Evaluation Questions

Question 1:

Question 2:

Question 3:

Question 4+5:

Question 6:

Question 7:

Opening Scene Evaluation and Improvements

After publishing our first draft onto YouTube, we showed it to an audience where they gave us feedback on things that they liked and constructive criticism.

What Went Well

One of the most common 'good/effective' comments that were made was for the match on action for the stab scene. A lot of people said that it looked very realistic and professionally done. As well as this, they like the use of the blood on the knife, stab wound and in the water.

A lot of people also liked the use of sound, especially the distorted music and ringtone and they also liked when the music was cut off when the headphones fell out. I believe that we were very effective with our sound. 

Another positive comment was on the location. This was seen to be suitable for the genre and concept and seemed to work well. 

Improvements

One of the most commented criticisms was that there was too many waterfall shots. To improve this, our audience suggested that we remove one or two of the shots.

Another comment was that the title screen was too short and needed to be much longer in order for audiences to be able to read it. This will be easy to fix.

Another criticism made was that the lighting was too bright and needed to be 'dimmed' and also that the blood on the jumper was too pink. This can easily be fixed by experimenting with the exposure and saturation.

Some members of the audience also commented that the Blumhouse production company was not suitable for our genre and that the logo that we used was out of date. To solve this problem we decided to look at Chloe's production company research blog and also to do some extra research.

The final comments made was to remove a 'wind' sound to make our opening scene seem more professional and also to add in a sinister sound when we see the killer to make it clear to the audience that something will happen and also to make it seem more dramatic. It was also suggested to include a sound effect when the killer is scraping the knife on the fence.


As a group, we split up the constrictive comments to help us improve our final piece. My job was to dim the lighting throughout the opening scene and to also adjust the colour of the blood on the jumper where the fake blood looked pink on camera.    

Improving the Opening Scene

Firs of all, I decided to change the exposure an saturation of all of the shots. I needed to make the lighting darker and seem more mysterious and scary as originally it was quite light and did not look scary enough. 

To do this,  I reduced the saturation down by -32% and also decreased the exposure down by -19%. As you can see from the screen shots down below, the lighting is much dimmer and the colour is much more washed out, giving a sinister and dusk effect. I applies these settings for most of the shots.  

The only shots that I did not apply the exposure to was the stream shot at the end and the blood dripping on the leaves. First of all, I edited the blood on the leaves. To do this, I reduced the global exposure down by -2%. Then I reduced the global saturation down by -32%. However, when I completed exiting this shot, it did not lo right so I then changed the global exposure to -19% and the highlight exposure to -10%. This looked much better.

The other shot that I did not apply the -32% saturation and the -19% exposure to was the end shot of the blood in the stream (the second shot).This was because it was quite dark anyway.  For this shot I reduced the saturation down by -10% and the exposure down by -10% as well.

When I looked back on the shot of the fake blood that looked pink, after I had changed the saturation and exposure to -32% and -19%, it looked more realistic. 

Here is the final draft of our opening scene:

Editing No.3

My final piece of editing to do was to add in and edit the stabbing sound that I had downloaded. For this, I instead the sound clip into the correct place in our opening scene.

Next, I bladed the start and the end of the clip, as it was too long for what we needed it for, as we just needed one 'stab', where as the clip gave us multiple.

When I listened back to the clip, it seemed to be out of time and did not flow with the rest of the shots. To edit this, I bladed the start of the clip as there was no sound, which was causing the delay.

Next, when I listened back to the clip again, I found that the sound effect was too quick. To fix this, I reduced the speed of the clip to 80%. When we listened back to this, it sounded much better and the audience would be able to hear the sound more clearly.

Making a 'Stab' Sound Effect

For this practical, I made a 'stabbing' sound effect. For this I used a sharp kitchen knife, half a melon and a phone to record the sound.

I then started to record the sound of the knife going into the melon at different speeds and at different points of the melon, fr example, through the skin or through the seeds etc.

However, when I listened back to the sounds, they did not sound like I would have liked them to. When I showed the rest of my group the sounds, we made a group decision that we would use a pre-made sound effect that would sound more professional and realistic.

Here is the final sound effect that we used in our opening scene:

From this video, we used the first stab sound.

'Stabbing' Sound Effect Research

For this research task, I looked on YouTube for stabbing scenes to research stabbing sound effects so that I could re create my own for our coursework.

The first video that I clicked on was from the TV series, 'Game Of Thrones'. In this scene, on of the characters gets stabbed multiple times giving the audience a gruesome image and sound. When the character gets stabbed, the audience can hear squelching and oozing sounds as a character stabs the other multiple times. This sounds realistic and gruesome for the audience.
'Game Of Thrones' Clip

The next clip that I found was from the film, 'Fertile Ground'. In this clip a female character stabs a male character. The sounds that the audience hears when the woman stabs the man repeatedly are almost like a shovel has been shoved into the ground. These sound effects are less 'bloody' than the previous clip.
'Fertile Ground' Clip

In the film 'The Babadook' a little boy stabs his mother. When the knife enters her stomach, it makes a thumping noise and there is not sound of flesh or blood being cut through. Although this may be a realistic sound effect, it does not portray the 'slasher' effect that we are looking for.
'The Babadook' Clip

In conclusion, I believe that the most realistic and gruesome effect is from the 'Game Of Thrones' clip. This is because you can hear flesh being sliced and you can also hear the sound of blood oozing out of the wound. This therefore makes the sound effect realistic and give it the 'slasher' effect.

Editing No.2

This was my second turn at editing our final shots. Fist of all, I slowed down the speed of the shot of Josh walking past the camera, whilst scraping the knife along a chain-link fence.

At first I reduced the speed down by 25% but when we re-watched the shot, it was still too fast. So I reduced the speed down by 50% and this was enough.

I then edited the sound where Lucy removes the headphones and 'answers' the phone. For this I bladed where she removed the headphones because the audience can hear the diegetic sound of the music that is playing when she removes the headphones.

The next stage was to remove the sound of the wind at the very start of the opening scene as this made the shot look unprofessional and did not sound like wind but background noise instead. For this, I zoomed in as much as possible so that I could blade the wind out as accurately as possible.

However, this did not go as planned as you could then not hear the bird noises, which we wanted to keep so instead we removed the sound and copied another 'nature' sound that we already had on another shot and copied that sound a couple of times so that this replaced the original sound. I also overlapped the sound so that everything blended in together.

 







Next, I edited the sound where Josh walks past the camera with the knife as we believed that we should put a sound effect of a knife scraping the metal fence instead of the music coming from the headphones. For this, I bladed the music where the shot of Josh appears and I then muted the sound on the sound where Josh walks past the camera.

 

Filming Evaluation No.2

Having looked and edited some of our shots from our first filming day, we decided that some of our shots were not as we would have liked. We decided to re-film the stabbing scene and the end shot as they did not look professional enough.

Everyone met in Loose at the agreed time of 9 a.m and we began filming at about 9:15.

The first shot that we filmed was a reaction shot of Lucy. This took a couple of tries to get the perfect reaction without it looking fake or over dramatic. Eventually, we got the right shot and we also got inspiration from my blog on stabbing reactions.  

The next shot that we re-filmed was a close up of Josh pulling a bloodied knife out of Lucy. To prepare for this shot we covered the knife in fake blood and food colouring, as well as Lucy's jumper to make the shot seem as realistic as possible. At first, Josh pulled the knife out too quickly so we re-filmed it so that it was a lot slower so that you can see the blood and the knife. 

 

Overall, I believe that this shot went very well and compared to our original shot, it looks much more realistic and professional. The camera is also a lot stiller.

The last shot that we filmed was the very end shot of Lucy lying on the ground and Josh walking away from her in the background. To prepare for this we had to find the right location in Loose valley so that the sky wasn't reflecting in the water. Eventually we found the right location to film at. The next step was to make Lucy's 'stab wound' more bloody to make it look like it had been bleeding for a long time so we simply added more fake blood to the 'wound'. We also added more blood to her hand and put dirt in her hair and on her face and bag to make it look more realistic.

 




Overall this shot looked very effective and was an improvement from the original shot.

In conclusion, this second filming attempt was very successful as we get everything done in time and very quickly and efficiently. The new shots looked much better than the original ones and looked more professional and realistic.  

Reaction Shot Research- Stabbing

In our final shots we have decided to include a reaction shot of Lucy being stabbed. For this I decided to do some research on reaction shots of people being stabbed on films to make this shot seem as realistic and professional as possible.

For my research, I went onto YouTube and search for 'stabbing scenes in films' and lots of results came up. The first clip that I clicked on was from the film 'Strangers'. I managed to screenshot some of the reaction shots of the characters getting stabbed.

 
 


Overall I believe that these reactions would seem realistic and they would be easy for Lucy to mirror.

The next clip that I found was from the film 'Gladiator'. The reaction shot from this scene was very different from the previous example as the character does not yell or scream but looks very shocked/stunned and does not make a noise.

Although this makes the 'stab' look less painful and the audience may not know if the character has been stabbed or not, it may be easier to perform than the other reaction as the more dramatic one may look fake or unrealistic on camera but this one can be easier to act out.

Another film that includes a stabbing scene is in 'Saving Private Ryan'. The character who gets stabbed in this scene has a similar reaction to the first example by showing that he is in pain by opening his mouth and scrunching up his eyes.

The final clip that I looked at was from the TV Soap Drama 'Coronation Street' where the character 'Kylie' gets stabbed.

 

This reaction shot is similar to the one in 'Gladiator' as the character does not show pain but rather shock and dismay. I believe that this reaction shot is the most realistic out of all of the examples as the character shows emotion but it does not look overly dramatic or 'put on'. I believe that this would be suitable for our reaction shot. The character also looks at the blood on her hand which is a nice effect and helps to show that the character is bleeding heavily. This would also work for our opening scene as our genre is 'Slasher' so there needs to be lots of blood and gore shown throughout.

Post Production- Editing

Now that we had finished filming, we began to start editing our shots. To make it fair, we all took it in turns to edit different parts of out shots so that everyone got a chance at editing a different part and used their skills and knowledge and applied them to the post production part of our coursework.

I was the second person in our group to start editing. As a group, we decided that it would be suitable to 'blade' all of our clips so that we can see how long our final piece would be and we can see what all of the shots look like in a concise and fluid order.

I began to edit my section of our shots at the extreme close up shot of Lucy's eyes. To do this I first selected the clip, and then bladed it so that it was much shorter as the original clip was too long and at one point she looks straight into the camera.

However, when we looked back at the new shot of her eyes, we felt that it was too long so I 'undid' the blade and made the shot of her eyes shorter. When we looked at the even shorter shot of the eyes, we all agreed that this looked much better.

 








The next piece of editing I did was again blading the shots that we got. This was the first piece of editing that our whole group did as this would make it easier to see how long our piece would be and we would be able to see roughly what our final opening scene would look like.

I then started to edit one of our match on action shots where Lucy drops the phone. For this I needed to shorten the clip down as there was too much footage of Lucy walking into the frame and walking off of it. For this I bladed and deleted the start of the clip where she walks into the frame from the right side of the camera.

The last piece of blading I did for the beginning of the editing of our shots was when Josh walks up some steps. For this shot, again it was too long and the shot continued even after Josh was out of frame. This would appear boring for the audience and would mean that we would have less time left for other shots that would be more valuable. For this clip I bladed and deleted the end off the clip so that it was a lot shorter and more suitable.