Draft Feedback

Dale
Research and Planning - Level 4
Practical Draft Level - Low Level 3

Tom
Research and Planning - Level 3
Practical Draft Level - Low Level 3

"Meaning isn't obvious. Use more than one piece of music. Tom must look like he's in danger. Get rid of the pizza cutter. Make sure you do all the things you say you will (in your blog post)."

In order to better show the chain of events in the opening, we've decided to go from the shot of the feet being dragged to a shot of the feet of the man in the chair before panning up to his face and continuing on as usual. In order to also make him look like he's in danger, we'll be using face paints to make him look like his face is bruised, along with creating a wound on him from the previously heard gunshot.

To make sure we use more than one piece of music, a totally understandable decision, as well as make sure it goes along with the pace of the opening, we've decided to choose a piece to be put over the opening shot of the sky (a shot that that will be reduced in length as well) that is slower in pace than the main music, and cutting it at the point of the gunshot.

Whilst we were originally going to have some levels of humour in the opening, clearly the use of the pizza cutter was just too much for the teachers to handle, so we'll have to take it out for their sake, but we'll be ever so sad to see it go. The final shot of the microwave will also be cut, as well as the shot of the baking tray with the leg.

We've also finally decided on what to put on the television - what will be on the television is a shot of the room from another angle done in the perspective of a video camera, a suggestion put forward by Ms Elger to help portray the killer in a sort of egotistical light that is hinted at by the music and the formal clothing.

Also, some other changes have been made (or are being worked on), such as the floor being covered in newspapers for the blood to fall on (linking to a new shot, where instead of having the man's throat slit on camera, it's shown slightly off screen whilst a headline of a newspapers is focused on by the camera),that the man will be bound to the chair with cling film, that the shot of the baking tray will be rid of completely, the iPod speakers will be replaced by either a faux record player or a slightly old stereo, etcetera.

New Costume

The old costume was a no go for the teachers because they thought it didn’t go with the theme of the music so we decided to change it so I am wearing more formal clothing

So instead of wearing Nike trainers I will wear shoes, the jeans were ok but I’m going to have to wear an old white shirt.



Evaluation of draft

Filming

Tuesday:

The filming started on the Tuesday 8^th of February round Dale’s house at about 4:10. We started with the first scene on the story board and went through it as planned. But half way through the filming we needed some clean film to rap me down in the chair (dale got this idea from a programme called Dexter). After buying that they tied me down to the chair and then we filmed the first couple on scenes. But because of some distractions it was hard for me and dale to get most of the work done so we decided to come back on the Thursday and do the rest of the filming.

Thursday:

On the Thursday there was only me and Dale at his house so we thought that we would start all over again with the filming because there was so little done on the Tuesday. After we got changed into are costumes we started filming in the same order as last time but we used a different chair for me to be tied in because the chair that we used the first time looked to modern for the idea that we are going for, this chair had more of a old fashioned look to it. As it was draft we didn’t use fake blood because it would make a lot of mess for just the draft and Dale’s Mother wouldn’t have been happy. The filming went very well and twice as quick as it did on the Tuesday because of the lack of distractions (Sam Cook).The one scene where the killer is looking over all the weapons and goes back to the pizza cutter. The problem was that when he looked over the weapons it was nice and smooth but we couldn’t think of a way to do that so I did it free hand. However we have thought we could make a device use a skateboard for the shot to become more smoothly. Another little problem we had is the light, because we are working in Dale’s conservatory and it being February the sun goes down early but when we come to film the proper thing in a couple of weeks it should be lighter throughout the process of filming.

But overall the filming on the Thursday was a complete success compared to Tuesday and when we come to filming the real thing we know the mistake’s we shouldn’t make. We have also learned not to do all the filming in one day unless we actually have the hole day not after school.     



Draft

Well, in order to meet the deadline we rushed the editing for this here draft. There are several things in it that should be noted will be changed for the final version:

• The candle on the baking tray - that's meant to be a leg, but we couldn't get any materials in time to make it. It's a placeholder.
  
• The lack of blood - there will be plenty of it in the end
  
• The floor will have a layer of scattered newspapers
  
• The television will actually have something on it - exactly what is yet to be determined
  
• The iPod is going
  
• Some other things I can't recall right now
  

The sound was also not sorted out in time for the editing, hence why many of the scenes have no sound whatsoever. Whilst unnoticeable whilst the music is playing, the three/four shots whilst it isn't are noticeably bad - the opening has no sound, the shot of the killer leaving and the empty room has no sound, and the microwave shot at the end is just messed up (that's a dishwasher you can hear). Also, some parts whilst the music is playing are meant to have sound - for example, when the man has the pillow case put over his head you're meant to be able to hear him struggling whilst the shot focuses on the speakers. The shot of the baking tray is also meant to have the sound of a pizza cutter over it, but noticing it now the shot lingers too long on it, so it'll probably be shortened down considerably. Other things to note are the final shot of the empty room - the doors are closed, and should be open. The sound in that shot should also have a car in the background, and a low drone or a decreasing volume in the music. It should also be lit better - it's fairly dark as is. The gunshot in the opening shot is very low quality and should be sorted out. Also, this was done in Windows Movie Maker, and I apologize for that. Adobe After Effects was acting up when it came to exporting the movie file, even when exporting to different file types (.mov, .avi, etcetera.), so we resorted to using other software. This actually lowers the quality of the video a lot, due to the fact that the effects we were going for in the editing done in AE are now notably absent, as effects done in Movie Maker apparently made the program crash when accessing. In order to fix this problem when doing the final version, we've decided to export the individual shots from AE (as, generally, the problems only occur when there's a large video being made), and then bunch them together via Movie Maker afterwards.

Filming The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Filming began on Tuesday 8th February and lasted from around 4pm until 6pm. During it, we had a couple of friends around to help with setting up the room. Unfortunately, this led to us being fairly distracted throughout, especially since I had to provide food for those guys as well as making sure they kept out of shot (being a good host). This, in turn, led to Tom and I being fairly distracted and, looking back on the footage from that day, made the shots we did fairly bad - we planned to carry on with it on Thursday 10th February, and keep the footage (being a draft).

When it came to Thursday, we took the other day as a clear indicator as to what not to do when filming, and so decided not to allow the others around during the filming so that we could keep focused on the task. Earlier that day we drew out small diagrams of where the camera would be and where it would be pointed at, as well as making certain adjustments to the storyboard as we went through it, and eventually had a very precise "to-do" set for what to film and when.

Another problem from the other day was the non-linear structure of our filming - we filmed shots in a different order than they were in, which (in a room made of glass and thin blinds) resulted in varying lighting throughout the scene. This was bad, so we chose to film instead in a linear fashion, resulting in the lighting getting darker as time passes in the scene, as it should. The original seat was also improvised (one of those office chairs that spins), and looked fairly out of place - so intead, we went with a more traditional wooden chair for the scene.

After all of these changes, we decided to reshoot the entire scene. This seemed appropriate, and still does, for consistency's sake. Luckily, Tom was able to come around on Thursday for as long as we needed (no longer having cricket or other things to do). Without distractions though, we managed to shoot all of the shots in the same time frame as Tuesday's shooting, and making them better.

There were a couple of things that went wrong, like accidentally changing the lighting of certain shots because we left the kitchen light on, but other than that everything went fairly smoothly. In order to save time with shooting, we decided on taking out certain elements that will be returning for the final shoot however - we didn't have the blood, nor a newspaper covered floor (as intended, due to the wooden floor of the room not fitting too well with the atmosphere), Tom wasn't tied down with cling film (instead holding his hands behind him to make it look like he was tied up), there is no party in the last shot and the room was a fairly light colour (though this may be returning, due to a lack of funds and no access to dark sheets - all of them seem to be white in my house).

Overall, the shooting (on the second day at least) went fairly well, and the final shot of the microwave let Tom discover the greatness of Super Noodles, so great!

The Draft - Attempt No. 1

Overall, the filming and the editing went absolutely fine until the final step, which was exporting the movie to a .avi file, because Adobe After Effects doesn't save straight to one, but saves a project file instead (due to the nature of the program - you create several compilations, then choose which ones to export to video after editing them properly).

The problem was that the video files that the camera we were using, .MTS files, aren't properly supported by the version of After Effects that we have (CS4). During the entire process, the video files work perfectly, but when you try to export them to a video file the result is a jittering mess of frames that just wouldn't be cohesive at all. To combat this, we tried converting all of the files to .AVI and then replacing them in the program, but every time we tried to do this the program crashed.

The editing itself, prior to rendering the movie, took around 5 hours. We didn't get to the point where we would have to do the editing again until 5AM, by which point there simply wasn't enough time to do it, coupled with the average time it takes for a movie even as short as 2 minutes in order to render (normally over night), we weren't going to meet the deadline.

Deadline extended until Monday 13th February

On Set God, I Love This Shot

I was messing around in Adobe After Effects with the footage that we've already shot and I accidentally made this rather bland shot of a bottle of pills and water look fairly interesting, using the 'Lens Blur' effect.

Though a lot of the shots we did the other day are definitely going to be reshot at one point or another, possibly tomorrow night if all goes well, this shot here I think will want to stay as it is. We weren't entirely sure about the use of white in the room (and that's one of the main reasons for wanting to reshoot the shots we did - the lighting is just wait too bright, and the main colour in the room is white, mainly due to rushing setting up the room and fitting the shoot into a 2 hour frame after school ended because of Tom's after school activities), but... I don't know really, I just really like this shot.

Television 'Picture Flick'

In the story board we said we are going to need a couple of pictures on the tele of the killer’s victims including the one in the film (ME). To do this we asked he student if we could take a pictures of them for the film but we had to take a picture of them without them looking straight at the camera.

Dale’s Note:

We did it in a way that made the subjects look oblivious to the camera, so that the implication for the audience was that the killer took them without actually knowing that he did. This keeps in line with the way his character is meant to be portrayed - integrated into society without them knowing his true intentions.

This is just a placeholder to save time whilst filming the draft, as the real series of pictures will possibly be shot in a very different way - these photos were taken in the matter of five minutes around the classroom, clearly. The shots we'll actually be using will possibly be reminiscent of a high-school yearbook, to indicate some sort of past trauma for the killer, and there will also be a greater variety of said pictures.

Company Logo Dale's Ideas

When thinking of the logo for 'Scarlet Sand', I thought that some sort of simplified version of a pile of sand should be used. You can see in the top left where I originally was thinking of some sort of sand dune, but realized the second word is a lot smaller than the first, so an upside down triangular shape would have suited it better. That then came to the idea of some sort of hourglass with the words inside of it, with Ms. Elger's attempts at it over on the right.

The idea of an hourglass seemed simple enough, yet also related to the title we decided on as well.

There's my first attempt at the logo, keeping it fairly simple.

Company Logo Tom's Ideas

This was an idea of mine for the logo. We had a lot of ideas about the logo but we decided on SCARLET SAND. In the image above I have tried to make it have a desert look to it by putting sand hills in the background. I also put waves in the sky which are meant to be heat waves showing how hot it is there, it’s the same with the sun and the lines around the sun. Then the dots in the left hand side of the paper are meant to be sand, and that’s going to come across the page like a sand storm pushing everything out of the way except the words SCARLET SAND.

Then this is the one I did on paint so it would be easier to get an idea of what I was doing. I have used a lot of warm colours to try and make it look hot and added the word productions across the bottom.

Film Classification

The BBFC states that films containing material that could potentially traumatize or harm someone in some way by watching, such as changing their personal attitudes towards such actions or justifying them in some way that could traumatize a young audience, should be classified as 18+.

Due to the graphic nature of the film opening (and, if it were to be a proper film, the film in general) and it’s “over-friendliness” to the act of murder, we’ve decided to rate the film 18+ in accordance with the British Board of Film Classification.

Evaluation (So Far)

What's Gone Well...

The filming itself has gone fairly quickly, at least the filming that we've done (the opening shots of the sky and the dragging feet).

The posts so far have been fairly straight forward and teamwork hasn't been a problem at all, what with us both being good friends who agree on many of the decisions made, even if we do go back on them from time to time.

The fairly low amount of people needed for the filming has also aided in making things a bit more efficient, and the simplicity of some of the shots have made it so that not many takes were needed before getting the intended effect.

...And What Hasn't

There were some technical problems when first filming, mainly to do with Dale not being able to figure out what button does what, but Tom came to the rescue so that worked itself out pretty quickly.

The opening shot was originally of a field, but we ended up changing that after the only field that we had access to was pointed out by a couple of teachers to look fairly like a school playing field, which wasn't the effect we were going for at all. We changed it to a panning shot of the sky.

The storyboard went through god knows how many iterations before we landed on a semi-perfect one, but we also have to adjust one of the shots after it was pointed out to be fairly sexual - a totally unintended effect.

Props

For the opening, we'll be needing several props. These include:

Knives (at least five)

A pizza cutter

A baking tray

A microwave

A television

Fake blood

Fake body part

We were originally going to have a gun, with accompanying gunshot, but we decided against actually showing that due to budget constraints and the pointlessness of it. It was going to be in the opening shot of the field, although that's been scrapped now so all we need is the gunshot (which we could find on certain websites that provide royalty free sound effects).

Locations

There are only two locations being used in the opening 2 minutes, which are:

Car Interior

Conservatory

We decided against using the field on the advice of both Mr Smith and Ms Elger, who pointed out that the field we were going to use looked like a field - the difference between the school field and a normal field (which would have been the ideal scene to use) was startlingly obvious after comparing them.

The shot of the field is now replaced with a shot of an open sky, with it panning to land on the sun. The gunshot, title, and various other shots continue as normal from that point in.

The car interior will be used for one (or possibly two) shots, mainly to convey to the audience that the victim was being taken from one area to another.

The conservatory will be shown in two different ways - the main shots being it as a murder scene (with cling film, blood and very little in terms of furniture) and the final shots being of it as a normal room (with sofa, television, people, table, etcetera.). Similar, if not identical, shots will be used in order to express to the audience that it's the same room.