This whole week our group has stayed behind after school and during free periods to continue editing our film. In one of our media lessons, we were analysing the TV drama 'Shameless' and noticed lots of quick, fast pacing shots at the beginning. This inspired us to try and use it in our own film. So after school, we began searching through our old film tapes and found 11 seconds worth of film with different shots of characters, locations and props that correspond to our film. We edited it down to 0.2 seconds so the shots are sharp and snappy (like the Shameless clip) We are so happy with how it has come out, although there is a few more bits to improve on.

Here is the clip..Enjoy!

First Day of Editing..

Yesterday we finally uploaded our film and it was fantastic. We had the whole afternoon to edit, so me, Emma and Sophie got keen and decided to start earlier than the lesson and start at lunchtime. When it was time for the lesson, Neelam, our other group member joined us and we got down the basics and started to experiment with different music to play as our 'motif' on top! Of course we are a long way off from getting the perfect camera shots to go together SO smoothly, but yesterday, me and Sophie stayed until 5pm trying to edit parts of the film to perfection. We still have lots to do, and this weekend we still have to film two more scences, but what we have already done, we tweeked up a bit and included slow motion shots for the most vital scenes of when the two characters meet.

I cant wait for the next few months to carry on filming, making it everything we hoped it would turn out to be!

Filming- Day Four

Yesterday, we all met up after school to film our 'final scene'. We filmed from 3.30 until 9.30 pm, so it was a rather long day. We had to wait from 3.30pm until it got dark which was just after 4.30pm. We all went down to the cinema to film in the underground car park where we had Billy, our actor/rapist run frantically down the ramp into the car park and towards the ballerina (me). We took loads of shots from high angled shots to low angled shots, to running along side Billy, in front and behind him. It was all a bit hectic! I managed to sit myself on top of the car park 'ledge' to film a very high angled/aerial shot of Billy running down the ramp into the car park. This looked fantastic!

Then we went to the car park stairs and filmed myself running down - as if from the bridge scene in a emotional state. I found it soo hard to try and get emotional especially with the public walking around! We filmed low angled shots and panned myself running down the stairs and through the car park.

Then we filmed the last vital shot of our film, where the 'ballerina' and the 'rapist' meets for the first time. This scene was really dramatic as the girl and Billy were both running towards each other in effect, and then as the girl stops in the middle of the car park, she walks backwards not realising Billy, 'the rapist' was/is behind her. It was very tense. As we was leaving we came across a graffiti ed alley way, so decided to film in there. I had to improvise with my reaction to seeing the music box down the alley, so picked it up and chucked it out of rage and fear to Billy out of shot waiting round the corner so we didn't smash the box up! It looked really effective!!

Then later, we went back to Sophie's to film the last part of the typewriter scene, with low angled shots of when he is typing, along with him filing in a sudoku of the exact dates he meets the ballerina, adding another twist to the story. We filmed on top of Sophies roof as an aerial shot of Billy walking into the shed to "start his work" and an establishing shot of the houses around the house.

Yesterday's filming was soo good! I really enjoyed it as our film is finally piecing together! All we have left to do is film at the ballet studio and in the lift when the ballerina realises she is being followed and has a flashback. YAY!

Our first day of editing - kind of!

Yay! Finally we managed to upload our film onto the imac's at school. I was so excited to do it!! Emma, Sophie and myself all met up and sat through the whole of lunch uploading and watching our film, even finding scenes we could use to make an 'out-take' film for our own time!

As I had a lesson in the afternoon, I was unable to continue editing the film so Emma and Sophie gave up their free periods to continue. I went back after lesson to see what they had done, and it looked positive. They had experimented with lots of sounds and changed the colour toning.

From what we have seen, it looks very promising and I cannot wait to have completed the whole film and start editing.

Filming- Day Three

For this week (3rd-9th Nov) Sophie went on a Geography field trip and so we had to postpone our filming for the week. Yesterday, myself, Sophie and Emma met up and filmed a fraction of what we had left as our actor, Billy, couldn't make it, but it wasn't a problem as the stuff we filmed today didn't require him.

As when we filmed the type writer before we had realised there was a few words we didn't type on it. So today we re did the type writer with the camera focused on the words appearing each time, so it didn't matter who was typing it. We also realised that we had to film it all on the same piece of paper as the continuity of it would be different as we would of started at different parts in the paper each time. This proved to be quite a challenge for Sophie as she was typing the words, since it was in the dark, she couldnt see what she was typing and if she went wrong we had to start all over again, which was quite frustrating.

After this, all three of us (Sophie, Emma and Myself) sat down and focused on everything we had done, and had left to do.

Film Prep.

In today's lesson we learnt about diagetic and non diagetic sound. Although we hadn't come across these terms before, we had already began using them in our film.

Diegetic sound refers to the sound that both the audience and the characters can hear.


For example, in our film, we use the scary music box theme throughout our film to familiarize the audience with the on going sound on and off screen. It can also be the sound of the characters footsteps walking down the alleyway.

As we was filming we came across a number of background sounds which cannot be featured in our film. Since we do not want them included in our film, we have decided to mute all the sounds and find our own music ( the music box theme) to play over the top. This is known as the Post product Production.



Non-Diegetic sound refers to sound that only the audience can hear.


For example, in our film this could be a fast paced heart beat music created on garage band, such as jaws, to build up and create suspense. This will help the audience feel how the characters are feeling and reflect their emotions.

We haven't yet learnt how to use GarageBand, so were unable to create our 'soundtrack' however, we are hoping we will find a good soundtrack to play over the top to create suspense and tension to the film. We also thought to make it spooky we would have the "music box" song played over the top of the piece as well to make it seem as if the music box is following her, thus the killer is. This is called a sound motive, something that is played throughout the film. We think that this will then relate back to our title of "The Music Box" and hope that it makes it more clear for the audience what the film is about.

Filming- day two.

Today, on the 23rd November 2009 we carried on filming our 2 minute film. As we have already filmed me running across directly above Billy running beneath the bridge, we focused our aim on looking at ways we can link the bridge with the dark alleyway and what location we could use to get me up to the top of the bridge. Thankfully, we came across the lift at the cinema which links the staircase that we are using to the top of the bridge, allowing me to run "frantically" down the stairs away from Billy.

For the lift shot we filmed an extreme close up of my finger pressing the lift button to call the lift down, and filmed me walking in and out of the lift. We filmed me running out the lift, as the lift is the turning point in the film where the girl (me) has a flashback and remembers all the times she has seen the man (Billy) so she freaks out and runs out of the lift ( towards the bridge ) We also filmed the inside of the lift, showing a point of view shot noticing the music box outside the lift, before the doors close when she has her flashback. ( This is when she realises she is being followed as she hears the same MOTIF that has been playing throughtout. ) We was planning on using sepia of the glow effect on imovie to show the significance and difference of the flashback.

Next we attempted to film the stairway of where the girl (me) was going to run down the stairs away from the killer from the top of the bridge but unfortunatly, because we were filming at around 3 pm the continuity would not have been the same, as the outside was far to light and so wasnt able to film that scene on that day.

Instead, we went back to Sophie's to film the rest of our scenes; Billy getting out of the car and the typewritter. We used an establishing shot of the house and filmed Billy winding up the music box inside the car before doing a number of different shots of him getting out of the car and walking off. This shot will be when the girl is "dancing in the dance studio" to keep the continuty of where both characters are at the start.

We then filmed an establishing shot of Sophie's house. We thought that this would give us a variety of different shots and that it would show where the "killer" is writing his story from. We tried this in a number of ways swooping up or just steady. We also filmed this canted angle as we thought that the "killer" isn't exactly normal, so the canted angle would help suggest this and make the feel of the shot uneasy.

We finally filmed the type writer. We filmed this in Sophie's shed which was pitch black. The only lighting we had on top of it was a torch with a red filter, which was made from a "top trumps" box. We also first filmed a saw with fake blood on it to get the "killer" mood. Before the type writer we filmed a newspaper that we created with an article of murder on it and in a headline our names. We moved the light across the article to show each part seperately and Billy then slammed a cup of tea on the newspaper and began typing.

We used extreme close ups of the words "The Music Box" come up on the type writer using the red light filter. We found this quite hard as it was difficult to see what we were typing and sometimes typed it wrong so we had to start again. We then also filmed it gradually zoom out onto Billy to show that it actually is the "killer" typing the story not the "victim".

Day two was probably one of the most enjoyable days to film as we were getting more and more excited the more we filmed. We just cant wait to see the finishing product!