Improving our Rough Cut- (DOC)

To improve our rough cut, Sam and I need to pay more attention to little details when filming. One of these details is the amount of time that the shots are one for; for example, on our first rough cut, there are point of view shots of the action figure walking towards the teenage boy who has just been tripped and fell down the stairs. For this shot, Sam and I need to make it shorter or break it up into seperate parts so that it's more believable and doesn't lose its effectiveness. Also, we were thinking about adding an effect to make the shot more blurred by using layering and and adding to layers over to make it look as if the character is dizzy after falling down the stairs, we were also thinking about adding a video effect or transition to make it look as if the character is blinking; it's little effects like this that should make the overall product more convincing and mroe enjoyable to watch. Another aspect of our rough cut that needs improving is the mise en scene. Sam and I are going to change what's lying on the floor at the beginning of the rough cut as the electrocution occurs, we will add things that are more scary and more suitable to the slasher genre. We're not sure what yet but we could link it in with another film to add intertextuality to our film opening. Another idea is to add a slaher film such as Halloween or Friday 13th poster to the wall of the room to provide some intertextuality.
Also, taking the feedback that we received from our first rough cut into account, we need to change the lighting of the shots and make it darker to make it scarier and mroe intense as everything is scarier in the dark and once again, this will suit the slasher genre more.

Practise Footage 1

Here's our first practise footage, this was had to be recorded on a ipod so sorry about quality. The idea was this was to find out and practise how to move the doll and therefore improve on it and gain feedback to improve on this for the final cut. We will be filming this again tonight, this time with a hd camera and we are going to also try buy a doll as in the latest feedback with our rough cut 1, we were told that we should change the doll from the red actionj figure.

Untitled from Sam Daffern on Vimeo.

Filming- (DOC)

Last night, Sam and I did some more filming towards our rough cut video. We re-filmed the movement of the action figure (doll) and of the action figure entering the room and walking around on the other side of the door. We filmed this by turning off all of the lights in the room in which we were filming, placing the camera on the floor, looking underneath the door into a room where the light is turned on. I then control the doll, moving it's legs to make it look as if it's moving and walking around on the other side of the door. Watching this back, Sam and I think it looks good but Sam forgot the battery for his camera so we had to use an iPod camera which obviously didn't work as well and the quality wasn't as good. However, we are still happy with how the filming went as we think it looks realistic as if the action figure really is walking around on the other side of the door. We will definitely re-film these shots using a better camera though.

When filming, we also filmed the action figures hand pushing open the door and then walking in; this was harder to do because we had to be very careful how we filmed the shots as we had to avoid filming my hands which were controlling the action figure. We did this well but it was made harder by the fact we were using an iPod camera because it wouldn't go on a tripod and the shots are most likely going to be very shaky which isn't good at all; this is even more reason to re-film these shots and Sam and I will do so tonight and tomorrow, using better cameras!

At this stage, we are still behind on filming and should have already produced a rough cut video including all our practise footage and a basic idea on what happens in our film opening. We haven't filmed all of our idea yet and haven't filmed the whole of the opening. We will have this completed though within the next two days.

Practise Footage Info- (DOC)

Practise footage should be up soon, we have filmed the scene of the boy in his room and how he comes to life, but it is hard to see and of course this will only be the rough footage, so we will improve on this. We also filmed the stairs scene we have described in one of our podcasts, but the tape we recorded on was corrupted and had lines across the video. This footage though looked really nice and we will defiantly use it for the actual finished project as it really gives the effect of someone falling down the stairs and looks realistic as the mattress is out of shot, and fast paced cutting should make it even more realistic and be more effective for the audience watching.

LS29 Productions footage info // LS29 Blog

Practise footage should be up soon, we have filmed the scene of the boy in his room and how he comes to life, but it is hard to see and of course this will only be the rough footage, so we will improve on this. We also filmed the stairs scene we have described in one of our podcasts, but the tape we recorded on was corrupted and had lines across the video. This footage though looked really nice and we will defiantly use it for the actual finished project as it really gives the effect of someone falling down the stairs and looks realistic as the mattress is out of shot, and fast paced cutting should make it even more realistic and be more effective for the audience watching.

LS29 Productions Blog: http://ls29film.blogspot.com/

Filming in the Snow

Today, Me and Dillon re-filmed the shots of the house which we are using to set the typical slasher scene; an isolated, big house, usually in the dark. However, this time we went to re-film the house because it's snowing and we think that this adds extra effect to the shot. We will post videos of both the shots, one with the snow and one without and get feedback from people on which one looks better. The first time we filmed the house with the snow, it was light and we did this simply because it might not still be snowing when it gets dark but if it is we will film it again and then we will have even more footage to compare and get feedback from other people.

Tomorrow, Sam and I will film again when the is more snow on the floor because we think it will look better, we may even film it in the morning and again at night, we could then play around with the idea of fading one into each other. Also, when filming tomorrow, Sam and I will do more filming inside and re-film the shots which use the stairs and show the teenage boy falling down them, onto mattresses obviously which won't be seen by the camera. We need to film these shots again because the first time we filmed them, the tape broke and put lines across the videos so unfortunately we can't use them but hopefully this time we can get more footage and film it better this time.

Sam and I are slightly behind on filming and haven't yet produced a practise footage video which we need to do. Even though we have the footage, we haven't yet filmed practise shots of everything that we're doing in our film opening. We know what we want to do but haven't yet got around to it; we will film some more next week and produce a practise footage video which we can show to people to gain some feedback, comments and advise.