Production Obstacles

Although we had many successes during our filming, there were still a number of obstacles that we encountered through out the process that made our sequence much harder.

12/11/10

Today I came in and did all of my work (updating my blog and checking over the storyboard) in about 10 minutes so I had 2 hours and 20 minutes with nothing to do so I felt this was a very wasted lesson.

19/11/10

We filmed our opening sequence today and we had a lot of problems. We spent about an hour trying to sort out our camera as the boom wasn't working. In the end, we realised that there was no way to fix this problem so we had to result in using a zoom mic instead which was much less reliable and harder to use but there were no more cameras with boom boxes left so we had to settle for it. We got most of the footage we wanted to get filmed but we had to cut out a couple of clips and save the part where the main character wakes up in her bed to film next week as we had no time to film it today. It was also very muddy in the cemetery so we had a lot of times where someone nearly slipped, including me whilst I was running with the camera which meant we had to film some shots a number of times.

22/11/10

We were meant to film our final scene for this lesson but we didn't have the correct location to film in as we needed a bed so we couldn't get any filming done today.

25/11/10

Chloe was a bit late today so we couldn't film until period 4.

10/12/10

We were told that we Cascade's face wasn't evil enough so we had to edit a lot of the clips to cut out his face to add more suspense to the opening sequence. This look a lot of effort as most of our clips had Cascade's face in them so we had to go to great efforts in order to cut it out whilst still maintaining the same types of clips.

13/12/10

We got a number of questionnaires back today but the computer we were using had no USB plug to plug our hard drives into the computer so it took us a while to actually get anything done.

11/03/11

We had a whole day of editing or sequence for the final time today. It went quite well but we did have a few obstacles such as the debate over whether the overall title should be at the end of the sequence or the beginning.

Production Successes

When we started filming for our thriller opening sequence, we had a number of successes that made our filming go very smoothly.

05/11/10

Today we started planning everything out. I was in charge of the storyboard which I finished within the double lesson. Chloe and Cascade also got what they were meant to do done.

15/11/10

More planning took place today. We all reviewed each others work that we had done and made any necessary changes. My storyboard was fine so I no longer have to worry about that.

18/11/10

I took my little sister to the park to get a shot of her on the swings for a part of the opening sequence. This went well as it was quick to film so I had everything done in a matter of minutes.

19/11/10

Today we filmed our thriller opening sequence. It was shot in the cemetery near Clissold Park. We got almost all shots that we wanted done as well as a number of ones we didn't even plan such as a long shot of Chloe running through the cemetery that we will use for the titles.

22/11/10

We hired a perfect room to film our final scene in for Thursday.

23/11/10

I started editing today and got almost all of it done from the clips that we have so far.

25/11/10

We finally got all of our footage filmed and it went very smoothly.

10/12/10

We were told that Cascade's face wasn't menacing enough for our thriller so we had to cut it out. It was hard on some clips but when we had done it successfully, it worked much better.

08/03/11

We changed a couple of things in our opening sequence today. We shortened some of the clips as we felt they were too long and didn't give enough impact such as the one of the girl running to a tree which we felt was too long and lost its effect after a while.

11/03/11

We had a whole day to finalise our opening sequences today. I think it was a very successful day, we made a lot of changes that really benefitted our sequence. We refilmed the final scene where the girl wakes up from her dream and it looks much more scary and panicked now which is what we were aiming for in the first place, the use of heartbeats reinforces this. We also changed the titles to much more fitting ones that play on a gravestone-like background and shake violently whilst playing, adding more suspense and emphasis to the sequence as a whole.

The Dark Knight Presentation

My coursework piece analysing the opening sequence of The Dark Knight.

Some of the captions were too small to read so I have print screened them to allow everyone to be able to read them.

Panic Room Presentation

My first coursework piece analysing the Panic Room opening sequence.

Some of the text is too small to see the captions so I have print screened them to allow people to see them.