1. In our preliminary task we created a short movie to a Beyoncé song, this was the
first ever time we had had the change to use a recording camera and to put
together a movie. We were a little unsure at first of how to angle the shots and
how to use the camera but after we were shown a few skills we felt comfortable
to video our scenes. After we recorded the movie we had to use Final Cut Express
for the first time and we did not have a clue how to work it, our teacher had to
show the class how to use the application and we all got the hang of using basic
skills on it. Therefore when we have to create our final movie for our corse work
we had a lot more experience in using the camera and editing the clips. I feel like
our skills in Final Cut really progressed as we used it more, we were able to use
the razor tool to cut clips and how to separate the audio for the clip. Overall I feel
like our skilss in media have advanced a lot since our preliminary task as we had
more experience using the software and cameras and I feel that we done a better
job making our final movie.
To start of with, we came up with a story based on cheating. We thought this
storyline would be brilliant, as people don’t really think much of it no more as it
is happens so much these days. Well, we wanted to show what effect cheating
can have upon people. Our storyboard to begin with was where 2 people (a
woman’s husband and her best friend) went on a business meeting out of town
and went for a few drinks out after. The woman trusted them both however she
had a terrible gut feeling so she hired a spy to keep an eye on them. Well, she was
right to go with her gut feeling as they did share a little kiss. The woman felt
heartbroken and she later ended up in a mental asylum, which made her no
better. She then escaped and was on a mission to kill them both.
This idea changed but not dramatically.
We decided to get rid of the pub scene and the 2 people going on a business
meeting and just explain this with writing at the beginning of the film. We were
going to record one of our voices explaining this story as some horror films do
this whilst showing scenery, however we already had a voice recorded singing
‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ and it would be too distracting if they were both
blended over the top of each other. We also added teenagers going on a camping
experience that came across this building and as all teenagers do in horror films;
enter the danger that lies in front of them. We got this idea from the movie ‘Cabin
in the Woods’.
We explored what locations we could use and we thought the most common was
a dangerous, abandoned building, as it would give a disturbing feeling towards
the audience.
We thought Tunstall Court was the best location for a horror film to be placed;
this was because it was a massive, empty building with walls and floors that had
been wasted away and graffiti all over. There was no lighting in this building
except for during the day when the sunlight shone through rooms that had
window spaces, other than that it was pitch black especially at night, this would
make it hard to film as we didn’t have any light equipment to shine on whatever
we were filming plus it would be dangerous and scary for us and our safety as we
wouldn’t be able to see anything. As of this we had to make sure the time we
went to film were reasonable times. Though some of our footage we filmed were
quite dark when we looked back at them on the computer; because of this we

2. had to edit the lighting and contrast so you could see the figures of our actors
more clearly.
We took a trip to Tunstall Court one day to capture some footage of scenery,
however no dialogue. The footage of scenery we took were great, they proved
how dangerous and creepy the building was.
When we started editing the footage we had on final cut it was then when we
realized that we wanted to change the story so everything was just held in
Tunstall Court. This was because our first idea was just not scary enough to be a
horror.
Our title for our film also changed as it went from ‘L<3VE SUCKS’ to
‘ABANDONED’ this is again because we thought the title just was not scary
enough to capture the target audiences attention. The title ‘ABANDONED’ is
simple but strong word; it indicates a lot about the building we placed our film
in.
Printingoff our updated, organized and well-detailedstoryboard and script and
taking them with us when filming gave us great help as we could get straight on
with what we had on the sheet adding and changing bits when needed. For our
horror we decided that we didn’t want to use a tripod as we didn’t want our
footage to be still and straight as this would not mimic a disturbing horror film.
Personally, I think our horror could have been scarier,for example, the killing
could have been more dramatic and could have had more build up. Other than
that I think we did a good job.