Both these Films use similair conventions and methods to create an atmosphere and to build tension for example, Lighting and Sound.

THE TEAM.

The Team, happy after finally grinding through the good times and the bad :)

The actors

The actors, Robyn, Chris & Ben, who all did a great job. Well done guys, thanks :)

editing and sound

I have now seen the film after the editing process. After viewing the final project i beleive its a good project. We have now cleared up the sound issues which Jazz talked about in a previous post, there was alot of wind but this has been cleared up by the music which we have used. We have decieded to go with a males scream and not a females as we originaly said we where going to do, we have done this because it goes with the music which we have selected

- Chris :)

Prelim task which we completed as practice before our main film.

Storyboard..

The Editing

The Accused has only been possible because of the editing done. Jazz has done a great job as the lead editor, and Chris and Ben have helped her well. The ideas that the group have had have allowed us to come up with a good film.

The sound and editing techniques used have been great, and the finished product looks nice - we just have to decide whether a girl's scream would be better than a man's one, but I think it's great how it is now :)

- Matt.

The Locations and Filming Troubles

Although the film is basically finished now, we did have some troubles at the start with the weather and locations.

Early on we decided that we'd film outside the church (which you can see in the photos) and we did all we could in two lessons. However, for the next couple of weeks, the snow hit and we couldn't film anything because of the continuity errors that would have arisen. We had to wait for the snow - which was also a good thing because we talked about the film more, and went into more depth, allowing us to make a better plot and think about the direction of the film. From them discussions we decided that we should change what we were doing.

Chris, Jazz and Ben brought in the options of a murder or death in the church, and we decided that Ben should emerge from said church in a bloodied shirt, and run away, with a detective using his phone to confirm with the line "It's done". This leaves the audience wondering whether Ben is the killer, or the detective is trying to set him up.

- Matt

Micro element - Sound

We have approached the micro element of sound mostly in Non-diegetic terms, by adding deep non-diegetic sounds it creates a type of atmosphere common in Psycological thrillers,it adds tension and builds a climax until the non-diegetic scream toward the end of the sequence.

- Ben :)

The Finished Product

I've had the pleasure of looking at the finished film now...and it looks good! The soundtrack has been added - an eerie collection of sounds - and the scream has been put in too.
The brightness of the running scene has been altered so it now has a darker, hazier look, which is brilliant for the genre we're doing.
The plot is easily identified throughout, allowing the audience to follow the film and not get lost or wonder what is going on.

- Matt.

Chris our director as dafont

This is Chris playing detective Dafont, one of the characters to be added to our film.

- Jazz

sound troubles.

During the filming, we had a lot of trouble with the wind noise in the background. To get rid of this we had to delete the volume and add natural sounds effects in the background, all easily done. But were still struggling to find the correct backing soundtrack, especially considering the computer were working on supplies no music files unlike the rest. I plan to have a listen to a few things this week and hopefully it will be resolved by next monday.
The sound is the most important part of the film in my opinion, and although the edit looks fairly average at the moment, a good suitable soundtrack will change it all completely in a matter of seconds.

-jazz :) x

DVD cover?

Some inspiration? jazz :)

General update of the last few weeks.

Although after all the problems of having to re-think and change our idea, then of course re-filming everything, as well as the troubles and difficulties the bad weather caused us, our film is generally on good track now.
There's been a few minor problems along the way and the duration and length of it still worries me slightly. We added two flashbacks, (robyns death and the interrogation between patient and detective) to make our film longer, at first we thought of doing a flashback of how ben escaped, but then decided as a group there was already too much running in the our film.
Even with the two flashbacks our film still doesnt hit the recommended 2 minutes in length it should be and although we are running out of time I still feel our group would be able to pull one more thing out the bag as the film lacks what you would call 'a big money' shot. Discussions are taking place...

- jazz :) x

Flashbacks.

Adding the flashbacks was not only to make our film longer, it was so we were able to add lighting and sound techniques into our work too. Also to add more close up and other different varieties of shots.
Both scenes were done in low key lighting, so that the background was not important, low key lighting also gives us more focus on the main subjects and creates atmosphere in our film.
Doing flashbacks also enabled us to experiment with editing techniques, we changed the images to black and white and turned down the brightness and contrast then used cross dissolves to create a dream like edit cut. Having dialogue also allowed us to play around with the sound, we changed the volume dials to make it seem like an echo, that worked well too.

- Jazz x

A few quick snaps I took during the setting up, just to see the locations. jazz x

Micro element - Cinematography

We have targeted the micro elements of Mise-en-Scene in a variety of ways.
For example we have targeted our cinematograpy by using good locations to get a variety of shots. One of our locations gave us the abilty to film low angle shots from a distance. This was helpful when considering the amount of shots we had used. Although we did have problems when first capturing our footage as we clearly saw that we had too many "long" shots and not enough close ups. Look at the post for "Variety of Shot" to read more info about this.


- Ben

Micro element - Lighting

We have targeted the micro elements of Mise-en-Scene in a variety of ways
for example we have targeted our Lighting features by entering the recording studio and adding Low Key lighting effects to shots and sequences like Robyn's death.This adds atmosphere to the scene and is commonly used in Psycological Thrillers.For example "Psycho" Alfred Hitchcock 1960 and in more recent times "The Uninvited" The Guard Brothers 2009. Therefore Low Key Lighting can be classed as a "Must have" for Lighting elements in Psycological thrillers.

- Ben (:

The Film

At the moment we are in the process of editing our film. There is nothing else we need to film, apart from a sign, and we just need to edit it. It is looking good at the moment, and I hope that when we put the sounds on, it will pull the film together and make it good. Ben has done a good job acting, Jazz has been great editing and filming and Chris has kept it all together well.

- Matt.

Robyn Death

We have filmed in the tv studio again. In the studio we filmed another flash back of christians (bens) life. In the scene you discover why christian was put in to a mental institute. We where going to add how he escaped from the mental institute but we all thought that there was to much running already in the opening, because of this we decided to film in the tv studio where the lighting and cameras improve how your film looks. In the scene Ben wakes up next to his sister who is dead and is played by Robin Bellingham.

- Chris :)

Variety of Shot

After looking at the footage coming together in a whole we've noticed that the amount of long shots vastly outnumbers that of close ups and establishing shots. We have added a larger variety of shots by working in the TV studio and adding flashbacks of "Christian Stonem's" past life. this gave us a chance to use techniques such as panning shots and we got to use lighting and setting techniques to contribute to micro elements which emphasise meaning. We got the close up and reaction shots needed and headed to the editing suite to capture the footage.

- Ben (:

Detective

After looking at the footage we have got of me(chris) on a bench and bens chase scene, we have discovered that we have not got enough footage. So we have decided to add a new scene. We have now filmed this new scene in the scene there is me and ben , i am now playing a Detective which adds something new to my character on the bench. This new scene adds more depth to are story and also makes the rest of the story make sense it does this because it gives you detail about what ben is ment to of done

- Chris :)

New Ending

We have filmed again outside the church we are still using the chace part of the film which we filmed last week but we have changed the end. We have done this because are other idea was to long and complicated.



- Chris :)