Name of our Film: 'The awakening of Emily-Beth'

Finally we have come up with a name for our film! We wanted it to keep the audience guessing and we thought titles like 'Into the woods' were a bit boring and unoriginal. The 'awakening' is referring to the fact that even though she is in a daze, she is actually being awoken from her age of innocence and is being corrupted and drawn in to something dark and sinister.

We have decided to use a song from 'The village' film's soundtrack called 'The bad colour'. It is very atmospheric and we think it would fit in well. the band Signur ros were considered but we couldn't find anything that was 100% right.

Another day of editing:

So today has gone brilliantly! The film is finished and I am so happy with the outcome.

We used crossfades, to add to the dreamy quality and this effect has caused the girls character to jump and fade in a ghost like way.

We have rewound footage and sped clips up to create that creepy feel, and also overlapped images of swirling candles and woods to add to the dreamy atmosphere.

One part Elle and I especially love is the part where the camera begins to spin round the young girl and footage of the woods are layered over the top, creating a ghostly feel to the scene. The opaque level is changed to a higher level each time, and buy the 3rd flash of woods she appears as if she really has transported there. I think we have shown successfully that she is on a journey and when she enters the woods it doesn't come as such a shock to the audience as they know she is being lured there.... but by what?

I am also pleased with the transition from dusk to darkness. We have achieved this through the use of overlapping clips, slow montion and crossfades. We wanted this to be a smooth process and i am happy with the outcome. I also think that rewinding the candles so that they appear to be magically coming alight was very successful, as was the short clip of the rewinding of the glitter falling.

All that there is left to do is put the soundtrack on which has been the hardest part to decide on. We want to include possibly some white noise at the beginning and end but also a song by the band sigur ros or possibly blue foundation? This is what we will be staying up later tonight deciding i am sure!

More Editing:

So today we have managed to give the focused clips a blurry look. Using a combination of movement blur and wind blur we have managed to create a similar look, thankgod!

The colours have also had to be changed slightly at the begining of the film, and a blue tint has been applied. However we like the watery effect of the colours and we don't want the film to look perfect. The blurred, dreamy effect is what makes it beautiful. I am feeling alot more confident with editing now, and am enjoying using final cut pro, i really feel like i've learnt a skill!

On monday we need to add in some more edits and experiment with rewinds and fastforwarding. The film is really coming along and the end is in sight!

Editing: Oh God!

So, Elle and I have begun to edit our clips. Final Cut pro is pretty hard to get your head around at first but we're getting there. I don't think i've ever shouted at a computer so much! The computer rooms on the fashion floor are rammed and boiling hot! We have decided to edit our footage in a small computer room on the lower floor where it is so much quieter, here we can really concentrate. Today we have looked at all our our clips and uploaded them all onto the computer. We have some really lovely footage and have began to transfer it to Final Cut Pro. The beginning is coming along and we've made the basic skeleton for our film, however we need to introduce so many short cuts and edits. Due to our film being so simple, we have to jazz it up through editing.

Due to the footage being on different cameras the borrowed video camera and Elle digital camera did not allow us to use it manually- meaning everything is in focus. We need to sort this out tomorrow.

The final shoot

With no chance of getting a camera out at uni for our shoot day we turned to plan be and borrowed a camera from one of Elle's friends. I arrived in London with plenty of time to spare, where I met Elle at costa and we got straight to work. We went straight back to her house to get everything ready for the shoot that day, only to begin freaking out about the borrowed camera as it had no uploader lead with it. Elle and I being rather rubbish with technology started to panic and ran straight down to jessops where we were advised to buy a firewire. Everything was on track again.

We perfected the hooded lurker's costume and met Freddie, bringing her back to get ready. Everything seemed like it was back on track after our little panic. We walked down to Sheen Common and started shooting in chronological order. We used the large tree mentioned during the blog discussing the test shoot and we got some amazing footage. We decided to experiment with me climbing up in the tree, getting some high up shots looking down on her to create a kind the sensation of her being watched:

We also got some footage of her by a broken down gate and fence which looked beautiful and made the location seem huge and gave a feeling of her being completely alone and vunerable. We took footage of her walking long distances which we intend to speed up and rewind to create an unnerving style.

So everything was going amazingly until half way though SHOCK HORROR! The borrowed camera decided to break. GREAT. luckily we had a backup so used Elles digital camera to record the rest of the footage and prayed we would still get some good shots. Luckily we didn't need to zoom or do anything too fancy with the camera,we wanted simple, raw footage.
So after taking a deep breath and continuing things seemed to get better again. We also experimented with glitter falling onto the candles, however we are unsure whether to use these shoots as we don't want the film to look 'pretty and magical'. We also blew out the candles and hope to experiment with rewinding this footage and see what we can create!

Overall Elle and I are really happy with our footage. We managed our time successfully, got all our shooting done before it got too dark and Freddie was so much better and relaxed around us this time. We've certainly had our ups and downs but we think we have some really beautiful clips which we just can't wait to edit and play with!

Experimenting with the hooded cloak costume:

It was obvious during our test shoot that the costume really wasn't working out. We wanted shoulder pads to create a strong look, however they kept slipping off the shoulders and just didn't look right. The costume was very uncomfortable for the actress and she couldn't breath very well (which obviously isn't a good thing!). The cloak was also difficult to walk and we couldn't achieve the slow, smooth walk we wanted.

Here is a picture of the original shoulder pad, made from black tassles sewn on cloth wrapped round a book- (Elles rather inventive idea, so gutted it didn't work!) :

After humming and harring we decided to scrap shoulder pads altogether and thought about experimenting with the tastles in other ways such as including it is the veil or wrapping it round the gold chain:

However after trying these things out we decided to keep the costume simple, and discovered that a large black sheet, layered with other black material and chains actually looked better as it was.

What have we learnt from our test shoot?

By doing a test shoot Elle and I have learnt a lot, whether it be technical camera work, the importance of time management or what is successful in terms of costumes.

We love the blurred camera effect so this is a technique which we will definately include in our final film. The location works well, however due to the film being shoot completely outdoors at dusk, we have learnt we need to move fast and try and film as much in chronological order so the shots don't variey in light when we come to edit.

We are now starting to prepare for our final shoot which will take place on Tuesday 23rd March.