Update!

Over the weekend, we filmed the majority of our trailer (minus one shot, which we are filming today) We are hoping this was successful, and if so we may begin editing either this lesson or the next. Although it snowed whilst filming this weekend, we managed to only shoot one outdoor scene in the cold surroundings, although we believe this may actually be visually effective due to this combining with the dark, eerie CCTV shot. The snow should add a blurry effect, combining nicely with our trailer's mysterious theme.

From this, in today's lesson we should be filming the stop animation/jump cut scene featuring Sophie's arm being 'cut' and 'bleeding' with a bizarre 'carving effect'. We will complete this with black nail varnish and fake blood. Once this is done, all of our initial ideas for our teaser trailer shots will be complete.

Afterwards, we hope to focus on simply editing the trailer. We have filmed a few extra shots that were spontaneous whilst filming over this past week, which may be essential alongside our other trailer shots. Once we have edited our trailer, if the shots do not feel right or if somethings missing, we are willing to discuss further ideas and film some extra scenes.

Video Diary Update

Film schedule/weather conditon for filming day 2

Update

Yesterday we filmed our prepared scenes that are displayed on the shooting schedule a few blog posts before. Various scenes were difficult to film due to weather and room, such as the window scene in my conservatory being moved to Sophie's house, as well as the 360 degree shot being difficult due to the background scenes and the amount of room whilst filming.

From this, we are filming various other shots throughout this week. We will film the 'hill' shot on Countesthorpe field in tomorrows lesson, as well as the 360 degree shot here as there will be plenty of room. The weather is forecast to be quite bad (raining and windy) this week, so this will depend on weather conditions, but we will over come this by filming on another day during this week.

Therefore, this week we will film throughout our lessons with shots that are plausible (the hill shot, the 360 degree shot and the stop motion 'cut' on the girls arm), whilst producing an opening sound and preparing/discussing our ancillary products.

Health and safety video

Costume!

Shooting schedule

This is our shooting schedule for Sunday 21st November. We are filming at both mine and Sophie's house at this time:

Weather conditions

As we are filming Saturday night and Sunday throughout the day, we are being alert by checking the weather conditions for the time of filming. From this, when we make our shooting schedule later on today, we can work around scenes that are plausible to match suitable weather conditions.

As the BBC weather websites state, the weather will be of the following:

Change in filming

After some discussion, we feel we are ready to film this weekend instead of the original 27th and 28th of November. This is due to us being ahead of our plans, on top of other commitments blocking us from filming all of our teaser trailer next weekend. Therefore, we are going to film on Sunday 21st and the following week - Sunday 28th. Hopefully we will film all of our shots within this time, although if not we will film the remaining scenes the following weekend.

Narration/title cards

As it is typical for narration to be included within trailers to depict the plot of the film, we have been discussing various ways into how we could portray this. However, upon research into teaser trailers, we realise it is not uncommon to avoid diegetic sounds or narration.

Therefore, upon discussing, we may include some speech in the editing process of our trailer. This would not include full-on narration throughout, however, but instead we will use quick clips with information on - known as title cards - likewise to the silent era. For example, we may use a shot with a black background, with text included to inform the audience some information, after a trailer depicts this wording visually. These are known as 'intertitles' and will therefore appear seperate from the 'visual titles' that we will potray throughout our trailer. Although referring to the same narrative, they are apart from one another

From this, we will also allow some shots to include the diegetic sound, such as heavy breathing within the shot, the 'final girl' screaming, etc... from this, we are following teaser trailer conventions, as well as intertextuality from the silent era.

The use of the titles cards to display information can be seen in the theatrical trailer for 'Donnie Darko', with speech being used throughout and a drumming/heart beat distorted sound throughout, with the title cards adding to further tension as an advertising device towards the end of the trailer:

Stop motion testing

In today's lesson, we experimented with stop motion. As said in our initial ideas, we want to include a shot of the 'final girl's' arm, which is being cut and slit by the demon through possession. We got inspiration from this idea from 'Harry Potter', where his arm is taken over through stop-motion and FX as a word is carved into his arm. From this, we would avoid plagiarism by only carving a bizarre marking.
Today, we felt carving a cross would be ironic due to the contrast on religion through the possession - as well as combining well with the shot featuring a priest - so therefore we drew a black cross alongside blood with coloured markings
We achieved this through indicating a mark on Sophie's arm, taking a few shots on the camera, pausing it, adding another marking, taking a few shots, and so on. Here is the video to represent this:

Experimenting with music

We have been practising with different methods in order to find suitable music for the duration of the trailer (minus the opening shot, which will feature separate drony sounds, which we may record ourselves). We have focused on the idea of a classical/dramatic/horror sound, as we feel this will make the trailer more intense and dramatic in relation to the horror images. This will add suspense and a theatrical feel.
After researching trailers, I feel that the 'Requiem For A Dream' trailer is quite similar music-wise to the music we are aiming for. It has long images that add suspense throughout, but also fast sharp shots with correlate well alongside the music. Below is the trailer for this:



Within this, it has violin sounds at the beginning - from Clint Mansell's 'Lux Aeterna' - as well as mis-mashed drum beats and a techno feel throughout.
We researched various sounds on www.freesound.org on the search bar with examples such as 'horror', 'orchestra' and 'strings' typed in, although we had no success. We also searched various soundtracks such as the above to consider using, although none were suitable or available for us e.g. the composer is still alive.
Therefore, we experimented with the AppleMac's 'GarageBand'. Having not used this before, we spent the majority of the lesson working different ways to how the music combines together. However, we acknowledged that we could combine different sounds to produce a combined tone, so we selected 'drum beats', 'violins' and 'orchestra' frequently. Although none of the drum sounds were plausible - due to being too long, too mixed up, etc... - we have decided to use a bass drum beat from http://www.freesound.org/ as it has more possibilities. We wanted to use a drum sound to separate the 'classical' feel and work well with editing the shots quicker.

From this, on GarageBand we toyed with various orchestra/violin sounds, and found a possible music piece that would be plausible with the rest of our trailer ideas. Therefore, the below video represents the music that we combined, which we featured on top of our green screen experiment in order to visually represent what our music would look like compared with a video:

Experimenting with green screen

In yesterdays lesson, we began experimenting with using the green screen, as we were debating if to use this within our trailer for a shot. This shot would include the 'final' main girl sitting down somewhere - possibly looking at her bookshelf or in her bedroom - when a shadow comes over her. We want this shadow to be large and look threatening, representing something not human.

However, once experimenting, we realised it would be very difficult to create a shadow on the green screen. This is due to the large bright image contrasting with the individual, on top of the bright lights still representing a bright colour even when we turned the lights off.

Therefore, this experiment was successful with finding out different results, although we have left this idea behind in reference to the shadow shot. However, we may decide to re-use this later on or for another shot, due to this differing from just typical camera shots.

However, the video below represents our experiments, which features a brick wall as a background as we thought this would be simple. We experiment with moving the camera around, on top of turning various lights off to give off varied lighting:

Currently...

...we are experimenting with music so that we can decide what to put as a non-diegetic sound on our trailer.

Afterwards, we will begin designing costumes for our trailer, on top of making a shooting schedule. We will also find time to experiment with the green screen, which we should be doing next lesson. With this, we will be filming a shot within our trailer - a shadow shot, hopefully - which - if visually successful - we will include within our trailer.

Props

In today's lesson, we discussed what props we will bring and who will bring what. The table below represents this:

Characters

We have decided who will play which parts within our trailer, as our characters vary. We have decided Sophie will play the main fatal protagonist, due to her blonde hair being stereotypical in linking to the 'final girl' convention. On top of this, Jess will be her brunette friend, whilst I will dress up as the 'demon' who is stalking the girl. Although we decided on this a few weeks ago, today we have concluded that I will also be the priest within our shot.

As priests' are only men, I shall dress up as a man. Although not fully decided yet, I may wear a wig/draw a moustache on, etc... as well as glasses to hide my appearance as a female. To make my costume more convincing, I will wear the stereotypical black cloaks (probably a black shirt/trousers) as well as the conventional clerical collar, to highlight the symbolism of the religion. I will only feature in the exorcism scene, where I attempt to spray holy water over fragile girl, although I myself become possessed.

Planning locations

In yesterdays lesson, we began planning the settings that we will use throughout our trailer. We did this by studying each shot on our storyboards and deciding where a suitable place to our knowledge would fit in well alongside the rest of the trailer to film.
In approximately linear order, we decided on these settings in ordering to our initial ideas on our storyboards:

• A deserted road in either Countesthorpe or Whetstone
• Ouija board scene will be in either Sophie's bedroom or living room
• The door slam scene will be in Jess' dining room
• My conservatory for window scene
• Media room for green screen with shadow effect
• CCTV shot; outside Jess' house
• Clock smashing scene; Sophie's house with her clock
• Pan around girl - Sophie's room
• Trigger objects - Jess' house
• Screaming pan shot - Cosby park
• Sophie's room for throwing scene (use a teddy bear?)
• Sophie's house with priest scene
• Fast paced shot of girl - Sophie's room
• My back garden for ketchup 'throwing up' scene
• Jump-cut of Jess (protagonist's friend) on Jess' landing
• Arm carving - media room
• Jess' house (hallway) for final shot

Dates of filming

After some discussion, we have decided to film our trailer at the end of the month - on Saturday 27th November for the 'night-time' scenes; Sunday 28th November throughout the day, and an filming that has not been completed within this time within the following weekend, on Saturday December 5th.
We feel that this is personally ideal for other commitments, as well as being realistic as we need to thoroughly plan out areas of our project e.g. a shooting schedule, as well as experimenting with various areas such as green screen and sound.