Media Studies Coursework

Thursday 26 April For the main photo for our poster, we decided to use a heart - this means that themes of horror are clearly shown to the audience, whilst still giving a slight nod to the romantic aspects of the film (hearts are an international symbol for love.) Furthermore, it even incorporates part of our plot. We had to get a heart from the Biology department in school, however, as these are dried, we soon realised that we also needed blood so we got some from a butchers owned by one of the group's family members. Once we got the heart and blood sorted, we knew that we needed a white plate that would make the blood stand out, sharp cutlery (preferably a steak knife) and a dark table, to further the darkness of the poster. All these materials were accessible, so we could quickly shoot the poster in school using an iPhone 8 camera and another iPhone's torch. Here are some of the shots that we took experimenting with different lighting: We decided to go with the...

Friday 20 April Today, I completed my work on making the magazine spread using Adobe InDesign. I was having difficulty at the beginning using this programme, so I used some YouTube and wen tutorials: http://www.indesignskills.com/tutorials/create-a-magazine-in-indesign-one/ I then began by selecting a magazine template that was already installed with InDesign and selected the double page spread that I thought would be most appropriate for a film review. This is the spread that I selected as I thought it would be the easiest to manipulate into the image that I had for the review: First off, I had to choose a colour scheme. As our film is quite dark, I decided to go with the dark colours (given that I would include brighter images to show the reader that it is not a serious and overly dark film - this would also mean that the bright images stand out against the dark background). There was already black, white and grey preset on the programme, and then I made a custom red c...

Thursday 19 April For the music during the first scene, it was pretty easy to put in - it wasn't necessary to fade it or edit the sound, all we had to do was cut it and place it so that the nice, upbeat ending went in time with the end of the titles. So, instead of cutting the end off, I cut the start off, making sure that I cut it at a place that seemed natural for the film to start off with. Luckily we had no problems with this and it worked out perfectly. Inserting the music for the end scene was more tedious and complicated - there were soundbites among the song of a man speaking over the audio, so I had to cut them out in 3 places. In order to make sure that the music didn't become jumpy and sound like it was skipping parts (although it was), I had to layer two bits of music over one another (the end of the clip before the soundbite and the beginning of the clip after the soundbite) and fade one out whilst fading the other in. In some cases it was easy and in other it ...

Wednesday 18 April Today, I wrote our group's magazine review. I struggled coming up with an opening line, so I took inspiration from reviews of other mockumentaries such as Borat and Bruno. I also looked at this WikiHow to help me write the article: https://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Movie-Review I made a list of key words to look at for inspiration aswell, such as horror, dark comedy and dying of laughter. Final Magazine Review As the amateur mockumentary genre is slowly being killed off by Hollywood’s big names, such as Bruno, Last Dates gives this genre its last fighting chance. At the beginning of the film, by combining dark comedy with what seems to be an innocent theme, upbeat music and a light hearted setting, the film manages to create a unique and new take on dark humour. But despite a compelling and tenebrous performance by lead actors Cormac Dwyer and Beth Hamill (debuting in their first notable film roles) in the final few scenes, it is almost impossibl...

Monday 16 April For our titles, we knew we wanted two sets. One at the beginning, depicting the light-hearted theme, and one post credits (mainly so the ending wasn't abrupt) but also to highlight the change in theme and attitude towards the characters. Our opening title screen is accompanied by an animation and lighting effects, using white and pink to represent the love theme: It appears at the end of upbeat music and makes a clean finish to the opening scene. Our ending title screen is darker, with no animation. This emphasises the shift in the mood of the film from the start to the end:

Tuesday 3 April By using the lighting settings in final cut pro, we were able to edit certain shots in order to make them flow better within the film. For example, the following scene was shot as the sun was setting, so the previous shot appears much lighter in the film: Therefore, we had to edit it in order to make the shots look more natural next to one another: We also edited the brightness and colouring of these shots in order to make them appear more like we originally wanted: This image was also rotated to make it straighter after having been filmed on a slope. The brightness of this shot had to be turned up as the colours are all dark, making the scene unclear, and we also had to make sure that it didn't become too grainy.

Filming Day 3 - Saturday 31 March Today, we refilmed the dinner and killing scenes due to continuity errors in the first set of footage. We gave ourselves 2 hours to film only a few scenes, so this footage was not rushed and we definitely did a cleaner and better job this time around. On reviewing the footage, it blends in well with shots that we took on the first day and luckily we kept props such as costumes and materials for the fake blood, so we were able to re-use them.

Filming Day 2 - Tuesday 27 March Today we filmed the office scenes. The filming went really well and we were able to use the shooting schedule, shot list and script more effectively as we used someone from our group as an actress, therefore we were not under time pressure and she knew exactly what was needed.  We also decided to film some filler shots of cars driving past before we left, making sure not to include their number plates. Now that we have the scenes of the receptionist speaking, we are going to be able to play it as Cormac is doing his phone scenes, making it easier for him to react to the dialogue.

Filming Day 1 - 19th March 2018 Outdoor Scenes Today, we filmed a large majority of our film. We began by shooting the outdoor scenes in Moira park, as these had to be done in daylight and were easier scenes for the actors to begin with, as they had minimal dialogue, and this helped to ease them into filming. We were lucky enough to get a nice day, as the sun shone through the trees and there was little cloud - this made for nice, natural lighting that helps the mise-en-scene of our film by giving a light and upbeat start to it.   In filming these scenes, we also took inspiration from our surroundings and used the location to our advantage, particularly when it came to taking filler shots that will be used for cutaways in the beginning of the film. One example of this is when we had Poppy’s character play with a dog in the park, after asking permission from its owner:   We encountered several problems in the park, such as l...

Friday 9 March This evening, I made a small portion of the fake blood in order to know exactly what to do on the day of filming, and to know if it will stain the floor or not. This is the recipe I followed: http://www.instructables.com/id/Washable-Non-staining-Stage-Blood-by-the-Gallon/ Here are some photos of the process: As you can see from the photos, the recipe was a success and easily washed off the tiles where we will be using it with Dettol and kitchen roll.  The improvement I will make to the next batch on the day of filming is to use more detergent or water in order to make it thinner, and to add more brown paint so that it looks more realistic, however not too much as the lighter colour stands out from the dark floor and suits the mockumentary theme better.

Tuesday 6 March We are making a background for the interview, which was inspired by First Dates: Our background will be a plain grey wall, on top of which we will stick a heart that we will have made out of coloured card. Here is a sketch of the heart that we will be making over the following week: Wednesday 7 March Today, we began making the heart. We planned to make it out of an A2 piece of card, however the only A2 card available was white. We feel that white would still work on a grey background, so we are going to layer a smaller white heart over a larger white heart. The smaller one will then be covered in cut-up pink and red card to create a mosaic effect. Then, we are going to cut out the arrows from black card. Thursday 8 March Today, we completed the piece and it will be taken home next week in order to be stored with the rest of the prop materials that we have. Here is the finished product:

Monday 26th February We spent today taking test shots and test footage of some shots that we plan to include in our film in order to find the most suitable camera and to get used to its features. Here are some of the shots that we took today: This is the first shot we took as we wanted to chose a subject and focus on it, in order to become familiar with the zoom, focus and the different options on the camera. This photo was taken for similar reasons, however we now wanted to focus on a person in a close up shot, as we would in a mockumentary. These are a test shots of some of the opening shots of the film, using what was available in school. This helped us test out the structure of the shot, the sound and the overall quality of the camera.