Question 6-  What have you learnt about technologies from process of constructing the product?

RESEARCH - OPENING SEQUENCE When thinking of an idea for our opening sequence Charlotte and I

started to look at other peoples AS Media opening sequences, we found one we really like the look of, not the storyline but some of the effects they do. It was called ‘Escape Goat’. We one idea from this which was to speed up some of our shots, put an effect and sound over the top. I liked the look of this because it made the mood change and also the character looked disfigured and blurry this represents what she was feeling inside.

When looking at some of the opening sequence we didn’t like any of their storylines, we then started to look at trailers to see if we could get any ideas from these. The film Paranormal activity had some really good ideas, but we didn’t have the equipment to carry out the right shots as we needed a night vision camera to make it look realistic, as an effect wouldn’t look the same. The other film we looked at was ‘Unborn’, we used some ideas from this like choosing our location which was in a rural enclosed area, like the first scene in the film. Also the character picks up a glove, we also did this as it symbolises the presents of a young child. This fit in with our storyline as the characters sister died.

RESEARCH – RULES OF FILMING 180 degrees rule- when filming a character you must stay on the

same side through opening sequence. I did this when I was going through the gate. Charlotte filmed me from behind going through the gate and then a front shot of me walking through it. If the 180 degrees rule is broken then you must show that the shot has been crossed and not just come from the other side.

Shot reverse shot- is when we see two shots and the viewers can see both sides of the scene. The camera must always be in the same position as the 180 degrees line this is so that both of the shots can be used when outing them together on Final cut pro.

Match on action- this is when all of the shots that are used within the film/ opening sequence flows, when doing this it creates realism. Charlotte and I did this through out all of our opening sequence, an example of this is when we change a lot of our shots opacity levels so that both shots go together.

LOCATION

Charlotte and I always knew we was going to do our filming in Castor as we both lived there but we wasn’t sure where we was going to film it. When watching the trailer ‘Unborn’, the main character picks up a glove right at the start when she was on her run. It looked like she was in an enclosed area as she was running a long a road in the forest. We both thought that the train track at Station Road was a good location as it looks mysterious and abnormal, because we did it here we both said we needed to check the times of when the trains were going past as it could be dangerous if we didn’t.

Charlotte was filming and needed and even ground, there were stones were the train track so I had to move them out of her way. We both did this for all of the shots that looked like they were going to be uneven as we didn’t want our footage to look lopsided.

CAMERA AND EDITING SOFTWARE

We used a Nixon D5100, none of us had a lot of experience with this camera as we had never used one before. We figured out how to focus and zoom which was mostly what we needed, we also asked our teacher for advice on how to get the best techniques while using it and got some of our class members to help us as some of them had used the camera before.

When we had created our opening sequence we put all of our footage on Final Cut Pro. Most of our sound effects came from this, but some we had got off of YouTube. The effect we used on all of ours was called ‘Cool tones’ and this set the mood straight away as the audience could tell it was going to be a horror about emotions.

We got our back ground music from YouTube as none off of final cut pro suited our footage, it creates tension for the viewers as they don’t know what is going to happen. The other sounds we used were natural sounds off our original footage.

SOUND Diegetic sound- we used this when the character is breathing heavily and

the sound of her heart beat, also when the gate is closing. These are more natural sounds that we expect to hear in these situations, another sound that is diegetic is when I jump off of the gate into mud and when I walk into the water there is a squelch sound because the mud is sloppy.

None diegetic- this is the background sound that flows all the way through of the opening sequence, underneath some of the shots we had to adjust the sound of this so the other natural sounds were louder. Another was the clock ticking right at the end when the title of the film comes in, we made this really loud so that the viewers would worry about what had happened to the charters because there is a black background. The voice over is none diegetic as well.