Tuesday 31 January 2012

The Adventures of Ralph: Editing our final piece together post 1.

So today we decided (now that we've got all of our filming done) that we were going to eliminate the shots that we didn't feel worked (and there were lots of them...) and put down the ones we liked in the order we intend them to be in. We haven't added our transitions yet but when we tested a few on some of the clips they looked quite effective so hopefully we'll be adding them in next time. Unfortunately though today God decided that he would put an end to our short-lived luck. It turns out that the footage we filmed actually isn't that long. Well, not as long as we thought it would be. Infact it's about a minute and 20 seconds too short. Damnit. However being the film making geniuses that we three are we came up with a good idea of what we could add to the end of our footage to make it longer (not filler though...it's all relevant to the idea of Death and Satanism). In this extra footage you should be seeing Jess (the Satanist) talking to her 'friend' (Me) who actually turns out to be a figment of her imagination that's telling her to kill people. We're so original. :) Oh and also one of her other friends informs her that her friend (Sarah) was brutally murdered and wishes her well. Which is nice of them. But this isn't a nice film opening so we decided to make my character angry at the friend for interfering and tells Jess to go ABSOLUTELY CRAZY at them. Oh well...here's hoping everything goes okay from now on. Fingers crossed. I mean it can't get much worse from here, can it? *touch wood*

Thursday 19 January 2012

About my production company.

Before I start i'd like to point out that this particular film had lots of Production Company's involved. So I chose the main one (or what I think is the main one) and at the bottom i'll list all the others.

The Weisntein Company is an american film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after they left -Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979. Their first realeases included the dramatic thriller Derailed (starring Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen), the offbeat comedy-drama Transamerica (starring Felicity Huffman) the computer-animated family film Hoodwinked, the World War II-era comedy-drama Mrs. Henderson Presents (starring Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins) and the caper comedy The Matador (starring Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear).

In July 2006 the Weinstein brothers and Robert L. Johnson announced the creation of the venture studio titled Our Stories Films which then would distribute African-American-oriented films.

On May 24, 2007, The Weinstein Company announced the launch of three new direct-to-video labels: The Miriam Collection, Kaleidoscope TWC, and Dimension Extreme.

In 2009, TWC lost the rights to the movie Sin City 2. The first movie cost 40 million dollars to make and brought in almost 159 million in box office alone.

In June 2009, The Weinstein Company announced the hiring of a financial adviser to restructure the finances of the company

There's a few facts...:)

Monday 2 January 2012

Questions on the film.

What do you need to establish environment?
To establish the environment during the scene of the victim we used a long shot although it doesn't show all of the room the audience know from what they can see that the character is at home, having a normal evening. Noramality was given off by this choice of shot.

To establish the environment during the scene of the Satanic Ritualist we used a crane shot to show the pentagram and the dark floor which is surrounded by candles. You can't see much of the room but you can see the character and the things surrounding her. This was to create a sense of mystery.

When do you show establishing information?
Our establishing information was shown in the opening of both scenes. We wanted the audience to be clear on what was happening before we got into the plot.

When do characters move and how do you show it?

Unlike the ritualist, the victim moves quite alot during her scene. We see her looking down at her phone, standing and walking into the kitchen, back into the living room, pausing and looking down at her stomach, falling in agony and dragging her hand across the rug. When we were filming her walking through to the kitchen and walking back out we used a variety of different shots and the ones we'll use will be decided later when we start editing.

The ritualist is sitting for most of her scene and the only real her victim. movement she has is when she lifts the notebook, crosses out the name of her victim and throws a bone into the bowl which she is performing the ritual in. We also filmed this in many different ways and will decide which one we use later when we edit.

Who's point of view is it from?
There isn't an actual p.o.v to our film. We're watching the characters as if we are there...which we're not...cause you wouldn't just watch someone die infront of you. Atleast I hope you wouldn't...I wouldn't...

When/why does the camera move?
During the death scene the camera moves quite alot as the camera follows the victim as she keels over and falls to the floor, spilling her guts and dying. A tragic death but it's a horror film...so. We use a tracking shot as we follow her into the kitchen.The only movement we see during the ritual film is when we use a close up on her face.

What are the significant eyelines and when do they change?
We see Jess glancing down at her notebook as she performs the ritual to show that she is concentrating on what she's saying. She also watches as she places the bone into the bowl but I don't think that that's very significant to the plot. A significant moment for the victim is when she realises that she's being killed/is bleeding to death when she glances down at her stomach to see the gash in her stomach.

I'm not sure what the last question means, sorry.

Any extra information.

Our film opening is set in the 21st century, modern era. Where we see a girl kill another girl using a Satanic Ritual. So the main themes of our film our death and satanism. Where did we get inspiration to make such a creepy film opening? Supernatural. Supernatural, all of Supernatural and nothing but Supernatural. Though Sarah and Jess have probably added in other things that have inspired them. For me it was all Supernatural. I wanted to do something that would relate back to Supernatural as i've always wondered what it's like to film scenes that involve...unnatural things. I think...yeah. So by doing a horror film opening based around a Satanic Ritual that was my way of attempting that.


The scene of the victim should be filmed in a natural setting. Somewhere like a house (which we ended up using) where there's no signs of something shocking about to happen. The victim should be doing something normal like sitting watch tv or reading a book rather than doing something that wouldn't fit in with the setting like something really energetic. The only props the victim uses in this scene is a phone and a water bottle. The character wears a set of pyjamas to give off the idea that she's relaxed at home.


The scene of the Satanic Ritualist should be filmed in a dark, quite space. The actual setting shouldn't be clear to the audience to give off the sense of mystery. The only lighting visible should be from the candles laying around the pentagram. The only props in this scene are the candles, the pentagram, two glittery skulls and the notebook she uses to read the ritual from. The character is wearing dark clothes that blend into the background with a cloak hung around her shoulders. Only her face is properly visible in the dim lighting.


Colour Palette...i'm stumped as to what that means. But I think I may have answered that in my paragraphs or I hope so.

Roles and Responsibilities of our group.

Director - That would be me, Hannah. I was in charge of actually getting everyone into position and how we were going to show our idea/image of the film to the audience. I don't know if I was any good at it but it sure was alot of fun. :)


Producer - Sarah. We've never really figured out what this term means. But that's what we decided Sarah is. From the name I get the impression that Sarah's job is to make it all happen. She gets everything prepared and ready and then I take over and say how I want it to be done. Well atleast that's what I think.


Editor - Sarah again. Sarah gets to edit our project together once we've done filming.


Director of cinematography - Not only am I, Hannah, director of the project as a whole but i'm also the director of cinematography. It sounds fancy but actually it just means cameraman. Oh well.


Lighting - Sarah...again. I'm beginning to see a pattern forming. Essentially Sarah has to fix the lighting if we have any lighting issues.


Craft Services - Here's where the pattern breaks. Jess is in charge of craft services.


Make up - Jess again. Jess dealt with all the make up before we started filming. She had to make herself look evil as well...which was interesting.


Costume - Jess also has to plan and get everyone's costumes. Jess came up with the brilliant idea of wearing a cloak! It looked really creepy. We were chuffed.


Prop Wrangler - That was me. My job was to collect all the props together and make sure they made it to Set (Jess's house).


Transport Manager - That was me but it turned out we didn't need anyone to transport us anywhere. But my mum took me and Sarah home after tiring days of filming. Thanks mum. :)


Cast - Jess & Sarah. Jess was the evil ritualist and Sarah died. Sorry Sarah.


Location Manager - This was Jess as it was her house.


Continuity Editor - Sarah. So once it's all filmed Sarah get's to check if we've made any continuity errors. She also had to do this while we were filming. If it turns out we do have any then we may have to refilm. Which would suck.


Set Dresser - Jess made the set look all pretty and nice before we filmed. Then when we filmed her Satanic bit she made it all scary. She did a good job.

Our props and health and safety precautions.


What's this? Aah well this is a pentagram made out of thousands of tiny bits of paper. If we're pretending to do a Satanic ritual we figured we might as well make it convincing. And in the end it was worth it as while we were filming it looked really good. There were a few mishaps with the paper. We learned the hard way that if you have lots of little bits of paper all stacked on top of each other to make a shape and happen to accidentally move the blanket they're laying on then your whole shape will be ruined and you have to make up the shape all over again. To make the setting dark we blocked up all the windows surrounding this area (with Christmas cards) and turned off all the lights. The only light we left on was the light coming from upstairs as without it Ralph (our group camera) couldn't see as the dim candlelight wasn't enough. Candle wise we made sure that the candles were at a suitable distance away from the blanket as we didn't want to set Jess's duvet alight. Sarah's knowledge of fire safety due to her Dad once being a fireman was very useful in this matter.

While taking set pictures and filming we did the very wise thing of keeping with us everywhere a cup or two of water so that incase of an emergency with the candles we could save Jess and her duvet. Another special mention to Jess's mum as supervised while we filmed as well. Incase our cups of water didn't work. Jess's mum is amazing by the way.

Our amazing prosthetics and costumes!

Blood. Blah. This is the costume of our victim, Sarah. :( We wanted to make it all look natural so we decided on having Sarah in pyjamas. I'd also like to point out that those particular pj bottoms are mine. They have robins on. I'm very hip. We also chose to use pyjamas as we didn't want to ruin anyone's clothes. Thanks to Sarah's mum for bringing Sarah home old Sainsbury's tops. You and Jess's mum's both have special mentions on my blog now.

More blood. Blah-er. Just incase of any misunderstandings I can promise you that we didn't slit Sarah open just for our scene. This cut is 100% made of wax and red washing up liquid. We owe our great prosthetic success to Jess's mum. Oh and the wax is from a face painting kit. We put alot of thought into this kind of thing.

Some lovely insider shots of our set.

This is Jess's living room. Jess's living room is used for "The victim" a.k.a Sarah's scene where unfortunately she dies...as it is a horror film opening. Sorry. We thought Jess's living room would be good as it shows Sarah in a normal environment, having a normal day...being normal before her tragic death. I also thought this would be quite effective because the set is quite cheery compared to the genre of the film (there's a Christmas Tree in the room. There's nothing eerie about that.) so there is nothing to give away the plot from this set...you wouldn't expect her to die is what I mean.

This is a close up of the rug you can see in the first photo but I think you already knew that. Reason being as this rug happened to be very important to our film. Almost like a main character but not. See this rug was used during Sarah's death as we didn't want to ruin Jess's mum's floors with fake blood. We were given permission to use this old rug by Jess's mum as she was going to get rid of it anyway. It seemed like fate that it should be put in our film.

Even though the kitchen is shown in our film you don't actually see much of it. You only really see Sarah going to get a bottle of water from the fridge. This was again to give off the idea of normality.

Another shot of Jess's kitchen with a glimpse of her fridge. We had alot of fun making the fake blood in here. Well Jess and Sarah did. I hate blood. Blah.


Unlike my EVIL friends I cut myself out of this shot. Since i'm irrelevant to the picture. This is just another shot of Jess's living room where we see Sarah crossing to get into the kitchen and dying.

Our shooting schedule and a brief apology.

Firstly i'd just like to say that i'm sorry that nothing was posted onto my blog until the last minute. Honestly I have no excuse as to why not other than that Christmas is my faviroute time of year and that distracts me from my school responsibilities. But this is important so i've spent half the day trying to work out exactly what i'm going to write when it comes to my later posts where I answer questions on our film. Yeah...:)

December 22nd: death/blood/carpet scene.
December 29th: pentagram/ritual scene
January 1st - January 10th: re-filming/corrections as needed.
This is was our shooting schedule. And surprisingly we stuck to it/are sticking to it but I think by now we've got all the filming we need and such.