Filming Plan/Last of the Filming - 23/02/12

In today's lesson, the rest of the class continued with their editing but because we still needed to finish filming, we decided to use our time differently but still effectively. We created a timeline of everything we wanted to happen in our trailer. The list looked like this:

• Placebo's "Running up that Hill" begins
• Shot of the back of Scott as he walks down the corridor, low angle
• Cuts to a stationary high angle shot of Melissa tied up, struggling
• Cuts to another shot of Scott walking at a low angle
• Cuts to a similar stationary high angle shot of Melissa, getting very scared now
• Cuts to the penultimate shot of Scott walking
• Cuts to the panning shot of Melissa, can see the fear in her face
• Cuts to the final shot of Scott walking
• Cuts to an extreme close-up of Melissa, can see the fear in her eyes
• Cuts to Scott abruptly halting, the camera pans round to his face, he smirks
• Cuts to Melissa, light hits her face as the door has opened, see her panic
• Fades to black with a booming non-digetic sound
• Cuts to Scott noticing the camera as he sharpens his tools, slams the door angrily
• Cuts abruptly to "Black Magic" title screen with booming non-digetic sound, then it fades into -
• A hammer being held by Scott, dripping with blood, we can hear Melissa's muffled crying
• The crying continues as the next title screen, "coming soon", appears on screen with no fad
• Cuts straight to the glove being thrown on the floor, covered in blood, we hear footsteps getting quieter
• Fade to end

We were able to find a decent top hat in the performing arts cupboard, so we were able to add into the scene where the camera pans round to Scott and he smirks that he also takes off the hat he has been wearing up until then, so that we wouldn't have to film everything where he hadn't had the hat all over again. 

After school we completed our filming. Before this, we took a picture of Scott wearing the newly found magicians hat for the magazine and couple more for the poster, and then we went to the D.T. corridor to film the "walking" scenes. Like we had planned, we filmed low angle shots of Scott walking whilst following him with the camera. We managed to get it all in one shot - following him with the camera, panning up to his face and he smirks, takes off the hat. Once we knew we were able to do this all in one shot, we filmed it twice more. Later we will be able to edit this properly and create the trailer we bullet pointed earlier in class. Next, we went into our favourite set, the D.T. room, and began to film our new idea that was born from the jump cut idea. Instead of a traditional jump cut, we decided that occasionally during the trailer, an image of Scott screaming should appear for a split second, so that his characters insanity can be conveyed in this way instead. To do this, we put the room in complete darkness, with a torch place just below Scott's face in the classic "ghost story" position, and filmed him screaming with his head in different directions. We can later edit this into our trailer and it should hopefully look good. The filming is finished now, the only thing left to do is take a photo of me dressed in my character for the poster. 

Clipping Footage - 16/02/12

Once again, our class was editing in todays lessons but we still didn't have all of our filming completed so instead Daniel and I decided to get the footage we already had in chronological order and then cut them down to desired length. Once we had done this, we discussed how to film the next set of clips, such as the 'walking' scene as well as our new location. We discussed this at length, going to every last detail so that we could be prepared in case anything went against our plans.

We decided that the filming had to be done within the next four days. During this filming we also had to take photos of our villain and victim for the magazine cover and film poster. These images would be of the villain looking at the camera and tilting his head - for the magazine cover - and half of his face, looking evil - for the film poster.

Editing Begins - 09/02/12

In today's lesson, our teacher decided that editing could be started for the majority of the class and so she brought in two laptops for two groups to use, but Daniel and I, and another group, wanted to use our own laptops. Everyone was using iMovie to edit together their clips, but Daniel and I decided to use Premier Elements, an Adobe package for editing.

As we hadn't finished filming yet, we couldn't edit everything so we decided to attempt the jump cut idea that we had previously scrapped because we still had the clips. To do this, we snipped the clip using the Split Clip tool until we got the correct starting and ending points of each clip, deleting anything we didn't need. We then placed the clips in random order so that we would get different emotions at different times, creating an insane/disorientated feel, which mirrors the mind of the magician - very unstable. Once we had randomly placed them perfectly, we played it to see what had become of them. Unfortunately, it didn't work, as the clips were too sudden and harsh with not enough fluid movement for it to look good or professional. Once again, we scrapped the jump cut idea, but it will always be in the back of our minds.