Today was the first day of official progress towards the opening scene project. We all got together in class as a group and started to discuss all of the ideas that we had, we had a wide variety of genres and everyone's ideas were all really good but so different there were horror ideas, rom-com and mythical romance. we came up with a list of all of the things that may go wrong or not work in each of the opening and tried to weigh them out with things that would work or look good, in some there was a lot more negatives than positives so we decided that it would be too hard to do and that we should try and move away from that idea. we then looked again at our ideas all together and came up with the idea of combining all three, for example we took the coming of age part along with the idea of the film revolving around a big secret from Olivia's film 'Fangs of love'. we copied the idea of the group of friends doing work on a project from my idea 'Avis' we also copied the idea of having the title the name of the main character (witch) and finally from the rom-com we interpreted the idea of the titles being shown whilst the main character is walking to a destination. We ended with an idea completely different from all of the others but that still had similarities. The film we have chosen to do is slightly different and more original than some of the films that were previously created. we finished off the lesson by thinking of the genre and we came up with mystery thriller which is original and I don't know of many films that are the same or like it.
Work Diary Day 2 (11/11/14)
Today in class we got into our groups and looked over our final idea. We added things we thought should be included into our presentation and took out things that just weren't working. we then watched other groups pitch their ideas and gave them feedback, we didnt get round to all of the groups including ours meaning that we would have to present it tomorrow (12/11/14).
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Work Diary Day 2 (11/11/14)
Today in class we got into our groups and looked over our final idea. We added things we thought should be included into our presentation and took out things that just weren't working. we then watched other groups pitch their ideas and gave them feedback, we didnt get round to all of the groups including ours meaning that we would have to present it tomorrow (12/11/14).
Work Diary Day 3 (12/11/14)
- The Craft (1996)
- The Woman in Black (2012)
- Practical Magic (1998)
- The Witches of eastwick (1987)
- Stoker (2013)
- Rebecca (1940)
- Suspicion (1941)
Work Diary 4 (13/11/14)
In today's lesson we looked at film titles and how font is used for effect and how certain fonts are used for specific genres and they wouldn't work if they were to be used for others. for example and symbols were used This font for example wouldn't work too well if it were to be for a horror or sci-fi film but it would for a rom-com. we drew sketches of what we thought would work as a film title and developed on from there, our first idea looked like this...
It was simple and literaly just read 'Evangeline' the font was more creative and witchy, it looked like either scratches or twiggs forming the letters. this worked because it linked back to the genre, and theme of witches as a comon steriotype is that witches like to practice their magic in the woods. we then looked at other film titles from simular films like 'Se7en', 'Scary movie' and 'Thir13en ghosts' two of these replaced letters with numbers that had significent relations to the film others used symbols like witchcraft symbols to take the place of letters. we then looked up comonly used symbols to represent witchcraft and stumbled across some symbols that represented letters. we then interpreted this into our title and ended up with something like this....
we then looked over it and realised that the twig lettering along with the symbol made it look messy and unprofessional so we changed it to something more traditional with a sans serif font in bold black writing.
we then considered giving it a purple glow around the edges but came to the conclusion that it looked childish and made the film look more like something for a younger audience and less 'creepy'. so we decided to stick with the plain black font.
Today in class we didn't do much towards the creation of our film opening, but focused more on researching film openings and how long the titles are held on the screen. I chose to record the timings of the film 'The Craft' because it is very similar to the one that we are creating, this helped because it gave us inspiration towards what ours would look like.
Work Diary Day6 (17/11/14)
Today we looked over all of the research and planning we already had and set each other tasks to complete, each person in out group got given a task to complete over the next few days.Work Diary Day 7 (18/11/14)
Today in class we researched things that we needed to include, we looked at what production company we were going to include and decided to go with 'aurora studios' we then researched the types or roles that need to be included into the titles of our film for example the director we recorded all of this in our books. Finaly we discussed possible shooting areas and where we thought would be best. Bellow are photos from us working in class today.
Work diary day 8 (19/11/14)
Reece shots
Today we were looking at the possible shots we could include and what would work with the surroundings we had chosen to work with, we wanted our film to open in a woodland area near a church but we didn't want it to look too syncline and overly horrified, so we attempted to over come this but taking Reece shots and looking at the different angles and camera positions we could use.
Work diary day 9 (21/11/14)
In class we decided we needed to create a second blog to use as a prop in our film opening, this blog will be featured a lot throught the film as it is the charecters first and main source of infomation. We noted down all of the things that needed to be included to make it successful eg
From these we then in class picked the one that our whole group believed was best and worked further on that image editing it to make it look even more suitable we edited it a few times changing the colour schemes and placing them all together we chose our final one.
We decided to go with this image because the sepia times suited the old fashioned theme of the witchcraft blog and made the photo look realistic and professional.
Today we shot scenes 1 and 3 (taken in and around the cemetery) and scene 5 which was taken of Eva when she was walking towards the entrance of the library. Sam and Olivia took turns in filming and directing the scenes with a small amount of help from me but because I was in front of the camera I couldn't help too much. I played the role of Eva. We took numerous takes of each shot to enable high levels of accuracy when editing. Taking several of the same shot mean we can choose the best ones to put together when editing. We tried to be as creative as possible we could being inventive with the how we used the camera to get a wide variety of shots, for one of them I held the tripod and camera upside-down in front of me this was so that we could get a shot of the front of my feet whilst I were walking this we would then flip when we edited so that it was not upside-down.
- sepia background to tie into the old fashioned theme.
- general infomation about witches
- dark and eery phont and colours schemes to stick with the genre of our film.
- and finaly infomation about our fictional charecter evangaline including a photo taken of her supposedly before she died in the 1910's.
We also had to take this photo as it had to be of the same actor that is also playing Eva we found it hard to make them look different from each other yet still using the same person.
We had already created our fake witchcraft blog but we hadn't uploaded a photo of Evangeline as at the time we didn't have one, over the weekend part of our group met up for part of one of the days to take the photo and get ideas for the poster we were yet to create. We selected a few photos that we thought were appropriate for what we needed (a Marline Monroe inspired model photo-shoot from the early 1900s) The three best ones are down below.
Work diary day 10 (24/11/14)
From these we then in class picked the one that our whole group believed was best and worked further on that image editing it to make it look even more suitable we edited it a few times changing the colour schemes and placing them all together we chose our final one. 
We decided to go with this image because the sepia times suited the old fashioned theme of the witchcraft blog and made the photo look realistic and professional.
We also looked over our story boards and corrected anything we hadn't included, this meant working out the timings of all of the shots and where and for how long each title would have to be up for and where it would be positioned on the screen, we then looked at poster ideas for our marketing campaign we really liked the idea of having the main character at the front and centred with the other secondary characters in a V shape behind her this would be set in the woods and they would all be dresses very formally in big long dresses. We got inspiration from the poster for beautiful creatures and the secret circle, we also had another idea where half of Eva's face would be shown in the right hand side of the screen and in the background there would be Evangeline we got inspiration for this from a poster we saw for a tv series called the vampire diaries.
Today was the first day of filming, we left at 1:30 and walked from school to St. Michaels church we arrived at 2:10 and were set up by 2:15. For the majority of the shots we used a tripod this was so that all of the shots were level. And we moved it around manually to get the shots just how we wanted.
work diary day 14 (26/11/14)
Today we shot scenes 1 and 3 (taken in and around the cemetery) and scene 5 which was taken of Eva when she was walking towards the entrance of the library. Sam and Olivia took turns in filming and directing the scenes with a small amount of help from me but because I was in front of the camera I couldn't help too much. I played the role of Eva. We took numerous takes of each shot to enable high levels of accuracy when editing. Taking several of the same shot mean we can choose the best ones to put together when editing. We tried to be as creative as possible we could being inventive with the how we used the camera to get a wide variety of shots, for one of them I held the tripod and camera upside-down in front of me this was so that we could get a shot of the front of my feet whilst I were walking this we would then flip when we edited so that it was not upside-down.
work diary day ? (10/12/14)
Yesterday we received feedback about our film openings first drafts, after looking at these we figured out that the most important things that we needed to improve were the
Today we were looking at what we could do to achieve this, we figured that it would be easy enough to re do the scenes change the titles and music and shorten it to three mins but we couldn't figure out how to make it more understandable and allow the audience to get it. Then I had the idea, after watching the opening scene to Beautiful Creatures to change it slightly. form this idea we would need to shoot a few more scenes and re write a script and change the story board but this wouldn't take to long.The plot of the film as a whole has not changed dramatically but it has to an extent. The original plot went like this...
- Music
- Camera steadiness
- Title colour/font
- Length
- Acting
- And overall sound
Today we were looking at what we could do to achieve this, we figured that it would be easy enough to re do the scenes change the titles and music and shorten it to three mins but we couldn't figure out how to make it more understandable and allow the audience to get it. Then I had the idea, after watching the opening scene to Beautiful Creatures to change it slightly. form this idea we would need to shoot a few more scenes and re write a script and change the story board but this wouldn't take to long.The plot of the film as a whole has not changed dramatically but it has to an extent. The original plot went like this...
- Eva and her friends are working on a project
- They discover she is a witch
- She begins to practice magic and find out more about herself
- The group finds out that there is a curse upon her and that she has had multiple past lives
- She tries to find a way to stop the curse
- Goes wrong
- Finds who put the curse on her, asks why?
- Attempts a final time to remove curse
- Gets help
- Succeeds
we have kept this but used it as a template and simply gone into more detail and including things like...
- Eva and her friends are working on a project
- They discover she is a witch and that she has had multiple past lives
- She begins to practice magic and find out more about herself
- The group finds out that there is a curse upon her
- She tries to find a way to stop the curse
- Goes wrong
- Finds who put the curse on her, asks why? this person then ends up trying to make sure that the curse completes its path.
- Starts to get ill
- Her birthday is coming up and she is having a masked ball
- Something goes wrong and she ends up passed out in the woods
- Gets help from a 'fellow witch'
- Attempts a final time to remove curse
- Succeeds with a struggle
- finds love with her best friend
We then realised that this wouldn't be seen in the first scene but it might help us decide on how we are going to re do the opening to make it more clear. we came up with the idea of starting in the middle of the film.
we would start with a scene of the woods the camera would then quickly swoop through the woods so that it looked like it was looking for something, it would then pause and a girls body would come into view laying on the floor in the distance. the camera would then zoom into this and adjust itself so that the angle was a birds eye view and that it framed the girls face. The camera would become still once again and her eyes would dramatically open revealing her yellow witch eyes. up to this point there would be no music but a voice over of her talking about how she wishes she could go back to a time she didn't know about magic etc. after this short scene the title would then appear and the music would start after the title disperses it would almost seem like the film is being re wound to the start. here you would see a quick glimpse (not long enough to tell what happens in the film but long enough to see witch things happen) the last scene in this rewind would be her walking [the same scene that we used in our original footage] this would also be the last scene in our opening but it would be played in real time and not rewound straight after. over the top of the music and these scenes you would hear Eva say something similar to 'and this is how it all began'. this would then be the end of our opening scene.
Hopefully this would create more of an enigma, the audience would be able to distinctly tell the gender and what is going on more.
Work Diary Day ? (12/12/14)
Today we went filming, we filmed the first scene in the opening of our film these are some snapshots
Here is an image of Sam once we had finished filming getting ready to leave
Here is an image of me and sam trying to work out where the best places to shoot would be and getting an idea of our surroundings.
This is a picture Olivia took of me applying more lipstick for filming.
bellow is a quote from Olivia about how our filming went ' Even with our biggest efforts to ensure the filming went perfectly, the camera ran out of charge shortly after getting to our location. We were quite annoyed by this but we overcame this by using an Ipohone 5 to film our footage. The quality of the camera is very good but using a phone meant that we could not use the tripod to raise the camera into the air. It also meanr rhat the camera was not kept as still as what we had originally hoped. Apart from that, filming went really well and the footage we got was successful.'
