Completed film: The disappearance of Holly and Jessica.

Music choices. 17/2/11.

    After creating and completing editing my film at home on Windows Movie Maker, I decided which shots of the film I wanted to have music over. Other than the shots with dialogue in (newsman outside school and the interview between Huntley and policeman) the rest have been left silent. I then decided to create two tracks. One to use when the girls are leaving the house and walking around their neighbourhood at the beginning, and possibly over the actual title at the end, and one to use during the bathroom scene to attempt to make it more scary. 

Track created for bathroom scene.

  

Track created for shots of girls walking and titles.

Once i had created both tracks wanted on the programme GarageBand and transferred them onto a CD to put onto my film on Windows Movie Maker, I decided that the shaker in the background of both songs made them too jovial. To overcome this, I cut the two tracks up separately and combined parts from both to make two new, more appropriate tracks to fit our story and it's genre.

Final location shots for film. 14/2/11.

First shot in sequence filmed here, shown coming out of a gate - match on action shot from girls walking out of house, to out of outside gate on the left hand side here.

Last shot in sequence of girls walking filmed here with two actresses walking (skipping) towards camera.



Match on action shot filmed here, second shot in sequence of girls walking. Enter from the right - match on action shot from the last of them walking out of their outside gate.



Interview scene between policeman and Huntley filmed here instead of the original highstreet plan, to make a more realistic neighbourhood feel.

Bathroom used for the scene of Huntley murdering the two girls.

Table used for filming the newspaper scene. However, had to put a tablecloth on as can be seen in the photo, you could see my reflection in the table whilst filming.

Forest used for the last scene in the film of actresses dog  finding the two girls bodies.

Third shot - "on scene" location for the newsman shot.

Animatic. 7/12/10.

This is my animatic for the film I'm going to create. The animatic shows each scene on my storyboard, with explanation.

  

Risk Assessment. 6/12/10

   Before beginning filming we had to think of any risks we may come across in filming our scenes, and how to overcome them. These are the points we came up with:

•    In the forest scene, the person acting may scream because they're acting out a reaction to seeing two young girls dead bodies. Because of this, it would be sensible to film in a less busy part of a forest so as not to worry any passersby.
•   The preparation for the scene of the policeman finding the girls clothing in a bin could be extremely dangerous, as their tops are meant to be burnt. To make sure nobody is harmed in the burning of the tops, we should make sure there's a fire extinguisher nearby or a bucket of water if the first is not available. Also we must make sure to keep any flammable materials away, and make sure the conditions are generally controlled.
•   Before filming the bathroom scene, we should check to make sure there are no wet surfaces as this could be dangerous for the actors moving around the room. To make sure no injuries happen by actors slipping over we should make sure everything is completely dry in the room.
•    The shot of the girls walking along the street, in a CCTV style shot could be difficult to film as we have to find a high point to film from. If we found a tree or fence nearby to climb and film from, we would have to take precautions with the camera, making sure it's somehow strapped to the body of the person climbing so it doesn't get damaged by being dropped etc.

 

Using VideoPad and Windows Movie Maker. 15/2/11.

   I decided to research different computer programmes to use on my computer at home due to not being able to find a way of making the bathroom scene adequately fuzzy on iMovie and the lack of time at school to use iMovie on the computer. I came across a programme called VideoPad that was available to download, recommended on the internet. I trialled the programme by filming a short film of my dog on my digital camera at home and importing it onto the programme. I then played around with the visual effects available for the film and found one which fuzzed out the scene exactly how I imagined it to be when coming up with my storyboard.

   However, when I transferred the films from the iMovie folder from school to VideoPad on my computer at home, the programme kept crashing when I put more than one shot onto the timeline.

   Instead, I decided to use Windows Movie Maker to do the editing at home. Though the programme is fairly basic, I found it simpler to use for my project than iMovie. I also found a visual effect called 'watercolour' on the programme which adequately fuzzed out the bathroom scen so you couldn't see the actress smiling but it's still evident what's happening. Though it doesn't give the same effect as the VideoPad programme did, exactly how I'd imagined on my storyboard, I think the watercolour effect is more effective for the viewer and possibly gives more tension to the scene.

   I've also used Windows Movie Maker before for entertainment reasons, so I already know how to apply sound over a shot, add my own credits, and zoom on the timeline to make my editing as accurate as possible.

Changes decided to make in film: 14/2/11

• We decided to scrap the fifth shot of the policeman finding the burnt tops in the open bins, as the props are too difficult to get hold of and the fact we didn't have the red tops made the act of burning them quite difficult. Also, if we did have tops to burn, it would have been too dangerous to carry out.
•    We decided to label time and date at the beginning of different scenes to make the general storyline more obvious and to make it clear that the title sequence is meant to be made up of random quick scenes, not in chronological order, as though a memory pattern of a person.
•    We also decided to add in blank shots between each scene of around two seconds in length to make the time difference obvious. The labels of time and date can be seen on top of these silent shots. Also, the last of these blank shots before the title of the film is shown is blank and longer than the rest, to create tension and give the audience time to reflect on the title sequence.
•    I decided to remove shot five of the newspapers falling on the table from the film as it didn't look like a particularly professional shot and seemed quite pointless to add into the storyline.