Update on mini-movie...

Okay, so in a previous post I spoke about basing our mini-movie on the film, "When a Stranger Calls." We have carried on with this idea and building our ideas day by day.

In class the other day, we drew out the storyboard, so that should be up here soon, so for now I will explain as much as I can.

- We decided to film at Vickie's house. (a fellow group member) She has a gravel drive, so we will walk up the gravel drive with the camera, towards the house. The camera will then focus on the girl sitting in the sitting room, through the window.
- There will be an underpinning of sound, a phone ringing, while focusing on the girl.
- There is a scene in Desperate Housewives I once saw, where the camera moved towards the front door of a house, and then the picture of the front door faded into white, then a picture of the inside of the house appeared from the white, I thought maybe we could incorporate this into our piece to add effect. I have just explored youtube for 30 minutes and couldnt find an example of it, sorry!
- The phone, meanwhile, is still ringing, and the camera is still at the door, but inside the house, the girl crosses the camera and walks into another room to pick up the phone.
- She then passes the camera again, but the phone is silent, so she hangs up.
- The camera then follows her upstairs, where she checks the children.
- The phone then rings again, and this time there is a heavy breathing coming from the other end of the line. At this point, there will be "music" played over the top of the phone conversation. The group looked on Myspace to find scary sounds and noises, and this is what we found:
(LINK TO MYSPACE)
- There is another example of good cinematography that suddenly sprang to mind at this part in our film, earlier in the term, with Mrs Francis, we watched the christmas Dr Who trailer, quite near the beginning, there is a 360 degree establishing shot, but from a low angle then turning into a high angle shot. It is, therefore, a close up shot of the character, an establishing shot, as you get a sense of place as the camera turns, and at one point in the turn a point of view shot from the character. This is the video from youtube:



- We will use this camera shot on our main character to enforce the fear.
- We are not quite sure about the ending just yet, but as I said, the storyboard will be up here shortly!

My last post was about my preliminary storyboard..
Well this is the actual thing! Posted on YouTube...
Overall, I am quite pleased with the outcome of my 30 second video.
The editing of the video was definitely the hardest part, as it was a whole new programme, on a whole new computer, (I don't have an Apple Mac), however, the software was easy to adapt to.
So here it is!...




Hope you enjoyed :)

My Storyboard...

So for our preliminary task we had to shoot a 30 second clip of someone walking into a room, having a short conversation and walking out again.
Before we could start this we needed to do a storyboard, to show the camera angles and the story itself.
We had to sketch the "freeze-frame", meaning the camera angle of the next shot, and then describe what is happening in that particular shot.




This is my storyboard:


And the back...

I enjoyed doing this preliminary task as I got to grips with how to use the camera and edit the videos once loaded onto the computers.
My group did have a few troubles, as we filmed our videos on a HD camera, which did not transfer onto the computers, so we had to film it again, but it did not take very long and we were able to catch up with the rest of the group.
However, I did learn a lot from the experience :)
I have to say though, once learning how to edit a video, watching films and programmes on TV is much harder in a way, as I always notice small mistakes that I wouln't have noticed before. I guess that's a good sign!