Props - Plates

I made a number of breakaway plates for when we had to smash them - I poured plaster of paris into the bottom of a large bucket and left it to dry for a couple of hours. One of the plates broke in half whilst I tried to extract it from the bucket, but otherwise the plates turned out nicely, good and smooth and perfect for smashing!

Properties - Diary

To create the diary I bought a notebook from Ryman see below, that I thought well fitted the personality of our protagonist


I then discarded the pencil and cut the elastic for it off. I took a black pen and filled in several double page spreads as if they were diary entries Eve had written. I filled in more than we would need to shoot to make sure if the mum flicked through the book you would not see any blank pages.

EB

Rough Cut 4

Here is our fourth rough cut - this is our final version without music or titles, we have exported it for the music to be composed to it

What we have changed

• We have moved the idents to the start of the trailer as we felt where they were they were breaking the tension we had built, this allowed us to put the voiceover of Ruby over the idents, integrating them into our film more 
• The bus stop scene has now been rotated to be straight
• We have added in sound from the digital audio recorder from the scenes we filmed later and fixed all of the sound for these scenes
• We added in black video as markers for where all of our intertitles will go
• We recorded the extra digetic sound we needed including an extra line of dialogue 

Points to improve

• We still need to make a main title
• We have now made intertitles and a billing block but need to add these to the trailer
• We now have the video to compose music in garage band against so we will begin this very soon

EB

Rough Cut 3

Here is our third rough cut

What we have changed

• We have added in the shots from our two further filming sessions since the last rough cut 
• We have continued the colour grade, using it to make several scenes appear to be at night such as scene 14

Points to improve

• We need to sort the sound in the scenes filmed in the last two sessions 
• We need to rotate the shots at the bus stop as we were on a hill 
• Also we need to film some diegetic sound for the bus stop and kitchen scenes
• We still need to make titles and a billing block
• We also still need to compose music in garage band and add it to the trailer 

EB

Rough Cut 2

Here is our second rough cut

What we have changed

• We have hugely cut down from our first rough cut of 2:47 to 1:24 as we knew we still had a lot to film and titles to add in
• We have added the sound from the digital audio recorder 
• We have gone through colour grading every shot in the trailer

Points to improve

• We still have several place holder scenes to be filled as there is much left to be filmed
• We need to make titles and a billing block
• We need to create compose music in garage band and add it to the trailer 

EB

Filming Day 3

Last weekend we had our third and final day of filming, achieving the final three scenes of our film. We encountered a problem just before we begun filming as we realised we had forgotten to bring a Digital Audio Recorder, however we rectified this by plugging the microphone into the camera allowing it to sync the sound to the video automatically as we filmed. After this everything went very smoothly, we had some problems filming the bus stop scene and in Dulwich park as it was very busy however we managed to find quiet places so did not have to pause filming too much to allow passerbys through.

EB

Ident 2 - Construction

For our second ident, Fireline, I decided that we wanted some fire (inspired by the title) to spread out into bubbles across the screen. I executed this by using various effects, mostly CC Particle Systems, using the 'Fire' physics mode, and a particle type of Bubble.

I also increased the birth size and decreased the death size to make the particles grow smaller as they rise, giving a stronger idea that they come from one point. I changed the longevity and birth rate to have the particles last less long (to give a fading away look at the top of the fire) and spawn more frequently (to give an idea that this is a roaring fire) respectively. I made sure to change the colours so that the particles were a gradient of orange the whole way through the animation. I adjusted the velocity and other parameters - from here on it was just a case of fiddling with things until I got the look I wanted. I also used a motion blur, Vector Blur, Fast Blur, Directional Blur, and Echo (although faded these out when the fire turns to bubbles) to blend the particles together and give more of a firey look. I also added a curves adjustment to make the fire more orange and a turbulent displace and a Glow to tie everything together. I then played around with the Direction, Resistance, Gravity, Extra, and Velocity settings to get a bubble result I was happy with.

GH

Rough Cut 1 - Audience Feedback

We showed the rough cut to a group of people to hear their feedback on what they liked about it and what they thought we could improve on.

What they liked

• They commented on the fast editing of the diary between the close ups of words and the mid shot of the whole open book
• They also liked the colour grade of the whole trailer
• They thought is was very easy to understand what was going on

Points to Improve 

• Change the edit in scene two to slow down the pace of it so it does not feel as rushed and confusing
• Add in the music which will hopefully lift it all 
• A lot of work needs to be done to the diegetic sounds, which we will fix by adding in the sound from from the Digital Audio Recorder 

EB

Foley Sound

We used a variety of original foley sounds in our trailer.

Foley Sound in Act 1

In act 1 we deliberately removed almost all of the diegetic sound, to create a smoother montage as the sound wasn't of consistent tone or quality. As such, there was no need for any foley sound, as the feeling of verisimilitude usually created using foley sound and continuity editing isn't needed during a trailer montage.

Foley Sound in Act 2

Act 2 starts with the breakfast scene, which required lots of post-recorded diegetic sound. The tapping on the bowl, the ticking of the clock (which is barely audible, but helps to build intensity and tension in the scene) and the spoon falling onto the table were all recorded separately to the camera shots - hence why some of it doesn't synchronise up that well.

The next scene in Act 2 is Eve using her phone and scribbling in her diary - I recorded sounds of me typing on a phone and scribbling on some paper to add in later. I did this in an environment with soft surfaces to allow me the greatest freedom to use reverb to give an idea of the size of the space in post production. You can here this in the trailer.

Unfortunately we had a sound recording error in the next scene - you can hear that the sound of the footsteps is far too loud in comparison to the voices. Unfortunately, this was very difficult to remove as the footstep sound is a similar frequency to the voice, and we didn't have time to reshoot this scene, so I did my best and moved on. Next time, I would have re-recorded the dialogue in post production (as we did last year) but as mentioned, we didn't have time this year.

The plate smash sound effect is the next example of foley sound - since the plates were made of plaster, they didn't sound like plates smashing using the recorded sound, so I had to source a plate smashing sound effect from a royalty-free website. Next time I would record the plate smashing sound myself, but unfortunately our budget didn't allow for that this year.

Foley Sound in Act 3

Again, in Act 3 the sound of her removing the knife from the rack didn't build tension in the way I'd hoped so the sound was cut from the piece. The sound of her tying her shoelaces remains, although it is quiet and backgrounded by the singing and music, which means it often goes unnoticed by audiences. I found this out by asking them after showing them rough cuts of the film. 

Next Time

Next time I will think more about other foley sound we might need - splitting into the 3 categories of foley sound:

Feet

In my opinion, we didn't have enough 'stepper' sounds in our film - for example, when Eve walks up the stairs, we hear nothing, when in fact we should hear her on each step and perhaps a creak or two in the final scene. Hearing the father's boots as he comes in would also make a huge difference to the impact his entrance creates.

Movement

Again, our film doesn't have enough movement sound - swishing of clothes, or the sound of hand holding in the first act would have helped heighten the tension in an otherwise 'nice' scene.

Specifics

This is where I feel our film excels (when considering foley sound). We used lots of specific sounds, discussed above, to create a feel of verisimilitude and to heighten the effect of certain scenes. In particular, we wanted the breakfast scene to feel uncomfortable with all the heightened sound. I think this could have been executed much better than we did, with more sound (e.g. tea/milk being poured) and more of a build-up to the climax of the scene. We were unable to do this because of time limits on the length of the trailer, but next time I would definitely make more of an effort on this front. The final scene also would benefit from some more foley sound, such as the knife and steps discussed earlier.

GH

Rought Cut 1

Here is the first rough cut for our final product, we have put all of the clips filmed on day 1 and 2 of filming together along with the idents. The colour grade has begun on some of the shots but there is still a long way to go on many. Currently the only sound for all of it apart from scene 1 is camera sound so this will need to be replaced with sound from the Digital Audio Recorder. Also currently it reaches 2 minutes 48 seconds in length with still 4 scenes to film, making it well over our target of 2 minutes so we plan to cut a large amount of it down.

EB

Filming Day 3 - Shooting Schedule

Here is the shooting schedule for our third and hopefully final full day of filming, after this we will only have a single scene remaining which we plan to film after school next week.

SHOOT DAY 3
Scn: 6	EXT DAY	HERNE HILL TRAIN STATION NOAH attempts to check if EVE is okay	PG CNT: 3/8	E, N
Scn: 7	EXT DAY	HERNE HILL TRAIN STATION NOAH attempts to check if EVE is okay	PG CNT: 3/8	E, N
Scn: 5	EXT DAY	BUS STOP DULWICH EVE texting boyfriend at bus stop	PG CNT: 3/8	E
Scn: 12	EXT DAY	DULWICH PARK EVE yells at pigeon, passerby stops to help	PG CNT: 3/8	E, P

EB

Filming Day 2 - Shooting Schedule

See below the shooting schedule I have made for the second day of filming

SHOOT DAY 2
Scn: 2	INT DAY	KITCHEN Breakfast - EVE shouts and runs off	PG CNT: 3/8	E, S, M
Scn: 8	INT DAY	BEDROOM EVE reveals inner thoughts to MUM - “Not in control”	PG CNT: 1/8	E, M
Scn: 9a	INT DAY	BEDROOM Out of control montage - Mirror, crying, writing	PG CNT: 1/8	E
Scn: 16	INT DAY	BEDROOM Death scene - MUM reading diary, EVE carrying knife	PG CNT: 1/8	E, M
Scn: 15	INT DAY	HALLWAY, KITCHEN, STAIRS EVE prepares for the kill	PG CNT: 1/8	E
Scn: 13	INT DAY	BEDROOM MUM walks into bedroom and reads diary	PG CNT: 1/8	M
Scn: 10	INT DAY	DOORWAY FATHER comes in through doorway	PG CNT: 1/8	F
Scn: 11	INT DAY	KITCHEN FATHER and MUM talk about EVE - plate smash!	PG CNT: 3/8	M, F

EB

Filming Day 2

At the weekend we had our second day of filming where we filmed all of the scenes taking place inside our main characters house. I knew this we going to be a lengthy process as the inside scenes were scene 2,8,9,10,11,13,15 and 16 so I decided to make a shooting schedule, see previous blog post.

We began filming in the morning to make sure we would have time to get everything done, we encountered a problem from the offset in that we forgot the piece to connect the microphone to the boom pole, however we managed to quickly solve this using some duct tape, which surprisingly lasted the whole rest of the day filming, keeping the microphone in place.

The rest of the day went very smoothly with our actors working extremely well together especially the parents who told us they had no previous acting experience. All of the props worked out for us and we managed to stick to schedule well, finishing on time.

EB