What do you need to establish environment?
We have decided to use a crane shot of the pentagram to establish the environment in which the ritual is performed. We decided to do this to immediately set the tone for that particular scene. For the scene with the death, we decided to begin it with a long shot, showing the character on the sofa, with pretty much the whole room in view. This is to establish the setting, and to establish normality, in contrast to the other scene.


When do you show establishing information?
We show it within the first to clips. The scene with the death is spliced (once again, not sure if that's the word, might not be. It's a nice word, though, isn't it?) in between shots of the ritual, so we establish setting, tone and two characters straight away.


When do characters move and how do you show it?
The character who dies gets up off the sofa and walks into the kitchen. We shot this in a variety of ways, such as a tracking shot and from different angles. We will decide which one to use when it comes to editing, based on which one looks better. The character performing the ritual doesn't move very much, she just leans to get the book.


Whose POV is this from?
It's not from a person's point of view. It's just a camera watching things happen, like a stalker.


What are the significant eyelines and when do they change?
The girl performing the ritual's eyeline is constantly down, looking at her book. It doesn't change, I don't think. The girl who dies has an eratic eyeline, going everywhere, because she's not focusing on anything in particular, until she dies. Then her eyes are looking just off-camera, but at one point she looks directly at the camera, to break the fourth wall and freak he audience out.


When/why does the camera move?
It moves a lot in the death scene, cutting to different angles. It also tracks the girl who is going to die, to allow enough time for credits and to get the character from the living room to the kitchen. There is no real camera movement in the ritual scene.


What kind of coverage do you need?
We filmed the death scene from a lot of different angles, so that we could choose from a variety of shots to use to make it seem more interesting. The movement from living room to kitchen only got filmed a couple of times, because it's not as significant. The ritual will also be filmed from different angles, to also give a lot of space for editing.

General information on the film.

The themes of our film are rituals, death, demons, Satanism (which doesn't help my 'I swear I'm not a Satanist' argument made in previous posts...) and murder. The mood is quite calm at the beginning, but as it progresses, it gets more tense and more dark. The scene with the victim should be filmed indoors, in a house with normal lighting. It should take place early morning/late at night, so the curtains should be drawn and only artificial light should be used. This should give the feeling of normality and casual existence. The ritual scene should ideally take place outside, but practically dictates we need to film it inside, in a darkened space, preferably black. It should be dimly lit, with candles and possibly other, subtle, artificial lighting. This should give the effect of being quite creepy, and unnatural, as that's what rituals should be like. The props used are a rug and a bottle of water for the death scene, which also adds to the normality, and the clothes worn are natural, normal clothing (pyjamas). The props used in the ritual scene are more unnatural: a lot of candles, a bowl, a pentagram (made of paper) and skulls, and the clothing is a dark cloak over dark clothing. This adds to the feel of evil.The character that is killed keeps her phone and not much else around her. The character performing the ritual keeps her bowl, her skulls and her candles around her.

I do not know what colour palette means.

Shooting Schedule.

Our schedule isn't terribly detailed and only lasts a few days, because we only have two sets and two scenes we need to film.


December 22nd: death/blood/carpet scene. 
December 29th: pentagram/ritual scene
January 1st - January 10th: re-filming/corrections as needed.


We hope to finish by January 10th at the latest, so we can get to editing as soon as possible.


I like italics. Italics are cool. But underlines aren't. Underlines are just awkward and pointless and irrelevant. This cool story was brought to you by Sarah Byard. 

EDIT: There has been much more filming since then, and lots more scenes filmed, most we didn't use:
February 15th: Scene involving Jess/Sarah - was not used.
February 16th: Scene involving Hannah/Jess - used in first draft, not second.
March 25th: Dream filming - used.

Roles and Responsibilities

Director: Hannah. This means that Hannah is in charge of what appears on the screen. She positions the people, and is basically in charge on set.
Producer: Sarah.
Editor: Sarah. This means that I am in charge of editing the piece post-filming.
Director of cinematography: Hannah. This is a fancy phrase for cameraman, I've been told.
Lighting: Sarah. This means if the lighting's bad, I have to fix it.
Craft services: Jess.
Make up: Jess. This means she's in charge of everyone's make up.
Costume: Jess. This means she has to sort out the costumes and whatnot.
Prop wrangler: Hannah. Hannah has to go get us props.
Transport manager: Hannah. She also has to take us everywhere.
Cast: Jess, Sarah, Hannah. We have to be in it.
Location manager: Jess. We're using her house, so it made sense.
Continuity editor: Sarah. Love me some continuity, so I'm in charge of making sure it makes sense, flows properly, and nothing is out of place.
Set dresser: Jess. She makes up the set and makes it look good.

Inspiration for our film opening...

As you'd expect from our group, Supernatural had a big influence in what we did. Take a look at this and just look at how great Bobby is you'll see where the inspiration for the pentagram and how the scene should look and feel. Then, there's this, which was an excuse to watch Jensen Ackles and his beautiful face and listen to that beautiful voice inspired our Latin piece that Jess is going to say. We definitely didn't get terrified that we were going to actually summon a demon and so decided to recite an exorcism just in case, no way...


The Rite is also an inspiration, for me at least. Once again, this is about exorcism and not summoning, but it does set a tone which we could try to achieve. 


I love the flashing images and the way nothing stays on the screen for too long in the opening credits for Se7en and thought maybe that would look good in our film.

Costumes and Props.

((At some point, I will probably make a master list of every post related to the coursework, but for now, it'll just sit here, because I haven't done them all yet. Also, I'll be updating this post as I get more pictures of costumes/props.))

Is this a prop or not? I'm uncertain. Although we placed it there specifically, so I'm guessing so. This is a rug. It is used for my death. As stated before in an earlier post, we got permission and all that jazz.

I've already written about this as well. It's the cut we used. Once again, did not actually stick a knife in myself, we used wax and fake blood that we made using washing up liquid and food colouring with a little bit of cornflower/cornflour/however you spell it.

This is what I wear to die. It's pyjamas, because I'm meant to be just chilling in my house before I die. I'm just thankful for old Sainsbury's tops that could be covered in blood and nobody would care. Got to love my mother. We covered my top in fake blood, otherwise it would just look weird that I randomly drop to the floor and die.

I've explained all the health and safety involved in this before, so I won't again. This is a pentagram, two skulls and about 50 candles. This is to set the mood for the ritual, as you'd hardly do it in broad daylight around a rainbow.

This is a bottle of water. I carry it from the kitchen and then drop it on the floor as I die.

More set pictures.

This is a set we intend to use for another scene in our film opening. We set it up how it would look when we're done with it, so you can see what we're planning on doing and yell at us if it's wrong.

We originally were going to designate this as the set for the ritual scene; however, this didn't work out because as we were setting it up to take a finished picture of it, we remembered that nature existed and that wind blows out candles pretty easily. Good thing we realised then, otherwise we'd have been buggered for filming. Also, you may notice that the floor is wet. This is another force of nature that would end our filming, so outdoors went out the window (see what I did thur hur hur hur)

This is what it would've looked like. Just for the lols, we left it out there and went back at night (we decided it needed to be dark, so night time was the best thing to do. This also proved to be a task, because we realised that Ralph wouldn't be able to see anything because it would be dark...) to see what it would've looked like. It would have looked awesome and so so creepy, but alas, it was not to be. Maybe God saw what we were doing and decided to put a stop to it.

'Elf and safety. Nice cup of water to extinguish any fires that could occur from the candles. We used a lot of candles, but apparently we're so good with fire that we didn't set anything alight. 

We decided not to let God's disapproval of our film get us down, and moved our location indoors. When we film, I'll probably take another picture, because these two aren't so great. But yeah, this is what it's going to look like. We used two black blankets to cover the floor, and the wall, so it didn't look like a house, because we didn't want it to look like a house (a ritual looks less threatening if it's done by a staircase...). It's black and everything to look dark and mysterious and creepy. When we film it, we'll use more than just candlelight (there's a light up the stairs that will light it properly - I think we tried it out - without making it seem too light). Just fyi, that pentagram took so, so long, as it is made of paper. Cut up paper. Cut up tiny pieces of paper.

'Elf and safety - the candles were not on the blanket, because that is just asking to set the house on fire. They were an appropriate distance away, as blankets are quite flammable. My dad used to be a fireman, so I'm pretty experienced in fire safety, and I'm sure he'll take a look at this picture and let us know anything else we can do to ensure our safety. Don't worry, we won't be setting fire to anything any time soon.

The only problem we might encounter here is lighting and possibly camera angles, as this is also not a very large space. It's big enough, and it's right by the stairs which is great for the crane shot, but we may have to re-locate to a larger space. Probably not though, it's big enough for our purpose (that really doesn't look right, I don't know why. Purpose. You know when a word just doesn't seem right? Hmm. Purpose.)

EDIT: We are now not using the rituals settings. In a video diary, we explain where we are when we filmed that.