Editing session №6

Today was our last editing session, where we focused on adding titles, fixing the sound and, generally, perfecting our sequence. We, first, chose our three favourite fonts from the list we created last session and uploaded it to Adobe to see what it looks like in the sequence itself. These are the three types of fonts we were considering:

1. 

(Classic Robot)

2. 

 (Cormorant Garamond)

3. 

                  (Van Helsing)

Cormorant Garamond looked the best, as its style was matching the ambiance of our sequence. We then started inserting titles in the standardised order (we researched it previously) and were trying to place them in the blank spaces of the frame. There was a useful tool in Adobe, which showed the boundaries of any screen (e.g. TV) and helped us place the titles in such way, that they wouldn't get cut after we would download the final version. After inserting all the made-up director, producer etc. names, we made sure the duration of each title occurring on screen is long enough for the viewers to read. To check that, we read each of the titles 3 times with a fast pace and if it was possible to do within its duration - we kept that length. 

Initially, we had a few ideas about the title of our movie ("Mind default", "Blank"), however we brainstormed more options and chose the one we liked the most: "A Void". "Void" relates to Jul's lost memory of her childhood, while "Avoid" refers to the movie action, as she would try to escape her fake family to find her real parents. 

The last modification we made was adding sound to one of the mid-shots of the room (it didn't have any audio). Due to the fact that we only needed some "natural" sounds of the room, we copied the audio from another room shot and pasted it to that clip. At this point, our sequence was completed and our teachers reviewed the video, gave us feedback and signed off the project!

This is one of the latest version of the sequence, however we made insignificant changes (e.g. relocated certain titles) after our teachers watched it (so the actual final version will be uploaded later):

Titles research

I explored StudioBinder and Masterclass to understand what order the opening credits in our title sequence should appear in. From what I found, there is a standardised order for opening credits and they usually appear in the following order:

1. The distributor company name 

2. The production company name

3. The filmmaker name (a particular person)

4. The film title

5. The leading cast names

6. The casting director name

7. The music composer name

8. The costume designer name

9. The list of associate producers

10. The editors list

11. The production designer name

12. The director of photography name

13. Executive producers list

14. The producer name

15. The writers list

16. The director name

Although, we will be following this standardised order, our movie title will appear at the very end, rather than third. The last shot in our sequence is a close-up on Juls' eyes and as she closes them, the shot becomes black, which is the perfect moment for the title of our film to appear. 

A few posts ago I was looking for credits inspiration in films, similar to our sequence. I analysed "Split", "Taken" and "Run" and now want to summarise the ideas we are planning to apply in our project.

After discussing this part with my team, we agreed that we want to use a simplistic font (so that it's not intrusive and distracting) and have the titles fade in and out of the different pats of the screen. We are not panning to apply any animation like in "Split" solely due to the fact that it is time-consuming and will probably be distracting the viewers from the narrative. This is why we are thinking of creating titles, similar to those in "Taken", where they are not a "focus of attention". 

Editing session №5

 I'll start this blog post by saying that it was a beautiful day today, it was warm and sunny and even though we faced obstacles during this session, they seemed like a small inconvenience rather than a huge issue:)) In the beginning of the session Adam was watching all our sequences and giving us feedback for us to improve our projects. This was crucially important, because today our sequence changed quite dramatically. Talking about the issues with our project, they were...

1. It objectively was too boring due to the fact that the whole "morning routine" took up 80% of the sequence with the last 20% being the actual action (flashback). Having received this piece of feedback, we as a group, started thinking about the parts we can cut out in order to shorten the morning routine and get straight into action as fast as possible. We got rid of the "stretching part" and went straight from Juls getting up from bed to taking her clothes and walking to the bathroom. Then we cut out the part where she washes her face and went from her entering the bathroom to taking the pill box and seeing that it's empty. Moreover, we were given advice to delete or change the mid shot of Juls taking the pill box and only keep the close up, because in the first shot it was obvious that the medication we used were just headache pills. Thus, we did just keep the close up and realised that it looks better this way, as it is not clear for the viewers what particular medication Juls was holding. All the following shots were already building up to the climax, which is why we didn't alter them to gradually build tension. As a result, we reduced the duration of our sequence from 2.13 to 1.44 minutes, enhanced its pace by shortening the "morning routine" part and ended up with a better version of our project.

2. The flashback part wasn't as impactful as it should. We were left with this piece of feedback and had to try figure out what we should change/add to make it more tense and ominous. After rewatching it a couple of times, we realised it was important to add more sound effects to it and create the desired atmosphere this way. We, first, edited the voice of the real mom in the flashback by making the sound delayed and, therefore, creating the echo which made the part look dreamy and unreal. Second, we added a heartbeat effect, which played all the way from the transition into the flashback till the end of the sequence. It isn't as noticeable in the beginning, however at the end, where anxious Juls and her fake mom are in one room and everything is silent, it stands out and intensifies the fear and terror of the main character. Moreover, we added a monotonous buzzing sound in the flashback part and a noise crescendo effect when Juls transitions to her subconscious. All these modification, undoubtedly, made the sequence more ominous and helped us achieve the desired ambiance for our video project. 

Editing session №4

 Today we dedicated a session for editing the sound and thinking about the titles in our sequence. In the beginning of the lesson we divided three roles between me, Isi and Zoe. We had to, first, edit the sound of each clip in Adobe, second, come up with a list of names (credits) to put in our sequence and, third, pick a song (diegetic) as background music Juls is listening to. I was responsible for working in Adobe, Zoe - for finding a song and Isi - for creating the names/credits. Reflecting on the process so far, I realised we didn't think the production process thoroughly enough, as we knew we needed a song for the sequence, but we didn't choose it on the pre-production stage. As a result, we were stressed about not finding a soundtrack and Zoe spent time looking for non - copyright music available in the internet. 

For me the process was new, as I've never edited the sound before, however this challenge helped me gain valuable knowledge in terms of film production and using Adobe Premier. Applying crossfades almost on every audio of the videos, I made sure the transition between the shots is smooth and natural in terms of sound. Moreover, I was precisely listening and comparing the audio lines of different shots in order to adjust the pitch and volume for sound and make it continuous. I was paying attention to details, which is why I didn't have time to add all the desired sound effects by the end of the lesson. However, I still managed to apply a high pitched suspenseful sound effect on the moment, where Juls gets the flashback to emphasise the tension in this part. Isi successfully came up with an A4 list full of names for our sequence and Zoe found a few songs that could potentially match the ambiance of our sequence. However, when we started trying to apply it, it didn't sound right, which is why we spend at least a quarter of the lesson trying to come up with a solution for this. I do realise now that this part should have been thought through in advance, as we had important tasks to complete other than picking the soundtrack. At the end we decided to take the first 20 seconds of a track, created by one of the current Hurtwood students, doing music technology (we did get his consent!!) and loop it out. We didn't want to use the whole of it solely due to the fact that it had lyrics in it and we thought it would distract the viewers from the narrative.

Hence, we took the first 20 seconds (the opening of the song), looped it out and adjusted the pitch and beat on every transition part to make it sound like one continuous tune. Finally, we started discussing the title of our sequence and are now thinking of something connected to "system default" or "consciousness glitch". My team also did great job picking multiple fonts for our future titles, that would potentially be a fit for our sequence. Next session we are planning to finish the sound editing, add all the desired sound effects and hopefully, start inserting titles and credits. 

Editing session №3

Today we were aiming to finish editing the video sequence in order to move on to sound and titles on Thursday. In the beginning we were extremely excited for editing the the “flashback” part, however, in my opinion, it became our biggest challenge. Due to the fact that our sequence was already too long (2.15 mins without the flashback part), we had to keep in mind the fact that we will need to shorten it later on. 
Talking about the challenge itself, in the beginning of the session we were convinced we had a lot of footage from the Turrets location. “We definitely have at least 4 versions of the transition” - we all agreed before we even opened Adobe. However it turned out that there were just a couple elf transition shots, which all had their flows. One was too shaky (because the shot was handheld), another one didn’t move close enough to Jul’s hair, the third was too slow etc. We chose the best option we had and tried stitching it with the shots from Turrets. Due to the fact that in the first location the lighting was warm and in the second it was cold (even blue), we had to apply a crossfade to smooth out this contrast. Later on we were playing around with the POV and mid-shots we made. On the shoot day we also tried collecting footage in 25 frames per second to make the action slow-mo. However, when we saw what it looks like alongside all other shots, we decided not to use it, because it made the action discontinuous and a bit odd. More to that that clip would take up too much time, which we couldn’t afford, as the duration of our sequence was already too long. The mid-shots didn’t fit well too, because the “jump” from the POV to the angle we recorded the mid shot from was too small, which therefore made the action abrupt. This is where we started getting concerned, because it meant the only workable footage from Turrets we had were a couple of POVs and two transition (back to reality) shots. We then made a decision to keep the flashback short, which would make a lot of sense - it is a flashback not an actual story, it was supposed to be a plot-twist rather than a significant part of the narrative and our sequence. That’s why we kept one transition into the flashback and one POV only. We then had to stitch the transition “back into reality” which was a big disappointment for me personally. The mid shot, where the camera moves to an ECU to young Jul’s hair looked extremely unnatural. Both the real mom and the younger Juls were in a static position and with a straight face, which made it look very unrealistic and in my opinion reduced the quality of our product.
We were limited in time, which is why we decided to set this problem aside and move on (we kept that transition as it was). It was time for the part where the fake mom comes closer to the disturbed Juls and tells her they “have to go to school”. We had a lot of footage of that part particularly, however half of it was not useable, because on the shoot day we made a mistake of not connecting the microphone before making the shots. Thankfully back to that day we realised it half way through and reshot everything with the microphone. That’s why we selected a few shots with good sound quality that would work for the finale of our sequence. Unfortunately, we only had time to insert one mid shot of the fake mom and here the session was over. We then planned to complete that part during the Wednesday free time/activities slots and start the sound on Thursday as we planned.
A couple of hours later I went to the editing suit (Zoe and Isi were on a Theatre trip, which is why they were unable to join) in order to finish the video part of the sequence and make sure we are on track. After chatting with Tom and asking him for a piece of advice, I decided to get rid of the unnatural “transition back to reality” part and just cut one scene to another. It already did look better. I then tried applying different effects/transitions in Adobe with one of them being a “spiral motion”, which actually fitted perfectly. I then stitched a long shot of the fake mom approaching Juls with an over-the-shoulder of her sitting down and a close-up on Juls eyes, which was actually the ending. As we planned the last shot was a close-up on Jul’s eyes, which close and the screen goes black with a title of the movie on it. Now that the video sequence was finished, my only concern was the duration of the clip, which was 2.23 minutes. I had to reduce is by at least eight seconds. I started by deleting the unnecessary clips: for example, we had three pan mid shots of the room with one of them not setting the ambiance significantly, which is why I got rid of it. Moreover, I went through each video and reduced the majority by a tiny bit (making sure it doesn’t affect continuity). After competing this process, our video became 2.13 minutes long which was perfect. At this point we are ready to start editing the sound and thinking about all the credits and titles we are going to add to our sequence.

This is the video from the morning session (first paragraph):

Independent research

 Pt.1: Biography of Saul and Elaine Bass

Before Saul and Elaine started collaborating, they worked independently, which is why it is important to look into the history of each of them individually before analysing their mutual creations. 

Up until 1955, Saul Bass, who was a a well-known filmmaker and graphic designer, worked alone. He achieved great heights, as he collaborated with such individuals like Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock, who were all the greatest Hollywood filmmakers of the time. Saul became famous in the film industry after designing and developing the title sequence for "The Man with the Golden Arm". Moreover, he invented kinetic typography, which is an animation technique, that involves moving text and quite frequently an accompanying speech. Apart from the title sequences, Saul specialised on creating logos for large companies in the US. For instance, he designed the logos for Continental Airlines in 1968 and for United Airlines in 1974. 

Talking about Elaine Bass, she wasn't particularly well-known before meeting her husband (and the future working partner) Saul Bass. However, since early childhood she expressed passion towards drawing and signing, which later surprisingly brought her to working in a fashion industry in New York (she worked in the design department). 

Moving on to 1955, the two talented souls collided:) As Elaine became an assistant to Saul (the main graphic title designer), they started developing more and more works together. Elaine herself directed the opening title sequence to "Spartacus" in 1960 and not long after this event, the two got married. Up till 1966 they managed to collaborate in the production of a wide variety of title sequences, including "Walk on the Wild Side", "Grand Prix", 'The Victors" and many more. The pair stopped working for a while when they had children, however in 1968 already they developed a short film "Why Man Creates", which actually brought them an Oscar. After an approximately 10 year gap, Saul and Elaine Bass returned to title design and created sequences for "The War of the Roses", "Higher Learning", "The Age of Innocence" and "Casino", which turned out to be their very last collaboration. Saul Bass passed away in 1996 and Elaine worked on her last opening titles in 1998, which aimed to update the old version of "Psycho".

This is a video, exploring the style of Bass's titles and the impact they made on the film industry:

Pt.2: Analysing an opening title sequence created by Saul and Elaine Bass

I particularly enjoyed watching the opening title sequence to the film "Seconds" (1966), as it is one of the most unconventional yet eye-catching sequences I've seen. I didn't watch this movie, however I read the plot summary in order to obtain a rough idea of what the film is about.

From what I researched "Seconds" is a story about a miserable middle-aged man, who decides to undergo a complex procedure of changing his identity completely (he not only gets surgery to change the way he looks, but also fakes his death and starts his life as a different person). 

This opening title sequence is an example of a minimalistic piece of work, which still creates a great impact on the viewers and undoubtedly sets the most significant themes of the movie. The whole black-and-white sequence consists of close-ups and ECUs on the distorted parts of a male's face, that merge together and transition to one another. The footage flows smoothly and slowly, which makes the sequence continuous. The titles themselves are simplistic (the font is not unique), yet perfectly suitable for the scene. The fact that they are relatively big in the ratio to the frame makes the viewers pay attention to them as well as the fact that they are white makes them stand out against the grey-black background. They slowly fade in and out of the screen, not disrupting the pace of the videos at the background. From what I've described so far the titles might seem average, however it is the art of incorporating them into the narrative that makes the whole sequence so unconventionally beautiful.

The title of the movie fades in (written in caps) along with the background close-up zoom-in shot on the mouth of a person. As the camera moves closer, the name of the movie "Seconds" is almost "eaten" by the opened mouth, which might suggest the main character didn't value the concept of time, when searching for a "better alternative" and changing his identity.

Furthermore, one set of titles (numerous names) are shown when the camera "enters the ear" and as it "exits from another ear" just one title line is revealed. This motion might also suggest the audience that the main character tended to interpret all information in a wrong way and distort/misunderstand certain things in his life.

I also noticed that the titles, including multiple lines (not just one word/name) appear alongside the images that seem to be doubled or tripled. For example, as it cane be seen in the picture on the left there are "multiple mouths" appearing on screen. This way the titles match the style of the image and both components accompany each other. 

Lastly, Saul and Eline clearly thought about the layout of the titles precisely. As it can be seen in the screenshot on the right, a column of titles appears in the darkest pat of the screen - the shadow underneath the man's chin. This sort of layout doesn't disrupt the viewers' perception of the images/videos themselves, but allows them to pay close attention to the background and the titles separately. 

Overall, observing the close-ups shots on the disturbed eyes, dark ears and nostrils undoubtedly makes the audience feel uncomfortable and tense. The titles seem to be adding on to the video sequence, matching its style and possibly creating metaphors, related to the movie. This opening title sequence makes it clear the film will be a psychological thriller, maybe even a horror, which leaves the audience nervous and disturbed.

Editing session №2

As planned we started today's session by trying to figure out how to stitch the footage of the bathroom scene. It didn't take us long to decide to insert a close-up on Juls turning the tab on between the shot where she enters the bathroom and where she takes her glasses off. We then developed everything according to our action list and storyboard. We stitched together the close-up on Juls grabbing the towel, the mirror shot of her drying the face, the mid and over-the-shoulder shot of her taking the pills and the POV shot of the trash bin. 

We then had to put some room items close-ups, implying that Juls is changing to her school clothes in the meantime. There were quite a few nice shots we took, but we only selected the ones with a slight movement in it (e.g. a tilt/pan but not static shots). More to that we made a decision to not add the close-up on the flowers on the windowsill due to the fact that it is static and has cold lighting instead of the warm one we have in almost all the other shots. It would just look odd if the lighting change between the close-ups and make the scene seem abrupt. 

Subsequently, we started putting together the next part, where Juls walks out of the bathroom in the school clothes already. We started with a wide shot, then added a mid mirror shot of her fixing her hair, followed it by two mid shots: to her legs, as she is approaching her bag and to the bag from another angle, when she puts her pencil case inside it. After that we decided to return to a wide shot (while she takes the box out) and put an over-the shoulder shot of Juls looking for the necklace. 

By the end of the lesson we realised two things:

1. We forgot to put the following back shot of the fake mother approaching the door

2. Our sequence is already 2.03 minutes long, which means that we will have to shorten it during the next sessions.

I'm more than happy with the progress we've made so far, however during the next lesson we will need to try and shorten the sequence in order to make its duration less than 2.15 minutes total.

This is what we created so far:

Editing session №1

 Today we had our first editing session, which in my opinion went quite smoothly. Before we opened Adobe I was scared we would have too much footage and would take too long sorting it out. However as soon as we started going over what we shot, it started making more sense.

On the shoot we didn't do everything in chronological order: we started from the middle of the sequence, then collected footage of its beginning and then moved on to the end. This is why our media in Adobe was not organised. As a team we were ready to spend time sorting it out, naming important files and creating separate folders, but we were suggested not to, because we are limited in terms of the time for our editing. 

The first thing we did was finding the very first blur mid shot of Juls waking up. Zoe was the first one to have a go at editing, which is why she started stitching shots together while discussing it with us. As we collected quite a few mid, wide and close-up shots of the same scenes, we were just putting them together in different order to see which go together the best. We also decided to do music and titles later: our priority for now is to stitch the clips together into one sequence. Even though, the skills we gained during our editing workshops helped us a lot in terms of operating in Adobe, it was tricky and challenging to make the action continuous, when stitching shots together. We were trying to be very precise at this point by moving the playback head slowly through the stitched clips and seeing whether the movement looks continuous or whether it is abrupt. About 20 minutes in the lesson, I switched with Zoe in order to try editing myself as well. I was again trying to make different combinations of shots in order to see which ones look better together (e.g. "mid shot+wide shot+ mid shot" or "mid shot+close up+wide shot"). When I finished the "waking up part of the sequence and we started moving on to the bathroom scene, Isi had a go at editing as well. 

This is where we faced one issue we are planning to sort out during the next editing session. We have a wide shot in the mirror's reflection of Juls entering the bathroom and looking at herself in the mirror. As she is wearing glasses, she is supposed to take them off before starting to wash her face. The problem is that we don't have one continuous shot of her entering the room+taking her glasses off, which means that we have to stitch the "entrance" shot with another mirror reflection shot of her taking the glasses off. If we put them one by one, it will not look good, because the frames and her position are a tiny bit different. We thought "okay, we can have a close up of her putting the glasses on the windowsill between those to shots", but the issue is that it turns out we don't have such a close-up. For now, our idea is to have a close-up on the tab between those two shots so that it does look continuous and the action makes sense. We didn't have enough time to completely figure it out yet, but this is our main task for the next editing session. 

Mise en scene video

This is the video we developed in a group (exploring the importance of mise en scene in film and the way we used it in our opening title sequence).

Reflection on the shoot day video

Preparation for evaluation questions

 Research into Institutions and Audiences presentation

Shoot day

My shoot day took place yesterday and in this post I'll describe how it went step by step. It would be sensible to divide this monologue into several parts, depending on the type of scene we were shooting, the location and the time.

Pt.1. Preparation

The whole crew (including the actors) were planning to meet up in school at 8.50 in order to collect all the necessary equipment and drive to our first location. We decided it would make sense to shoot the scenes, where both Hayley (playing Juls) and Bethan (playing the fake mother) are needed. We thought it wouldn't take us long, because according to our storyboard and action list this part consisted of just a few different shots. Me, Zoe, Isi, Hayley, Tom and Adam picked up the Black Magic Design camera (we practiced operating with during the workshops), the two-stage tripod, portable LED light, batteries, lenses, props and costumes and were ready to go to Hurtwood Inn - our first planned location. 

As we arrived, we started setting everything up in the room we were about to shoot the scenes in. In my opinion, we were very lucky to be provided with such a great room in Hurtwood Inn, because even without any props it did look like a normal room of a teenage girl. To make it more lively, we wrapped the bed with fairy lights, put a few books on the windowsill, paced some notebooks on the studying table and piled some clothes on the armchairs. We intentionally made everything neat and didn't create mess (not like in a cliche teenage room), because Juls character had to be very tidy and maybe even perfectionist. Moreover, we hung up a fake calendar I created the day before on the door in order to cover up the "emergency exit" sign. We eventually shot a few close-ups on it as well, which helped set the character of Juls. 

Initially, there was also a small coffee machine standing on the table, which I personally liked and thought creates that aimed ambiance of wealthiness and luxury. However, after talking to my team, I went along with their view, because it undoubtedly had a valid point: a coffee machine looks fancy, but it can hint the audience that the sequence was actually filmed in the hotel room (because such an object is quite common there). Subsequently, we set up the bathroom: we put make up products all over it, hung up towels and placed a box of bills (props) - for the part where Juls throws them away. Finally, we dressed up Hayley (Juls) in a school uniform: a black skirt, a white blouse, a blazer. She was also wearing glasses, some jewellery and black heeled boots. This classy look was exactly what we were going for. Bethan (fake mother) wore her own outfit, which definitely matched the aesthetic from our mood board that I sent her earlier (classic straight long pants, heels, a blouse and a blazer.
At this point we were almost ready to start filming except we had to set our camera up. The primary footage we were planning to collect were wide shots of Juls in the room, which is why we placed the camera attached to a tripod next to the door, facing the room, chose "white balancing indoors", focused it on Hayley (by zooming in, focusing and then zooming out) and adjusted the exposure. In the next couple of shots we were using the Dzo Pictor 20-55 mm lense.

Pt.2. Hurtwood Inn shoot

Even though we had our storyboard with us, it mostly just gave us a general idea of the action plan, but we improvised and came up with new ideas a lot. In the beginning, we made a few long shots of Juls leaving the bathroom, packing her bag and taking the box of personal belongings from underneath the armchair. We also shot every scene at least twice just in case (extra footage is better than little footage). As it was just the start, Tom was supervising us most of the time, which helped us learn and apply the skills later during the day. I was doing the camerawork in the beginning, while Zoe was responsible for the sound and Isi - for the set design and props. Throughout the shoot our roles kept changing, which is why each of us tried all the roles possible during the shooting process. Apart from the natural lighting coming from the window, we always had all of the lamps and inside lighting switched on for the shots to have a higher quality and look brighter. After making a few long shots and mid shots (by zooming in the camera a bit) we moved on to completing the following shot of Beth approaching the door. This was the first tricky task, as we had to hold the camera in our hands, walk behind Beth and try not to shake the camera dramatically. After at least 5 trials we finally got it. Right after that I started thinking about the previous shots of the dialogue we collected with the questions being: "Was anyone taking care of the sound at that moment?".

We rewatched that footage and realised we forgot about the sound (it was quiet and muffled), which is why we had to reshoot all the shots of Beth talking to Hayley all over again. Talking about modifications, we skipped a few storyboard shots (like the profile mid shot of Juls and mom looking at each other) and replaced them with the options that were approved by the whole team. For instance, we made more over-the-shoulder shots due to the set up of the room (it was physically impossible to make a profile mid shot of the two actresses because of the location of the bed in the room). Subsequently, we changed the lense to Dzo Pictor 50-125 mm in order to make close-ups and ECU to Juls, the box of personal belongings and her eyes. To lit the latter up better, one of us would always take the bedside lamp and use it as the lighting equipment, directing it in the way of the characters. We finished this part of the shooting process by completing the transition (to the flashback we would shoot later on in the day). I was doing this transition, where I had to move the camera from an ECU of Juls eyes around her hand to an ECU of her hair. I tried doing it multiple times and we finally got it (the camera was heavy, which is why t was a great challenge in my opinion). 

Hayley had to leave for a Theatre performance in school for just an hour, which is why we let both her and Beth go (we collected all the footage necessary where both of them were needed). In the meantime (while Hayley was gone) my team pitched an idea of collecting close-ups on different objects in the room, which we would add between the part where Juls goes to the bathroom and then comes out of it dressed in school uniform. The girls made beautiful close-ups on the flowers on the windowsill, the fairy lights, the pile of clothes, the books (using 50-125 mm lense). I made a couple of close-ups on the calendar that we hung up on the door: it might give the viewers an idea of what Juls is like, because her timetable is thoroughly described there). 

Hayley came back soon and we were ready to crack on. We went through all our footage to understand what shots we had to redo. A decision was made to make a few more close-ups and mid shots of her packing the bag, taking the necklace out of the box and being terrified (starting to get the flashback). As we were done with all the scenes, where Hayley had to be dressed with her makeup on, we moved on to shooting the "morning routine" part.

Originally we had an idea of making the first opening shot - a blurred POV of Juls waking up to imply that she has a vision impairment, however after trying to implement that we realised it doesn't necessarily look as god as we thought it would. This is why we modified this bit slightly to starting with a blurry mid-shot of Juls waking up and putting her glasses on. The latter action was accompanied by us focusing the camera, which would as well show that Juls has a bad eye sight. Subsequently, we made both mid-shots and close-ups on Juls switching her bedside lamp on: in reality as soon as she pressed that switch, me, Zoe and Isi would switch al the other lights in the room on simultaneously. After completing all the necessary long shots and over-the-shoulder shots of Juls getting up, tuning the music on and approaching the bathroom, we moved on to the last part of the shooting process in this location.

The bathroom scene was relatively short and we pretty much followed the storyboard accurately. A few mirror shots, close-ups on Juls taking the towel and her looking at the empty box of pills were completed here. The most challenging part was making the POV shot of the bin, as Juls was throwing her pills away. Zoe decided to be the camera woman at this point and in my opinion she did absolutely amazing laying on that floor with a a heavy camera and having a box dropping right next to her! 

The most amazing part about the bathroom scene is that it was totally completed by us, without any supervision already. Both Tom and Adam were around to help us if we needed to, but in my opinion we worked great as a team, helped each other out and figured how to make different shots without the help of the professionals.

After this we had a lunch break and were preparing to head to Turrets (Ewhurst) to shoot the flashback scene.

Pt.3 Turrets shoot

After lunch, the whole crew came back to school in order to pick up Annie (the younger Juls) and arrive to Turrets by 4 pm - the time Karen (the real mom) said she'd come there at. As we arrived to the location, we first constructed an outfit for Annie: me and Isi brought different pieces of clothes and just had to put them together. Eventually, Annie was wearing a red flower-pattern skirt, a cardigan and had her hair braided to one side. The shoot took place in the kitchen, where younger Juls was supposed to be sitting in front of the door. I was actually quite amazed by how fast my team dealt with all the challenges and obstacles. For instance, there was a big green sign above the door, which would clearly be odd in the shot. Zoe quickly took the pins out and took it off even before anyone had time to say "we might have an issue". We removed all the objects, like sanitizers, remotes, off the way for the audience to concentrate on the action rather than the setting. As Karen arrived, we were ready to start. 

We came up with an idea of having Karen wear the necklace Juls (Hayley) pulled out of her box, so that the viewers might start making the link between the two events. As we set the camera up behind Annie to make a couple of mid-shots, we were suggested to adjust the lighting in order to make the atmosphere somber and express that the place is poor and unsafe. For that we changed the white balance, so that the image is filled with cod colours like blue and grey. More to that, we were using the portable LED light to lit up the characters themselves (as all the other lights were switches off). Finally, we wrapped the "necklace" around Karen's wrist, so that it's more obvious for the viewers, when she puts her hand on Annie's shoulder. Later we made a few POV shots of Karen storming in the room saying "we have to go, honey, we have to leave now" as well as the transition itself. This was the biggest challenge, which is why each of us was trying to control the camera and make the transition smooth. We managed to complete this part successfully and now we have at least 6 identical transition shots. Finally, each scene was shot in two different ways: normally and filming 50 frames a second. The latter makes the action seem a bit blurry and slow-mo, which might emphasise the idea that this part is a flashback (we shot it normally as well in case during the editing process we don't actually enjoy what it looks like). 

From my point of view, the shoot was amazing. We altered a lot of details, generally following the plan, but making the action more interesting. In the very beginning I felt really stressed, but as we started the process I felt like we went along perfectly with my team, managed to collect all the necessary footage and more! All the spontaneous decisions we made only upgraded our footage and storyline. Now I undoubtedly, feel more confident in terms of using sophisticated filming equipment, working in a team and staying calm in situations filled with challenges and unexpected challenges.