Editing Part 2

Editing the film has taken its toll on the group and keeping to the deadline is very hard. We have spent the last few days going over the film discussing where and when shots can be cut or shortened. The has been constantly going down and as the day of the deadline came we had managed to get it down to 2 minutes and 3 seconds.

I am very happy with how the film has turned out and believe we have managed to create a interesting production that has the ability to entice the audience from the start of the film.

Editing Part One

I have now started the process of editing down the footage into the opening two minutes of the film. We are using Adobe Premier Elements to do this as it is available to us at school so can use it during lesson and after school. The problem is the school computers are old and slow so everything takes longer then it should do which gets very annoying when you are working with a deadline.

We knew we had to do a film of around two minutes and after our first filming session we thought that this would be further then we first thought but after the second session we ended producing around five or six minutes of usable footage, this has its pros and cons with the fact we have now finished filming and wont have to go out again but trying to edit it to just a two minute opening is very hard as we feel that we worked hard on every shot so don't want to cut any of them out.

We will have to discuss the possible shots we believe to be unnecessary and that we can get rid off but this may take a while for everyone to agree on the final outcome.

Finished Filming

We spent a few hours after school when we knew the room we required would be open, this has allowed us to finish filming and finally get on with editing the final piece. The filming was in desperate need to be finished so now it is it is a huge weight off my shoulders.
Filming the final piece of the film was the most difficult to shoot as it required shots that we only had one chance to complete due to the fact re creating the scene to get a good sense of mise en scene would have been impossible for us to do. Another problem was we needed to film things for a long period of time so we could speed them up in the final edit of the film, the problem with this is the fact that we were very cramped in a corner of the room and the slightest sound was being picked up by the camera. The only way to deal with that problem was to sit there in silence for extended periods of time in silence and just get through it.
We did also suffer a problem with teachers walking in and out of the room so we had to redo alot of the takes to make sure this didnt happen but this has meant we got the chance to do all shots more than once and get it as perfect as possible which will hopefully mean we end up with a better final piece.

15

I previously thought that the film would be a 12 with minimal actual horror taking place but after realising the final scene will actually be a murder i thought id look if this changed the rating of the film. The script is very clean so we face no problems there but with this murder you see a knife cut someones throat with a large knife and then see blood come pouring from the cut so i think that this may be to graphic for under 15's but wont know till the scene is shot and edited whether the film will finish as a 12 or 15.

Filming Nightmare

Getting the rest of the film shot is taking an age to do, with half term and illness we haven't found a day that we can really get it all done, we have filmed the odd shot when possible but nothing major. We have all decided that tomorrow is the day we all can do so all costumes and props have been left where they are needed so we can get it started first thing in the morning and work solidly for as long as we need to get the entire film finished and loaded onto the computer so we can start editing hopefully tomorrow as well but if not then friday we will start.

Audience Profiling

Audience profiling is very important and will let us know who we should aim our film at and how we should go about doing it. We got this infomation from www.pearlanddean.com. The website contains information about about films audiences and who is watching the film.

The Strangers






The Ring

Questionnaire Findings

After receiving all our research from our questionnaire we have found out that male audiences tend to enjoy horrors, comedy and action films whereas females prefer horror, comedy, romantic comedy's and chick flick films. Most of the audience said that the opening scene of the film is very important to them because they will be able to get feel of whether the film is going to be good and whether they should carry on watching it. A selection of peoples favourite films were Halloween 1 and 2, American pies, Anchorman, Dark knight and Mean girls. It varied between whether people wanted to go to the cinema or watch it on a rental DVD. This was because some preferred being at home and being able to pause and watch the film in there own time. People who preferred to go the cinema wanted that experience with the surround sound system, big screen and great graphics.

Questionnaire

Age? ............

Gender? ...............

Favourite genre? ....................

Favourite film? .........................

Is the opening scene of the film the most important part of the film? (yes or no) ................

Why? ..................................................................................................................................................

Cinema or Rental DVDs? .....................................

What do you like most about your favourite genre? why? ....................................................

Props (final murder weapon)

After we found out that a knife was the best idea we got to work on deciding the best way to make the knife murder look as real and scary as possible. We first thought that a drama knife would be a good idea as we could stab the victim (Matt Davison) without harming him as the knife would go into the handle but then we thought this may not give the film the real and gritty feel that we wanted it to have. We then decided that the only way to make it look real would be to use the blunt side of a real knife but to take it a step further we introduced blood to poor out of the knife whilst the cut was being done. To do this we found a 10mm syringe with a tube that fitted around it then taped this to the back of the knife we were going to use, as the knife is being moved along the victims neck someone out of shot will slowly push the syringe giving the effect of blood pouring from his neck.