Editing session 2

Our opening sequence length was too long as it needed to be cut down by 50 seconds. In an attempt to reduce the length I cut down unnecessary shots when the characters were both leaving the forest toward the car and arriving back once they got the equipment. I shortened this section down as the original shots were too long and will have made the audience loose interest. Therefore, to keep or maintain tension the journey to and from the car had to be reduced. We also have in our opening sequence blood dripping from a tree which we liked as it connotes the horror conventions so in order to reduce time, I sped up the shot to double the speed. The shot is still just as effective and was not too fast that it did not match the rest of the shots before and after it.

I also helped Matt change the colour on one of the shots. I already knew how to adjust the settings but I needed conformation with Matt as it was in his section. We needed to adjust the colour settings as that particular shot was extremely bright and did not fit with the surrounding shots. The footage before and after were much warmer and gentle to look at. Therefore, I had to change the colour from harsh lighting so it would fit better in the scenes.

During my section of the dialogue there was a limited variety of shots. The only used shot was a medium shot of one single character and so it was hard to tell who the characters were talking to. To amend this I added a low angle long shot of  Alice, Matt and myself. After I implemented this into our opening sequence it was much clearer to see who was talking to who. It is necessary that the audience know which characters are communicating as if they are confused they will not understand the story line.

Filming Journal 2

After looking at our footage on final cut pro we realized we had insufficient shots and variety so we decided to re-shoot at a later date. I filmed the close up conversation between Matt and Alice to show the expression in that scene. This creates diversity in our film and with the different shot types that can explore different ideas. I also filmed a POV shot of us walking for the filming site location to the car. This has been done to create a sense of realism that we want to connote through our filming. A POV shot was necessary in order to create a reality as it shows the film from the perspective of one of the characters. Another shot that I filmed was the low angle shot of the murderer with murder weapon. The low angle shot was taken to create enigma surrounding the killer. This is key to creating a successful opening sequence as we want to intrigue the audience into watching the film.

Editing session 1

At the beginning of our opening sequence we had a shot that was 20 seconds long of the characters walking to their location. We realised that this shot was longer than necessary and we had to cut it down. We used the blade tool to cut the one take into several shorter ones. As a result with tampering with our footage we had to re-film most of the first 30 seconds which we decided to do in the upcoming days. We moved onto the the next scene where Alfie placed is bag over the camera to cut to the characters all set up. In order for this to flow we edited a black screen onto the footage so that the transition was clear. Some of our close ups of the characters dialogue did not work correctly so we added this to our list of re-filming in the upcoming days. Our opening sequence must be 2 minutes long and therefore in order for each of us to have the same amount of time to show our ability, we split the time into 30 seconds each.

Filming Journal

On the day of filming Ewan Matt Scott and I met up on location with our actors. We briefed them on what we will be doing and how they will be involved. We instructed them to remember their exact position to keep the continuity correct. My role was to be part of the opening sequence but I also contributed off the screen as well. I directed some high angle shots of the characters walking through the woods. I also directed the dialogue scene of the characters interacting about where different possible filming angles could be.

Fake Blood

For our film we required the use of fake blood which was needed in order to create mystery surrounding the disappearance of one of the members. The fake blood was my idea so I provided the prop and incorporated it in to our film. I ,as seen in the picture above, poured the blood onto the axe. I brought the fake blood from home as an extra prop and we decided to use it due to the fact that it is a stereotypical connotation of the horror genre and we will use it efficiently to show off a murder within our opening scene without showing any on screen violence or death.