Video Lighting Basics - Three Point Lighting

The importance of lighting

The key light is the main source of light and is key to the whole set up, it is angled 45 degrees from the camera, so it is not faced on and it won't look as well defined, so at the 45 degree angle she looks well defined as wrapped around the face, apart from a few shadows, which is where you use the fill light to get rid of them.

The fill light is also placed at a 45 degree angle from the camera, however is opposite from the key light. The fill light is less intense than the key light, you can do this by using a lamp, or simply moving the light further away as this effects the light tensity, also you can use a density gell. Using key light and fill light creates an even light around the subjects face and helps them blend into the background.

The back light is used to make them stand out of the background. The light is placed behind them but not at the camera, and this creates a rim of light behind their shoulders and their head, to make them stand out of the back ground, so in the end once used all 3 together, the subject looks really good.

Film Outline

Vampires; examples of vampire make-up/costume

Make-up we are wanting to use:

• fake blood
• white powder/face make up
• fake teeth
• white contact lensers 
• mascara
• eye liner

This is the kind of make-up we are wanting to use because it will create the vampire look (pale faces, fake teeth, lots of blood, bizzare eye colours).
All these are out of the ordinary to humans, so it creates the effect that they are different.
To create this effect we have to apply white face make-up, fake blood, fake teeth which we have collected from our homes from halloween.

With clothing, vampires are to wear quite casual clothing for example, plain t-shirts, trousers (applied to both women and male) you may have seen this kind of clothing from films like Twilight and Drama's like True Blood.
We are wanting to dress our vampires in dark clothing to create the effect of them being quite dull and the colour may reflect on the weather/day/night. In our case night time.

Script Layout examples

MOVING PICTURES (STORYBOARDING) THE SIXTH SENSE

The purpose of storyboarding is to use it so you know what you will be doing throughout filming. When coming to filming it is less stressful and more organised if everything is planned out step by step and you will walk in to filming knowing what your about to do such as what is happening in each shot, angles and how long each shot lasts. When story boarding all your concentration goes into it, so ideas are coming constantly and different ways of thinking creates these ideas.

To show lighting in storyboarding you shade the areas darker where you are wanting darker lighting and leave it white where light lighting is needed/wanted. When creating a storyboard you are the camera, so in the storyboard box you will have to draw what you are wanting in that shot and you draw the image at the angle you want. To show camera movement you use arrows drawn in the direction it will be moving.

Ideas for film- Narrative

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPlq6tI7Zvc


Here shows the bite given to the victim by the vampire, we like the shots used to show the bite and to then show the facial expressions given by the victim. There are close-ups of eyes, teeth etc which are the kind of shots we would like to use to show the transformation of our victim becoming a vampire. We would like to use the pace of the different shots in this but not all the way through, we will slow shots down to give a better understanding of what is happening.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reRRAEVHq8E

Here is the trailer of Let Me In, we are wanting to use a female as the vampire this is because you hardly see female vampire in films (it is very rare), also what we had taken on board is the clothing she is wearing, its ordinary/normal so noone thinks shes strange/different, apart from one small thing... she wears no shoes, however we are not wanting to use this, we want our vampires and victim to be in dressed in casual clothing.
In our film we want the girl who gets taken by vampires to be totally normal at the beginning like you see with the girl from Let Me In, but as time goes on you start to see who she really is under that inoccent mask.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHf6Th-E3kE


The lighting in this clip from 28 weeks later, is very dull, which throughtout our film is what we are wanting also you see in this clip that they are in one room which we would like our film to be based in just one small room thats not very appealing. You can feel the tension in the room and just from this clip you can get a jist of the characters (who may have the stronger personalities) which in our film we would like to create a bond with our victim to the audience so they feel what she is going through.

Textual Analysis - Chariss Lee

Fonts

Art Of The Title

We chose this particular title sequence because of the type of images and shot types used. We like how the shot types are close-ups, master shots and canted. There is a variety of shots and we would like to use many different shots this is because we think it is more effective. The images shown shows the location, characters and props. This gives you an instant idea what the film may be about.

PITCH

Here is our planning for our film:

Comments by Media Group

Title Sequence Template

We made some changes to our title sequence, such as we didn't have her in a car or at the local shop, as we just had he walking like most teenages on her phone, and i think watching her walk creates a sense of reality like shes just a normal teenage girl, so it will be even more sad for the audience when she dies and scary. We kept the graveyard and the bite scene and her kneeling by a grave. 

Seven opening title sequence

seven notes

Kyle Cooper...

Here is a video of Kyle Cooper talking about his Work.

True Blood opening title sequence - youtube

true blood notes

Chariss and Katie Title Idea Grids

Here are our own grids for title ideas, we have images that we thought would relate to vampire films.

We have based the first grid on Seven as it is more story based, like someone's day to day life like cars driving past and a man walking a dog.
We have based the second grid on True Blood as, in their title sequences they have lots of different images based on the genre, which we have also done, as ours is vampire and we have put image like bats and sharp vampire teeth with blood, so it relates to our film.

Narrative Ideas For Our Film

Charaters- we would like to have a girl, teenaged vampire as our main vampire/character this is becuase in most vampire films the main character are males for example, Edward out of Twilight. Although there are female vampires that do have a part in the film, Edward is still the main character, so we want to make our main character a female. 

Also the main vampire in Van helsing is also male, so we will like to be different.We would also like the other characters that will be the victims to be male and female.

Costume- vampire- fangs, pale skin, white eyes (contact lenses), Casual clothes (dark). In Twilight, Edward (vampire) wears casual clothing such as t-shirts and trousers. The colours of these are dull. He has pale skin and unusal eye colours.

  


In this clip you can see his eyes and how he dresses and how he has really pale skin. 


In Van Helsing he also looks scary with pale skin and fangs. However he doesnt where as casual clothing, he looks like a vampire with a long black cape, and we want ours to be more modern so we will have casual clothing. Our victims will be dressed in going out clothes such as dresses, shorts, tops etc because they are coming back from a party.


He you see them changed into a vampire, and their teeth turn into fangs and eyes change colour and such. 

Lighting and setting- we would like the film to be based at night to create that erie, spooky feeling. Dim lighting will be used- lamp lighting the place. Throughout twilight dull lighting is used, this is because it is based around a town that has rubbish dull weather all the time, so the theme is carried on throughout the film.




 This is the same in Van helsing also, as it is never nice whethe rit ia always dull and misserable, and mainly set at night as it creates more of an spooky atmosphere.

Twilight- Chairss Lee- Wordle

Bella and Edward are the two main characters in the film Twilight, this is why there names are larger than the other words. Vampire is the next size down, this shows you staright away that the film is about vampires. Words are then used like powerful, death, tribe, killing, suicide and strong this gives you a big understanding about the film staright away.

Horror Wordle - Van Helsing - Katie Smyth

The film i did was Van Helsing, here you can see the main words that are important to the film such as Van Helsing and dracula, as these are some of the main characters that are important to the film. You can also see words such as vampires and kill and suchwhich show the film is about vampires and there is likely to be a a lot of killing in it. You can also see the word castle is quite big so this is important as is one of the important locations in the film. You can also see words such as monster, frankinstein, wings, captured, escape and cemertary and such, which helps to give you a understaning on what the film is about, as there is vampires and monsters and killing and such in it.

Final Coursework group

We have two people in our group, and we have chosen vampire for our final coursework project. We thought this would be an interesting and creative project to do, this is because the use of costume used in vampire films such as, blood, fake teeth etc. We both have an interest in vampire films, so this is an advantage also we have worked together before so we no how each one of us work. 

Mind Map

This is our mindmap we have done in preparation for our film. We have talked about; costume, narrative,  makeup lighting, sound, character, location and camera shots that will be in our film. 

Chariss Lee- Assignment

Use of Camera

In our film assessment, there were many different camera shots, we created a storyboard before filming to make things clear to use so we knew what we was doing and what camera angle and shot was needed for a particular scene. A Tripod was used, so when filming there was no camera shake, this was done very smooth, also there is a part in shot seven where the camera is tilted, this was also done very smooth because there was no jolt. Many different camera shots were used throughout the film such as, long shots, close-ups, extreme close-ups and mid-shots, I think each and every one of these shots shown emotion and was very understandable. At the start of our film the majority of shots are at a high angle looking down at her, this is to create the effect on the audience showing that the character is vulnerable at this point, when she starts to get up, the camera then becomes the same level as her until she is fully stood up and the camera is at matching eyeline. If I was to go back and do this film again I would change the lead and head room because at points in the film, for example shot one has a big lead and head room which is not needed, so I would make the lead/head room a lot smaller.

Use of editing

Before we started to edit, the week before, we jotted on a sheet how long each shot was going to be, so when editing we knew when to cut things out and crop the shot to fit the time. We followed our storyboard step by step, so when it came to editing we knew it was in order, so we knew what part we were doing and didn’t get confused. In our assessment we applied the rules of continuity editing, I think you can tell this by the way the film flows really well throughout. Our 180 degree line and 30 degree line I thought was also well thought about when filmed because the film flowed well with no jump shots. When editing we tried to make it look like the film we copied as much as we could, we found by adding many effects we could achieve this. We changed the brightness and contrast to make the room brighter and the outfit and tattoos darker so they stood out more. After adding many effects such as, brightness/contrast, shake (so the camera looks like its shaking) Movie Maker started to freeze and not let us use any more effects, this was disappointing because we would of like to use a little more to improve it, but I am happy with what the editing turned out like.

Selection of content

Before shooting our film, we set up a date to do a taster of what make-up and outfits where we’re going to use. We got our two actors to come into Bilborough College and did a make-up trial. For our main actor we used eyeliner to make her eyes stand out and on her arms we drew fake tattoos with marker pen. These were the only two things we used on her, for the make-up but I think it was very successful because it looked at lot like the film we was re-creating and stood out a tremendous amount throughout the film. With our second actor we used fake blood; we did the blood running down her face. We originally wanted the main actor Stevie to wear a white dress, but we thought because she had blonde hair it would look better for her to wear black also we got our other actor Saoirse to wear all black.

Before shooting our film we each did a reccee sheet. My chose was to do the first bit of filming where the three girls are chanting at a Church, 5 minutes down the road from where I live. Originally I thought it would be good to do the chanting in the arch of the church, but when visiting the place, I thought it would be a good shot if they were chanting under the tree with the church in the background, but when visiting college the week after we all decided not to add the chanting scene in our film. So we all agreed on using the faith room at Bilborough College for the whole film. I liked the look on this room in our film and I think the location fitted really well with what we wanted to achieve.  

Self Assessment

Unfortunately, I was not able to come and help with the shooting of the film but because of this I helped a huge amount with the editing, I had help by the other group members by them giving me ideas and thoughts on where I should cut and crop it and what effects to use but I added effects and cut/cropped the whole thing. However I was involved with everything else such as doing test shots and planning etc.

If I was to do the whole thing again I would work on getting every shot perfect and work on the head/lead room rule and I would like to add a few more effects and transitions to make the film a tad better.

Overall I am very happy with our team work and I worked really well with my group members, they did a great job in shooting the film also I am very happy with our chose of actors.

Katie Smyth - Half term Homework Assignment

Use of the camera
My finished assessment shows that i can hold a shot steady, sych as when we used a tracking shot, and i held the camera shot steady following the actr as she stood up against the wall. It also showed how i can frame a shot appropriatly in the tracking shot as we framed it, so there was room above her head to move into. this was lead room; we used alot of composition techniques, such as everytime we did a shot we checked the frame looked right such as there was nothing in it that didnt need to be there. Everytime we also checked the rule of thirds, however the groups film we copied could have framed some shots better, such as the rule of thirds better, but we didnt change it as we copied exactly like theirs as that was our task. I think we could have done better on the head room but i think it does look good and isn't too muh unneccsary head room as you need to see all around her to show shes in a white room, in the corner. 
We used a variety of shots such as we had an extreme close up in our first shot, where our actors eyes open, so it is an extreme close up of her eyes opening and looking around, so your focusing more o her eyes. we used lots of other shots such as; low/high angle shots, long shots, tracking shots, mid shots and point of view shot, such as when she is looking down at her arms, we filmed it from her point of view.

Use of Editing
Our finished assessment shows we can apply the rules of continuity editing, as i think it flows really well together, so we made the right choices when cutting/cropping and editing out film, and following the 180 and 30 degree rules. However when using the 30 degree rule, we could have done it better, such as having a bigger angle distance between some of our shots so it flows better, such as between our 2nd and 3rd shot. I also think it would have looked better if we added more transactions such as a flash between the 2 shots of the dead body, however the mac wouldn't let us add any more effects, as everytime we tried the window shut down, but i think the effects we used were very good, such as changing the brightness and contrast to make the room really bright and white so it looks better.

Selection of Content
We chose the appropriate make up and costume for our horror film as her eyes looked scary liked we wanted, with the eyeliner we used. It would have been good however if we managed to get some white contact lensers in time. The drawings/ markings on her arms looked really good, and looked simular to te film we were copying, and looked spooky. However for the costume we could have prepared more and got a better costume that we wanted, as we wanted a long white top like in the film we was coping, but when we had finished i think all black looked really good and more effective in the white room, so im happy with the costume choice.
I think we chose the right location as the film we was coping was called the 'white room' and the location we chose was a white room, also having a white room shows how she's gone crazy and possessed. i think it was a good location as it was quiet and knowone disturbed us in the faith room. However at one point you could see a curtain and some of the window, hopefully it isnt very noticable as the brightness makes it not very visable, so we could have picked a better white room where there was lessthings that could get into the frame.
I think the actor we chose for our film was a great choice, she worked well with us and was a really good actor, such as she did really good acting when she screamed at the end, and she looked really scared.

Self Assessment
I helped with a lot of thing to complete the film, i think we all contributed well. When planning we were working throuhg the sheets together, such as one of the things i helped with during the planning was, i was looking at the seconds for each shot whist someone else wrote them down and what angle and shot type they were. I helped doing the arm makeup on one of the arms whist alison did the other when getting ready to shoot. Since our actor had not seen the film we were copying from i helped explain and even (try) act out what she will be doing. Me and alison worked well taking it in turns and together positioning the camera right and making sure the framing and white balance and focus looked good and the composition and continuity was correct, such as that we did not cross the 180 degree line. We took it in turns filming such as i think the tracking looks good, when i moved the camera following the actor as she pushed up against the wall. We all helped edit together and all said our ideas and disucssed them. During editing i helped decide which bits to cutt/crop out and i checked that the seconds on each shot was correct. We all had a say in which effects looked best and which to use. We could have edited it better, but the effects wouldnt work, so it could have been imporved with more effects and transitions, as it would flow and look better. We also made a few mistakes whilst filming such as in the pint of view shot, we had abit of our actors hair in it, so we would do it again and make sure her hair isn't in it. When i do my final course i will be more organised and prpare and make sur ei follow all of the rules such as the rule of thirds and the 30 degree rule.

Alison Watkins-Half term homework assignment

Use of the camera
In our film assessment we held the camera steady at all times, even when we done a tracking shot of the actor pushing herself up the wall, the camera was steady and didnt jolt.
I believe we framed the shots appropriately because we used long shots to show when the actor was moving, and we used close ups/extreme close ups of the actors face when showing emotion.
We used a variety of shot types including; close ups, extreme close ups, long shots, POV, high angle and low angle.
Whilst filming we made sure we used composition techniques to make the film look more professional such as the rule of thirds. We also tried to make sure that we followed the 180 and 30 degree rules to ensure the frames flow. We were able to do the 180 degree rule correctly without struggling, however we found the 30 degree rule difficult as we were unsure if we had left enough room from one shot to the other.

Use of editing
Our film shows that we applied the rules of continuity as we used to 180 degree rule correctly and did not cross the line which results in the veiwer understanding and not getting confused at where the actor is. We tried to follow the 30 degree rule inbetween two shots, however I think we could have left a little more room just to be certain that the shots doesn't look like they've jumped.
We did not do editing transitions between shots as we did not have enough time and we thought they flowed well together without having transitions.

Selection of content
I believe our film shows that we used appropriate constumes, props and make-up to suit our genre because possession is quite a confusing and frightening genre. The actor was dressed in all black which is dark and mysterious, and we did thick eyeliner around her eyes to make her look scary. We also back-combed her hair to make her look like shes had a rough time. The main make-up was the symbols/drawings on the actors arms which would be confusing and scary to find so we thought that fit well into the genre.
I believe we chose the perfect person to shoot in our film as she was willing to try and do anything to help us make our film look to the best quality we could, and she was a brilliant actress and wasn't affriad to experiment with her acting skills.

Self-assessment
What i did to help complete the film was helping with the planning of timing, shot types, how many seconds in each shot and compositions and continuity rules, also in my own time i created a story board at home of the film and added notes to explain what was happening to help us shoot our film, we was one person down on shooting the film so we had to work harder on working together on trying to get the shot type correct, and i helped with the editing of the film.
I think to help improve our finished film, we could have used more editing effects to make it look more effective and suited for its genre, also theres one shot which is a POV shot of the actor looking at her arms, and one improvement we could have made on that was to not get the top of her head in the frame accidently.
When it comes to my final coursework film, what i would do differently is be more experimental with the constumes chosen and go that little bit further to make it look really impressive and realistic, i would also use more editing effects to really put the film together and make it look professional.

Video skills practical assessment sheet

30-40 assessment video

This is our final piece. We did good on the composition for example, we tried to make sure we always got the rule of thirds correct. However, since we were copying someone else's film, we couldn't always follow this rule as they didn't use it in some shots. We think we used the lead room very well such as when the actress was going from sitting to standing, we left enough room above her head for her to move into. The first shot we done, we used the rule of thirds correctly with her eyes on the golden means. One thing that we made a mistake doing, is getting the actors head in the POV shot by accident. 

Katie Smyth- Reccee sheet

Alison- Recce Sheet

Chariss- Recee Sheet

Make-up test shots, before and after

katie smyth - the faith room

This is a good location to shoot our film (the white room) as it is a white room. We will move the curtain and not shoot the window in it.

Composition Exercise

One strength of this film is that we understood the 180 degree rule well, which looks effective. Having a clear storyboard helped us well to shoot the right clips and to know what shot we had to do. A weakness that we had was on one shot we had to hold the tripod at an angle to look over the side, which resulted in the camera shaking slightly, which doesn't look as professional.  

Chariss- All Saints Church

This was an idea for the part where the three actress' were chanting, but we then decided to cut this bit out. Also the only problem with this location, is that we would have to use the sun/moon light, so this may effect our filming. However i think this location would of been a good location to use.

Chariss- All Saint Church

Alison's photograph for assessment film

I decided to have this location as a idea for our film because at night it's very dim lighting which fits in with the film that we have to copy, and also it's an abandoned old tennis court in the middle of some fields which gives a scary feel. I know this location well because it is at my old secondary school so i know it is open to the public 24/7. 

Continuity Exercise

We think our continuity exercise went well, apart from our small mistake where we did not follow the 30 degree rule. We had learnt about the 30 degree rule, but while filming we forgot to take this rule on board, as when Alison is approaching Chariss, there is a jump shot. We have learnt from our mistakes and will now pay more attention to follow this rule. Overall we worked as a team and enjoyed our task.

4th october 2011

Today we learnt how to avoid continuity mistakes. The camera should stay within the 180 degree line, and should not change the camera angle less than 30 degrees. Also another technique we learnt was how to was the reverse shot and master shot and also we learnt how to match the eyeline to ensure that the direction of characters gazes stays the same.

First Filming Exercise - Evaluation

In our first shoot our strength are that is most of the footage is fluent. The first couple of frames worked really when the actress was walking up the stairs. Our weaknesses is that we filmed her opening the door twice, but on the first shoot which we needed, the software cut out her hand on the door so we had to miss out a part.

Our second post!

For our 40 second film, we are planning on casting one of our team members friend named Stevie who is 16. We will be using the Faith Room in the college to re-act the 'white room'. Props we plan to use will be a white gown, white contact lenses and make-up e.g eyeliner. We will also use editing effects once we have filmed. We will have to work inside college and in our own time. 

Our first blog

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be learning how to use several camera techniques and the different shots we can use.  Also we will create a storyboard to plan our 40 second film. As well as this, we will be learning about the genre conventions to help us make our film.