Task 1- Research
To start off our suspense piece, we had to start by researching. We have done this over the course of around two weeks, researching things such as camera angles, colour theory and lighting. We started off by having to come up with a mini suspense piece that was 5 shots long, no less and no more, and we were not allowed to edit any of it and had to just let it play through. We had the afternoon to film this and it was a first and second years task. Myself, Freya, Harry, Ben and Oliver. Our piece was about a boy that ran away from someone through the college, and then ran into a dark room and shut the door, and then that person he was running away from was in there. I played the villain and Harry played the boy. The point in this task was to learn about camera angles and sizes, and to get used to the suspense side of things for our actual horror short film. This was all part of the research process. The next thing we had to research was horror films in general, and the way that they were shot, and filmed with things such as lighting and sound. I researched the purge and wrote about the way the shot angles were used when the masks were at the door. This helped us get a better understanding of how we are going to film ours. The next thing we researched was lighting and colour theory. For this, we had a lesson about it all and got a sheet of paper with all the lighting angles on them and an example of what they are.
This is the sheet we got given with all of the lighting types and angles on it. We used this for the next task, where Kane put three videos on the board and we had to analyse the lighting types on them and make notes about it all, and then read them out to the class at the end of each video. After we had done this, we had to get into pairs and create an image of a shot of something of our choice, but draw in the lighting that that image would have, and label it to explain it. We then had to explain that to the class, I did mine with Freya and Bailey. This was ours:
Design
To start off out planning process, we had to get into our groups that we are doing the horror films with a discuss ideas about draft ideas on what we wanted to film, we had a brief fifteen minute meeting with our group about this. We came up with locations we were thinking about using, and group discussions for plots during this. We also came up with who wanted to do what paperwork. We then had another meeting about who wanted to do what research. I did props and lighting, Alex did costume, Megan did makeup, Jack did location and Josh did colour and sound. For each of these things we each made a power point slide of mood boards, power point slides etc to showcase our ideas. This was to plan what of each of these we were using in our suspense piece. We made things such as mood boards, and lists. We then had to put all of this on a power point to give to Kane. But first we had to discuss a story line. Ours was about a mysterious woman who drops her sunglasses, and gets them picked up by a boy who happened to be walking by. As the boy walks further, a gang approach him and steal his diary from his backpack and assault him down an alley. This diary is how he communicates with the world as he is deaf. The woman then comes and scares them all, leading them to run away and the boy gets his dairy back. We thought if we kept the story line simple we could make it a lot better and film if a potter better than if it was over complicated. During this planning process, one thing i think our group could have worked on is communication, such as who is doing what, who has different ideas etc as we weren’t so good at that, but learned from it during this process and it ended going quite well from that point forward. Before the shooting days, we made sure all of our paperwork was complete. We dedicated certain paperwork to different people so the process was done faster. Josh did shot lists, I did scene breakdowns and risk assessments, Jack did call sheets. We ended up getting this all done on time however we forgot to bring a shot list to set which is something we have now learned not to forget.
production
When we arrived at set, we practically got going straight away and started filming as soon as we had location scouted the area. To start off with it was a pretty quick process and we were getting it done reasonably fast but in good quality. The weather was good throughout the day until it got dark with was good for filming. We were filming it all in order as it made it easier for us with planning and location. We started off in the garden outside the hostel, which was perfect because it had the abbey in the background just like we needed. Even though we did not plan to film here, it worked out for the better, so that was the first change we made to our script. We then moved on to the abbey for the woman’s scene. This caused quite a bit more stress as the abbey closed at 2:30 instead of 3 because of high winds so we had to get it done fast, because when we got there, members of the public were taking pictures so it held us up a little bit, but it all turned out okay as we got it done. As it for later on in the day the weather got a lot worse which we were not expecting for so we ended up not being able to film the most important scenes that night, and couldn’t do it in the morning as the makeup couldn’t be done again. To solve this we had a group meeting with Kelly to discuss what we were going to do and how we were going to fix this problem. We ended up changing the story a little bit, and changing around some scenes around and it all worked out perfectly in the end. However we did have a couple of issues on set at times like batteries not being charged, timings and weather, there was an incident were an actor bumped his head on the wall during filming one of our scenes which we didn’t plan to happen, but it was all okay in the end. We did managed to get it all filmed and to a good quality despite some struggles on set so i would say as a team we did pretty well. The makeup on set was exactly how we wanted it to look. We used a porcelain mask which we asked the makeup artists to put lipstick on, and blood dripping down Sienna's eyes, and the costume for her was all black mysterious clothing. The costume for Will was just his own clothes as he was just a regular boy, and the gang members were all in black hoodies with their hoods up.
Evaluation
Overall we did leave Whitby with some great shots and some amazing footage which we were all pleased with during editing, some things we did overshoot which we were also thankful for while editing. Although a lot of this project did go very well, we still have a lot to work on and we did learn a lot from it all, like to have better communication within the group while doing paperwork, charging batteries before filming, bringing shot lists to set, timing properly and more of a contingency plan. However I do think we all worked very well as a team in the end and if all went smoothly pretty much all the way through and we were all pretty with the end result. Our actors were always on set when we needed them to be in the right costume, and also all of our crew were, including film makers and makeup artists which was extremely helpful in case we needed a touch up of something, especially Sienna's makeup as that had the most detail in it. During editing, it all ran pretty smoothly as we had overshot, however we did struggle in the beginning using after effects as it was playing up but then we figure out how to fix it. Overall i think this project had some challenging aspects but was overall fun and went well.
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