Storyboards and scripts

For our piece we did not use a script this was due to we were not planning to do an opening scene because we wanted the audience to focus mainly on the different images that where appearing. Also if we did have the character using dialogue it would create more personality and identity which we did not want as it would then help show the contrast of the mental and normal side to the character.


Here is our story boards below in a  link
i have made the storyboards on the computer and i have transfered them onto a software on the internet call prezi to make it easier to view them.

http://prezi.com/6ugnylxwekzi/edit/#7

Equipment used

For our piece we used different Equipment to research, film and edit. From research we used the computer and internet to research different films that had where simular to ours. For filming we used from the media department at totton college a tripod and a sony handycam camera. we also used different props and costumes which are entitled in the blog as "props" and "actors and costumes". For editing we used the computer and used the media editing software of Adobe premier pro.

Other equipment that we used for filming to helo shoot our film where when we shot the blood dripping scene we used two chairs to lay a sheet of glass on. This was because we wanted to have the blood dripping as if into the screen. For this, in effect it would have to drip onto the camera but would also damage at the same time therefore we resorted to a glass sheet instead and held the camera underneath the glass. To add more distortion the glass was also foggy.

Time Magagement

Structuring Process Time
When it came to planning how we were going to structure our time on when and what we where going to do. we planned what we were going to do the following lesson in the previous lesson so that it enabled us to be on task every lesson and be prepared for example if we needed to bring props to the lesson.

Filming
Due to editing being fetal to our film as it relied on the different types of speed, cuts, effects etc. we wanted to make sure we had enough time to do this allowing extra time just in case we needed to re-film. This led us to plan to have filming done for about the week.

Editing
for editing we did not have a set plan on which part we where going to do unlike doing to the filming. However, if we did not finish a certain task within the editing like the credit titles or music we would set a target for the next lesson to finish it by the first part of the lesson.

Setbacks
In our group we had some setbacks. These where when people in the group either forgot props for the lesson. also at the beginning we set to a slow start for example when we where gathering ideas for different shots as there where so many different ideas and we did not know how to narrow them down. However, even though we did have these set backs we did not waste time as we used the time to capture the film that we already had so far. This worked to our advantages as it saved time while editing. Another set back we had was when we where capturing a segment of filming we saved it in the wrong area which resulted with the following lesson while opening the file half off what we captured from the previous lesson was not there. therefore we had to recapture.

Layouts and Designs

For our piece our set designs where mainly set at college. This was due to where we lived far apart from each other it was easier to shoot for filming. However, as we went around college we found that it was a great design for our film. This was due to the white walls with blue strip made a good setting for a mental hospital due to the clean white wall. Also the lift in the college had a grid lined window that had a light which went on and off after a certain amount of time when we did a test shot it worked really well. Plus, the lift gave a feeling and related to how the character can be trapped. For example he is trapped with the madness of his mind and the grid lines looked like or gives an interpretation of how he is in a cage. Another reason why we used the college as we wanted to have the hangs mans noose suspended from a height which the rugby post was great to do this from.

However, the college was not the only set we used this was due to when it came to film scenes like the toast, using the refectory did not send a vibe of a homey feel. Due to this we used my house as for filming the alarm clock,toast and getting ready which would also make it seem more realistic to the audience.

Research

Even though this is a title sequence from a television show and has a different genre i feel that it could be useful towards are piece. This is due to it using shots that are sequenced together very fast creating mystery and disorientation. I like the way they have used different types of symbols but have mixed them together and rather than having classical music like Hannibal it has rock music. However this may not be helpful as it includes lyrics which have different connotations. Also with these flashing scenes they have alternated them with normal scenes (showing each character) which gives us an idea on how long our crazy scenes should last. Also an aspect of which i like from this is where they use symbols that change into the credits. i like this and it could fit with our film as it shows how behind every name/person there is a side(the symbol part) that is hidden from the rest of society.

Actors/costumes

In our film we had to find a male to act in our piece as the character is male. We used Fred who was our actor. He did the scenes where the character had his metal/crazy flashbacks like rocking to and fro sitting down. We wanted to film Fred without showing his face to leave the character as a mystery. This was important as within the human race the only thing that differentiate us is our face as we are all different therefore if we took away are characters face it took away part of his identity which enabled us to flip from the different personalities easily. Not only was this helpful as we had another actor to play the role which was my brother as i did some filming at home. Due to using to different actors it was even more important that we did film the face.

the costumes we used had to be to one extreme to the other to enhance the difference between the two different personalities. For the phycotic side we used a straight jacket as this is a strong ideological symbol of a mental person. other the other hand for the reformed side to the character we used a suite which was black, white shirt, black tie and the brown shoes. i didn't want to use black shoes as the brown give a slight indication of the off set part of his past where they don't match the suite that's black. We wanted to also use a black tie rather than one with colour as this shows that he is unhappy.

Props

for our piece we had to used different props here is a list of them and why they where used.

• alarm clock, toast, knife,plate,butter,= to help create the realism of being a home and are items that we immediately relate to getting ready for work/waking up.
• rope = for hangs man noose for effect of crazy
• fake blood = as most iconic symbol for horror genre, we also used a sheet of glass to drip the blood on to.
• pencils,newspapers,books,chair,desk,sheets of paper= things that would be found on a desk normally we used these as we wanted to create a theme / give a hint to show that the character had OCD, therefore we thought that the best way to do this was to show it through a very organised and tidy desk. for example we had the pencils lined up in height and colour order.

Logged Shots

 After we filmed all of our different shot we sat down to log them all. this was due to we did a number of different takes which some where good and others where not which is shown in the table. This anabled to save us time when it came to capture and also to see what footage we had so if we where missing a sence we could check the logs. there are different tables from the different days shooting and logging. Also i the tape did start back at the 0 seconds time therefore i sectioned it into 3 parts with made it easier to review.

Start time of shot	Finish time of shot	Description
24 seconds	49 seconds	Fred rocking back/forth in straight jacket
40 seconds	49 seconds	Quick footsteps in snow
59 seconds	1 min 6 seconds	Footprints in snow
1 min 7 seconds	1 min 13 seconds	Toothbrush/toothpaste
1 min 23 seconds	1 min 27 seconds	Running water
1 min 47 seconds	2 min 1 seconds	Buttoning shirt
2 min 7 seconds	2 min 16 seconds	Struggling in straight jacket
Take two filming
16 seconds	26 seconds	Close up of tidy desk
42 seconds	52 seconds	Opening book
53 seconds	1 min 2 seconds	Hanging rope (cloud background)
1min 4 seconds	1 min 44 seconds	Hallway hanging rope
2 min 8 seconds	2 min 22 seconds	Tying shoes

No. shot	What?	Start	Finish	Last	Take	Keep?
1	alarm	00:17	09:15	9 seconds	1	X
2	“ “ “ “	09:23	15:00	06 sec 37	2	X
3	“ “ “ “	15:07	21:00	5 sec 53	3	KEEP
4	“ “ “ “	21:17	1:10:11	49 sec	4	X
5	“ “ “ “	1:12:11	1:14:17	2 sec 56	5	KEEP
6	Tie/mirror	1:15:08	1:15:23	5 sec 15	1	X
7	“ “ “ “	1:15:23	1:25:18	10 sec	2	KEEP
8	“ “ “ “	1:24:16	1:28:10	4 sec	3	KEEP
9	Tie close up	1:29:15	1:31:18	2 sec	1	X
10	“ “ “ “	1:31:18	1:35:11	4 sec	2	KEEP
11	Jacket back	1:35:11	1:38:18	3 sec	1	KEEP
12	Jacket mirror	1:38:20	1:42:12	4 sec	1	X
13	“ “ “ “	1:42:13	1:45:59	3 sec	2	KEEP
14	Walk door	1:46:00	1:54:10	8 sec	1	X
15	“ “ “ “	1:54:11	2:03:06	9 sec	2	KEEP
16	toast	2:40:01	2:44:08	4 sec	1	KEEP
17	Blood	2:44:09	2:56:08	12 sec	1	X
18	“ “ “ “	2:56:08	3:16:21	20 sec	2	KEEP

Also from these logs it shows that we would have enough footage that would lead us to meet our film length target of two mintues.

10/02/10- lesson review

On the Tuesday morgy came in to the classroom to edit the music as it was only less than a minute long. she did this with different techniques so that the edit of the music could not be shown easily. When we heard it in the lesson, i just looked at the filming rather than the edits to get the true atmosphere and it was really good. The music built up in tension at just the right times and felt really effective which made the piece feel more dramatic. In the lesson we felt that there needed to be more layers in the music, morgy went up in the music tech room to make a small base line that we could use as well as a production tune as we could not find a suitable one on the Internet. while that was happening me and Fred looked at the audio of the shots to sort out the hissing sound in the scenes with the alarm clock and the toast. Also we had to edit the audio as in some of the filming there was extra sound like talking that we could pick up on.

Once morgy came back from the tech room we added the sounds and it looked really good. The production sound was space like which went well with the logo as it is two moons together. Then we sorted out the different levels of sound when all the music was together.

5/02/10 and 8/02/10 - lesson review

In this lesson we carried on with finishing the credits making sure we got the right order. While we where doing this Reno, our teacher, took a look at are work so far and pointed out to us that the font that we have used look very armature and unprofessional. Reviewing his comment we all agreed and found that we needed a new style in our credits. We then went with a black background and just having white simple credits in the font courier new. This made it more sophisticated and we thought it suited the film as the white on black is a contrast like our characters "normal" and mental mind.

On the Monday we carried on finishing the credit by finishing changing them. Once we did this we found we still had 35 seconds left to reach the 2 minutes. So we decided to space out the credits a tiny bit and Aimee sorted out the fading in and out of the credits. With these adjustments the piece looked even better.

1/02/10 and 3/02/10- lesson review

Last lesson i was not able to come into college as i was ill which left my group to carry on . During my absence they achieved to recapture the alarm clock scene as there was apart that was cut off while capturing. Also they started creating the credits on two clips. This was also followed by adding the production logo onto the premier pro programme and onto our film. The production logo was made by Fred on a paint type programme on his mac laptop. They also put titles on the production logo and experimented with different font types that would suite our film sequence. they decided on a red font with a white shadow which looked good.

This lesson we carried on finishing the credits through the piece. However, we saw that our film opening sequence would be very short, so instead of our origanl plan of having the credits on top of the clips we decided to have some of them in between the shots. They would have the red writing then the black background. This would add longer time and it showed variety in the titles. We also had a look at the music that we could use. We looked on creative commons to find a suitable piece. Our oringal music we had planned to use was "dinner for one" as the rock feel to the music went well with the scenes of our character rocking and struggling. We could not use this piece as it had lyrics in and lyrics already have their own connotations and narrative so they would not fit with our film. While looking on creative commons we found a piece of music by xcryil which fitted great as it built up in tension and had a edgy feel that was created by the strings. we played the music and the film of what we have done so far and it suited really well.

27/01/10-lesson review

In this lesson we had all of our shots all ready captured and worked on the editing. From the Mondays lesson we had put the footage in a some sort of ruff order. We focused on creating the quick fire shots that included one or couple of seconds of different footage as it would create the feeling of how are phychotic mans mind is always changing and turning crazy. We also felt that it would create tension as the tempo and speed of the piece becomes quicker showing the tension building up.

24/01/10- lesson review

On Friday we looked at the shots we needed and decided for the shots with the toast, alarm clock and door, to get a more realistic feel rather than filming these shots at college the best place to film them would be in a home. Due to this i took a camera and tripod home over the weekend which i borrowed from college and filmed these shots. I got my brother to act as the man in the film but as we wanted the character to be a mystery to the audience at the beginning of the film i had to careful not to get his face. Plus it also helped as in the other shots we had used Fred even though we where careful and didn't get his face to add the mystery. The first scene i did was the alarm clock. we wanted the character to reach out and turn the alarm off. They went successful. i also did the shot with tightening the tie, the putting on the jacket, walking out of the door, the toast and blood. I think the toast and blood scenes worked well as when filming the toast scene the camera picked up really well the crunching sound which was effective. Once all the filming was done i then went over all the footage that was shot and logged all of the shots.

25/01/10-lesson review

In this lesson we finished capturing the shots from the last lesson. Then we started to explore the different types of effects that was on the programme that we where using. some effects worked an others didn't. As a group we wanted to have distortion so we looked at the distort section but as we placed it on a chosen clip, we we picked at random just to have a feel of the shots which was the shot of the character rocking, however we did not see a dramatic difference and decided not to use it. one effect we did find was ghosting at first it did not look great but especially on this shot when we increased the speed it looked really spooky and reflected are characters mixed up mind.

20/01/10-lesson review

In this lesson we did some more filming. The shot that we had filmed was the scene with are character tying up his shoes as part of the "normal" side to the character. For this we used my dads sees which where smart brown shoes which were very formal and smart and reflect to the character going to work in a smart suite. For this shot we used a close up of just one shoe with Fred tying the laces. we did a couple of takes as we where in the classroom and where people walked pasted us it created a shadow with the lighting. After that we then captured the footage that we had so far due to not having the right props for the day. As well as logging are shots that we wanted. From learning from our mistakes Morgy did the capturing as before in our preliminary piece when i captured i had to recapture as i cut parts of the film in the wrong place.