Editing Update

Today we successfully completed the editing for our thriller opening "Misplaced". We are pleased with our work and are glad to finally have it finished. We are now looking forward to hearing what people think about our opening and their feelings towards the effect that we have tried to create. Not only this but whether or not people believe it is a success. We hope you enjoy:

Progress Report

Today was our first lesson back after our half-term break in which we were all present. Today we began to look at the evaluation questions and criteria for our blog, not only this but we also started the final stages of editing our thriller opening in which we now believe is 95% complete. As a group we found today very productive and hope to have finished our opening and have got well into our evaluations by the end of the week. We will be sure to post any further progress accordingly.

Alternative Music For Our Thriller Update

Following on from recent posts relating to our second audio track within our thriller opening we have since chosen to go with a song or title called "Paregoric" which again we found via www.freeplaymusic.com under Ambient Figures Vol 2. We decided on this particular track in favour of "Floatate" and "Portent" as we believe that they weren't exactly what we were looking for in the end and we discovered that "Paregoric" worked much better with the our opening and the effect we were trying to create.

Alternative Music For Our Thriller

This is an alternative piece of music we could use for our thriller opening, again this piece of music was found on www.freeplaymusic.com. We were unsatisfied with one our current pieces of music so i decided to have another look to see what i could find and I managed to find "Portent". I decided to upload a 30 second snippet of the audio onto our YouTube channel:

Again we hope this will create the kind of sinister and dark effect we are looking for within our opening.

Editing Update

Today was yet another opportunity for us to continue the editing of out thriller opening. It was a very successful as we managed to complete our rough cut for Misplaced. The footage still needs a lot of work, however we were given a deadline to have a rough cut posted by the end of today.

Please feel free to provide us with your feedback and thoughts on the video as it really would help us out a lot, thank you.

Credit Tutorials

This particular video helped us when it came to placing our credits within our thriller opening and we found it very useful.

Editing

Today was the first day we managed to actually start editing our opening. All of us were present and we made good progress, we still have to sort out some of the music, tweak a few shots and just give the footage an overall tidy up. However so far we are relatively pleased with our curent progress and we will be sure to post any developments regarding the completion of our opening on here in the very near future.

Tutorials That We Found Useful

As a group we decided to watch a few Final Cut tutorials to gain a better insight into the technology of the software and how it works as to try and gain the most out of it when it comes to editing our footage. These are some of the tutorials we found useful:

We will continue to look at tutorials like these throughout the editing of our opening to help us get the most out of our footage. 

Evidence of Using Props

This is the padlock we used in our thriller opening. We used this padlock as it was already in place at the filming location and in that respect was very useful to us and ment that we could keep continuity within our filming and also meant we didn't have to buy a separate padlock just for this shot.

This is the set of doors we used as we did not film at the deserted barn there was no set of gates for us to use so instead we used these doors at the cricket club. This was very useful to us as they helped to create the effect we were looking for and were very convenient placed for us to film.

As it snowed we decided to use sticks and twigs to create Rosies message. This was very effective and was very simple to create. This helped us greatly when it came to filming as we were able to design the message any which way we wanted as the snow made it very easy for us to display a clear image.

Lighting In Our Opening

The overall lighting in our thriller opening is bright as the snow helped to light up our shots, however having said this some shots are darker than others. This could be due to time of day, as the day went on it got darker. Not only this but the amount of light coming into the camera lens may have also had impact on the lighting of some of our shots, here are some examples below:

This shot is bright and can everything within the shot can be seen clearly.

In contrast to this, this shot appears much darker and not only this but there is in fact a gloved hand placed on the tree, however the shot is too dark and this cannot not been seen. This is disappointing for us as it would have been very effective within our opening.

Camera Techniques Used In Our Opening

We used a variety of different camera techniques and shots, these were:

Close Up - We used a total of seven close up shots in our opening.

1 and 2. Rosies feet when walking across the tracks from two separate angles.
3 and 4. Rosie playing with the snow in her hands from two separate angles.
5. Rosies face when confronted by Nigel by the deserted train tracks.
6. Nigel unlocking the padlock.
7. Nigel shutting the door

Mid Shot - We used a total of eight separate Mid shots in our opening.

1. Rosies balancing on edge of the tracks, this could also possibly be considered an establishing shot.
2. Rosie playing in snow by edge of the tracks.
3. Rosie sitting on the railing by the edge of the track.
4. Rosie playing with snow whilst sitting on the railings by the edge of the track.
5. Nigel creeping up behind Rosie.
6. Nigel taking Rosie "home".
7. Nigel unlocking the door.
8. Nigel walking away from the door.

Point of View - We used two point of view shots in our opening.

1 and 2. We used two separate point of view shots of Nigel watching Rosie to give the impression that Rosie may be in danger and is being watched by mysterious character.

Over The Shoulder - We used just one over the shoulder shot in our opening.

1. Again we used this to create tension and to give the audience a greater impression that Rosie is being watched.

Pan - We also only used one pan shot in our opening.

1. We used this at the end of our opening to create a greater and more dramatic effect when revealing Rosies "Help Me" message.

Overall we produced over twenty shots within our opening and we believe we have the right shots in place for what we need to make this into an effective and successful opening.

Changes Made Whilst Filming

We made a few changes to our opening whilst filming, these changes we mainly camera shots we decided to add and how we decided to create Rosies message for the final shot.

We decided to add more shots of Rosie playing by the deserted train tracks to make our opening longer and add to the effect we were trying to create in which giving the audience the impression she is young, innocent and happy. Due to the show this was very easy to achieve as we created numerous close up and mid range shots of Rosie playing with the snow.

We also added a shot of Nigel walking with Rosie to the "Warehouse" and removed the shot of Nigel grabbing Rosie's hand at the deserted train tracks as we felt this worked better with the continuity of the footage.

Not only this but we also decided not to have a shot of Nigel closing a door on Rosie at the warehouse as we did not have access to the inside of the warehouse and as a result of this the shot was not feasible so we created shots that provide a similar effect to that of what we were looking for.

Again due to the snow we decided to create Rosies "Help Me" message from sticks and place them on top of the snow this was actually very helpful to us as it meant that the message stood out more.

Overall some simple and not too major changes were made that we hope will benefit us when it comes to finalisation of our thriller opening.

Filming Update

So despite the snow, today we finally managed to film all the footage needed for our thriller opening. We managed to capture a variety of shots which we had planned out and the weather conditions added the type of effect which we believe will now make our opening even more effective. We are happy with our work and now look forward to getting down to editing the footage and creating the opening for all to see.

Filming

Despite the snow, we have all successfully made it the selected filming location and are on site ready to film.

Meeting 10 - 3/2/12

Today we had our final meeting before we plan to film on Sunday. Everyone attended and we discussed and finalised all the plans that we've got in place and how we plan to operate when it comes to filming. Not only this but we also began to start creating the credits for our opening which was very productive as we managed to complete almost 40% worth of the sequence in the space of an hour. We have everything we need for sunday regarding equipment, we are ready. We will post our progress in the very near future.