Second Draft

This is our second draft. We've now added all of the footage that will be in the final draft, as before we hadn't added that bit. Now all we need to do is cut it down, re-film some bits and make it good. Easy...

Misfits

Misfits is a comedy/drama show on E4, and is one of my favorite TV programs. It's about five teenagers doing their community service after committing various offenses, who then get struck by lightening and develop superpowers. Although the synopsis sounds awful, the show is incredibly well written, and one of its main strengths is that the protagonists are so flawed, yet are somehow more lovable for it. It also portrays young offenders as people who can show compassion and are just people, something that I think strikes a chord with the youth today after we get such bad press.

The first episode of the second series started the other night, and part of the advertising was done on Twitter, with all the main character in the show given their own fake accounts. During the episode, the characters discussed parts of the plot with their followers, and the day after their followers were allowed to ask them questions. This was a really fascinating way of getting the viewers more involved with the show, and was targeted perfectly at its core audience, as E4 as a channel is generally aimed at teenagers to twentysomethings, people who are also likely to be on Twitter.

First Draft

This is the first draft for our movie beginning. We have quite a few things to improve on, for example we need to sort out sound, and we haven't even included all the bus scenes yet, so we'll need to trim the current section down. We also need to decide on the titles and just fine tune a few other things, but as it's early days we'll definitely get all of this done.

Alarm Clock Shots

This is a couple of shots that we did when practicing for throwing the alarm clock. We had Alice and Valentina under the window on the drive trying to catch the items we threw in a blanket, and we experimented with a couple of different objects of varying sizes and weights before using the clock for the final thing.

Helpful Video

This is a video from YouTube that helped us use a freeze frame effect.

Se7en

On Friday's lesson we watched the film Se7en, starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. It was a very good film , and gave us a lot to think about when editing our own movies as it has some fantastic shots and use of sound. Although we as a group are not doing a horror/thriller film, it was still good to see, as it showed us what could be achieved.

I don't think that films really need to use plenty of gore and violence to make the film last in people's memories. Although I didn't get particularly scared by it (which is a miracle considering I get nightmares after Shaun of the Dead), I still found that I kept thinking about it even when I was trying to get to sleep that night, especially the ending.

Filming

On Wednesday the 27th October we filmed for our main movie opening. It was definitely an eventful day, and we all went home incredibly tired, but pleased that we'd filmed it.

We decided to film at Alice's house, because her sisters' room was perfect for filming in. We all arrived there at about 10:00, and we had a quick planning meeting where we decided when and where we were going to film each shot. We decided to film the zoom in/zoom out shots of Andrea's outfits first, because we didn't need it to be very light, and the weather was meant to get brighter throughout the day (which it did!). We also filmed the scenes that involved Andrea looking as if she's just got ready, because we knew that we'd need to make her look as if she'd just woken up later in the day.

We had quite a few shots that were difficult to film, including the shots of me lying on the floor having been hit with an alarm clock. This was a problem because of continuity, so I had to lie in the exact same position for around 10 minutes (I was watching the alarm clock while waiting). This was the kind of thing I wouldn't like to film again, mainly because it was incredibly uncomfortable and fairly embarrassing. We also came up with many shots on the spot, for example we chose to film the scene where Andrea's character grabs orange juice instead of milk from inside the fridge, which is an unusual shot and has the added bonus of making a black screen when the door closes, which is perfect for putting some credits.

After a lunch break, we went to the bus stop to film Andrea's character getting on the bus. This was the most stressful part of the day, because we couldn't use Valentina's dad's bus. We also ended up with a rather moody bus driver, which was unfortunate but luckily we still managed to film all we needed. Even more annoying was the bus driver who waved and smiled at the camera when we were filming Andrea from across the road, which is annoying, but we may be able to edit it out somehow. The actual filming was also difficult while on the bus, because the bus was very jerky, so it was impossible to film without any shakiness. We decided that this was to our advantage, however, because it would give the viewers the feel of being on a bus, and it makes it more realistic. After having gone from Enfield Town to Brimsdown we discovered that we had left the tripod clip on the bus, which was a bit of a pain but not too much of a problem because the rest of our filming was fine to do with the gorilla pod.

We then got back to Alice's house to film the beginning scenes. After back-brushing Andrea's hair and messing up her makeup we filmed her character waking up and throwing the alarm clock out of the window. This was also difficult to do, as it was Andrea's alarm clock and she didn't want it broken, so we first filmed Andrea throwing the clock to Alice, who was behind the camera, and then of me out of shot, throwing the clock out of the window with Alice and Valentina outside with a blanket to catch it. We managed to do two or three shots with an unscathed alarm clock and filmed our efforts on the main camera, so that any good shots we got we'd have them on the right definition. We also practiced before throwing the clock, using a hairbrush and an oyster card holder.

By the end of the day (about 5:00) we were exhausted, and filmed a victory video on the flip before passing out...