IN THE END
now that it is all finished there are a few things I may do differently..

- I'd do it alone. It was good to have more people for gear and things, but it was hard to organize them to be there all the time and by the time we got to editing I was doing it by myself anyway.
-I'd leave myself more time. I underestimated how long EVERYTHING took. So if I did it again I'd have more time for filming and editing.
That's it really - otherwise it was so much fun. I am absolutely going to take film next year and see what I can do with a doco. Thanks Anya :)

i did the audio without the rest of my team ( Paloma and Ruby helped me though). I took out the parts where you could hear us instructing George through and the random out-of-place noises. I didn't really know what I was doing to start with so it was good to have Paloma to show me what to do - but in the end I could show her some stuff :) I looked for music that would fit the movie but I couldn't find any, then I was talking to terry about using Reason and I thought I might try and make my own kind of soundtrack. So I spent a couple of days (after school and at lunch times) cutting and stretching and reversing and speeding up and layering tracks from Reason and made me a soundtrack I was happy with. The I added in the credits and it was done! I am surprised really. I thought it wouldn't look nearly as good as it does now. I'm pretty proud of it. It does stray a bit from the original plot, but the idea is still there. Sharne and George watched it today, they last saw it before I started the sound and the music, and they couldn't believe it. That was fun :)

22 july

after the holidays we had some serious editing to do if we were going to meet our deadline. Now that all the footage was mostly put in place we went about changing the colour to correct the lighting. We played around with several video filters and decided on one that would tone down the colour. It made the lighting more sinister and also more constant. We only used this in the first half of the film, because that way the only strong colour in the entire film is the bright red blood in the dead body scene.

4-19 july

HOLIDAYS

(no work got done, everyone was away)

1 july

we captured all our footage and began to arrange and edit it. When we had a rough draft we realised that there was a huge gap in our plot. One moment it is dusk and George is disappearing over a hill, the next it is pitch black and he is running down a street carrying a mysterious torch. We have to add another scene! So that day we spent another day after school filming a scene in a garage to link the two parts. The garage is at Sharne's house but again we don't think the audience will realise. It was very cramped in the garage and difficult to fit three people and a tripod but it all worked out fine. We edited the new scene in and the rough draft was done!

27 june

we decided that the final scene would have to be shot all in one night due to lack of time and lighting. So we grabbed all our gear and Paloma and rushed over to Sharne's house after school. We started to set up and soon realised we had a big problem. The camera was flat and the park was far far away from any power plugs. We had an emergency setting change and decided to film our last scene down the road under a streetlamp. So we pulled out the millions of extension cords that Sharne's Grandfather by some miracle had in his garage. It turned out that filming under the street lamp was actually good for our film, as it allowed for rather lovely lighting. The dim light from above combined with the torch made the bright red of the blood really stand out in the otherwise monotone scene. It cast some sinister shadows, it was like although the circle of light may look like a safe place it is in fact the most dangerous place for our character, a contridiction.

We concocted blood from eggs and other gross stuff and got to work. All went relatively well (apart from Sharne stabbing both George and me) until we came to our last shot with the last of our toilet paper. George had to stand in the middle of the road and at the EXACT moment that he ripped the last bit of paper from his face a car drove straight into the shot. So we had to go around and borrow more toilet paper. We got it right in our second take, thank god. We packed up and watched the footage and realised the camera had moved at the crucial moment. But we could fix that later!

23 june

the next shoot we had was pretty smooth except that we were running out of toilet paper. We had to keep reusing it, but it wasn't too bad as it looked as though it was disintegrating throughout the course of the movie. In some scenes George also played the bandaged man in some scenes so that Sharne could be in charge of the camera and get the shot he really wanted. We filmed the shots out on the street that we had been getting to last time when we were interrupted by the cat. Although we filmed the same scene on different days we can use video filters to create the lighting effects we want. Some of these we didn't use in the actual film, but better more than enough than not enough. By now we reckon we are about 2/3 through the film.