I'm a student at Enfield County who is currently studying AS Media. My other A-level subjects are Maths and Psychology. I enjoy playing piano and watching comedy and mystery films.
We filmed at Morgans house on the 22nd December at 4pm. We were originally going to film a 12pm but it was too much light shone into the room, and we wanted it to be set at night.
We filmed for an hour and a half and we used Morgans brother, Kelsey, as our main actor. The shots we used were close ups of his hands, and over the shoulder shots of him watching the recordings.
For the Miss-en-Scene we made Morgans desk look messy and put up a pinboard which the investigator would use. A messy desk would symbolise that the investigator is so interested and engrossed in this case it is all he can think of right now, and this is supported with the fact that we filmed at night.
Yasmins information sheet
Along with the pinboard, another one of our main props was the File the investigator used with Yasmins name on it. This contained documents regarding the case, such as mine and Morgans written witness statements, and an information sheet on Yasmin.
We payed close attention to detail when writing these. I wrote the witness statements and Yasmin wrote her own information sheet the day of filming.
As there are two computer monitors, one of them was used for the investigator to watch the videos Morgan and I handed in to the police. On the other screen we put www.tweetping.net on fullscreen. This is a website that shows live tweets around the world. We used this to make it look like he could be tracking someone.
Starting from scratch is a major decision as when we will be around 2 months behind everyone. While we are still filming they will all be editing, but I believe starting again is the best decision as we are now somewhat experienced in choosing what ideas will actually be good. Plus, we could've spent ages trying to save what we already had, knowing in the long run it still wouldn't have looked good, resulting in a lower grade. Therefore we decided to start again and do our absolute best in making it as great as it can possibly be.
After school on Thursday 15th, Morgan, Yasmin and I went to the park. We filmed us messing about in the park and just having fun, and this will be used in our opening sequence when the private investigator is looking at the friends footage of the night of the incident. We chose to film at 4:45pm as it was quite dark and we filmed in the park as it was quite empty and to make it more believable that Yasmin could've gotten lost, as outside of the park it was quite light due to street lights and there were many people about.
Once again, we have thought of a new idea for our opening sequence. I understand that we are behind schedule and others in our class have almost finished editing whereas we haven't even filmed, but we are not worried because our new idea is much better than the last one.
In this video I'm talking about what our new idea is.
Today we're going to Morgans house to film the rest of our opening sequence.
I really like this title sequence and it may be one of my favourites as the non diegetic music is is not overpowering yet creates suspense, the audience questions what is happening and why this type of music is playing. The music builds up after the first minute to create an intense atmosphere.
The titles come up in a font which almost looks like it has been scratched on. Plus, the editing used makes it jolt on and off the screen which also adds suspense and tension to the opening title sequence.
The props used suggests that the story line is linked to crime as the person is doing things which are unusual.
As a group we watched over our recordings and we thought that the first half, the part where the girl kills another person, was terrible. We like the second part as that bit had good camera angles and techniques but we thought that it would be too short and too boring if it was just that part, as most groups film someone in their house making tea ect. Miss Foster spoke to us too and we decided to restart so we will have to plan, storyboard, film and edit all over again.
On 16th November we filmed first half of our opening sequence. We filmed from 4:30pm-6:30pm for lighting purposes as we wanted the windows in the background to show that it was the evening. Even though the main character, me, kills Yasmin by suffocating her, we used fake blood to show that she was already injured. The audience can assume that she was injured by the knife I put in my bag in the second half of the opening sequence.
Once we filmed we uploaded all our footage to the Mac.
On Friday 11th November we went to the British Film Institute (BFI) as a class for the day. In the morning Tom Woodcock spoke to us about conventions of film openings. Firstly, he spoke about Macro elements of a film opening and how important they are in the opening title sequence. Macro elements include Genre, Narrative, Character, Themes and Atmosphere. We watched three opening sequences; The Wedding Singer (1998), Napoleon Dynamite (2004) and Casino Royale (2006) and we had to fill out in our booklet how much the opening sequence provided for Marco elements. This was an good task as it made us think about what Macro elements are in our own opening sequences. Then he spoke about Micro elements such as colour, lighting, font, costume, props, setting and sound design. For this, we saw four different opening titles and evaluated what was consistent in them. Consistency helps the audience understand what is happening. Afterwards we had lunch and when we came back we saw Dexter Fletcher, an actor and director. He spoke about his three films he had directed and what he did for their opening sequences. His style is to integrate the titles into the film as he believes that the film should completely be about the film, rather than having a stand alone title sequence. His three films were Wild Bill, Sunshine on Leith and Eddie the Eagle. I enjoyed listening to his opinions as I saw what title sequences meant from a directors point of view, rather than a students.
Todays trip made me think about our groups opening sequence and possible changes we might make.
