Our Idea

Our idea was inspired by the film 'The Lovely Bones'. Sophie and myself previously watched this film and we loved it. We liked how unexpected it all seemed and the way it was produced. This gave us the idea of doing a similar plot however giving it our own twist. The link below provides a lot of detail on this film and a description on the plot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lovely_Bones

Below are some shots we especially liked as they portray the feeling of unease and mystery. I like these images of George Harvey, who kills Susie Salmon in the film because he has a very focused and creepy expression on his face. In each of these pictures he has someone in his sight (possibly Susie) and he remains in the correct character all the way through which I think is crucial for this role.

Possible Sounds for the Film

Before we started recording, we thought it was a good idea to go through on Imovie sounds to see which ones would be suitable and sounds good which our film. This allowed us to have an idea on the moods that the film will create and help pair it with the sounds more. The list below is all of the ones we are thinking about coorperating into our film.

• Alien impact
• Borealis
• Dogma
• Farewell 
• Mystery accents
• Suspense accent

Also during the selection of sounds there were many sounds that could be used as ambient ones which could occur in the background of the setting/actions/location. This will also help to create the eery sounds and could portray certain feelings and ideas to the audience. 

• Cave Water drops
• Dog barking
• Door metal squeak
• Elysium
• Footstep
• Flurry
• Grandfather clock strike
• Police car siren
• Pursuit 
• Radio station 
• Clock wind-up

Research Methods

There are 4 different kinds of research methods which all have different advantages and disadvantages.

PRIMARY

This research method is done by the individual who wants to find out the information. This can be done by interviews, surveys or questionnaires.

Advantages: You will know where the source of information has come from and the topic of information is more focused and specific to what you want to know. 

Disadvantages: It may be time consuming and  quite expensive and the data may be out of date when you come to use it.

SECONDARY

This research method is done by an individual researching from other information resources such as the internet, newspapers and libraries.

Advantages: The process of finding information is done quickly - you only have to search for it and it isn't expensive. 

Disadvantages: You may not have any access to these sources of information. You don't know where the information has come from so may be unreliable. 

QUALITATIVE

This research method focuses on the reasoning of collecting information and finds more information out about people including age, interests, religion etc. 

Advantages: This can be very detailed and precise. 

Disadvantages: It could be time consuming as you would have to analyse peoples responses.

QUANTITIVE

This research method focuses on the numerical side of research collection like statistics and data.

Advantages: It is good for finalising results and making them more conclusive.

Disadvantages: This could take a lot of time and a lot of effort is involved.

I think that the best research methods to use during the process of creating and finalising the short film would be primary, secondary and quantitive data. I think that qualitative data would mainly be used in the evaluation process of this task. This is because they all provide good and fairly reliable results which would allow summarised conclusions about specific topics. Throughout the task I will be commenting on the research carried out is either primary, secondary, qualitative or quantitive.

Recce pictures

To get an idea of the possible locations for our short film, we took some pictures of the areas which we were looking to film in. As you can see in the pictures below, we thought the entrance of the school would be good to use as it would set the scene for the opening - informing the audience of the location and setting.
By filming the 'student' getting out of the car in the car park, it could suggest that they weren't actually a student but could be some sort of teacher.
Also having the office in the opening of the film could also create the impression that this student is new as she asked for her timetable to the receptionist.
Having the 'student' in the corridors with other students convinces the audience even more that she is actually a student, which we thought was useful to use.

Main Task Decision

Our class got told that it was acceptable to work in pairs our in small groups for the main task. In the group I am in is obviously myself, Sophie and Harriet so we will all share the work load and work well together.
We have chosen to create a short film for the main task as we have clear ideas on what we want to create and the mood we want to portray within it. As we gained our thoughts quite early within the process, it allowed us to think more deeply about what we want to include in the film, the mise en scene and camerawork that would work best as well as finding reliable characters who wouldn't mind playing a part in it.

Short film

What I Have Learnt

Scripting/Storyboarding

Before we started the filming we had to create a storyboard or a script which displayed our thoughts on the story plot and then shots that we were planning to take. Besides this we had to jot done all the sounds, camerawork, editing and mise en scene that we wanted to include. We chose to do a storyboard to show our story line and it helped me to learn that it allowed us to have a deeper vision on what to compose as well as helping to plan the time schedule and the period in which to film. It gave us a structure in which we could follow to see if we were doing the work correctly and if 2we had completed all of the filming scenes.

Locations

As this was just a preliminary task we got limited to the schools premises on where we could film. Due to the story plot to our film, we wanted to do some of the filming outside. This caused a lot of problems due to the weather being miserable. A majority of the days in which our lessons occurred it was raining which meant we could not film. We this happened we filmed inside so we wasn't wasting time. As our deadline was getting closer we had to take matters into our own hands and used our free periods to film when the weather was good. I have learnt that we cannot always do as we please and have to wait for the right time or in this case, when the weather was decent.

Talent

First of all, I have learnt that 'talent' means actors/actress! I have noticed many things when it comes to working with the actress in my case. It is clear to see that you cannot always rely on the actresses who play a part in the film you are creating as they may be off due to illnesses, appointments, and they may just not be in the mood to film. But the majority of time she was reliable and I knew she would be as she is a very good friend of mine. Besides this I also had to rely on the actress and myself to bring in the correct clothing for the filming and this proved to be a big problem as it wasn't always the first thing on our mind to bring to school (our location for filming).

Organisations

Thoughout the task, my partner and myself had really good organisation skills as we contributed fairly and made the same amount of decisions. A big part of our film was the class room which took a lot of organising. We had to get the whole of our media class into a room and set it up as if it was a real lesson; this took a lot of organising as people in our class had their own work to do so we had to chose to film at the right time. We also had to organise when to bring in the clothing needed and when we could book the cameras out. I learnt that not all organisations run smoothly as many factors, such as the weather, can mean that things cannot be done.

Teamwork

I worked with another girl in my class who is the actress in the short film and we are very good friends which made the task more enjoyable and easier in some ways. I was the one who done the recording while my friend done the acting. We found that working together was very benefical becuase we contributed both ideas about the story line, camera work techniques, and putting the film together. We had to rely in each other to bring the clothes that we were shooting in. The shooting was very weather dependent for some of it as we was filming outside, so when it was raining we had to work together on editing the footage we aready had.

Editing

We learnt how to upload the footage onto the Mac as we did not know how to do this. Once this was completed we had to delete any film which we didn't want to use; this was relatively easy as you just pressed the 'delete' icon. As we completed the filming early we just explored and tested Imovie to get an idea on how to edit. As me nor Sophie, the actress, had used Imovie before, we was clueless to how the editing works. We rushed the editing as it took us a long while to learn how to do it. We found out how to add sounds and at transitions ourselves because it was quite easy to figure out.

The Final Product

The main thing I loved about this task was recording it as I learnt more techniques than what I knew before and can put them to use in the future. I also enjoyed working with my partner because even though we got all of the work done on time, we still have an enjoyable time creating it.
If I could improve the making of the film I would maybe have thought about the weather conditions first as I would realise that it could prevent filming however I feel that shooting outside added vartiation to the films setting and made it look more realistic.