WHO HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE

PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

HOW DID YOU USE A BLOG TO WORK

COLLABORATIVELY?

We used blogger to record all of our planning. We were assigned tasks that contributed to our understanding of the conventions of horror. This was useful as we could effectively plan our shoots.

After we posted our blog posts we would then get feedback from fellow group members and teachers on how we can improve and how well we did. This allowed to develop and improve our posts which then improved our planning and ultimately our film.

Using blogger allowed us to easily look through our own and each other's posts and allowed us to look and take ideas from the opening sequences we analysed. We analysed opening sequences to give us a good idea of the conventions of horror. This included typography, colour, mise-en-scene and plot. This helped us meet conventions of horror.http://twgsbmedia15asgroup8.blogspot.co.uk/

HOW DID WE FILM OUR WORK?

During our filming, we used a Canon DSLR (500D). We also used a tripod, track and camframe to get steady shots. We carried out four shoots overall. The first shoot was in our friend Andy’s warehouse. This is where we filmed the interrogation scene. The second shoot was carried out at Freddie’s house, which is where the flashback scene occurred. The third shoot was in an alleyway in Rusthall, where the POV shots were filmed. And the final shot was at school in the drama studio.

Some issues we had during our shoots was firstly that we were not able to go back to the warehouse in which we did the first shoot as there was building work going on after we finished filming. The caused problems as we had to make a compromise and finally film in the drama studio. This was an awkward situation as we struggled to make the two locations look the same. However, we overcame this problem and it turned out fine in the end.

Another problem we had was finding a suitable location to film the shots we couldn’t do at the workshop. Eventually we decided to film in the drama studio. The only problem that arouse with this is that the wall in the workshop was white where as in the drama studio is was black. We could not do anything about however so we decided to keep the shots.

The shot on the left is in the workshop and the shot on the right is in the drama studio.

HOW DID WE EDIT OUR PIECE?

We decided to de-saturate our footage to give it a dull look which connotes horror. This also got rid of the orange colour that some thought was too bright. We then adjusted brightness and contrast to give it the right look.

The shot on top is the original untouched footage and the bottom shot is after desaturation.

We also stabilized our tracking shots using after effects as they were too shaky. That was one of the problems we solved with editing.

For our titles, we went for a simple serif font with white text on a black background. We cut to black every time we showed titles to create tension. We went against the typical rule of thirds and centralised all our titles. We also added a slow zoom in to the titles by adding keyframes on the title and changing the size. We took inspiration for our titles from another independent horror film called Monsters (Edwards, 2010), which went for simple titles. This gives it the look of an independent production.

We also utilized visual effects such as adding a quick white flash at the beginning and end of the flashback scenes to represent to the audience that it is a flashback. We did this by adding a white screen at the beginning and increasing the opacity every frame for 4 frames.