Final day of filming

Today we managed to film a potential ending to our film. Although this was a late decision to add in the "24 hours later" clip, we thought to make the film more interesting, we would have a scene of the ballerina waking up in the morning ready for a long day ahead of her. As she wakes up to her alarm clock, we zoom in on the alarm clock with the ballerina pressing the snooze button and then cut to another shot of the girl waking up and getting out of bed. She then mutters as she wakes up, complaining of the day ahead of her, unconscious of what is about to happen.

We included a close up shot, medium shot and extreme close up in our film, and also managed to film an over the head shot but this doesn't seem to fit into the other clips once edited.

We went back to school after filming at lunch and managed to edit the clip quite fast. We added the 'Dream' effect to make the next day seem eerie and fresh, and to give the audience the impact that she has just woken up to a fresh day, unaware of what a terrifying day she has ahead of her, making the audience feel slightly guilty as they have previously seen what she has to go through.


I think this clip we have added at the end ruins the audience's own imagination of what happens in the rest of the film, so after much deliberation, my group and I have decided to leave the film as it was without the scene of the "24 hours before" and leave it at the jaw dropping ending when the two characters come face to face with one another.



This is what our film would have looked like.

Evaluation

Evaluation for The Music Box

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Final ending to our film

After months of having our film looking like a trailer, we have finally managed to produce a 2 minute film opening. It has been so difficult trying to end our film, but not completely end it, but thankfully we have found a way.

After the car park scene, we have the Music Box credits introducing our film as the music box ballerina spins with an overlapped image of the ballerina spinning to add to our editing techniques. Then after that, the black screen appears with "24 hours earlier" to make the film seem as if it is starting and to justify why the girl was on the run from Billy, and also to suggest that the film started with the ending and is now going to go back 24 hours ago and explain the storyline in further detail. The sound of this clip is an alarm bell ringing that starts in the middle of the 24 hours earlier clip to suggest the morning.

We also found a CCTV look a like to add to our grainy clip of the stalker inside his "den". We decided to add this to our film, as we have always been in two minds whether to keep the scene, as it was so grainy as our night vision on our camera did not come out as well as planned. This new edit looks a whole lot better as it suggests to the audience that the poor pixels in the film are from a CCTV camera.

Changing the beginning

"MURDER IS LIKE MUSIC TO MY EARS"

These are the 'famous' words we have inserted into our film to confuse and disorientate the viewers. When I saw it actually built in to our film, it really gave it that professional looking effect. After much debating, we all agreed that it looked far to much like a trailer, especially by having "The Music Box" appear at the end. Then thinking about, no film that we had looked at in class, or ever seen, has black images with text on unless its a trailer. Although we didn't want to throw all their hard word away, we felt we all needed to go and fix it as it just didn't look right and we thought by going against the exam specification, we were putting ourselves at great risk of losing marks.

The montage of all the fast clips we deleted, lasted around 23 seconds as so we had to create something new and exciting to take its place, but being based on credits as we now had long enough to introduce some, with it still fitting in time with our music. We then inserted 4 black screens and introduced our credits as follows:

1) " A S.E.E.N Production" - S.E.E.N coming from our four initials is a unique film company we have made up in order to make our film look professional, yet still unique to our group at the same time.

2) We originally had "A Fox film" so we then changed it to "A Jackal Film" and almost mocking the 21st century fox productions as a Jackal is another similar animal. We changed it again mostly for individuality to our film and to avoid copyrighting issues.

All these clips individually lasted around 7-8 seconds and so fitted in time with the music perfectly when the black and white type writer is seen.

As we now had changed the ending, we wanted to still give off a eerie effect and so when the ballerina is shown panicking in the car park right at the end, and Billy just appearing behind her. It somehow gives the viewers a shiver down their spine as it is left to the viewers own imagination to what he does with her.

Deleting the blood scene

Even from the start of our filming days, our group has always been confused whether to keep the "blood scene" as it implied to the viewers that the murder was a killer, who was no doubtebly out to kill the ballerina some time soon!
After months and months of debating whether or not to keep the scene, we have decided to leave it out of the film as after showing it to friends and family, they were always unsure as to why the blood was there, and where it came from. We decided to delete it is as it seemed unnecessary and didn't even show of great camera skills as all it was was an extreme close up.

One thing we did particularly like was the blurriness of the shot at the end which was perfect to fade into a shot of the ballerina afterwards. So, instead of getting rid of the whole clip, we shortened it down to 0.3 seconds and added it to the montage of clips at the beginning of our film opening.

Changing the opening credits

Neelam and Emmak came up with an idea that they had spotted on one of the DVD starting screen when you go to press "play". They said it looked like newspaper cuttings of some sort that spelled out the word "MURDER" which kept flashing up over different images. They felt that this fitted our film and so adapted it to the phrase "MURDER IS LIKE MUSIC TO MY EARS" as this fits with the theme of murder and the theme of the music box from our film. We decided to use this in our film because the fast pacing clips that was usually at the start of our film, seemed clear to us that it was more of a trailer than an actual 2 minute opening.

So, they inserted black screen in between the pre-made montage of short clips at the beginning and each one lasting between 6-7 seconds. Then however, they had the tricky task of making it fit the music we had previously perfectly edited to fit in time with the part of the film when the black and white type writer begins to write "The Music Box" when the heavier part of the beat begins. They took calculators and divided the length of the time by the number and lengthof black screens they had inserted and so after a long process, they eventually made it fit perfectly.

Copyrighted Music

Now that we had an almost perfected our 2 minute film opening, our main issue our group had to face was tackling the whole music issue. We had been told by Miss Foster that we had to make our own piece of music and that if we were to use a piece that already exists, we would lose marks as this would be going against the exam boards specification.

We were searching on YouTube to help us with our Garage Band music, when we came across an excellent piece of music which had been created by a person with the YouTube name of "red hook noodles". We went on his YouTube "channel" and came across this piece of instrumental music.


Once we had uploaded the music to itunes then garage band, to make it our own, we had to split the clips up and edit it to fit our film.


We then experimented with different sounds that could be overlapped. We also remembered a technique we has learnt at the Garage Band trip that was you could make the music fade in and out at different points. So, when the image of the real music box is shows, we had previously recorded that sounds and pout it on our film and as we didn't want the two sounds to clash, we faded out the basking track so that the music box sound was heard clearly.

Discovering Extra's

As I was exploring the mac, and its features, I come across a settings buttons and you can click on "imovie preferences". Once clicked, there is a whole new range of tools that can be used on editing your film. If we only we had discovered this earlier!

Tools include things such as overlapping clips, blue screen and green screen and also being able to edit the colours more specifically on a clip of your choice. So now having these extra tools, we are able to improve our film even more.

Justification of the title 'The Music Box'

The main reason why we decided to call our film the Music Box is because our Rapist, Billy, has an obsession with ballet dancers and usually in music boxes there innocent ballerina's, as it is commonly known for many little girls that want to be ballerinas when they grow up. We have then taken this symbolism of this toy and completely transferred it around into something dark and creepy as a prop associated with a killer.

The music box is shown in many points of our film, so that is made sure it is a key component to not only the film title, but as a symbol of Billy always being around me (the ballerina).

It is shown as a symbol of control when Billy is sitting in the car and it lies on the dashboard. When he slams it shut, the ballerina falls over whilst in dance practice and this shows that he is almost controlling her every move. It is also shows discreetly when I am running through he underground car park trying to escape from Billy and she casually runs past it. We played this clip on slow motion so the audience begin to realise that "The music box" is a symbol of Billy's where about.