More music research

On Tuesday I had free periods so I come and edited our film again, and at break Emma K came up and helped with me. I was experimenting on different camera effect,and every time I spotted by Billy it goes into a negative/x-ray effect. As we was listening to youtube in the background, we noticed the background music of Rhianna's song 'Russian Roulette'. We liked the beat to this song and thought that it sounded quite scary. So we therefore found the instrumental version on youtube and played it over the top.






Then, Emma and myself began researching all the chart songs, and come across Eminem's song called Music Box. We listened to this a few times and played it at the same time as our film, and there was a really significant ring to the music box he used, During this song you can hear the music box winding up and a melody played. This melody is on top of the background music and I think that this helps us find out how we can have music over the top of our film with the music box melody also.

Rough Edit 7 of our film.

This os a few of our roughly edited films. We edited the films with the two pieces of music; Massive Attack - Angel, and The Saw music, but obviously, due to copyright reasons we cannot use them. I think they both go really really well with the type of genre our film is. We have an idea of when we want the film to build up, where we think that the height of suspense is and what emotions, feelings and what atmopshere it creates.

ROUGH EDIT 1.



ROUGH EDIT 2.




We also edited the shots together with some cross blur/zoom transitions which gave the effect of time passing. I think that this makes it look better as you don't have the bore of watching her travel everywhere.

We then added in all of the shots of Billy winding up the music box and getting out of the car and walking off. With these shots we put the exposure up, so all the shots of him were grainy which gives the audience an effect, due to the mise en scene that he is "trouble" and this is shown through the grainy effect. In contrast to this we added all the shots of the ballerina (me) dancing and put them in the effect "Dream". We used this effect as it brightened it up and also due to the mise en scene, it shows that it is before all the dark, scary ''stuff" happens and when the girl is happiest dancing. This happiness then contrasts at the exact moment she walks out the door. This could show that at the exact moment she walks out the door she's being watched.

When the shot of the ballerina girl spinning is shown we played the music box music backwards, which in itself sounded scary, but we thought that this gave an extra effect that she's different and to distort the audience into thinking something is going to happen to them.



















Rough Edit 3.

Day Five - Filming

Today we filmed the ballet studio 'Bodens' with the ballet girl (me) in her dance studio dancing around before she makes her way home, unfortunately "bumping" into Billy, her stalker. We realised since we deleted the last scenes of 'who's next' with his next victim we could focus on the ballet studio, really emphasising the fact that this girl is a ballerina (like the figure in the music box) not just an average girl getting raped. We are hoping we can link the music box sound with the ballerina's dance music, as this would be a vital motif for the film leading into being a diagetic sound in different scenes to make the link between the music box girl and the ballerina girl.

Firstly we started off by filming some shots of Elle's feet, going on point. These shots were either long shots or extreme close ups of her feet. We decided to do loads of different ballet techniques and movements as we thought that more would be better than less and somehow, either at the start of our film, with the quick transitions or with the help of fading transitions can show how she got from each shot.

We then filmed some long shots of the ballerina (me) spinning. We started zoomed in and then slowly zoomed out to reveal the girl. The reason why we did this was because since inside the music box there is a ballet dancer spinning, with a zoom transition I will mimic what the ballet dancer inside the box is doing. This is to help show the audience that the box is sort of like a voodoo and it controls the ballerina.

Following on from this shot, we did a extreme close up/canted angle of her falling. This shot would come after the shot we previously filmed of Billy slamming the box down. This also proves that the box is a "voodoo doll" and that Billy has some kind of control or power over her. We also filmed a lot of split jumps through the air. We may not include these shots but we thought if we had more time left over it would make sense to have more footage that shows that she's a ballet dancer. These shots were pan shot follows across the whole room. You could also see me through the mirror. This shot was difficult to film because there was no way we could pan across the whole room in the mirrors without the camera and tripod being seen. Luckily in the room there was a pole in the middle which was just big enough for one of us to stand behind with the camera and pan across without being seen. Also as seen in the picture, we filmed some "bar work" which where she completed various ballet moves. We may not have time to put these in our film but we thought we might aswell, as we may end up using some in the fast transition start.

Then we filmed again from behind the pole but of me spinning and doing stretches and the splits. We then zoomed into the mirror to show a closer long shot of her (me). This shot is good as the audience is not looking at her directly, they are looking at her through the mirror which also gives the audience a sense that she is being watched. I think that this shot makes up for the fact that we couldn't get hold of Billy so we could, unfortunatly, not use the amazing shot of when I bends down Billy will appear in the mirror, unseen by the girl.

Finally we realised that our next shot after this was the ballerina walking out of 'Esporta', so we needed some kind of real life transition to show that she's left one place and entering another one. We then panned her picking up her bags and leaving the room. We filmed extreme close up's of her turning the lights off and grabbing the doors. What we have realised though is that we can only use one extreme close up, either the switching off of the lights or the lift, from previous filming, as her nails are black in one and fake in the other. But this would not be a problem as we already have too much footage to deal with.

We are soo happy that we have finished filming, and learnt soo much along the way. We just cannot wait to see the finishing product!

Opening to our credits..

At the weekend I went to see Paranormal Activity with friends and found the ending very scary. As I was watching it I picked up on a scary part of the film, not the content of it with the characters, but at the start it shows appreciation to The San Diago Police force which really stirs the audiences emotions as you actually believe it is real. So we adapted that to our film by putting a black screen at the opening of our film saying "With thanks to the Metropolitan for allowing us to use this case." I think this implies a very dramatic effect onto the start of our film. At first we then added another black screen saying "Billy has still not been found" But as a group decided against it and have decided to change it to "This case still remains open" as it makes it less 'cheesy' and more serious. The sound over the black clips are very serious, and as the second clip begins a police siren plays overlapped with the first sound. Here is a clip of the opening scene..

Rough edit of film

Shot by shot analysis

(Point of view shot) - Pan across newpaper and type writer "The Music Box" (Fading transition or overlap)
(Over the shoulder shot) - "Killer" Billy winding up the music box.
(Extreme close up) - Ballet dancer in music box spinning.
(Zoom in and out, fade into real dancer)
(Long shot) - Elle spinning.
(Extreme close up) - Elle's feet going on point.
(Long shot) - Back to the shot of Elle spinning.
(Over the shoulder shot) - Billy slams music box, (voodoo effect)
(Canted angle) - Elle falling over. Canted angle shot makes the audiende feel uneasy and distorted.
(Mid shot) - Elle gets up brushes herself off.
(Low angle shot) - Possibly through Elle's legs. She bends down and in the mirror you see the killer in the door way.
(Mid shot) - Of Elle stretching back out.
(Long shot) - Elle walking out.
(Wide shot) - Elle walking out of esporta, pan to end of the road.
(Exrtreme Close up) - Elle's feet through the leaves.
(Long shot) - Elle walking down alley
(Long shot) - Billy walking up alley
(Mid shot) - Billy turning around to spot Elle.
(Long shot) - Elle walking down.
(Pan shot follow) - Elle through hedge.
(High angle shot) - Billy entering shed.
(Pan shot follow) - Elle through hedge.
(Point of view shot) - Saw dripping with blood
(Point of view shot) - Dripping on ballet dancer on newspaper
(Mid shot) - Elle turning around
(Point of view shot) - Billy crossing out the ballet dancer in blood.
(Pan shot follow) - Billy over hedge.
(Long shot) - Elle/Billy walking down alley
(Close up) - Billys legs through poles.
(High angle shot) - Billy/Elle walking down alley
(Long shot) - Billy and Elle running around the corner.
(Long shot) - Elle running to lift.
(Extreme close up) - Elle pressing the button.
(Long shot) - Elle getting in the lift.
(Mid shot) - Elle's facial expression.
(Long shot) - Elle running out, pan to door.
(Wide shot) - The bridge and the two characters running across.
(Canted angle) - Stairs, Elle running down
(Mid shot) - From behind Elle running down stairs.
(Long shot) - Billy running down the ramp
(High angle) - Running in car park
(Wide shot) - Walking across car park.
(Long shot) - Elle running out stairway
(Extreme close up) - Elle running past music box, slow motion.
(Long shot) - Elle running into car park, she turns around.
(Mid shot)(Two shot) - Billy behind her, quick strobe light effect.
(Point of view shot) - Sudoku in shed.
(Long shot) - Sophie walking in park
(Mid shot) - Sophie walking past Billy.
(Close up) - Billy's smirk.

Sounds and Motif's

As we have now got the foundations of what our film is yet to look like, we have seriously been considering the different types of music and motif sounds to play in the background. As our film is called "The Music Box" we were considering using a quiet music box sound like this one we found on YouTube..


After watching our fast paced clips at the start we realised that the music might not be suitable to be played through the whole film, so we tried it with different music. We also added a few more clips and faded out the music at the end so it didn't come to a sharp stop.

Massive attack - Angel music fits so perfectly with the content of our film, but unfortunately we are unable to use it for copyright reasons, so we are going to try and incorporate a similar sound made by us in Garage Band.