Second Day, Second Attempt

Hi. Today's filming has been delayed an hour due to bad weather conditions, however we are not giving up! I dropped into college today to pick up a tripod for the establishing shots, and we thought id update the blog on how our filming is going. Last Friday, we (including Sam's actor friend, Justin) made our way to Cowplain to begin filming the all important opening sequence, the pub scene. Truthfully, we had no choice but to film the pub scene, because we noticed that it got so dark, it was impossible to see anything in the forest we filmed. This is when we decided to stretch the schedule a bit, and film some shots today.
Filming went along smoothly though. Sam's friend did extremely well in presenting ideas, and acting out his role. He was happy to take part in our work and we were honestly surprised that he doesn't mind being thrown to the floor in the midst of our trailer (Getting muddy and wet perhaps). Also, Sam decided to play a supporting role as 'Toby's' friend, who helps take the mink out of who's now called Lauren (Alice's role). The character name was changed to Lauren, because incidentally, Toby/Justin confused it around when we said Laura before. So now, we have footage of the pub scene, with him calling my character Lauren.
The location of the pub scene was good, for we found a small corner to film in, where no one was around and gave us a chance to be ourselves when filming. We didn't want people in the footage to be looking around at the lens as we filmed, it'll be off-putting.

Today, we're hopefully going to film all of the establishing shots, the tracking shots and the hopefully the running scene with me running alone through the woods. It's gonna be tough, because Alice has got to force herself to get exhausted in order to create realistic footage, and that she's got to look scared and petrified and maybe have to scream too!
Matt will be in charge of the camera work, whilst Sam will be there to fill in maybe some empty roles, and to give his personal opinion on the footage. We need opinions! So feel free to comment.
The lighting of the area is causing some major issues at the moment, and for one thing, its getting us worried whether if its alright to film from a dark pub scene, into a sort of bright, running scene. Of course, we can edit it into a dusk atmosphere, but what about the edited night-vision shot? We can't edit two things in one piece of footage at once. I guess we'll find out later after the holidays during the editing process. One thing for sure, we hope we'll get some really cool photos today like we took before. You'll find these photos on the photos bar on the right. The photos taken during our last location scouting; the ones that were taken and edited by and Matt has downloaded on his iphone. They were beautiful if you ask.
We can't wait for our next filming session, for it includes Sam dressing up as the Antagonist, and its Matt we have to rely on to get just the right shot of the grabbing moment. One thing that gets to us, is how Sam is going to see when he's wearing a mask AND a white shirt over his face to make a blank face. It's surely going to be a funny day of filming indeed. Right we're off, with the tripod, to begin our second day of filming :)

Updated Script and Filming

Last session, we updated the script. New lines have been written in, and hopefully, it's all been sorted out and ticked off ready for filming. Filming will start in about 2 hours, and hopefully we'll get most of the shots done and out of the way tonight. Next week, we are doing some of the more complex hard scenes, and re-shoot some the footage we may have not quite liked beforehand. Sam is dressing himself up as the antagonist, and Alice is getting ready to play the role of Laura. She's a little nervous but hopefully it'll go smoothly tonight. She's bringing with her an array of lighting equipment, including a large torch to help get around the dark forest with and hopefully to pick out good lighting in the footage. Matt may also be playing a guest role too, as one of Toby's best friends at the pub, who pick on laura for not being old enough to have a drink. Toby is going to be played by Sam's friend who offered himself kindly to play it, thank goodness. And Matt will be the person behind the camera, hopefully to get all the right shots and camera angles in there.

Anyways, below is the updated, script:

Script and Basic Updates

Last week, we began writing the script to our trailer. we attempted to piece together our ideas, characters and expected shots into it, however it didn't turn out as expected for Matt. This is normal though, since now we began developing upon it, cutting out sections, writing new ones in, and starting to REALLY bring our trailer into the light. The beginning of the trailer, she wrote both characters Laura, and Toby talking about villains of movies and what they do to their victims. Matt didn't like this, for he wanted the trailer to start out with a warm atmosphere, where students are just chilling and having fun. So we cut that section, and replaced the conversation with a normal, non-hollywood cliche conversation about drinking and ID's, and how Laura is picked on by Toby and probably his other friends. One other thing, is that we wanted to present Laura, as an innocent, sane heroine character, as for Toby, a sort of drunk stupid character who always dies first. This works well with the plot, for they've all just finished their night out and walking home. Laura asks if Toby could walk her home since the shortcut to her house is through the woods, and that its pitch black. He accepts, however he doesn't know what is about to come.

The first draft of the script, and the updates we made to it are presented below:

Location, Location, Location... scouting

For a tenth session, it really wasn't a session, heck we weren't in the classroom. Instead, we were given permission to go location scouting! Regardless of how far away we live! We trekked to the specific locations we found on Google maps to observe and learn how much an effort it'll take to work on there. The fields were fantastic, perfect for the night-vision POV shot of the slender man himself, along with long walkways and paths where we took a lot of photos of. Sam also introduced the pub which surprisingly, wasn't so far from the fields and rural areas we were planning to film on. For one thing, i'm glad i wore my walking shoes today, for we continued down some roads and past town into a forest with the perfect dense environment which we'll take advantage of later when we start filming. Matt and Sam took plenty of photos, specifically one which included a reflection in the water which we all particularly liked. Theres also one sample film of a tracking shot moving through the wooded plains Matt took, which he will hopefully upload later on along with the photos. For one thing, i'm glad we got this sorted out today because now we got the location and area sorted and out of the way. A friend of Sam has agreed to play the part of the stupid character, whilst Alice is playing the main girl who gets chased primarily through the film. She's totally up for it, even mentioning about how she can run a few laps around the area just to get the high breathing action going for just a few seconds of footage. We're thinking of cutting the boyfriend character out for we were unable to find an actor to play him, and we've also discussed equipment that we needed to bring. Matt has bought online a tripod specific for the iPhone and a wide angle lens, which will both come in VERY handy, just so we can film it without the lens moving so much and in capturing more within the scene. Alice is going to bring her families large torch, with other lighting equipment and such just we can see in the dark whilst filming.

Filming Scheduled to start the Monday after the next,
             3rd December to 10th December 2012

Piano Keys are the Key +New Art

This afternoon whilst at home, i conducted a piano key test using the application 'Garageband', afterwards recording my voice and editing it all into this sound test video which you should see below.
A screenshot shows how the app presents its piano keys, and how i can use the keyboard as the actual piano.

The artwork displayed is of my own work. Our group is thinking that sticking to classic instruments and beats, we can create a very tensive atmosphere within our trailer. What do you think? Feel free to comment.

'Painting on the blank canvas'... Session 9

Todays lesson is all about the storyboards. The entire group was here today so we managed to get plenty of work done unlike last week which went a little slow. Alice and Matt discussed camera angles and how our strategy of guerilla filmmaking will take hold. The script, is not going along quite as great as we planned, however were hoping to draw inspiration from the story boards which is progressing nicely. Sam managed to find new locations and areas to possibly film in, with motorways (A3+ Park lane), extensive fields, and narrow woodland areas (Public Bridleway). We're confident on our locations now, and the synopsis of our plot is gradually enhancing. Story boards will definitely be uploaded soon, along with character profiles and details of the plot later updated.
Matt mentioned plenty of useful facts and information today, informing the group as this special lens we can get for the iphone, and how we can specialize in using for our film. We also discussed travel to our film locations, and also the fact that lighting is of vital importance in our trailer. Alice informs that she has a large torch at her house which she can possibly bring and use, whilst a smaller one too for the characters to use in the trailer maybe. Matt also started the health and safety sheet which we needed to fill out before filming, just so we can notify that our production stage is fully revised and set up without hesitations or problems coming up later in the project. Were still having problems finding actors, but i think it has come up to the conclusion that Alice is playing the main female role. We just need two more actors, male and reliable that we can trust to come back for at least a second day of filming. We're deciding on the role of the stupid character, and that this character is of vital importance for theres going to be a thrilling scene involving him getting grabbed.

Possible Film Name: 'INFERUS'
    Latin for 'faceless', it makes a good movie title because  of not only it points out the antagonist himself, but how much of a mystery he is, and unknown. It connotes infection, inferiority and fear. Its not exactly straight away our main title, but it is highly likely that it wont be changed.
                                                                                                   "Repeat, this is not a movie..."

Were looking forward to the editing process, for thats when we can get creative, and decide which clips and cuts are well suited for the trailer. The music will be mostly in Alice's, the editing in Matts, and the photoshop developments in Sam's.

The huit hour

Todays lesson was a bit slow and general today unlike our previous lessons. Alice is back now, however Matt was unable to attend so its just a repeat of every week now, with only two people in the group. It was slow today because because most of the work that had to done had to be written by hand, otherwise drawn. As usual, Alice the perfectionist, felt that the characters appearance had to be just right, and that their details had to be well suited and done for the plot of our trailer. We didn't really get much done for a story boards because the process of character creation took quite a long while.
(Alice) "Just a quick comment for this lesson, i cannot help but worry that we'll never find the right actors to play the roles of our characters. We need people that are reliable, and are able to get the work done, and lets face it, actually act instead of straight away laugh about it later. Im considering that if all hope is lost, ill probably step up to play the main female role, and leave all the trust of the camera to Matt, since Sam is playing the villain. This has been considered one of the most stressful weeks for me, and that i wanted to make sure that everything was just right and ordered, most of all done and out the way. It'll get better after the filming, for the editing is the fun part of the movie production"

Today we moved onto the filming process of our project. We looked at the locations we would film from and took screenshots and uploaded them onto the blog. We also started to design and get a feel for the characters we would have in our film. We did this by drawing them out and writing about their background and what they are like as a person. Also today we started looking into the script and getting a feel for the locations we would use and for what type of narrative the film would take and be like.