Horror film!

21/01/2011

On friday everyone was in this time, last week jessica and aaliyah wasnt present, but they were this Friday. Don was with us again, though Phil wasnt there this time, at the start of the lesson we went over how our horror film was meant to go, and we also started to play around with the camera a little. Mr.Le Marechal tought us different movements with the cameras we used. The first movement i learnt was 'Panning' this movement is when you are standing still and you want to move your camera up, down, left or right.
  This Cam-stabiliser is best for panning and tracking.

Tracking is when you move around the scene with the camera while filming and you are still able to keep to camera stable. Don said to us the easiest way for us to remember is if you think of train tracks, because we are walking like we are on a track because you can go straight forward, sidewards, and diagonally.

  During our 5 hour lesson, we also learnt how to use a tripod (legs), we had to learn how to put it up properly and make sure that it was balanced and the way we found out how to do that was at the side of the tripod there was a little green thing with a bubble in it and if the bubble was in the middle of the the green circle then we knew it was evened out. We learnt how to put the camera onto a tripod also, and we had a competition to see who could put the tripod up and get the camera it the quickest and safest, me and Shanell worked together and we beat Naomi and Jessica by far.

   Mr.Le Mareshal also taught us how to use the Directional video condenser microphone, and how to place it onto the camera. He explained to me and my fellow peers that this particular microphone can only sense sound from where the microphone is directly pointing at. Also when you have the microphone plugged in you have to plug in the earphones, so that you can make sure at all times when the film is commencing that the sounds are actually getting picked up.

these are our locations that we found when we went around our school to find good spots to shoot the scenes.

Locations:

• Cupboard (in hall or classroom) Room 306 (Maths cupboard)
• Classrooms x 2

(a)   detention room 401/402

(b)   empty room room 309

• Corridors- science floor
• Staffroom – room 215
• Dead end
• Balcony (outside Head’s office)

 This was our original Cast list for our short production:

Character name	Character traits	Year	Played by
Courtney White	Good Girl	2011	Shenell Poorman
Tammy	Bad bully	2011	Naomi Mwakamowo
Dawn	Funny bully	2011	Jessica Lily Ellis
Kimberley	Believer bully	2011	Deme Bekir
Teacher	Ms Graham	2011	Actor
Teacher as child	Bella Graham	1991	Shyanne Watson
Cynthia Walters	Murder victim (unseen)	1971
Caroline Warren	ditto	1991	Aaliyah Bell

This all got changed around as Shanell didn't want to have to the main part anymore, and Aaliyah and Jessica didn't want to have boring parts... I said I'd be Courtney and she could have my part, and she agreed, then Aaliyah wanted to also play the role of Courtney, so Don decided with Mrs.Williams that we should have tryouts so we did. We both had to pretend that we was locked in a cupboard and make it believable, I didn't get the part though. Even though i didn't get the part of Courtney, i had a streak of luck as Naomi didn't want to be the Baddest Bully anymore, so she said i could have her part. Basically in the end everyone changed their role apart from Shyanne as she still wanted to be the younger teacher, and now this is the up to date Cast list:

Character name	Character traits	Year	Played by
Courtney White	Good Girl	2011	Aaliyah Bell
Tammy	Bad bully	2011	Deme Bekir
Dawn	Funny bully	2011	Shenell Poorman
Kimberley	Believer bully	2011	Jessica Lily Ellis
Teacher	Ms Graham	2011	Actor
Teacher as child	Bella Graham	1991	Shyanne Watson
Cynthia Walters	Murder victim (unseen)	1971
Caroline Warren	ditto	1991	Naomi Mwakamowo

Creative and Media diploma: starting on our horror film

14/01/2011

On Friday me and my peers finally got around to planning our horror film. Of course we didn't do it alone, we had the help of Mrs.Williams, Don our directer, and Phil our screen writer. The first couple of hours of the day we introduced ourselves and spoke about our self and what our favourite things are. We also spoke about our ideas of what our 15-20 minute film should be about, and we all contributed some ideas. Some of the ideas i remembered was that i thought we should have a spirit of a Victorian girl that is out to get revenge because some bullies killed her and she hates all bullies so she haunts the school and comes out every 10 to 20 years to kill the bullies that come out of detention. They used some of these ideas, but they played around with them a bit. 

   The previous lessons we had before Friday i learnt quite a lot when it comes to horror films. We watched parts of some horror films, e.g The shining, Scream and the Blair witch project. Mrs.Williams went through the points in the film about how Dumb cheerleaders (slutty hoes who takes other peoples boyfriends, and usually gets killed first), Stupid jocks (who think they can pick a fight with the killer and win which obviously doesn't go to plan.) There's also the geek (she is in most films a virgin, and is a girl who doesn't have boyfriends, and who doesn't have many friends).This character is in most horror films the last person to stay alive, as they usually start to use their instincts so that they can stay alive for longer. 
  We finally finished planning our short story, and this how the story goes:
40 years ago a girl  called Cynthia Waters mysteriously dies in her school as she somehow got locked in the school cupboard and she somehow died. Twenty years later which is 20 years ago, another girl called Caroline Warren gets locked in the exact same cupboard that Cynthia died in by the bullies. She discovers there's a bunch of loose chemicals in the cupboard and starts to freak out, a girl comes along and Caroline begs for the girl to let her out, but the girl was afraid that the bullies would get to her so she just ran away and left the girl. Caroline eventually died because of the fumes. 20 years later which is now, a girl who is called Courtney White find out about the 'myth' and starts to research on the subject. She finds that this happened in the exact same school that's he goes to and what day it was going to happen and pretends to bully a girl to get into detention as that's apparently around the time when the killings happened. She ends up in detention with a bunch of bullies and tells them that she believes the same thing will happen to one of them. They don't believe her and carry on with their stupid ways. It was the end of detention almost but their teacher was nowhere to be seen so they start to get spooked at go and look for her. One by one they die somehow death unknown Courtney and the main bully was left the last bully gets killed and then its just left with Courtney. They had put out cameras to find the killer, in the end it was the teacher...
On my next blog i shall blog more about the film.                                         

Creative and media G.C.S.E performance !!

G.C.S.E performance

14/12/10

Tuesday was the day of our performace, and we had spent around an hour and a half rehearsing our performance. I personally thought it went well and we had worked out our little hiccups.
  Rehearsals were over and it was time for us to get into our costumes, my first outfit was the witches outfit, and i had to place my Gnome outfit behind the curtains on stage as i had to change quickly during the performance which also went well. Around 100 primary school children came top watch our perfomance as Miss.Williams said there would be.
 During the Panto there were a few hiccups as a couple of people forgot a bit of their lines but the kids loved it. One time as i was about to exit the stage i heard one kid say that witch is evil!, it was quite amusing.
  Our dance went really well and i dont think it was just me that thought so i think me peers thought that too. Some Kids started swaying their arms so i guess they liked it too.
  We performed on the steel pans twice while the primary school children were there first time was in the middle of the whole perfomance, and the second time was when we finished and they wanted to hear it one more time so we did, but that time Mr.Fox brought some children up to play the tambourines.
  I think that this was a highly successful perfomance, and i feel that i worked very hard. I dont think there was anything i needed to improve on apart from one, this was my scarf i was wearing during my winter dance. I found that it kept on falling off i ended up leaving it but it get in my way a bit. I think i could have prevented it by maybe putting the scarf on a different way.
  During the performace i think i found playing the Steel pans the easiest, even though im less experianced in that area.