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