Monday 30 November 2009

Comparing To The Original

Our version of the scene compares favourably to the original clip of 'What Lies Beneath'. The camera shots and angles, the costumes (dressing gown) and the setting (bathroom) were as simular as we could get to the original.

When trying to recreate a scene from an existing film, you pick up qualities the film maker has used. This is helpful as it has been created by professionals who are creating films daily. It gives you a head start in your real production, as you pick up different ideas from using the camera and you become more familiar with the equipment, lighting, props, comstume and also helps gain experience by editing the film you have created.

Our version could have been improved by the sound in different shots of the scene. The problem was the digetic sound, as we could only run a bath tap when there was no one in it because of health and safety. Between different shots, the sound varied when we had to consider the regulatons, but we could not do anything about this.

Friday 27 November 2009

Preliminary Task

Planning Stage

In the planning stage of the preliminary task, firstly as a group we had to discuss which film we wanted to base our task on. We decided to base it on a horror film which we had all seen before, so we chose 'What Lies Beneath'. We had to decide which part of the film we were going to re-create then plan a story board to work out the number of shots used in that particular scene. We put all of our ideas together to remember the scene as graphically as we could, made notes on each of the shots of what angles were used, the length of the shot and whether there was any text. After we decided the scene of the film, we had to find a location for the filming as it was the scene with a bathroom involved. I had to take a release form home and have permission off my parents as we used a bathroom in my house.

Production Stage

During the production stage, the group had to work out which roles they wanted to take. We had 2 actors (Abee and Sam), then the rest of our group (Tessa, Georgia and I) took it in turns to film different shots and use the clapper board. We discussed what position the camera would be in, how long the shot would be and how many takes we needed of each shot to see if each shot was good enough. Each of our actors had to wear similar clothing to the ones in the film to make it as similar as possible to the costumes in the film. First of all, the lighting was too bright in the bathroom because the sun was beaming through the window, so we covered it with a towel to dim the brightness. In each of the shots, the digetic sound varies as we could not run water in the bath with the actor in it because of a health and safety regulation.

Post-Production Stage

In the post-production stage, we loaded the footage onto the computer and used some computer editing software to create our scene of the film. We looked at each of the takes (shots) and chose which one we thought was best to be used. The clapper boards we used that we used in the production helped in this stage as it allowed us to put the scenes in order without hassle which left us to put the shots in the right order to get the extract right. We decided not to add any non-digetic sound in the editing process as we didn't want it to get in the way of the speech, because it was difficult to hear with the water running in one of the shots.


During the process of these three stages, I was responsible for certain tasks. I drew the story board in the first stage and filmed in the second stage.

Monday 23 November 2009

This is my first post for my A2 Portfolio Blog.