre is thriller and by researching into thriller films we was able to use similar techniques and camera shots in our films also which created a much more successful thriller opening. To find out our target audience I carried out a questionnaire to help find out specifically who was interested in thriller films. For further research we also showed some people a selection of horror movies and asked which one they preferred, this helped us a lot. Another bit of research we also researched other famous thrillers and analysed them. I think 15 is the youngest age who would be interested in our product as we wouldn't want to scare them as the location is at a park and younger children may be scarred of the park after watching our film. But on the other hand I don’t think people older 30 would be interested in our media product as they could see it to be boring as it's not that scary in comparison to movies which are out at the minute such as Saw movies and paranormal activity etc. I think that our target audience wouldn't be similar to seven as I wouldn't find that 15 year old would understand the film as it is quite confusing to follow but on the other hand I find that taken would have similar target audience as the opening location is a young girls birthday and our film also involved children as well.

Evaluation - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

 

For my AS media course I had to complete an opening sequence to a thriller. I have realised that an opening title sequence is a very important part of a film as it has the job to grab the attention of the audience in order to keep them watching the whole film. From research my group and I realised how much planning was needed to do this as not only was there a narrative you had to plan but also sounds, the titles and mise-en-scene.

I find that our opening titles show many challenging forms and conventions of real media products. For instance we included point of view shots and panning movements to help identify what a character is looking at helping the audience understand the characters point of view and feelings and a panning shot is used to follow a character as he is riding his bike along an establishing shot. The effect of this was to get the audience to follow the character and almost care for him and to make the audience feel almost as they’re there with the characters and I find that these two types of camera shots worked really well because I feel that the point of view shot from the man on the swing helped the audience see the bigger picture by putting the audience in the characters shoes making it even more mysterious.

 

Also editing shows many conventions of a real media product as it uses editing, a form used in our sequence is transitions for instance. Transitions are used between shots to make the shots come together smoother and making the outcome not jumpy. An example of this was when we included a cross dissolve transition to put together a shot of the young lad ans the swing which is shown on the left in the screen shot, this helps drive suspense. The effect to the audience was to be that the title sequence is easy to follow as for our first attempt which was ‘Lost but Found’ we realised that our dissolve transitions didn’t work with the narrative so we also had to take this into consideration. But we found that our transitions such as cross dissolves worked really well as our target audience said that the outcome was very smooth and easy to follow.

Sound also help show conventions of a real product because we used a backing track which played pretty much throughout the whole sequence. We involved sound to hopefully create suspense and tension throughout the film; we hoped to also do this by altering the volume of it to also add more mystery suspense. We were overall impressed with our sound as we noticed that the strange music went with the plot. We also involved titles, which is another convention to a real media product. The narrative of our titles was to inform the audience of the actors and the different people who played a role in making the sequence. We hoped that the titles would also drive tension as we added many effects onto them, which added even more anxiety, and after showing our target audience they agreed with us and said the effects definitely added tension.

Our whole sequence also involved a narrative which is another form and conventions of a real media product to help set the scene of our narrative we used establishing shots to establish the scene and location for instance to establish that the location was in fact on a park we helped show this through not only establishing shots but point of view shots as well. This is shown above in the screen shot. Establishing shots are used in many opening sequences to help set the scene and point out to the audience where they are in fact this is shown also in the film taken which i shown in the print screen above.  The effect we hoped for this was that the audience would know where the location was and they could add tension by using their own imagination and we found that the outcome was impressive as our audience agreed that it helped show the narrative. We also used mise-en-scene which is another convention of a real media product for instance we used dark colours for the clothing of the man which helped represent danger and threat which helped cause suspicion for the audience.

Editing for 'Snatched'

After finishing all of our filming we then decided to label all of our footage and put it in order. We then began to watch them all to make sure they all went fluently together and started to note which shots we either need to re-shoot or do a shoot off. After deciding this we then chose a day to go re shoot the missing scenes which we needed. After that we need uploaded the footage into the programme and started to rearrange it in order. We then took it in turns and suggested where we needed to import a transition or effects to not make the footage jumpy.

 

Titles

 

 As we arranged set roles for one and other we was able to do different tasks whilst other tasks was being taken care of. For instance, from the start of our editing process Chloe took over the role of sorting the titles as she had great ideas for them. Because the titles was a big job it took up a lot of Chloe's time but in the end they turned out really good by also getting suggestions from myself and Laura-Jo. We decided that we would involve titles at the beginning of the sequence and at the end. We decided that we didn't want titles throughout the whole of the sequence as we thought it may take it away from the action on screen so the audience watching wouldn't get distracted. Chloe decided to use black as the background colour and white as the text colour as she wanted to keep it nice and simple but we wanted advanced effects to involve. Because our title of our movie was called snatched we involved a title for this at the beginning before the filming and we added an effect to it so it looked like the text was being smashed as if someone has smashed through it to get to someone. At the end of the filming we tried to get the effects of the text to go in time with the music so in the end we found the music before and then found the effect of a wave. Overall we was really impressed with how the titles turned out especially the last sequence as at the end it blended in nicely with with the action as it swiped across as the man walked off screen.

 

Music/Sound:

For our music/soundtrack we didn't want a well known song which involved any dialogue as we thought that looking back on our last video of 'Lost but Found' our chosen music didn't work out very good as we thought it didn't suit the action. So for our new opening sequence we wanted to make sure our sound fitted into the action. In the end we started to just look on websites with earery sounds on them but we then resulted in looking on YouTube as the sites we looked on wasn't long enough or they simply didn't suit our action. Finally we found a great sound clip on YouTube  the only problem with it was it wasn't long enough so in the end we decided that we would just repeat the sound throughout the whole of the sequence so that it would cover the whole of the filmed action and thankfully this worked out really well. Also with our other sound effects we filmed these different with a sound recorder as from our last attempt of producing a opening sequence we noticed that sound doesn't come across very clear especially as we also involve a soundtrack throughout it. We self recorded breathing which we did through a bottle which worked really well as it made it much more mysterious. We also recorded sounds of leaves rustling, the sound of a football being kicked, a swing swinging, a phone ringing and a scream.. At first during our editing we didn't self record the dialogue whilst the boys on the phone but we realised you couldn't hear him talking over the music so we then separately recorded this and then was overly happy with the outcome.

 

 

 

We started our opening sequence as I've mentioned above with the first set of title which firstly introduced our production company which is 'LaNiCh' productions which is in fact our first letters of each of our names. After that the next title slide was the name of our film 'Snatched' the effected we used was a smashed glass effect which is shown on the left in a print screen from the editing programme. We all thought this worked really well as it straight away grabs the audiences attention to the action on screen.

The first clip of filming the audience is shown is a close up of the two boys playing with the football having a kick about. We decided to start with a extreme close up of the football and zoom out so at this stage the audience has no idea of what the film is about. From that we then introduce the man which is a shot of the bark on the park and the movement he is making to introduce to the audience that there is something not right and makes it all more mysterious. To add more tension at this part is the sequence is where we involved the first bit of of self videoed sound of the breathing effect which we found worked really well with the action. We also used handheld to make it clearer to the audience that we are following the man and its filming his footpath, from this we then tilted up to the young boys playing football showing the audience what the man wanted and what he is looking at.
 

After this is a shot from the other side of the football cage as the young boy runs towards the camera guessing nothing is wrong or strange. At this point the audience gets to see the man for the first time in the background walking away from the two boys then after this shoot there is a couple of short clips showing the man footsteps away from the young boys linking that the man in the previous shot is in fact the same man watching the young boys. At this point in the sequence the soundtrack of the mellow music is being played throughout. The next footage is showing that the male figure sits on the swing at this stage the audiences would have guessed that the film must be based around the male and the young boys.

The next shot where the man is sat on the swing swinging we found was a really nice composition shot as he is central to the camera but still not looking at the camera which therefore he is still keeping himself hidden and mysterious. This also then blends nicely into the next shot as its a point of view going into an establishing shot. I thought that this was shot very cleverly by Laura-Jo as when she did the point of view shot she suggested that she should hold the camera and swing with it on the swing emphasising that its the males point of view and what he can see. We used a cross dissolve to put these two shots together so that it then didn't look jumpy.

After them shots we then focused back onto the young boys playing football. We then brought in another of our self recorded sounds of the phone call ringing which became louder than the music so that it became a main focus followed by the dialogue which we self recorded of the conversation between the young lad and his parent asking him to return to his house. This became a harder task than we thought it would be to match the sound to the filming as we had to make sure it matched up to his lips but thankfully it worked out in the end so overall we was happy. From this shot we did a straight cut into the swing by it self showing that the male figure had moved and then we showed a walking shot of him walking to a bush where you could suggest he was hiding.

After this we then went into the movement of the young lad on his bike making his way home by using a pan shot as he goes past the park entrance hinting further to the audience that he was being watched. After this is was a short clip of the young boy riding beside the bush from this there was a mid shot showing the man on the other side of the bush where he was riding and he suddenly grabs him and lift him over. We decided that we would leave it on a cliffhanger as he walking off then with the movement the titles comes on and moves with him which started off as my idea as it was just a suggestion then in the end we made it happen.

Our chosen music was found on youtube which was very eerie and mysterious.

 
Overall I'm really happy and proud of my groups opening sequence as it shows all of our strengths and it reflects on how well we can work together. I think that this piece of work turned out much better in comparison to 'Lost but Found' because I found that as a group we was more passion et for this one as we knew that the narrative was much better. Below is our final hand in of our opening sequence.

 

 

 

Filming towards 'Snatched'

After creating our last and final story board we then planned a date, time and location for our filming. We decided to do our filming one night after college rather than a weekend day as we found it too light the timing we filmed our last sequence so this time we decided to go later so it would help set the scene. As our location wasn't hard to get to we was able to either walk down to our local park or get a lift down so we didn't find it a struggle to make our way there. Also it was easy to locate our actors who we was using to get there as 2 out of the 3 was Laura Jo's family and the other young boy was her brother friend so he was free when we asked him. Before our filming we had to plan which equipment we needed so that we wouldn't forget anything so we came up with a list which included:

• 1 Tripod
• 1 Camera
• Actors For instance 2 young lads and a male figure
• Costumes
• Make-up
• Bikes
• One Football
• One Mobile Phone
• A Swing

On the first day of filming the weather was great as it wasn't too light nor dark as we went at just in time before it turned dark so that the lighting was mysterious. We thought that we got a lot done in our first night of filming as at first the lighting was great but as we knew it would get dark quick we wanted to rush and try and get all the shots filmed and at this time we thought we did which was brilliant. The next day we went back to college and uploaded the clips onto the programme but then we discussed and decided we had missing shots and we needed to re film shots as at some places some shots didn't go together as they looked jumpy and not fluent which we don't want it looking like so we then decided we would go the next day and re shoot some shots with the same actors the same equipment and the same time as you would then haver the same time although we faced our first problem as it started to rain a little bit during our filming so we had to keep stopping and starting and we was determined to get the filming over with so we could edit. 

During our filming we all took it in turns so we would all get better at filming. Which was good for my group was that we had all already had experience at filming so we already new a lot of the basics and camera movements which we needed to film so that we expected the filming part to be better than our last attempt. I really enjoyed filming although I found it a bit hard to film without the tripod as I have a really un steady hand which made us thankful that we had a tripod so it improved our filming. Although a problem we came across again was that the tripod at times sunk into the ground as I've already mentioned that it rained one day of our filming it made the ground soft so that there was many puddles about which we had to avoid. As it wasn't our first time at filming we didn't come across many problems in comparison to last time which was good as we altered everything we needed to learn from for instance our actors knew us so they didn't feel weird acting with us and being told what to do so for us directing the shoot and producing it we found it easier.

As I made many changes with our storyboards and thought about it in depth more than our first draft as we didn't think much about the storyboard before the filming so we had a lot of changes to think about. Although as the ground wasn't ideal for our plan of the young lads being dragged through the bush we decided that the better idea would be to be pulled over the bush and we was able to do this with our well thought out casting choice as we had a light boy in comparison to a strong male actor who was able to lift the lad over the bush.

 

 

Planning towards 'Snatched'

After our draft hand in feedback we decided that our first draft wasn't strong enough to provide us with the grades we wanted. So from that we came together as a team and decided that instead of re filming parts to make 'Lost but Found' better we thought that it would not only be easier but a lot better to come up with a new idea and re film a whole new opening sequence. We thought this was for the best as we already had experience what had previously worked well during filming and editing and we now know what we're good at. So from this we came together and started jotting ideas down of a new story and finally produced a mind map of a plan which we thought could be a new opening sequence for our coursework.

 

Mind map:

 

Above is our mind map which we came up with full of our ideas towards our new thriller opening sequence 'Snatched'. We all had different ideas but I decided that I wanted to take charge of the storyline so after my group jotted ideas down I started to finalise them and draw together a plot.

 

 

Editing:

Throughout our whole of our opening sequence we are hoping to involve many advance editing skills and techniques so that we get high grades and show off our knowledge and skills which we have on editing programmes which we have learnt throughout the whole of the year. We have discussed to involved various of fades throughout the sequence to make it flow and not be jumpy, this is one thing we learnt during our editing for Lost but Found. Also I think that slow motion would be great to involve which you would slow the clip down on the editing software to cause tension. But on the other side in contrast to slow motion fast past editing would be great for a chase scene which is one of our initial ideas as we think a chase scene would be very clever and would cause a lot of tension.
 

Location:

During our planning we discussed various of location which would be suitable for a thriller. As we had already spoke about this whilst we was planning our other opening sequence we decided that we would definitely use a different location for this piece of work. There was many suggestion we thought of whilst brainstorming locations for instance we thought that the idea of a park was a great decision which we deciding for our last filming although we don't want to use the same park as we don't think the forest or woods helped us shoot our ideas very well. Our other location ideas was in a alley, street, field, house or in the woods. Our chosen location is a local park near our homes which is bigger and more public than the other park we filmed our last sequence.

 

Sounds:

By brainstorming ideas we came up with a mass amount of sounds which we could involve in our new sequence. We wanted to use a lot of sounds in our sequence as we thought that it would add more impact of horror to the action. By not only having a lot of sounds we wanted to pre record them to emphasise them which we didn't do in our last piece of work. The ideas we came up with during our planning was the sound of bikes, car crashes, heavy breathing, leaves and screams on top of dialogue.

 

Camera:

During our planning we decided that we wanted to use as many camera techniques as we could so that it would be a great chance to show off our skills. The ideas we came up with was that we wanted to include pans and tilts to be able to set the scene and we have found that these kind of camera movements help to focus on characters mise en scenes. Also we are planning to involve zooms so that it would help focus on important props in the scene for instance a phone. Another camera movement is an establishing shot which we are planning to use as a point of view shot which helps represent a character.

 

Characters:

As a group we decided that we wanted to use young children again as we think that the age gap between young people and older people are stereotypically scary and we found that this worked well in our last filming although this time we wanted to use an adult instead of using someone our age dressed up to be older. The same as last time we want to use the public in the background to help set the scene of a park. But after debating which gender to use we have decided to settle on 2 young boys and a older man as we find its stereotypically more freaky and scary for a child snatcher to be a man.

 

Costume:

I've decided that I didn't want to dress the actors in any other costumes than casual everyday wear as we thought that this looked well in our last sequence so that it makes the scene look normal at the beginning so then we are able to build tension throughout the sequence. I also decided that the male figure would be dressed in ripped jeans, builders book and a dark hood which would hide the mans face so it wouldn't give anything away also I think this costume would look good as it doesn't give anything away and I find that this is what an everyday kidnapper would wear as you wouldn't want to get noticed.

 

Props:

• Bike
• Hammer
• Swing
• Football
• Phone

Narrative:

Once we had all gave ideas I then decided to try and put a narrative together and I decided that a kidnap would be good as its completely different to our last sequence. I thought that as we decided we would be using boys as our main characters what would be good they was playing football as where we have chose for our location there is a cage where you are able to play football. Also then I think that there should be someone watching the lads without them knowing and then the young lad gets a phone call telling him to go home immediately he then gets followed home and gets kidnapped. One initial idea was that he was be followed on his bike and then he was start to guess he was being followed and begin to feel uneasy so he then would fall off his bike and the camera was drop on the floor and would film him being dragged away into a bush. This idea was based mainly based around the chosen location as I was thinking about what we could do instead of coming up with an idea then having to find a location which would fit into the storyline. Another idea was that the man would be holding the camera a lot of the time hinting that he was filming the young boys, I think this would be good as it would build tension that he was getting closer to the young lad.

 

Story Boards:
 

 

After deciding our initial ideas for what we wanted to include in our opening sequence I then began to story board our plan. I thought that it would be good to set the scene and start with an establishing shot of the two lads playing football using different camera movements including a zoom towards the football and shot reverse shots of the two lads talking. After that I decided that the young lad would answer his phone and get told to rush home immediately which throughout this there would be an over the shoulder zooming in shot of the phone ringing. After this there would be various of shots showing his journey on his bike which then during this there would be short shots of a mans footsteps walking towards/following the young boy. This would begin to get the audience guessing that he was following the young boy. After this is would then end up with his following him on his bike which would later lead to the boy getting scared and falling off his bike and leading to him getting dragged off into a bush. Many of this would be filmed by the camera which would have been attached to the kidnappers bike which would be lying on the floor as he would have jumped of his bike.

After thinking I was finished designing the story board and we was sorted for filming I then came back to next lesson with more ideas than the original so I began to jot them down and I produced a new story board. I think this new storyboard is better as it involved more camera movements and chances to show off our editing skills which my group was happier with as they both preferred the second one more. The storyline was similar to each other the only changes was the amount of shots and the different angles. We decided that the first shot would be taken in the cage which is next to the park where you are able to play football in so this setting was perfect for the two lads to play football in. After that I thought that it would be better to involved the kidnapper from the start as it could get the audience locked into the film straight away guessing who it was and why was he there. So I planned to keep having shots on what the man was doing in comparison to the young lads was doing and in both shots they would be both in the background to each others shots showing the audience that they was nearby each other hinting the two characters was linked. Following up this later on the kidnapper would end up on the swing which would help to show the audience which setting he was in and it would be good to do a point of view shot at this time as you could do a handheld shot swinging on the swing being the man, which I hope to turn out good. After this I decided I would then have to bring in where the young boy does get kidnapped as I didn't want it to drag and the audience get bored of seeing the same thing. After this I planned to then show a shot of the man hiding in a bush to then jump out and the young boy and lift him over the bush or through it. This is another point why it is a good decision by Laura Jo that she decided to cast an older and stronger actor to play the main male role as he would be strong enough to drag or lift the young lad over or through a bush. After this I decided that it would look good if with the action the titles came up.

Roles:

We originally organised roles for us all to complete during the whole of the filming of our sequence which we thought was very good but in the end we all kind of helped each other with everything as we thought each of our ideas was better than just one idea coming from one person. The roles below is what we originally planned to follow:

 

• Filming - All team effort
• Editing - All team effort
• Casting Director - Laura-Jo
• Directing of the shoot - Chloe
• Make up & Costume & Hair - Nikki
• Props Organiser - Laura-Jo
• Title arrangements - Chloe
• Story Writer - Nikki

 

 

Editing of 'Lost but Found'

After we had finished all of our filming and felt like we had filmed enough we then decided to upload all of the shots and pictures onto the computer which at first was a very difficult as at the start of trying to upload all of the media onto the computer it wouldn't work. Which worried all of the group as we didn't know what to do as we thought that all the our work and filming had been lost or possibly deleted. After this we then decided to back up the media on to one of our laptops just in case we lost or deleted the filming by mistake. When we eventually was able to upload our media we firstly went through it all and gave each of the shots a name, we did this so that we would find it easier to put them in order when we imported them onto the editing programme. After this step we watch all of the clips we had filmed and deleted the worse one out of them as we didn't just film one of each of the shots just in case we didn't like the end filming of it. When the media was imported onto the programme we then put each of the shots into the order so that we could easily see what worked and which didn't and we then recognised that some shots didn't follow after each other so from that we started from the start of the sequence and made sure that the sequence was able to flow. At this point Laura-Jo was in control of the editing programme with input from me and Chloe giving pointers and suggestions throughout. 

At this point we had already organised the shots in the order we had arranged and we had sorted that they all flowed onto one and another. After this we decided that we would work from the beginning to the end as we thought that would be the most efficient and quickest way. So at the start Laura-Jo decided to do the first part of the sequence so she started of my cutting one sequence in half and overlapping another one on top after I suggested to do so as we had 2 shots of the same but in one of them the start was better and on the other the ending was better quality, which in the end this idea paid off and worked out really well after ending it with a fade, which at the start we had troubles with as we thought that the fade was too slow as it didn't fade quick enough onto the next shot so we could still see the one before. Finally we sorted it by speeding up the fade. We then moved onto the puddle shot which involved the little girl running through it, which in fact we wanted a shot of the puddle which showed a reflection of a face or the 'demon' but when we was filming this was another problem we came across as we was unable to get the shot done as the camera was always shown in the reflection. We then worked on from this and decided we would simply just do a quick shot of a further close up of the young girl which Chloe took her turn on the editing programme which worked out really well. When it came to my turn editing on the programme I didn't feel that it was as difficult compared to how I found it when I used it on the prelim task. I really enjoyed editing the footsteps sequence as I was able to alter the speed and colours to be able to fit into the other sequences. At first not all of the pictures we took of the footsteps was as good quality as I thought they would have been so I had to go through the pictures with my group and delete the images which wasn't as good quality as they needed to be. So from that we had to re arrange the images to make sure they went in order to show the footsteps of the 'demon'. I decided to involve a dissolve into the footsteps so it didn't look to jumpy and fake as that wasn't the look we was going for. At the end of the sequence one of the shots is when the change happens to the character which we took a photo of the little girls face which I edited into a demon-alike figure but unfortunately we found that it was too jumpy as we put it in the sequence so we concluding to having a black out first then print screening the previous take and editing that which in the end worked much better. I used Photoshop to edit the image by using the liqidfy tool which emphasised the eyes and I also changed the colour of the eyes into a darker colour. 

Later on after we had put all the clips together sir Chloe suggested that we should also show a quick glimpse of the young girl when she was normal showing the change and hinting that something inside her is trying to take over her. Which we thought was a great idea so we worked on this and played around with the effects and thought that a quick flash of the girl in her normal state would be a great ending to the opening sequence as it leaves the audience on a great cliff-hanger which would make the audience want to carry on watching as they're interested. After we was happy with all of the sequence we decided to chose the music and titles we wanted to use in the sequence. As we planned to use a nursery rhyme we attempted to look for one over the internet which we could use but we found this quite hard so we then decided that we could use the Alton Tower 'Thirteen 'theme song. We didn't want this the whole way through it as we thought that it would seem more like a trailer so we avoided this option. We decided to put this music in as the children had just finished swinging and the young boy gets called to go home by his mum. I found that this worked really well as it fitted in with all the action at the same time. But after we decided this I thought that there was too much speech going on and too little music but Chloe and Laura-Jo didn't think we need music throughout the whole of the opening sequence so we then agreed that we would have it from when the little girl runs to the park. After this we also made other alterations overall. First of all we darkened the lighting at the start and then imported a cross dissolve after Charlie (the young boy) gets off the swing to go home. We did this to show a change so the audience would guess something bad or tragic was going to happen, we also decided that we need a more clearer to show this change so we changed the colour change to black and white.

Finally because of our bad time management we didn't have time to finish the whole of the titles before our first draft hand in so that Chloe volunteered to take control of the title sequences only was able to do our producers titles and the 'Lost but Found' titles. From this I think we will as a team work on our time management more so that our next hand in date our work will be complete and up to high standards as at this point in time I don't think our opening sequence is as good as it should be. Below is our first draft of our opening sequence:



Overall I'm not that impressed with our final draft as for one I don't understand the narrative and I'm guessing other people wouldn't either. When we got our feedback I wasn't surprised that it was good or positive as we had a lot to re-film. I think that we could easily do much better work if we put more effort into it and paid more attention to the narrative and story line of the sequence. I think the end of the sequence is a bit too unexpected and confusing as you only get to see a glimpse of the changed young girl. Also at the end I think that we should re film it and put in a tilt camera shot up to the girls face and instead of having a young boy standing behind her we should have an older adult so that it looks more convincing that it is someone scary or demon like. Another point I find that needs changing is the sound. Although at that point in time we thought the music was perfect we later looked back on it and decided it didn't match up to the filming on bit as we found that it didn't fit into the sequence. So from this we are going to look for another piece of music which is able to play throughout the sequence and another point on the sound is that the dialogue isn't as clear and loud because of the wind. Because of this we will have to re film the speaking parts especially at the beginning between the mum and daughter which could help towards making the storyline more clear.

Filming of 'Lost but Found'

After creating our last and final story board we then planned a date, time and location for our filming, we came to the conclusion that our location would be at a park nearby to all of our houses so that it wasn't hard to get to and so that if we need to re film something in the future we could easily do this. At the same time as deciding which location we wanted for our opening sequences we had to consider a place which had a woods nearby, a public playground, involved a park, puddles as throughout our plan  we included all of these examples. After deciding our final decision of a location we then decided what equipment we would need to complete our filming which included of:

• 1 Tripod
• 1 Camera
• Actors (One young girl and boy and a mum)
• Costume
• Make up
• Teddy bear
• Gas mask

 

On the day of filming the weather was thankfully not dull and horrible so it was a successful day of filming in my groups eyes as we got everything done and I didn't actually take too long. Also thankfully all our actors we chose was reliable so they both turned up so we wasn't let down and also all of our group members also turned up so that from the start of the day everything was going to plan.

We all individually took a turn of filming as not only we all wanted to be fair to one and another we all wanted to boost up our skills and knowledge of the practical work. Thankfully we have 3 team members in our group so that we all was able to help each other for instance as one of us was filming another was able to direct the actors and another was able to see if everything looked okay so the job of that member would to look over everything. I really enjoyed filming because I had never done it before so it gave me great experience to get use to the camera and I also really enjoyed using the tripod as it made the filming a lot easier as you didn't have to hold the camera and make sure you held it right. Even though I have used a tripod before as I do photography I have never been able to use it in so much depth as I did that day. At times we found it a struggle to be able to move the tripod as sometimes the tripod would sink into the mud also another problem we came across was that once we altered the tripod size in height we struggled to get it the same later on if we needed to re-film something so a tip for next time would be to not adjust the height of the tripod until we had finished that whole part of the sequence. Another problem which occurred throughout our filming was that because me Chloe and Elana (the mum actor)had never met the young children before they wasn't as friendly and didn't listen to us as much in comparison to Laura-Jo who was there cousin but throughout the filming we became friendlier and got use to everyone's company so it made it a lot more easier and better to film.

We didn't in fact make too many changes from our story board to our filming. But at some parts we found it a struggle to film some of the scenes we had planned as for instance we didn't think when we was planning our opening sequence that a foot step technique would work. The idea of this was to make it look like the demon was walking but we couldn't see him which was one of my suggested ideas. But fortunately when we was filming we thought that if we did each of the steps as a still image we could then put them together in the editing process and it would work better. So hopefully when we get to the editing part of our coursework this idea would work. But if I would have to re film any of the takes we did I would have suggesting to go with the plan of tilting up to the young girls face instead of just doing a head on shot. Another change we made to our original story board was that we changed the opening as where our location was there wasn't a hill which suited what we had planned but I suggested that because woods are commonly used in horror/thriller movies we should do a shot which involved the wood which in the end we did.