Twelve Draft

This is our twelve draft and we have now got to the point where we are simply sorting out anything out of place. We have now turned down the sound of the birds and have made the fade a lot more gradual so that the voiceovers can be heard clearly. We have also removed the shots of me at the end as they are irrelevant.

Eleventh Draft

This is our film with the background music added, we decided the voiceover was too dull without music and there was also too much attention paid to the voiceover which is only meant to be an added element to the confusing images. The recording is bad quality again as we are still editing the track in Garageband. We also added bird noises at the end of the opening which leads the film on to the rest of the film.

More Voiceovers

Our previous recording had a few mistakes in so me and Aimie re-recorded the voiceover. I am the 'PC Smith' and Aimie is 'Mrs. Richardson'. We have began to edit however a lot more needs to be done.

As our original script was not long enough to fill up our 4 minute long film we added more to the script;

(after Mrs. Richardson says: Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.)
Police: Why? What was he like?
Mrs. Richardson: I didn't get to meet him. She never let me.
Police: What about her friends?
Mrs. Richardson: I only really met Sarah Underwood and Stephen Land, but they haven't been to the house in months.
Police: Do you know if she is still in close contact with them?
Mrs. Richardson: No, like I said, she never told me anything like normal daughters should.

Tenth Draft

We have now recorded our police interview with Aimie and my own voice, this draft includes a sample of the recording which has been edited to distort the full name being spoken. Again, the sound is not very clear as it is a recording of the track as we cannot add the track so far as it is not finished.

Ninth Draft

We have now changed my credit to 'Introducing' rather than 'Starring' to make our film seem more realistic and professional. In Dreamgirls Jennifer Hudsons credit is also 'And Introducing'.
The recording is loud as we made a recording of our voiceovers so far, the real version will not be like this as this is only a test.

Eight Draft

This is our eight draft. We have kept the company names and title at the beginning but decided to spread the named credits out amongst the film similar to a real film opening. We've removed the effects off the shots of 'Leyla' after she has woken up to show the difference between her sleeping and her being awake which is not a mistake in our editing as we have added this on purpose!

Sixth Draft

After watching over our fith draft we decided we needed the make the time differences a lot clearer especially after getting people to watch and they were confused between past and present. We made the present day shots a lot slowed and changed the effect from 'Vignette' to 'Romantic' which makes the shots lighter and hazy around the edges rather than black to give a waking up and hazy effect. Slowing down the shots made the film slower paced so that our film opening looked a lot less like a trailer.

To stop the film looking like a trailer which we are in danger of we decided to have a black screen with sound paying before any footage is shown. For a test we added walkie-talkie noises over the beginning of this curent draft. We all liked this sound but we obviously cannot leave it simply as this.

After getting a few people in the lesson to watch the film opening they said the 'Filmed and Edited by' finished too quickly to be read so we have also extended the time it is shown on screen.

Fifth Draft

We have now added a new effect on the present day shots in the woods to make it clear which shots are flashbacks and which aren't, we added 'Vignette' to the present day shots to make it seem as though someone is watching 'Leyla'.

Third Draft of Film

This is our current draft for our film which we have temporarily named 'Pulse'.

We have added in an elipsis at the end so that I fade and reappear down the path. We also removed parts after audience feedback as the film was too repetitive.

We spent a whole afternoon making the credits however we forgot to add "and" before "Sarah Isaacs". We managed to find a font similar to Seven's credit font, it looks very rough and etched fitting in with our genre. We also made sure each credit lasted for 4 seconds so that there is enough time for the audience to read it, however having "Aimie Condon" right after "Filmed and Edited by" makes it seem that only Aimie filmed and edited and that it does not apply to all three of us. Also added togther "Filmed and Edited by" and "Aimie Condon" makes 8 seconds which may be too long for just credits.

We now need to begin work on our voiceover but overall this second film is progressing a lot more than the previous.

Group Dicussions & Decisions

To keep a clear difference between present time and flashback we decided to change the complete black and white to having a hint of colour as the complete opposite effects between the black and whites and colour was too different and made our film seem inconsistent. We needed an effect for the flashbacks to create the hint of colour/drained effect, so we began to play around with iMovie's effects until we found one called 'Old World' which looked dream-like unlike others which were very dark and dim and we then manually changed the colour settings and it looked alot better than previously.

We decided we needed transitions also to stop the film being jumpy as well as making flashbacks and real time clear so we added a 'Fade to White' transition before every flashback although creating the perfect timing has been hard as iMovie decided automatically how long each transition should last.

We also discussed our credits again and confirmed that we all liked the creepy effect created by the Seven Credits, also like the Bulls on Parade video. We experimented how to make the flickering effect and after strenuous amount of fiddling we managed to create it by making several text boxes for every flicker of text and then changing each text box to make the writing look as though it is moving.

Here are the Seven opening credits which shows how we want our credits;

Second Day of Filming

For the second day of filming we began at Aimie's house and filmed things that happen in people's daily routines such as a point of view of pouring milk into a cup of tea and a close up of slicing cheese which will be odd for the audience as it has no significance. We filmed a clock of Aimies which is very disfunctional and spins endlessly out of control, it looked effective however it was reflective of the natural light and when we blocked out the light it was too dark to see on the camera so we scrapped the idea entirely.
We filmed a shot of my hand reaching over a shelf to try and reach a necklace, it looked very effective as the hand is very snappy and attempts to grab anything reachable, it also looks as though my character was too short to actually reach the shelf even though I was actually sat on the ground.

We then went to Forty Hall to film shots of our character waking up in a forest. We decided to use someone from our group as it was the most reliable option so I offered to do it as no one was too keen. We filmed panning shots of the location of trees as well as a point of view shot of some gates which looks wierd as the bars move along to help confuse the audience. We filmed interesting shots such as spinning around looking up to the tops of trees at a low angle which is very disorientating. I filmed a point of view shot lying on the ground looking up to the trees which was very slow paced compared to the rest of our footage. Theres a variety of shots of me lying on the floor starting from extreme close-ups all the way to long shots. We also included a pan shot of me getting up from the ground and walking away. We filmed a shot of me walking away from the camera similar to a shot from our old opening which we liked, however as the shot is very long we could cut it and add transitions to create an elipsis.

This is the second draft of our film where we have experimented as a group with black and white and colour to show the differences between real time and 'flashbacks'.
We are still in the initial stages of putting it together although I already think this is much better than the previous film;

Visit to CLC

Despite not having a film opening we visited the CLC with the rest of our media class and were taught alot of techniques which we are going to use in our film opening. We played around and managed to create alot of tense pieces similar to the film opening of Seven, which we were trying to create

Our Original Film Opening

This is our original incomplete film opening before we scrapped the idea;


0:00-0:36 - This scene is much too slow and did not give the creepy effect that we wanted. It was also much too dark and is based too much on the character and not the surroundings. I do like how the camera began in pitch black and focused and brightened when he switched on the red light, aswell as the creek of the door. The shot of the collage of girls was also not long enough for the audience to understand what it was. The pan from the collage to the stalker is not very smooth either which looks very uneffective. I think that there is not enough clear movement after he drops the glass on the floor to when he sticks up the photographs, it is also not clear what he is even doing.
This was not the original beginning as we would have filmed more footage if we had carried on with this idea.

0:36-0:48 - Again, the shot is very dull and long. I do like the wide shot though as it shows that the stalker appears to look like a normal man walking down the road up until he looks up at the girls house and waits at her alleyway. On this part of footage we practised with iMovies "Day to Night" effect which gives it the blue tint, personally I do not like this effect as it does not look realistic. The problem we had with light and brightness from the sun is also obvious from this shot. We did not use various angles as we wanted to keep the stalkers face hidden, however this did not work well as it makes the shot very boring.

0:48-0:55 - I like this shot from inside the house as it is a bit of a break from the outside shots. I like the editing of the sound also as it is silent except from the door slamming shut.

0:55-1:03 - I like this shot but the transition from the previous is not smooth enough. This shot almost creates a barrier between the two characters through their opposite sides of the wall and when the girl steps out the drive, leaving the 'barrier' she is leaving her 'safety zone'. I think the shot should end once the girl has stepped out the shot rather than watching the man continue walking because it needlessly longs out the shot making it dull again.

1:03-1:07 - I do not like this shot mainly because the transition was not perfect as we had not edited correctly so the shots jumped from one to another.

1:07-1:12 + 1:18-1:22 - I really like these shots as it is a point of view of the stalker. We kept the same effects as the other outside shots but added on a black fade to the corners which focused on the girl who was in very light colours. I also like when the girl turns around and the stalker looks away as this provides us with a medium shot of the girls face to show the confusion on her face.

1:12-1:18 + 1:22-1:24 - These shots were improvised on the day of filming and they did look good until we edited the point of view shots, so now they look very jumpy and odd as the shots skip from one effect to another. They also aren't muted like most of the other shots as we were midway through editing.

1:24-1:26 - I am undecided on this shot. I like the effects and that when the hand reaches out it goes white and this focuses the viewer well. I also like that it is slow motion to add tension. However I dislike the point of the shot, I do not like the reaching out at all. I think it would have been more effective if there was a close up from infront of the girl with either the man placing his hand on her shoulder and they had both stop walking to show the fear on her face or the man putting his hand over her mouth and her eyes widening to show panic.

1:26-1:52 - Alot is missing for the last scene returning to the darkroom. The photographs came out too dark so that you could not see what they were of. The mobile light would not stay on and continued to flash which could have looked creepy - but it seems not. Also our names were on the pictures of ourselves to be used as credits with a pan shot, however after reading the marking criteria we discovered we must have our credits on made on iMovie.

Continuing Editing

We were given a lesson to continue editing which is very hard when all 6 groups are trying to work at once however we began to try and sort out our lighting problems but we could not find a resolution even with changing all the effects.
Also we believed our scenes were too slow and dragged on rather than increasing tension and building up to something.
As a group we discussed our alternatives as we did not believe our film opening was effective enough. In my opinion, I believe we should re-film as we are now much more educated in film openings, in the horror/thriller genre and at filming and editing aswell as storylines.

Uploading and Editing

When we uploaded our footage from the two day's of filming we were slightly disappointed due to the lighting, especially in the dark room although we edited it on iMovie and it looks alot better meaning we will not need to refilm the scene. Also the weather during the house scene did cause a problem as we thought, we did attempt to edit this also and it created a nice effect, similar to that in Sin City however instead of bright red, all of the white colours were very bright.
We did this by changing the contrast, brightness, saturation and colour balance.