Final Opening Sequence

Above, I have inserted a final cut of our opening sequence "The Forest that Lives". Unfortunately, due to size of the file, when uploaded onto YouTube the visual and the audio are out of sync. However on the DVD copy of the film that the examiner will receive this is not applicable, and that copy will reflect our final piece the way we intended it to be shown.

Post- Production

Above is the clip of our rough cut of the opening sequence to "Forest that Lives". We are pleased with the outcome of our footage, however before a final cut is made we have decided as a group to watch over the footage and edit any issues of continuity that we have now discovered. We will also use this rough cut to gain feedback from our target audience in terms of what we need to do to gain that horror genre that we aim for. The rough cut shows a final outcome of the visuals, in which we have carefully edited and have proven a success in terms of different shots. Watching the rough cut has made us see the fast paced nature of our opening sequence, but at times we thought some lengthly footage of merely the surroundings extracts from the fast paced nature. In this case, we will cut out some of the lengthly footage before our final cut so that the tense atmosphere remains throughout. Overall, we are pleased with the rough cut and feel that with music and some final aspects of editing we would have produced a successful opening sequence.

Before editing we logged our rushes so that it would be easier and more organised in terms of choosing the footage we were going to use. Below I have inserted a copy of our logging rushes.

Production

When shooting, we chose to shoot early one morning to assure that we could get every shot filmed that day hence avoiding any issues of continuity in terms of the weather. In doing this the dark atmosphere of a night time wasn't acheived, however we thought this wouldn't be appropriate for the narrative of the film. We realised that to make it look realistic; that the girls are walking home from school, it would be light overall. However having a lighter environment gave us more of a challenge as a group in a way that the horror genre would be strongly relying on our shots and editing.

Beyond watching our rushes, we were pleased with the outcome of our footage. When filming we had issues with the dialogue, in that we didn't want the lengthly dialogue to make the opening sequence seem like a trailer of a film. However when watching other films of our chosen genre such as "Wrong Turn", their opening sequence was somewhat similar, with the opening being narrative and a strong sense of dialogue. Although in order to avoid this, we cut small chunks of the dialogue out; not so it would be shorter, but so it would make more sense to the audience however still acheiving the idea of two young girls walking home from school. We filmed many shots of the girls running, more than we anticipated, so that if when editing we got continuous jump cuts or we generally weren't pleased with other shots, we would have extra footage to cut in.

As a group we worked well; myself being one of the actors made me step aside from the more technical aspects of filming, but Jack and Liam shared the role of filming whilst we equally made decisions to assure that our shots would look as good as they can. The fast paced nature of our shots acheives the rushed and panicing atmosphere that of a horror genre.

To gain the gothic atmosphere that our genre entails, we decided to manipulate the opening establishing shot into black and white. Doing this, alongside deciding for the credits to appear over the shots rather than a black screen created the tension that we hoped for. Beyond filming, as a group we will sit down and go onto unsignedbandweb.com to find a copyright free track that we can use to climax our opening sequence.