Captured- Final Finished Opening Sequence

Costumes

In our opening we want to create the right atmosphere in a number of different ways, and one of these ways is with the costumes. We want both of our 'killers'/'baddies', (Jade and Efosa) to be dressed in dark clothing to highlight that they are up to something, the dark outfits hold negative connotations and will immediately allow the audience to point the finger at who is who.

We would like Jess on the other hand to wear something white. We felt that white holds connotations of purity and innocence, which will help the reader empathise more with the character Jess has to play. Also we can show how Jade is corrupting Jess' purity (white) by covering her in red lipstick. Red holds connotations of hate, but can however be linked to passion and love which would be quite disturbing for the audience.

We have decided that costumes play a very big part in what you are trying to put accross, and these subtle hints will be what will make our film great. Fingers crossed!

Feelings about the Project as a whole- Evaluation

Looking back over the course as a whole I feel like I have learnt a lot about a lot of different elements of media. I have also learnt skills I can take on to later like working independently and also working as part of a group. Despite being quite stressful it has been extremely enjoyable and helped me to form good friendships. As I had never done media before, it was all new to me so I didn't know what to expect, this was another way the course has been quite difficult for me but I feel I have adjusted to it well and have done quite well.

I have also had to work on various different programs like Flash, Final Cut and Garage Band, which will help me with other things in different lessons, and also later on in life if I am asked to work with some of this software I will feel confident as I have already used it before. 

The creation of our product has helped me vastly in many different ways.

Preliminary Sequence

Decisions on Film Names

We had a meeting on deciding a name for our Opening Sequence. Firstly we had an idea to have the name 'The Hidden', as it could relate to both Efosa and Jess. Efosa because we don't see him until the end of the opening and Jess because she is kept hidden from the rest of the world as they keep her in a garage.

Despite this we came up with a second idea, which was 'Captured'. We thought this was better as it has a double meaning as not only Jess is captured, Efosa takes a picture of Jess at the end so this also links in with the Film name.

Production Meeting Notes

These are an example of notes we had in our meeting. This is where we started to form the final ideas for our opening.

A Summary of Problems our Group has Faced

As a group we worked, I thought reasonably well but there were certain times where we faced problems. The first problem we faced was the fact that me and Jess were the only ones who were close friends so the fact that we had to keep meeting up was quite awkward for us. Despite this, after working together for a few weeks in lessons we started to bond and we started to feel a bit more comfortable with each other so by the time we had started filming we were fine with going round each other's houses to have meetings and organise everything for filming.

The second problem we faced was with the editing. Me and Jess missed the lesson where everyone learnt how to use the editing software, so Efosa had to go through it with us again, which delayed us in terms of our schedule. For a couple of lessons we had to work a lot quicker than the other groups which was quite stressful for us, but once we had got over this we were able to work at the same pace as everyone else. 

Another problem we faced was the fact that on our opening sequence, the dialogue was between Jade and Efosa but after our teacher had watched it she advised us that Jade's accent took away from the genre of the opening and she thought it would be better if we re-recorded it and made it fit the genre better. We stayed after school and recorded my voice over the top of the footage, which I feel was a good decision and has improved our piece a lot.

Finally, we also could have organised our time better. If we had a list of what we would be doing in each lesson and we had to meet each task, we would have been much more up to date and we wouldn't have had to worry about who was doing what, and where they were doing it. It would have caused a lot less confusion and our work would have been done a lot quicker. 

Final Editing Progress

Today we met up as a group to talk about all the things we need to improve on our Opening Sequence. Miss spoke to us about how the dialogue in our piece took away for the genre and in some ways ruined it. So today we are going to concentrate on re-recording the dialogue, and making sure all our sound is good and works with our genre and action that is happening in the film. We realised that Jade's voice wasn't right for our opening so we are going to try mine and Jess' and see which one works best.

Recent Editing Progress

Last week we were working on our production logo. Jess and I were working together on figuring out different aspects of creating our logo. We have been through a few different ideas over the time of creating our opening sequence. We did a mind map in one of our meetings which consisted of the ideas;

-Wonky Donkey Productions
-Lighthouse Productions
-Newhouse Productions
-Lightbulb Productions
-Transform Productions

We came to the conclusion that the best names we had were the 'Lighthouse' name and the 'Lightbulb name. We made a production image for both and chose that the best one was our Lightbulb idea, so we went for that. I sat with Jess and we made sure that we had done everything we could to make it as good as it could be. We sent it over to Efosa and he added it to the beginning of the film and we watched it a few times and it looks appropriate and works with our film.

Editing

Today we have been starting to edit our Opening. We have been working on Final Cut Express where we have been cutting our shots and fitting them all back together to start to build our final piece. I think that we have been working well as a group. We have had very few disagreements and have worked well
to help and teach each other all the things that we didn't know. I have been contributing to the decisions made with the editing and we have overall made quite good progress and if we carry on how we are we will be finished in no time :)

My feelings and thoughts about group discussions and decisions

I personally feel that as a group we have worked well to come to final decisions about our opening. But obviously as every group has we have had to compromise as we all have different opinions. I am excited to get onto the editing part of our opening as at the moment I cant really see how the film will end up. We have decided that next lesson we will start to edit our piece to bring it all together and start to create the music for the non-diegetic sound.

Our Group's Storyboard

My personal response to our groups plans for filming and shooting

As a group we have been working for the past few weeks on planning how we will film and shoot our opening. I feel we have worked reasonably well together and have listened to everyone's opinions without leaving anyone out. We had a meeting where we looked at all our individual storyboards and took ideas from each of ours to create our final storyboard idea. We found that all of our storyboards were based around the horror genre so to choose our genre was quite easy. Ways in which we could have worked better probably would have been to work a bit faster as we were a lesson behind what a few other groups were doing at the beginning but now we've caught up but we had to work very fast and rush for a few lessons to get back up to date. We have planned to film the opening at Jessica's house in her garage, bedroom and living room and we have planned to do it on the weekend of the 29th and 30th of January. I am really looking forward to the filming and also the editing that will follow. I can't wait to see the final product!