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Friday 29 November 2013

Music Insparation-FIAXTION

While researching the music, I thought it may be possible to turn a love song into an eerie song, so I looked up artists of the 50's Bobby Darin and his song' Dream Lover came up multiple times. Due to the age it does not come under any copyright rules so we are able to use this. The song is quite fast so I used audacity to slow it down however this made the music sound dreary. However I believe this could work.


After researching some more I found that there were a lot of copyright-free Media Music that other students have produced as seen below:


After listening and putting it to some of our footage we felt that it may be too 'in your face thriller'. We want the audience to work out what is happening to to guess from the music, by having a less obvious background sound the audience will have to focus even more on the film to understand what is going on. Therefor after even more research I found the music below, I think this may work even better because although it sounds eery it is not so 'in your face'.


During our opening their is also a music and map scene, the group researched and found the below ideas.

The Lennon Sisters was one of the choices for the map scene, the words stand out more than Dream Lover, however like Dream Lover we concerned that slowing down the music would hinder
the effect. Another song the group found was 'Feel So Close' although it was originally by a signed artist we have found one that has been done by an unsigned DJ.
We also found 'Thinking about You' Which is also done by an unsigned DJ,both of which are below:
 

Third Poster Idea-FIXATION



After the feedback we were told  that the first poster's picture was to comical or not serious enough for the film, therefor we changed it by taking the image from poster 3 and moved it onto poster 1 as much of a replica as we could manage, we were also told that the poster was very bland because it had no colour, so as a result we added the colour red. However we are still undecided on whether our final poster will have colour. 
After we produced the above poster we showed another one of our media teachers,she also agreed with us the colour, she believed, as did we, that the colour was very stereotypical and that we should stick to the black and white posters. 
Overall she said that the genre was easy to get across and that the fonts were great and easy to read, the posters were better without colour overall.

Poster Research- FIXATION


Charlotte and Lara and went round the school to see what people thought about our original posters.
The four questions we wanted them to ask were:
1) What is the genre of the film?
2) Who is the victim out of the two characters on the poster?
3) Can you tell what the film is about?
4) Is there anything that we can improve?

There feedback is above. 

Second Poster Draft- FIXATION







These are our second ideas for posters, we thought that we needed to make it more 'professional' we felt that our first posters looked untidy and unfinished. We also added more text that is also more commonly found on film posters including the dates of the film.

Production Diary

Lesson one:
The first lesson the whole was put into groups, the people that I with are  James Braddy, Lara Eardley and Charlotte Gregory, this would be my group for the final piece. Once we was put into our groups we pitched our individual ideas to each other, the film pitches that we had created over half term. From this we narrowed down to myself and Lara's film ideas but we were still undecided.
Lesson two:
The next lesson we got back into our group and after weighing out the pros and cons and a lenghty discussion we finally decided that we was to go with Lara's idea, we decided to choose Lara's opening sequence. The group decided this because they/we felt that my idea would be too costly, although we agreed that mine was the most original we were afraid that we may be unable to show clearly to the audience what genre this film would be, they also felt that it may be too hard to shoot and produce the opening sequence in the short time we had.
  We deiced to change the title because we felt that the first title had little relevance to the opening itself. At first we wanted to call the film 'Obsession' but we thought this was unoriginal and didn't have the right feel to it, so we looked up different words of obsession  and after searching we found the word Fixation. We felt that 'Fixation' was not only more appropriate but also more intriguing. After the title change we turned our attention to the characters. We felt that the characters we too unoriginal and had the idea of swapping them, so we had a female stalker and a
male victim but was initially sure if the idea made sense to decided to pitch it to the class the following day.
Lesson three:
We then pitched our film idea to the class and got their feedback. We pitched the idea of having the young boy as the victim and the class said this was a good idea as it was more original than the idea of a female stalker and stayed away from the stereo-typical thriller, they also said that because of this we would need to make it clearer that the woman is a creepy stalker, because it isn't as obvious as it would be if it was a man as the stalker. From this we went back as a group to discuss the changes that we would need to make to improve our film. We decided that one of us wouldn't be right to play the main woman we would need an adult. We then decided how we could make it aware to the audience that she wasn't a 'normal' middle aged woman to set this off we  that we would include a shot of an over the shoulder shot of the woman looking at a map of the area where the boy lives. The map would have pictures of the boy and have plots on it, so it looks like she is following and plotting his every move. We also decided that we would make her look different by  using makeup, we would give her pale makeup, with dark under bag eyes and make her have greasy hair. So it looks like she spends no time on her appearance (spends most of her time stalking the boy.) We then decided that James would be the main character (the venerable boy) and we decided on what costume he would wear. We need it to look like he has just come from a party so we decided to dress him in a pair of jeans, a shirt and trainers.
We then roped in the help of mine and James' drama teacher, Natasha Bishop, to play the stalker, we discussed what she would wear and decided on something simplistic.



Lesson four:
This lesson we went over our ideas. We started to plan props, I started producing different ideas of  the map and how it should look  and Lara started making a shot time line that had all the shots that we wanted to include in order. Charlotte started to research the genre, and Lara , James and myself started to look at sounds. James was planning and finding the shots that we wanted to do for Lara to produce a storyboard next lesson.





Lesson five:
Now we know what all the shots are that we want to include we are able to produce a storyboard. We discussed who was the best drawer and deiced Lara should have the job so she is doing the drawing for the storyboard. Myself and Charlotte focused more on what the characters are going to wear and how they are going to come across. We decided that we needed to make it more obvious that the woman is creepy so we decided that she would wear a long black trench coat and look generally untidy, so she would have unfinished makeup and messy hair. We decided that James would be smart casual, and his shirt would be untucked to represent drunkenness.




After discussion we founded that the shots weren't planned out as well as we thought, some may have confused the audience and others had no relevance to the story so we decided to change them. We changed the shots so that the opening flowed better, and was more understandable for the audience. They also now build up more of an enigma code. This is our changing process.



Lesson Six: Charlotte made the inspirational fonts PowerPoint with a voice over and Lara made the storyboard with a voice over. James made the mood board and I began researching music to have in the background of our film opening, I thought it would be an interesting concept if we slowed down a love song to create a hooking opening.
Lesson Seven: Charlotte, Lara and James filmed the character profiles, to put on our blog to give the audience an insight to what the characters are. They then went on to edit this and put it on their blogs. 
Lesson Eight: Charlotte finished the final ideas PowerPoint, and put together a shot list and James started to put a voice over on top of the mood board. I composed and  completed the risk assessment to help us understand what dangers we may come across during film. James and myself also took pictures of our actors to start putting together a film poster. We also began to discuss when would be the best time to film within our group.
Lesson Nine: James and myself filmed both Charlotte and Lara in front of the green screen, set up as a discussion, where Charlotte and Lara spoke about the group feedback that we received when we first pitched our idea to the rest of the class. This took some time due the camera positing, Charlotte and Lara were unsure of what to say and as a result started to laugh, we therefor had to re-shoot multiple times. After realising that Charlotte, Lara and James had made a mistake within James' character profile we needed to re film. So myself and James decided to go and film a more convincing character profile whilst Charlotte and Lara began editing the group feedback.  After filming James started to work on the film poster and I began the shooting schedule.






(Shooting Schedule)

Lesson Ten: Within lesson ten, we learnt about creating feeling whilst we were filming. Throughout our lesson we were making sure that when we film we aim to make the audience feel a certain way and that certain way needs to be created by the shots and the actions and expressions the characters make. I also completed the shooting schedule to help the group understand the contents of the shots and what we needed. After completing the shooting schedule I contracted a virtual map of how I wanted the map to look, the construction of this is below.


Lesson Eleven: Charlotte and Lara began to do font research and started to put a voice over on to explain our font choices for our titles and why the group had ruled out certain ones. After group discussion we decided that the presentation of how our research relates to the genre, wasn't in enough detail  and needed more expelling so I went  to edit this and add in more detail. James began editing the posters from the final draft to get them to look more like a film poster and how everyone in the group wanted it too look. After finishing adding more detail to the Pixton animation I then created a prop list so we knew what to bring whilst filming.

Lesson Twelve:
Charlotte and Lara began to do font research and started to put a voice over on to explain our font choices for our titles and why we had ruled out certain ones. . James began editing the posters from the final draft to get them to look more like a film poster and how everyone in the group wanted it too look. Charlotte and Lara began to give advise to James about the film posters, I had given James advise previous advice on how to improve the poster but gave him creative control, James then completed the drafts. . We also held a group meeting to discuss the different roles and the remaining jobs we had left to do. We decided that nothing was left, but things could be developed in more detail. During our group meeting we had a disagreement, as James and myself wanted to edit the ending because we felt we were cramming to much into two minuets, we wanted to create an enigma code and felt this would not happen with all the shots, we also felt that the different shots may confuse the audience but Charlotte and Lara disagreed. They believed without certain shots the opening will not make sense and will completely defeat the key part of the story that we are trying to portray. At this point there was a massive divide, it felt like it was myself and James against Charlotte and Lara, we all felt that our idea was best. Taking this into consideration, we all decided to just film what we have planned. We will then edit both openings and pitch it to the public and receive market research on what the public feel works best. After we have collected this information we will decide on the final opening.
Lesson Thirteen:
In lesson today James continued to edit posters after myself Lara and Charlotte gave our feedback on them, we wanted to collaborated two posters into one, I edited the music in audacity to see if my idea of making a love song slower would work. While Charlotte and Lara went out into the school and asked Teachers and Students alike what they thought about the posters. After getting the feedback from students and teachers Lara and Charlotte edited the recording. While myself and James discussed how we can improve the posters with the help of the feedback, I also put together all the pictures we will be using on the map.

Lesson Fourteen:
Today James got some more feedback from peers on how we can improve our poster, I finalised and printed the images we are planning on using and also started designing the titles to put in the opening shot.

Lesson Fifteen:
Today in class our whole objective was preparing to shoot, this included putting together the map photos together. This lesson was very hand on and showed how well we can work together. While myself,Lara and Charlotte finished the pictures James made sure we had the lighting, camera, tripod and the necessary props he then continued to update the poster ideas. However we had a large problem we needed to over come in class our lead role (Natasha Bishop) had double booked and she was unable to attend the filming. This was our problem - do we put of filming for yet another day or use Lara as a stand in? 'The show must go on!' we said and used Lara as a stand in, because we barely see the stalker face we may be able to get away with the posters not being changed, but this will ultimately come down to when we edit. If the face is obviously not Mrs Bishops, then we will have to change the posters, although not a major problem-it is a lengthy process. We would have to re shoot the images, redo the posters, get feedback and then change them accordingly. This will all be decided after filming/editing.
After school the whole group travelled to James' house. Myself and Charlotte helped Lara with the makeup we had to ensure that we were able to show her untidiness without going over the top.
 After this we did a run though without the lights- this was recorded and will be on the bloopers we then used lights, this was so much better as the shot was far less grainy than without. We then started to shoot, the images of which are on the 'Filming' post.  We were very careful to ensure their were no continuity errors while filming for example, a change in the light, hair on the left side than on the right.  We would re watch the previous shot to ensure this didn't happen. It was very hard in party shots because we had to ensure that people where in the same positions, they had the same drink in their hand etc. In my opinion those shots were the hardest.
(Our set)


Unfortunately we did not have enough time to film all the shots we required, we shot from 4pm to 7pm and decided that the map would be too time consuming for tonight and we wouldn't of finished till around 10. We therefor decided that we would film the shots of the map tomorrow.

Lesson Sixteen:
Today, despite deciding to film the map yesterday, we felt our time would be better spent editing the footage we had, we knew this was a lengthy process and we needed every ones full attention. We first watched the footage we had and then decided what footage we would keep and what footage to put on the bloopers. We couldn't decide on what sequence to have the shots in, without all the shots this was very difficult. In the end we decided to have the party shots first, then the feet shot followed by the stalker walking up the drive. We also added the non copyright music to see how it would effect the shots, it worked well.
As Charlotte and Lara are absent tomorrow James and myself decided to set up the map and film the different shots.
Lesson Seventeen:
Due to Charlotte and Lara's absence myself and James started putting together the map, we researched different 'stalker maps' to get inspiration from, as stated previously we wanted the map to look like organised chaos, originally we were going to have pictures and just small snippets of information we decided it looked too bare and we needed more pictures/information so decided that we would need to take snippets from different parts of James life and put the map to show the length of time she has watched him for.  Today was very much trial and error, seeing where things should be put, ensuring it made sense, we plan to continue the map during break and lunch today to we are able to film tomorrow morning. After putting the basics on the map myself and James decided that instead of just filling the map we would fill the surrounding area as well because we felt it would show that she follows his every move. I continued to add to the map after school and we planned to finish tomorrow.
 (Inspirational map)

(Begging of the map)
(Half way through)
Lesson Eighteen:
Today Lara and Charlotte added their bits to the map second period, at break I went to see how the had got on and they had added quite a lot, which I was pleased about,during my free and added the last tittle bits including more news articles and post it notes . We plan to film during fourth period so we we are able to edit fifth and have our first draft ready at the end of the day

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During filming we found a lot issues with the lighting upon doing tester shots I found that having the main lights on it was too dark, so I turned them off and they seemed fine, however after filming the entire sequence and putting it on the PC we noticed that the shots were very grainy and hard to make out, at this point tensions where running high and a dispute erupted between the group, making a further divide. After time apart we got back together with little frostiness we continued to edit hoping there would be no more interruptions. We were having problems with the 'ghosting' effect as one image stayed in the same place without moving, it look us a while to figure out why this was happening and resolved the issue. We then put some music in to match the map sequence, the music does seem very jolly but we feel that it is a good contrast between the more serious music. We then continued to edit and finalised our first draft.
The group decided to stay after school for a while because we felt we could get some more editing done as this is our last time as a whole group.
Lesson Nineteen:
Lara and Charlotte were absent today so myself and James continued to edit, we are finding difficulty to make decisions with just us we, we tried different music for the opening because we felt that the first music we tried was so much like the opening of another film, we wanted to make our film unique as so changed it.  
Lesson Twenty:
Today we all continued to edit, and tried different music and different effects on the shots we had. We also changed different shots around to see where, if anywhere, they were better fitted. We also added the shots that we filmed on a previous lesson so we had more shots in our sequence. We all sat around the computer and continued to work together as a team to edit the shots, we still found it difficult with just three of us. After school I decided to add different bits onto the main structure, I did not want to change anything without the groups acceptance so made a separate folder so I could edit what I felt might work without loosing any of the work we had already done. It look a while but I felt it was important to have different ideas available in case we wanted to change it.  

Lesson twenty one:
In  lesson Lara felt it necessary to do another version of of FIXATION, we had shown a select few our opening and we were told that the titles were too long, so Lara started an opening with snippets of the board throughout the opening in order to break up the begging, myself and James helped Lara but also edited the map and started thinking where we were going to put the title and production companies. At the end of the lesson we watched Lara's piece and incorporated every ones ideas into the peice, we ended up changing quite a lot today because we wanted to ensure everything flowed.
Lesson Twenty Three:
Today the class stopped working on the openings and we all sat down and did a peer assessment on each others first drafts. We answered questions on the film to give each group positive and critical feedback that we would feel would make their film lot better if they changed or added certain things, I think this was an important thing to do because although the group understand whats going on, the audience may not and this was very relevant to us.  
Lesson Twenty Four:
Today we got our feedback handed back to us, so we could see what people though about our first draft, there was a problem with our opening, because it was a ruff cut there was no titles and the ending had been cut off so we got a lot of comments about that, we received positive and negative. However, both benefited us, we took this into consideration and started editing  The main positive piece of feedback we got was that the titles were very original and creative, however they were very long and due to the ghosting effect was very confusing and the ending didn't make sense to them, which we knew wouldn't. We all chose how we wanted the main title and then Lara edited the title into sequence but we still cannot figure out where to put it.
Lesson Twenty Five:
We went through the negative feedback and improved upon it. We changed the positions of shots, the sounds and added in extra clips on the map that we thought the audience needed to see. We feel the map gives a clear insight to our main character, Eileen's, personality. During this lesson I continued to type up the feedback, most groups were writing it up on their blog but I wanted it to look more creative so used different programs like Pixton to show the feedback in different ways.
We then showed our opening sequence to people in year 13 and asked them for their feedback on our new and improved version. They were very helpful and gave us very positive feedback about our film but also gave us advice on how to improve, for example one said that the music was very abrupt and we should edit it flow easier. Lara also made a new institution logo as the ones each of our group members made did not fit our genre well enough, therefore we decided to make a new one, Lara volunteered on making one while myself and James continued to edit, this was called scorpion productions.
 
Lesson Twenty Six:
Today I have continued and finished the feedback of our first draft, Lara created the production companies and James started the type up the shot and music lengths. We also continued to edit so we were able to meet our deadline.  We tried to make sure everything was in the right timing and tried as hard as we could to fit all of our shots into the time scale that we had. We also tried to make a title fade in and out so that we could have one of our titles do this, and this would look more elegant that just randomly appearing and randomly disappearing. After school myself and Lara then stayed and showed our teacher our final production, but they gave us some feedback to improve our opening sequence. We then took another shot of our board, in a different room to see if the lighting was better. However, on the camera our shots look very good as the lighting was professional, but then when we uploaded them onto our blogs we found that the lighting did not look like the other clips that we had and they almost had a hint of purple on them. Therefore we tried it in the original place we filmed them and it was much better, so added this into the begging of the opening and then made sure everything was in place before uploading our final piece.

Lesson Twenty Seven:
In today's lesson, myself and Lara created a questionnaire about our film to give the audience a variety of questions so we could gain some feedback on our final opening sequence. We asked around our class and filmed people answering, this gave us an overall view of what people thought about the film, we asked both media and non media studies along with one of our teachers so we were able to have a variety.
The questions were:
Do you feel as though the music fits in well with the whole sequence?
What do you think the rest of the film could be about?
Do you think the editing is effective?
What do you think the genre of our film is?
Would you want to see the whole film?
If you created the film what would you have done different?
Was there anything you couldn't see? If so what?
What would you score our opening out of 60?

Then, during our lunch break we did a screening of our film and after school myself and Lara are editing the feedback we received.













Lesson Twenty Eight:
In today's lesson we filmed fellow media students talking about FIXATION we asked them the same questions as above, we wanted feedback in different ways so we had taped feedback and questionnaires. After filming the feedback we edited it so we could make it flow, adding the questions in to give it a more professional look, which we then uploaded on the blogs.

Lesson Twenty Nine:
 

Font research- FIXATION



To find the prefect titles Charlotte researched different fonts that would be a possibility when editing in the title.

Poster Drafts -FIXATION

This is our first draft of posters for Fixation, we want to give the audience some idea of what the film is going to be about to entice them to come and see the full production however we do not want to give them too much otherwise the film will be to predictable. The whole point of posters are to advertise the film. In class we shall choose one or two and then present them to the public. We are hoping to get constructive feedback from the public to help us improve them. Once feedback is taken we will then go back to the 'drawing board' and improve the remaining posters.


Synopsis Planning-FIXATION

Synopsis Planning
We will open with a shot of a ‘Stalker Wall’ covered in pictures stuck around a map, there will be red string stuck into the board with pins. We aim to have a shot of the stalker putting a pin into the board which we will film this close up to the wall on the angle so we see the pin get pushed into the board. We will then see the vitcim send a tweet about his party, then a sudden cut to the stalker’s laptop where the tweet comes up and she grabs her car keys. We are then back at the boy’s house, he’s putting on his birthday badge and we are looking through the window at the party in action he’s drinking; this shot is from the eyes of the stalker. We are then outside and people are leaving, we watch feet move past the camera as the stalkers feet come out of the shadows and head towards the house. The door opens, we then cut outside where we see the badge drop on the ground, the sound of car doors slamming and we watch the car drive away. Fade to black. We are now in an off-licence, our vitcim is buying alcohol when he gets a text through on his phone, its about his party tonight.


The rest of the film will be about how the stalker is following him online and in person, how she plans her every move and is waiting for her moment to strike. Later on in the film we see the kidnapping in more detail and where he ends up. At the end of the film we would want the audience to feel sorry for the stalker as her obsession over our vitcim is only through the tragic loss of her own son and her husband divorcing her. The audience will only find this out about ¾‘s of the way through the film.