Here are some screen shots of the new scene in which we filmed, luckily it all went to plan and so now all we have to do is tweak a few bits here and there in order to have a completed film opening.

At first we have establishing shot of where the scene will take place. The bus stop in the centre as it is the main focus. I really like this shot as it splits the frame up into thirds (the rule of thirds).

This creates reference points for good framing and is a powerful compositional device.

Kate then enters the scene budging everyone over so that she can sit down..

This then causes Yasmin to fall off the other side (a bit of slapstick comedy there). This is another long shot so that the audience can clearly see what has happened.

Then we have a panning shot to show everyone being irritated by Kate.

And this is where the panning shot ends. Here Kate is day dreaming while the others are moaning at the bus being late (well played by Miss Foster).

Then then have yet another long shot of the bus driving past and everyone running after it..

All except Kate. This is the final shot in our film opening at which point we hear a final strum of music as Kate looks up and turns her feet inwards. The clip then fades to black).

Here is another quick video we made a while ago also experimenting with using different shots. We did have a lot of fun making this might I add!

Today we filmed the last bit of footage for our film opening. After planning the shots that we wanted to do and grouping together some of our friends as extras, I got into costume (bearing in mind continuity) and we headed off to the bus stop. We managed to get some great shots so a big thank you to everyone who helped.

Charlotte imported the footage during break and I edited it, adding the new footage to the rest of our film opening. After roughly piecing together all the footage I had to extract the audio from different clips to get the sound of the traffic the same throughout so that it doesn't chop and change in every different shot. However I had to choose carefully which audio to place over the footage to make sure that the sound of the cars driving past is not heard when there are in fact no cars driving past. That would have looked really odd, however it all still needs a bit of adjusting. When editing I really liked the idea of having the end piece of music move with my feet right at the end, and when I tried it, it worked out really well. The only problem now is that our film has gone over the time limit so I'm a bit unsure about what we are going to do.

Here is our sixth draft...

Here is our fourth draft with all the new footage. I've roughly put it all the clips together and put the music in over the top however the sounds still need to be adjusted and the music needs to be edited in places. This should then make sure that the song lasts until the end of our film opening. We also obviously have to write in the actual credits and also put our production company animation which we have made in at the beginning.

When editing we had to delete some original footage as we have gone over 2 minutes and we also decided to keep the snorricam footage minimum which seemed to look more effective.

In todays lesson we managed to add in our bumble bee animation to our film opening as well as placing a bumble bee sound effect over the clip which we downloaded and converted from Youtube.

We also added in the credits using a similar order to the film opening of Mean Girls so that our work is of a professional standard. We also used similar transitions and font styles to Mean Girls so that the style of our film opening matches our genre of a chick flick comedy. We then made the decision of deleting the bus scene footage as we felt that all the new footage was a lot better making the old footage look less successful.

Everything seems to be coming together. We will hopefully be shooting one last scene at a bus stop on friday afternoon to avoid finishing our film with me walking off down the road as it seemed like too much of an ending. But other than that we are almost done!

Here is our fifth draft with all the new stuff we added in today...

Today in our lesson we mainly focused of the credits and sound. We decided to change all the credit fonts and transitions to be the same as before the credits on the black background were different to the others. For the sound we split the music in places to make it all fit in with whats being shown in the footage and so far it has worked really well.

We then made a quick outtakes movie, showing you bits of our day during filming...

Recently we've been doing lots of editing on our film opening, putting all the new footage from Saturday together.

Here is our third draft before we added the new footage to it obviously makes no sense however it shows all the bits which we have re filmed.

Yesturday we filmed hopefully for the last time. We managed to get everything done, this time with much brighter lighting, but had to be very carefull with continuity making sure everything in the room was the same as last time, for example how far the window was open and how low down the blinds were. We think it went according to plan but all will be revealed when we upload the footage tomorrow.

Lat night we went to the cinema and watched 'The Rite' an American supernatural horror film based on the making of a modern exorcist. It was directed by Mikael Håfström and written by Matt Baglio and Michael Petroni. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Father Lucas and Colin O'Donoghue as Michael Kovak.


Brief background of film...
The film is based on the book The Making of a Modern Exorcist by Rome-based Matt Baglio, which was published in 2009. To research the book, Baglio participated in a seminar on exorcism where he met Father Gary Thomas, a parish priest from California, who was tasked by the local bishop in San Jose, California to become an exorcist for the diocese. Initially skeptical and reluctant, Father Gary becomes an "apprentice" to a Rome-based exorcist and his skepticism is soon replaced by the cold reality of evil and the ways it sometimes takes the form of demonic possession.


My opinion...
I liked the film, although it was quite disturbing. The whole idea of the unknown really does scare me. It was also very jumpy in places particularly when the possessed priest whacks the little girl around the face and also when the devil hand starts strangling Kovak. At this point me and Valentina literally lept out of our chairs. Makes me laugh so much every time I think about out it!


The echoed, whispered sounds used definitely added to the jumpiness of the film. The scariest bits however were when it was silent as you just know that something scary is about to happen.


The first thing I noticed about the film was the camera work. The compositions were quite interesting. The camera’s perspective peaks from around corners and from behind fences which creates a mysterious, edgy feel to it adding to the genre of horror. I also noticed how detailed and intricate the make-up designs were especially towards the end of the film used on Hopkins. The dark blue veins and intense wrinkles really gave him that possessed, demonic look.

In the film after Father Lucas shows Michael his first case of possession, he remarks to the boy, “What did you expect? Spinning heads and pea-soup?” It seemed like a reminder that it wasn't like every other exorcism movie. However when the possessions started we saw nearly every single cliche of the genre. The possessed girl uses her sexuality to try and shame the priests. She plays on their secrets and insecurities (a very good actress might I add), they use electronically lowered voices, muttering blasphemies, blank contact lenses and blotting out eyes, sinister prophecies coming true, the vomiting up of odd objects etc. It all sounds quite familiar but I guess exorcism movies wouldn't be the same without it all, although I did think that red eyed horse was quite naff. 

                                

So recently me and Charlotte have been looking at some more options for music as it seems we are unable to use a song from freeplaymusic.com unless we pay something like £50. So we've been having a look on YouTube to see if we can find an un-copyrighted instrumental cover song.

Here is the one we are now planning to use. It is an instrumental cover song by a man called Craig Evans of the song Fell in love with a girl in white stripes, it is an uncopyrighted version..



We liked it as it's upbeat and funky which goes well with our genre of comedy. Also we liked it because there are lots of places where the music stops and then starts again which we can make fit with our footage. The silence we can use in order to highlight the funny bits again adding to our genre. In our first couple of drafts for our film opening we used the song Cool Shades, and we really liked how the music stopped when Kate walked out of the door and then started up again on the freeze frame of Charlotte lying on the ground. This is what initially gave us the idea of having a piece of music where there are breaks.We'd obviously have to cut the music to make the breaks in the music longer however this shouldn't be a problem as it can easily be done on imovie.

Big Fat Gypsy Weddings is the television hit of the year. But is it going to harm the community it portrays?

Remember a few years back when Eastenders ran an advertising campaign with the strapline 'Everyone's talking about it'? At the time, everybody was, or so it seemed. These days, British viewers have turned their attentions elswhere and it seems like you just can't escape people talking about Channel 4's Big Fat Gypsy Weddings.

The five part series is drawing in over seven million viewers with each episode, making it one of the channel's most-watched shows ever. And people aren't just watching - they're discussing it on Twitter and setting up Facebook groups. Newspaper columnists are talking about it. I've heard people telling their friends that's it's the ultimate television highlight of their week.

So why the obsession? The series grew out of the 2010 documentary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which focused on the weddings of three young women from traveller families. It was the sort of programme that gets described as 'car crash TV' and millions couldn't help but tune in for a glimpse inside the notoriously secretive traveller community, where marriages generally happen between teenagers and traditional gender roles are very strictly observed. With the return of the show as a series, viewers have kept going back for more - with mixed reactions.

Predictably, there's been a lot of snobbery, racism and ridicule. The gypsy and traveller communities are the subject of much prejudice, talk of 'pikeys' and 'gypos' and jokes about their culture are common.
In 21st century British culture, where plenty of people practically consider 'chav bashing' their right, it's easy to laugh atwedding dresses which weigh as much as a fully-grown man, six-year-olds getting spray tans and sixteen-year-old brides discussing the decor in their new caravans. And it's hardly going to change the way travellers are often treated by society.
Unsurpringly it's brought anger from travellers and the organisations which work with them, many of which feel the show nothing more than 'sensationalism' - an unfair and inaccurate portrayal of a culture which is marginalised enough in the first place. They have said that the unbelievably over-the-top weddings and apparently violent courtship practices are far from widespread and that only a small minority of travelling people live their lives this way. They're not happy with the way the tabloids have covered the series either.

The show's producers have reiterated that the people featured in the series have been happy with the way they have been portrayed, but the debate rages on.

A major area of concern for viewers has been the way traveller culture impacts the lives of women - even, it has to be said, people who aren't usually bothered by gender issues. Sexism may still be alive and well but to most, gender equality isn't a totally alien concept.

Watching these young women who have left school at 11 or 12, who are extremely restricted by gender roles and who freely admit that 'it's a man's world' has been really uncomfortable for a lot of people - just as much as seeing young men laugh at the idea of a woman having a job or saying that they think the custom of unmarried women not being allowed to drink alcohol or go out alone is completely 'fair'.

This is certainly heightened by the other facts we know about travelling communities. That the women within them are considered some of the most marginalised women in the country. That, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, up to 81% of them have experienced domestic abuse. When you add this to low life expectancy, alcohol and drug abuse on the rise, lack of access to support services, prejudice from the general public and the stigma of admitting to being abused, the picture doesn't look too rosy.

It certainly doesn't show those who are quick to mock travellers' lives in a particularly good light, even if it is 'just a laugh' as far as they're concerned. Their remarks about gypsies and travellers in general have shown that there's a lot of venom reserved for them, no matter what sort of lives they lead.

Agencies and organisations are working with travellers to support them and help combat prejudice, but I wonder whether Big Fat Gypsy Weddings is going to mean they're subject to even worse treatment from the public - and how much 'concern' will remain once the series is over.