Finished!

We've had another test screening and had only a few slight problems which didn't take long at all to fix!

We've finished!

Editing

Over the past few weeks, I've been doing a LOT of work on the edit suite.

One of the things I like best about our sequence so far is the first few shots we see of Rob waking up. In this bit, Rob wakes up slowly in 2 different shots, one a CU and one a BCU. I then cross-faded them over eachother while reducing the opacity of one of them at intervals. This makes the whole sequence really disorientating and confusing, similar to how Rob is supposed to feel. We also took a tilt from his feet chained up, all the way up his body but this was too long to fit over the top and also ruined the disorientating effect and made the editing really obvious. So we decided it wouldn't be a good idea to use it. We also took some sound effects of chains clanging. This was put over the top but it just detracted from the original shots. I actually feel the music by itself accentuates the effect. Also, with our opening credit 'A film by' 'Live Wire', we put an glow on the writing and then used the 'Solarize' effect on and off to make it flash then put some electricity sounds beneath it to anchor the meaning. This was over the clip of the light turning on which also anchors the meaning.

After looking at a large selection of fonts, on http://www.1001freefonts.com/ , we narrowed down our options to:

We chose these because they all seemed fairly sinister with 'Barbed Type' being similar to the 'Twisted Pictures' logo who make the 'Saw' films. In the end though, we decided we didnt want to be too similar to saw as our film is more of a thriller than an all-out gorey horror movie. The font we decided to go with in the end was '1942 Report' as this font look sort of old and dingey, much like the set for our sequence. It's also quite out-of-line with parts seeming to be uneven which accentuates the unnerving feel of the sequence altogether.

Actual Shoot Reflections

After the first real shoot, we discovered a few things that will need to be foxed on the next shoot

• We have got to keep track of the shooting script and storyboard and not just decide on random shots - This could have saved us a lot of time that we spent just milling around and deciding there and then what the next shot should be.
  
• We need to use the whiteboard more effectively. We struggled when we were trying to edit the clips to find which was the best take. This is also due to not using the shot log as much as we should have!
  
• Stop messing around and wasting so much time! This was a MASSIVE problem. We had too many distractions there and we could have gotten so much more footage if we'd just been a bit more focused.
  
• Have less helpers. This was really the main distraction. They really helped when we were moving the stuff in the basement at the beginning and end but during the shoot they didn't have much to do so tended to muck around which made us less focused.
• We really need to make sure when we can move the stuff in the basement. We did it without asking and this resulted in some very angry caretakers! So we ended up having to move it back and then move it again later for the shoot.
• We also managed to break a light filter. This was due to a combination of carelessness and stupidity. We ended up leaving the lights on unnecessarily for too long then when packing up, the filter was too hot to handle and its easy to tell what happened next...
  
• OVERALL make much better use of the time we have and be a bit more careful with equipment.
  

Test Shoot - 24th November 2008

After filming the test shoot, the initial idea of having the killer having a very childish mind with not a lot of creepy habits etc. we looked at the footage and thought this seemed like a real cliche with it being exactly what the audience expect. We decided to change the killer and make him seem as normal as possible so he'd come in and be really friendly to the victim and treat him kinda like he'd in a hotel but then he'll have an evil streak and suddenly switch to being violent and aggressive... I personally really liked the location. The school basement was a perfect place for the shoot. It has a small window to the outside and can easily be made into pitch darkness. This is really helpful as, although we have limited space available there, the darkness is really easy to disorientate the audience so it can seem bigger and we can have more victims in different places. I also really liked the door to the basement, it was conveniently very dusty which gave a really nice effect with the blue light behind it. It made the door glow blue whichset it up really well for the shot with the hand banging against the window (above).

We originally saw our opening as being similar to the Saw films, being kinda gruesome with someone trapped knowing they are in a bad situation. I think it is still quite similar but the killer is much more accessible and easy to relate someone to. It seems as though it could be anyone that has a killer streak, you just dont know... So rather than having a distinctive characteristic like a mask or something, he is more like 'Dexter' from the TV series. Where noone ever suspects him of being a killer...

Preliminary Exercise Group 1 12E Stroppy Media Student