Filming Main Task - Production

Our filming took us two days to film our thriller thoroughly. However our editing took us around 3 - 4 days because it was much more specific and detailed.

Filming Day 1

We began day 1 with myself meeting Ryan to go to his house to film. Unfortunately Mitchell was at work and Andrew was unavailable so it was just us two. We decided that

we probably wouldn't get much done so we went about arranging our setting, moving our props and drawing a risk assessment. Unfortunately we left our storyboard at home and we couldn't stick to our original plan. Once we set up our setting Mitchell arrived and we sat down and discussed how we were going to go about filming. We discussed that we needed to put in more of an effort and to make sure we have everything next time. We started to film our establishing shot at a long shot and using a panning movement while holding the camera steady to make sure the audience can see the room clearly. Also we shot a few other scenes such as our extreme close ups with an over the shoulder view of the killer cutting out newspapers. the effect of the mise-en-scene is to create a powerful menacing image of the killer so that he is represented as a formidable antagonist in the film. After a few hours we decided to call it a day and to buckle down for our second day of filming. To summarise what we achieve in day 1 we:

• Arranged our setting (moving furniture etc.)
• Created and moved props (placing weapons and cutting out newspaper clips)
• Drew risk assessment
• Thought out possible shots & angles
• Discussed what we planned to do the next day

Filming Day 2

Day 2 was much more promising everybody was present, we had everything we needed and we managed to finish all of our work. Once we managed to film every scene we wanted inside of our location we wanted to go and film at a cemetery in co ordinance to our storyboard. The only one we could think of that was local was Romford Cemetery. However we reviewed our filming and discovered that we had more than enough film, which was about 4 minutes of film to edit for our thriller and we decided we didn't need to film that particular scene and felt that it was inappropriate to the story we thought it would be best to leave it out. After alot of necessary changes to our setting such as covering up and changing the lighting as well as muffling the sounds from outside we managed to get the desired "look" for our film. Each shot went smoothly and we didn't have too many mistakes even though we went through the filming with a fine tooth comb to make sure there wasn't any shaking or jolts to make the film unrealistic. At the end of our filming we were all very pleased with our work and couldn't wait to edit it and see our finished product.

Editing

Once we uploaded our film onto the computers and the editing programme we began immediately. At first we had fun looking at what we could do with the different edits and then moved onto serious work. We wanted to look at each shot and consider the framing and the mise-en-scene and work out how we could edit some aspects of these shots to emphasize the tension and suspense. We thought that certain shot edits were inappropriate for our film such as wipe cuts and montages. We stuck to simple yet effective edits like, normal cuts, jump cuts, dissoles and fade outs. Once we eventually edited down our entire film we wanted to add music to really terrify our target audience. The music we chose came from http://www.newgrounds.com/ in the music section and we fell in love with it once we heard it. The track was just the right length for our film but we still needed to cut down certain parts so that the nondiegetic music was related to what was being seen. However we needed to include some diegetic sound which meant that we needed another scene at the end of our film to finish it all off. Fortunately we already shot this scene and the slam of the hand on the window really creeps the audience out and finishes our film spectacularly. We noticed that in some of the extreme close up shots the camera frame was not steady. We felt that this would be an advantage for us because the jolty, disorientated movements suggests a distorted psychological state from the point of view of this character. Once we had finished our film we needed to input our names to finish our production off. We decided to put these in the establishing shot and throughout certain shots in the film that were appropriate.