WELCOME MODERATOR

Welcome Moderator 

I am Oliver Macnaughton 1243 and I worked with Freddie Howe 1210 and Marcus Couling 1291.

I hope you enjoy my blog which contains all of the necessary work on the G321, the titles and openings of my fictional thriller/nori movie which I named "Lights Out". My premilinairy exercise follows immediately underneath. My 7 evaluation questions are all above. 

Movie opening

Here is my preliminary exercise http://youtu.be/fWPkX1EW8z8

Construction: Blood Sequence

For this scene, it required my character to walk around a particular room after walking through the tunnel. He wanders around the room before discovering blood on the wall. He's then attracted to a noise where he goes down back towards the tunnel, leading to the lighter sequence. This scene required a slightly more tactical approach. Firstly, we had to create blood for the scene. We decided to make the blood ourselves by making red paint with a little bit of purple paint and water thrown in as well. This was to make the blood seem fairly authentic without it looking too much like paint.

Originally, the scene was going to be longer as there would be a much longer panning shot showing off the room in its entirety. However, we decided that it was better if I saw the blood more suddenly due to the fact that the scene dragged on for much too long.

 During this scene, we also had to put the blood on the wall. We decided to put it on a  wall that had paint worn out, mainly due to the fact that we did not want to stain the building. It also added to the mis en scene as it made it seem that the building was old and decrepit.

During this scene, we also felt that the blood did not show up on the footage, which meant the audience would be unable to see it. As a result, we did a close up on my fingers to show the blood there so that the audience would be able to see it.

Making the noise was also a bit of a challenge. We basically got someone to drop a cup in the tunnel in order to attract my character's attention. However, the noise was somewhat too loud. We wanted to make it loud enough so that it would attract the character's attention but quiet enough so that it would seem like the noise came from fairly far away. We managed to achieve this by rolling the cup instead of dropping it.

Finally, we also decided to do another POV shot with the camera. When I walk out, we get the impression that someone is watching me. We did a handheld, tracking shot with the camera to show that something or someone is following me.  We did many takes, including one of the camera ducking underneath. However, the best take was of one that followed me out of the door, as we managed to get the best angle from here.

Flashback sequences

For this scene, we filmed flashbacks to show our private investigator going to the asylum before the office scene. Most of these scene was generally just my character walking around the asylum like through the tunnel entrances and many other places. These scenes, we generally felt did not add much to the movie and perhaps "padded" it out rather than getting to the actual point. Also, for the office scene, we discovered a problem as there are no mentions of me going to the asylum in the first place. As a result, most of these scenes weren't used in the final movie. We filmed around 90 seconds of footage mostly to not make the opening extremely long. 

However, whilst filming these scenes, we did get to test out some new things. For example, we tested out the idea of using the camera for POV shots. This was to essentially show that our character was being watched by some sort of unknown figure. Our opening never shows the figure being watched, except for a brief shot in the final scene. As a result, it allows for the audience to use their imagination not knowing what the actual figure it was, a little like how Steven Speileberg used POV shots for Jaws. 

Whilst a lot of footage was not used in the end, we managed to test out a lot of things that were beneficial for our final product in the end, showing some form of success. 

Editing

After finishing filming, it was now time for the editing process. This was perhaps the most challenging part of the experience as it required a lot of effort. This was due to the fact that we had to go through roughly 20 minutes of footage in order to find the takes that we liked and didn't like. As mentioned in a previous post,  we originally we had a flashback sequence that would've made up around 40% of our original idea for the movie. However, we cut this all out due to this footage seeming like unnecessary "padding". We also felt that it made the opening seem a little too long so we decided to completely cut it out.

We used two types of editing software. We used Imovie which is software that comes with all Apple computers. The other was a trial for Final Cut Pro, a more professional editing software. We used both sorts of software. We found that Final Cut Pro was better due to it having more effects but Imovie was a lot more accessible and easy to use due to using it for our original preliminary exercise. 

Filming: final scene

The final scene was meant to take place in the tunnel due to the chronology of the story. Due to the fact that the tunnel was too light, we decided to use the "dark room" a room designed to develop photography in order for there to be no light. The scene involved the private detective going into the room due to hearing a noise.
 He then lights his lighter in order to see where he's going. Suddenly, an unknown figure blows out the light, proceeding to reveal the title of the movie.
 The scene was incredibly hard to do at first because of the overall lack of light that was present in the dark room. At first, we decided to use the red light that is used in the dark room but we decided to turn off that light as well. As a result, the lighter is the only source of light in this scene. As a result, it was very hard to get the camera to focus on my face due to the lack of light. Another negative of filming this scene was using a zippo lighter. Due to the lighter being "wind proof", it made it extra hard to blow it out. Some takes worked and it did blow out whilst others didn't.  We did many takes of this scene including one where the unknown figure comes out from the side and another where he comes from behind my character. We decided on many different takes but decided on the one where he come from my side instead feeling that looked  better as well as the fact that the lighter didn't blow out when the character came from behind.

Music in our opening

Music was something that our group felt was very important in the movie making process. This was mainly due to the fact that I feel that music is one of the best aspects in creating mis en scene in a film. Our movie needed this as it was set in the 1950s, a time which had incredible  pop and jazz  music. We also felt that we needed music to establish mood for atmosphere during some of the more suspenseful scenes in the movie.
We decided to pick two songs, one for the very opening and another for the end. The first was I don't want to set the world on fire by the Ink Spots for the opening. This song, whilst generally having a happy tone has a certain mood that makes it seem old and somewhat spooky its tone, partially due to its age. Here is the link to the song below.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l6vqPUM_FE

The other song we picked was Wonderful, Wonderful by Johnny Mathis. This song was much like I don't want to set the World on Fire due to its happy but suspenseful tone. Both songs also created a sense of irony due to their happy and somewhat upbeat nature. Wonderful, Wonderful was also effective due to its whistling at the beginning which we felt would create a great noise if an echo was added during editing. Here is to the link to Wonderful, Wonderful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH0_XfxnXWI
 

Don't look now opening

During class, we decided to look at what is now known as "Britain's favorite thriller) Don't look now. Despite being a very old film being made back in 1973, there were some very powerful chords that the film struck and it allowed me to generate ideas for the thriller opening. 

It's use of the countryside as a backdrop was something in particular I took a note of. Due to its rural nature, the countryside is something that can be used quite effectively when viewing horror/thriller movies. I decided to take this into account as the area around our school depicts a lot of woodland like areas. The opening also displayed many mixed emotions throughout. There was always a sense of dread and fear throughout the opening as you feel very aware that something bad is going to happen to the main characters. I wanted to create this through our movie. We did this in a slightly different way using the old 1950s pop song as effective backdrops for feeling this dread. The movie also has some very effective images such as Donald Sutherland's character pulling the girl out of the lake. This also helped us generate character during the pre production stages of the movie. Whilst there are no children in the movie, the main female character has lost her husband, much like the parents losing their children in this movie. The opening was highly effective in teaching me in how to create atmosphere in a film opening and how it should immediately grab the audience in.

Original location planning

During the very early stages of production, we decided to find locations around Surrey and the UK that could possibly be abandoned. We found an area on the internet called Cane Hill Asylum which was fairly near where we lived. Due to the fact that the large majority of our movie opening was set in an insane asylum, we decided to have a look around the website to see if there was any way of getting in. Whilst we eventually discovered that the building had been completely demolished back in 2010, it was a very interesting way of discovering new locations on the internet as well as possible places to film, despite the lack of success of getting into the place.
Here are some images of the asylum to show what our original location planning was going to entail

Props

Over the course of filming, there were certain props that we needed in order to make the 1950s feeling for our movie seem authentic. For example, we needed a typewriter, a pack of cigarettes for the detective,an old vinyl record player and an old rotary telephone. Most of these props were only used for one particular scene which was the office scene  Some were fairly easy to find. For example , cigarettes were easy to find as adults could provide us them for the making of the movie in its entirety.  Others  were also fairly easy to find such as the record player and the rotary telephone as our teacher  had managed to provide these props for us.  The hardest prop to find was the typewriter. This was due to it being an extremely rare item to behold. Luckily, our teacher also managed to find this for us as well as she used a website to get a hold of a broken one so we could shoot the scene

Filming: tunnel sequence

For this scene, my character was filmed walking down a tunnel to get to the asylum. In order to create a better sense of atmosphere and dread, we decided to film a couple of POV shots in order to get a feeling like my character was being watched. We originally used a GoPro for this sequence but decided that the footage seemed too "shaky" making it hard to see. In the end, we decided to use the actual camera for this sequence instead but with no tripod. Also, we originally were going to do a POV from my perspective in order for the audience to understand what it was like in my shoes. However, we didn't think the footage looked particularly promising so we decided to change this part once again.

We used multiple shots for this sequence to make it seem far more threatening. We had a shot of me being watched from behind as well as one of me being watched from above. I thought this was an excellent idea due to the fact that it created a sense of dread. The way it's shot makes it the audience doesn't know whether I'm being watched by multiple figures or just by simply one that perhaps has some sort of supernatural background to it. 

Filming:office scene

This was perhaps the hardest to film sequence out of the entire movie. This scene required a lot of preparation in order for it to work. The main things that we had to do with the scene was to make it look authentic. It had to look very period based. As our school does look very old, it was good that there were certain rooms that still had an authentic feel. However, there were still certain things we had to do in order to make it even more so.
The first was the collection of props. As mentioned on a previous post, the majority of the props were largely for this scene alone. We prepared for this scene and managed to get all the props that we needed.

The room is also an office in real life where many important meetings happen in the school. As a result, we had to organize timings when we're able to do it. We also had to coincide  this with the times our actress could do as well. Once, we were able to solve and get a suitable time, then we were on our way.

During the actual filming, we  still had to make the scene look authentic as possible. This meant that we had to remove certain chairs and telephones that made the scene look too modern. We also had to frame the shot right so a tennis court would not be seen in the background as we thought that would be an unrealistic view for a private detective. The filming went smoothly and, whilst about 5 takes had to be done in order for it to be perfected, we generally felt it was a good shoot overall. We thought it helped deliver the effectiveness of the time period very well and that it was a great shoot in helping me learn how important authenticity is in a movie.

Construction: kidnapping scene

During this scene, the husband is finally kidnapped by his boss and dragged away. Originally, this scene was not in the script as, at first, we felt it would be more effective if the film didn't show the disappearance, as it would make it more mysterious due to the fact that it would be up the audience's imagination of what happened to him. Nevertheless, we decided to film a kidnapping sequence in order for the film to make a little more sense.

In this scene, the boss is shown ambushing the husband. A struggle happens before the husband is dragged away. We see a shot of his feet before we see him tied up to a chair screaming for help. 

We achieved the shot of him being kidnapped by filming the actor playing the husband in the tunnel. We included an "over the shoulder" shoot in order to show off the experience better. We then had the actor playing the boss come from around the corner, depicting a struggle. We tried to shoot it as realistically as possible in order for it to not look staged as we couldn't make the actors hit each other. We covered up a lot of the hitting and mainly focused on the husband getting dragged away.

The shot of his feet was achieved by having a closeup of the husband's feet. We then dragged him away but never filmed it so that it showed us. This was so we could have an effective shot of him being dragged but not actually showing where he was getting dragged to, perhaps letting the audience be more in the husband's shoes of being unsure of where he's getting taken to. 

Finally, the scene with him being tied up was achieved in a number of different ways. We found a new location behind a shed in the woods near our school. We tied a simple knot to give the effectiveness of him being in an enclosed space and put a blindfold on him to give a more realistic edge to him being kidnapped.

Character shoots

We decided to shoot pictures of our characters. These images will possibly be used in the promotional distribution for our movie when it comes out. We also used to get ourselves an idea of what the visual representation of many of these characters are going to be. We took pictures of two of the characters. One being the private detective portrayed by me and the other being a government boss like character played by Marcus Couling.