Feedback - 15/03/12

In today's lesson we decided to get some feedback on our product so far, as we had practically finished editing the trailer, aside from the monologue and sound effects, and our poster was complete. We set up the trailer, turned the volume up and let our fellow classmates and teacher watch it, asking for honest opinions and constructive critisism so that we may be able to apply any advise they had to offer.

After the screening, we recieved very positive feedback as a response, with comments such as "palpable tension", "very good lighting" and "brillantly shot". There was no critisism for our trailer, which we were very pleased about. A few were particular amazed by our title screen, where the words "Black Magic" melt away like blood. Now all we have to do is record a voice over for the monologue and add in the sound effects of footsteps and a muffled cry; after this, our film trailer should be completed and we can then concentrate on the magazine cover.

We have been working on the film poster throughout the lessons where we were unable to edit. Fortunetly during today's lesson we were able to finish the development of said poster. It has a black background, with half of our villains face made up in words and the other half fading to black to give a 'floating head' effect. "Black Magic" is in large text below this image in dark red, and the actors names are above this in white. Below the title is the smallprint, in white, the font of which took us ten minutes to find and perfect - we wanted to look as professional as possible, and all the smallprint on film posters is the same font, no matter what the genre. We then added "DM Productions" logo and the age certificate of "15 (some scenes of graphic violence)" at the very bottom, with "coming soon" in red also at the bottom. We asked for feedback, as well as suggestions for what the tagline should be. We already had "a hell of a show" in mind, but we wanted to know what our peers thought.

We were given two suggestions; for our tagline to be "it's going to be one hell of a show" or simply just "one hell of a show". In the end, we went for the former, and put it in red at the very top of the film poster, above the image of the villains face. It was also suggested by one person that we have a different image of the villain, where he has his top hat on and is pulling it down at an angle, but as no one else thought that our original image looked bad, we decided to ignore this advice. We want to keep our poster simple, just like our trailer and magazine will be, and so there may be such a thing as too much if we change the image to the one suggested.

Reshoot - 10/03/12

Due to the problems with lighting that I mentioned in my last blog, we had to refilm the 'walking' scene with the villain. We decided that rather than filming in the same location and attempting to block out the light, we should think up a new location and luckily we found one - the drama hall within school. With the curtains pulled across, the main lights off and a spotlight focussed on our villain, it looked very atmospheric and the curtains added to the 'magician' feel. This new performance stage feel that the drama hall gave us meant that we were able to experiement with new ideas such as filming our villain flipping a coin in a menacing manner or walking through the closed cutains like a ghost. Of course, these ideas would be tested later on in editing.

Again, the lighting wasn't perfect. The spotlight was too bright and we weren't able to darken the area any further without the camera being unable to pick up any footage. Daniel and I will fix this in editing using lighting effects. Now, with all our filming completed, we have a very small checklist to consider:

• Record the monologue
• Add sound effects
• Edit everything together

After all of this is finished, our media production should be finished.

Major Editing - 04/03/12

Over the weekend we decided to start on some of the major parts of editing on the footage we had filmed so far. We had to do this out of school hours as Daniel wanted to change the editing program that we were using - previously we had been using Adobe Premier Elements on his laptop but now we are using Adobe Premier Pro, which isn't on his laptop, and so the editing of the film cannot be done within school. His reasons for this change were that Premier Pro gives a wider range of options and effects for video and that this software as well as the laptop itself was struggling to render the footage; our main problem with this was the lag.

We created title screens for our trailer first, which are "Black Magic" and "Coming Soon". We used Adobe After Effects for this to get a professional look - Daniel had previous experience with this program and so he found it easy to use, whereas I needed some coaching. Using the help of a tutorial we had found on the internet, we were able to complete our title screens quickly. For the title screen "Black Magic", the effect is that the words are made of blood that drips down the screen - this was done using stock videos of 'blood' dripping which we then masked over our words. We repeated the blood effect for the "Coming Soon" title screen, only this image was static and so no blood dripped. We made sure to use the traditional horror colours, red, white and black for these title screens as they create the correct ambience and follows the codes and conventions of real horror trailers.

Next, we created a title screen for the production company, something which features at the beginning of all trailers no matter the genre. We made up our production company, calling it DM Productions and used the internet once again to help create the title screen. We wanted the logo to appear misty and ghostly which was easy to create with the internets help, and then we added our title screens to Premier Pro ready for editing together with the filming.

Now we put all of our footage and title screens in the correct places in chronological order to get a sense of where we were going with the trailer; unfortunately, we still didn't have the 'walking' scene, so we were unable to actually editing everything together. Daniel had prevously created a 'luma key' preset which he added to the clips to give them a better look, making them darker and more focussed This effect is what we had wanted all along from the beginning of production, as it is conventional of horror trailers to look that way.

Lighting Issue - 01/03/12

During today's lesson whilst sorting through our clips we realised that the filming that we had done last week (the villain walking down a corridor) was not good enough for our film and that we needed to reshoot. This, of course, meant that we hadn't finished filming yet. The issue with these clips were that it was too light when we had filmed, and when we went into the 'editing' options, then to 'lighting', we couldn't quite get the look we needed to create the tension we had hoped for in the trailer. It was either too light, or so dark that we couldn't see our villain. After many attempts to recover these scenes, we had to come to the conclusion that reshooting had to happen.

Because of the lighting issue with the corridor we will be using, we decided that we could use black card/paper or bin liners to block out any natural light from the skylights that had ruined our shooting last week.

Yet again we were unable to edit much together so we decided to start using photoshop to put our magazine cover together. We have images that we took last week of our villain. So whilst Danny went on the internet to try to find information on lighting effects, I cut the image out using the Cut tool and put it onto a blank background. Danny came back in, with an idea for the poster, where the villain is the only image rather than having the victim in the background and we would try to use the effect of words making up the image of the villain. Our teacher said that the only way that would work would be if there was some sort of monologue over the top of our trailer. We thought about this, and set to work creating this monologue. In order for the monologue to work we would have to change the background music from "Running up that Hill" by Placebo to something else. We chose a sound clip of eerie music to replace this song. It would be a lot easier but we still have to email the record company who created it for the copyright permission.

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.