Group Vlog

A vlog to explain the plan for filming at the beginning of the half term!

Fast Pace Shots

The fast pace cuts of these shots in this advert create tension and mystery and as we decided to create a 'spy' film we thought that it would be good to use fast pace cuts as it slightly disorientates the viewer and keeps them guessing for what is next.

Title Sequence

Checkmate!

Me and Anna started to discuss title ideas for our film in lesson today, thankfully Rachel and Lucy arrived to distract us from the awful names in which we were coming up with! We discussed ideas and we all decided that a single word would be much more striking for our title, and this is when Anna came up with the title Checkmate. We all said that it did make us think of chess, which obviously is not what we want, but we thought that by defining as 'defeating the competition' would be really clever and it will connect perfectly with our film. Rachel then thought of Beyonce's music video 'Diva' in which it defines the word at the beginning of the video. We plan to set it out similarly to that and it will also coincide with our credit ideas!

Action Ideas

Quick update from Lucy and I about our new action packed ideas...

Snow Day

On friday we decided to go out and film in the snow. Although Annas lovely dark hair looked great against the white snow and the lighting was perfect, filming was a nightmare. We once again didnt have any of the props and Anna wasnt wearing the correct costume. But we powered through and decided to film scenery shots.

As you can see from the vlog below we all had a 'great' time filming, but we now need to decide whether to carry on and complete our filming in the snow or to wait until it has all cleared up and film on a nice sunny day.



Here are some pictures of the group enjoying the cold weather!

Snippet

Heres a small part of our film so far

The Editing Continues...

After school yesterday we all stayed behind to edit the footage we got on Friday. We have now incorporated the lift into our final film and we think we may need just one more shot of Anna leaving the toilets but apart from that half of our 2 minute film has been filmed and edited. Up next we are outside filming Anna further into her 'spy' like form. Hopefully not long now till we have our final film!

       

 

Introducing the mini tripod!

For Christmas my mum coincidentally was given a mini tripod, Why? I have no idea, (she doesn't even own a camera) but it has been very useful and has been perfect for some of the filming. In Fridays lesson we began to film a couple of shots in the school lift which was very small so the mini tripod was very handy. We also positioned the camera in the top corner of the lift and filmed Anna from a high angle, this made it look like CCTV, which is perfect for our 'spy' film, we also managed to capture Anna quickly glancing at it making it all the more mysterious and suspicious.

We also finished filming in the toilets. We redid a tracking up shot that wasn't as steady as it could be and we also decided to add a few new shots and angles. We have now created a high angled dutch tilt which coincides perfectly with our film as it makes it again look like it could be CCTV. We also have an aerial shot of the makeup bag in which you can see her taking off her numerous amount of bracelets, this close up aerial shot focuses on her removing her bracelets so the audience can see the all important transformation.

Slight Change of Location

Today we did an update vlog on the change of location. We have discussed and come to the conclusion that going up London is no longer the best or easiest option for our film. We feel that using Central London and having all the iconic landmarks will distract the audience from her transition into a spy, which is the main focus in our film. Also, by using places closer to home, we have the flexibility to go and film when we need to and focus on the cinematography.

Christmas Holidays

So with 'BRING THE EQUIPMENT HOME' carved into my hand with a sharpie, you would think that we would remember to bring all the equipment home. Wrong. We all managed to remember the important equipment such as the tripod, the flip and the camera. But what slipped our minds was the props. My suitcase with all the other props in it, has been tucked away in Miss Fosters office in school, over the entire christmas period. As you can imagine we were really frustrated as we had a set date to go up London and although we tried to work around the problem, for consistency reasons we were not able to film anything without the props.

I think forgetting it has allowed us to thouroughly plan for our days out and we roughly think we need about 2 more days which will be spent in Central London. So although we havent been able to film over the holidays, we plan to get started as soon as we get back from our break and use any available media lessons to go out and film.