Evaluation

Final Outcome

Out-Takes

As explained previously, we were meant to come up with various different ways to shoot and demonstrate our actors and roles credits, as we took inspiration from the opening of 'Napoleon Dynamite', but instead of using student cards and food (as seen in the film), we wanted to try various scenario's but with school related objects instead, to keep within our school theme (such as the highlighting video below).

                                                                 

After many a conversation, we then decided to change this idea, as despite it's originality and uniqueness, we were advised that having too much variation within our credits was a bad idea, as they should all appear to the same theme. After this was pointed out, we agreed with this completely, hence our final product's credits appearing all similar.

Our third scene which was planned on our original plan was a time lapse of a typical lunchtime at our school. However, as you can see the camera jolted constantly within the clip, and no matter how many time we tried to adjust this, more problems began to arise. To make life easier, we concluded that we should just remove this brief clip, as we feel that we had already successfully set our school scene previously with our drone shots. 

                                                                 

My final example of some of our out-takes is our bully scene, which (in hindsight) was a key moment within our plot, as it highlights the motivation behind the hiring of the Hitman in the first place. However, after moving the clip around and adjusting it's colour, length and speed, we soon realised that this whole clip was not really needed to explain his motives. Wherever we placed it, we felt that the clip was out of place, so we just decided to permanently remove it.   

                                                   

Editing

For our actual main video editing, we used a system called 'Final Cut Pro'. I personally found this system really simple to handle, but also liked how it had complex capabilities when I really grasped the software.
When looking back on Editing as a whole, I realised our main editing was cropping each video clip, but most importantly was the use of colour correction.









As seen above, we completely transformed every clip we ended up using in our final project, and significantly adapted it's overall appearance. Our clips may appear slightly blue, as we took inspiration from the global phenomenon 'The Twilight Saga', as it was apparent to us during our preliminary research, that they also used the same colour saturation, as it confirms the eerie nature that we initially wanted to set out for our audience.

Music (Garageband):

As said in my previous post on music, my group and I knew that it was imperative for us to incorporate Piano and Strings into our soundtrack. We knew this, because we decided to be heavily influence by the soundtrack of 'The Exorcist', as we preferred to have a repeating riff of music running throughout, to stick within this Thriller Stereotype. We also wanted a repeating soundtrack like this as we wanted our project to be memorable... for the right reasons!

One difficulty Laura, Matt and I had to overcome

was the layering of each musical clip, so that the

beats were all the same, and that changes in the tempo and instruments themselves were in time with the clip changes we had organised previously. Another task we struggled (initially) with was the use of 'loops'. As predicted, once we all got the hang of Garageband and it's capabilities, we began to just hopelessly add loops that in fact crowded over our main

piano and string features, meaning we became unhappy

with how it worked with out project, compared to how

we imagined it would be (simple, repetitive yet effective).

Luckily, in the end we managed to source the correct balance between the loops, and legitimate instruments, and it is safe to say that we all agree with our musical outcome, and believe it works well with our project as a whole, finished product.

                                                                                                         

Our Filming Day

As stated before, on Sunday 29th of January, my media group and I organised to come into our school alongside our actors in order to finish our planned shots.

We had and kept to a strict schedule for the three hours we were on site, so we could accurately and efficiently finish what was needed to be done. Yes it proved to be quite a challenge, but luckily we managed to complete what was needed to be done.

However, before we could attempt to plan our shots for every hour, my group and I realized we would have to thoroughly plan all the aspects of Mise En Scene, to really depict and make apparent the finer details within each shot. 

We asked Jake (our main actor) to bring in his green jacket, and to wear his school trousers to continue to define our school theme within our Thriller. John (our Hitman) was advised to wear a dark coloured suit, alongside a Black Coat in which Matt (a member of my group) provided. I myself provided a pair of leather black gloves in order to solidify and finish the Hitman look in which we imagined previously. 
Matt, Laura and I decided to arrive at school slightly earlier than planned, in order to go over what we needed to achieve within our time slot, and also to set up all of the equipment. We also needed to re-arrange the English Room, as we established we should take down certain posters and pictures, to clearly direct our audiences that the room is an English. 

Our filming actually began at around 10:00 am:
My group experiences very minor complications with our camera and SD Card. We thought the best way to tackle our scene filming was to complete them in chronological order, as this saves all confusion! 
Thankfully, we had previously already filmed half of our scenes, so we started with the computer scenes, as these were the scenes that needed to be tackles most. Luckily, very minimal re-takes were needed for these scenes, as they were quite straight forward, and everyone cooperated well. 

It was now 11:00am; we were well on our way to accomplishing all of our shots within good time. As we came to our shot on Jake's close ups of his eyes, we encountered a slight problem with the lighting. The shadow from the camera angle continued to show up on Jake's cheek, which therefore was ruining our shot massively.
In conclusion, we were then challenged with the task of finding various spaces which would leave us with a cleaner shot, rather than a dark one due to the strength of light. Luckily, we found two angles and heights that rectified this problem.

Our final hour and a half consisted of clearing away all of our equipment, and then going over the famous 'Hitman Skip Section'. This had proved to be our hardest scene to correct to the highest level. Our first attempt was actually our favourite attempt as we feel all of our angles and positions were perfected to a very high quality. However when we then showed our media teacher, he pointed our several errors. There were countless prop problems, as school ties were within our shots, alongside our bottles of water and many more tiny errors.

On our second attempt, our camera lense was clearly not as clean as we thought, so most of our shots either came our fuzzy or completely unclear. due to sheer frustration, we decided to leave this scene until the Sunday, as then we would have had a lot more time to clearly fix any thoughtless mistakes.

Fortunately, our third and final attempt was very successful, and had no mistakes!





Storyboards

                                                         

Location

In order to initiate our school based thriller, we planned to incorporate various locations in order to solidify this theme. The sheet featured to the right was our establishing ideas sheet for possible locations. As demonstrated, our school setting would be easiest at Aldenham School as this way we have access to all classrooms/ areas, instead of trying to organise convenience with other schools or locations.

One of the first shots used is a birds eye view shot by a drone over a large tree. As said previously, we have chosen this slightly strange opening as we have decided to open our thriller based on one of our influences 'Sunshine on Leith'. The group and I have always loved our very opening, as the disorganised leaves change to a suddenly established and cleaner shot of our main school. 

Before our main actor walks into the main classroom shots where he accesses 'The Dark Web', audiences will see this corridor featured on the left.  

This location solidifies our school theme, as this really represents the stereotypical school vibe that we are aiming for. The bright light and colours etc also accentuates this theme further. 

Our last scene is filmed around a skip found behind our drama department. We originally decided to use this location as it creates tension and mystery, which fits the Hitman's characteristics perfectly. The dirty, unhygienic skip, the flooring and even the occasional leaves creates the ideal setting for our Hitman section. The brickwork on the building and the dated wooden fence directly behind the main feature also highlights the suspense with this location. 

                                  

Alongside our drone footage, we also used a wide shot to continue to construct our theme further. Here are some further images of our school site.

The image to the left is taken from the same place our drone was positioned in order to get as much of the schools features in it as possible. Throughout our filming for our outside locations, we aimed to plan it by day (and therefore the weather) as we wanted a continuous gloomy atmosphere and lighting, in order to keep the theme the same throughout.

Here, the photo was taken from a different angle in order to deceive our audiences into thinking the schools grounds were bigger than they really are, to then make the buildings seem superior, whilst our actor inferior, as he walks across the school field and to 'The Dark Web'.