Construction: Updating Eve's personal blog x filming the friends blog scene

Today we filmed two separate parts of the film which would be merged together to give to an impression that Eve was looking at her old blogs with her friends. We filmed a scene where she was scrolling through her blog and clicked on an old video she had made in the past.


When filming  key scenes of Eve's personal blog, I had to go back to the Wix editor website that I created a while back (post was made about this lower down in my blog) I have to go back and make sure small tweaks were made and more content was added to give a sense of realism when we see her scrolling through this blog.

This scene mainly consisted of a over the shoulder shot of Eve scrolling on her blog and we added a special feature; a screen recording made on Quicktime.  Which I edited in using the ken burns effect on iMovie. We were able to transition form the over the shoulder shot to the screen wording of her clicking a exploring her old blog.

This gives the viewer a different perspective/ outlook of Eve's world and almost entices them to want to see more as she pauses the video 'halfway' through.



Risk assessment:

Planning: every frame of painting

I have been inspired by films such as Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011) because of its use of framing. 
In the video tutorial Every Frame A Painting, on Drive -The Quadrant System, I learned how narrative complexity is achieved through using the creative use of positioning characters in different quadrants. Here, for instance, attention is focused on Ryan Gosling in the upper top left quadrant but also on Carey Mulligan and her boyfriend whom he is gazing at, in the lower right hand quadrant. We are invited to visually compare the two men and see the long shadow one casts toward the other. 

The two sides of the frame tell different stories, which enriches the filmwork.

In my own work, I intend to pay careful attention to composing the frame in the park scene and the scenes in Eve's bedroom, as I wanted to make sure the  audience knew where we were and in what context were meeting our character. The framework was able to frame the playground and the highlight the doll who is Eve's childhood friend. The character is not seen as much throughout the scene but we are able to establish her presence and dominating power over the doll by comparing how much bigger she is and comparing who is pushing the swing-the person in control. This also applies for the bedroom scenes as Eve's is framed in a way where we hinted to focus at her taking her opioids or of her listening to music for example, which is a way for her to distract herself and escape form her tormenting reality.

Risk assessment:

Construction: Eve's bedroom blog scene

We started shooting the first bedroom scene with Lydia O'Reilly as Eve and Chloe and I as co-directors and editors.

To make sure we were able to capture the audiences attention, we derived from filming eve doing her daily stuff to her filming her blog with Elizabeth in the background.  This only elevated the level of suspense and tension as the doll sat quite realistically on the bottom right frame  of the camera.

When it came to sound effects, we felt like using  silence was the best option when it came to recording the blog scene as it created even greater tensions and a more spine chilling atmosphere as a diegetic sound. We also create a sombre mise-en-scene as we played with the lighting-we turned the lights of and covered the window with the curtains so a decent amount of natural light would be used.

One problem we encountered was a sound recording issues when filming one of our scenes as our initial ideas was for Eve to wear a weird combination of clothes which included a raincoat. The problem when we were recording is that the sound of Lydia's

(Eve) movements were enhanced by the microphone which left an annoying and constant burden when trying to hear her speak and engage with Elizabeth. We had an outfit changed and resumed to recording using our phones on the app: voice recorder.

The scene was later edited by me. For the editing of this scene, I had to align the clips in chronological order and make sure the lighting was reflecting the atmosphere we were trying to project by adding a slight filter which would make the room feel colder and obscurer.  I proceeded to adding diegetic sounds of Eve's speaking into the camera for her blog as she is expressing her direct feelings about her current situation.

When filming the extract of eve filming herself on the blog, we had to position the camera infront of her and record using a tripod  just like a real blog would. This enhanced the realistic features of the blog and creates a different connection with the audience as she seems to be addressing them directly. We can almost say she is breaking the fourth wall as they looks straight in and talks directly in front as if she has got an audience watching her.


The use of the prop Elizabeth the doll, shows her attachment to her as she is featured numerous times through the film.  She adds tension as typical doll connotations are that they are creepy and give off an obscure feeling.

When looking at the film on a whole we felt one element was missing. We thought that the transition between clips, seemed rather basic therefore we decided to add a green screen to our scene and use a recording camera's frame to portray that idea. The typical REC sign helped illustrate this very well as it is a universally recognisable sign.

This really helped show the difference between Eve's blog moments and Eve's usual routine. 

Risk assessment:

Construction:creating the park scene

When looking over the call sheet, we saw that the next scene needed to be shot. We figured that filming the park scene with Eve and Elizabeth would be most useful as the weather and scenery of the West End recreational playground seemed appropriately dark and windy which connotes gloominess.

Using the weather as a key advantage, we were able to incorporate this  element as part of the mise en scene.  I helped create a mood we can interpret as a mirror reflection of Eve's mood and her state of mind.


I took part in directing and editing the clips for the park scene using editing tools such as fade into certain scenes, adding in voice overs and sound effects such as diegetic sounds of screeching playground swings and wind spot sound effects despite the real wind blowing during our shoot.

However, we seemed to encounter a problem when coming  back to edit as I had realised that the background noises we covering up all the dialogue between the doll and Eve. Given that we want our production to sound  and look professional, we decided not to include the sound in but add in the voice over for which I wrote the script for in my free time.  Recording the script took a couple of tries but however after, getting the rate take the overall composition turned out rather successful.



The scene starts off with an over the shoulder close up shot of the prop, to highlight the realistic features of the doll and to see where she has been positioned. From this shot, we are immediately triggered as to what the doll is doing on a kids swing in a playground.  The next few scenes are close ups of the doll in question.   this brings out a sense of unease in the audience which is used as an advantage on our part as the point of the film is  to feel slightly frightened or creeped out by this young girl's mental state.  

The rest on the shots consisted of mid shots, wide shots, over the shoulder shots and close ups, also accompanied by voice overs and slow motion editing +the sound effects used previously.

Construction: Making an Ident

Making an Ident for my Production:

Today in class we learned how to create an ident for our film production. Having no experience in doing so, I have to focus on every details and make sure I would be able to create a perfect indent for my production team. As a collaborative effort, Chloe, Liddy and I started on part of the indent together and later on I continued the ident adding my own touches and skills learned today. I completed it using iMovie.

Starting by exploring the kind of theme we wanted the girls and I each research the different green screen themes on Youtube to then decided which would be best for our ident. I found I perfect green screen which went for our theme of spooky and rather sombre. We obviously do not want our theme to relate to our film but we want our company to illustrate what it will be known for.

Getting a green screen was the easy part as all we needed to to was to type in "ss" in front of of the word youtube in the link. After doing so, I was able to download the clip and work with it from iMovie. Adding a background to the green screen would make the green go away therefore it was imperative to find an appropriate and effective one.

We then proceeding to find a background colour to place  behind the green screen. We picked a background that had quite a dark touch to it but that would not clash with the green screen. I found an ashy grey background which seemed to give off the sinister vibe we were after. I then proceeded to copy it and include it our indent. I overlapped the green screen with the background using the "green/blue screen" option on iMovie . This took away the green background and replaced it with the background we added to it.  Using "Dafont" I selected the font longshot which I felt would suit the indent's overall fit.

We called ourselves Seven Studios as we wanted to make it slightly more personal and we wanted to make sure we would be able to relate to the production name (We combined our dates of birth to create seven as the final number). We also wanted to make it memorable by using alliteration with the s'.

The final ident I completed: 

Voice over using Quick Time

Today in class, we learnt how to create a video voice over using the application Quicktime. This app can be used for screen capture, or for prepared visuals. To show my capabitity in using the software, I have prepared a smaller clip to show my understanding of it. However, here is a step by step instruction as to how I managed the recording.

1. Quiet is essential so use a quiet so there is no background noise
2. Open Quicktime
3. File > new screen recording 
4. >Internal microphone 
5. Click on your video, still photo or your PP
6. To start recording, press the red button (as below) which opens a white button (find this button at the very top right of your screen). Allow a few seconds lead-in time or your recording will be clipped.
7. Save as Quicktime 720 or 1080
8. Upload to YouTube for your blog

What I found quite complicated with this process was to remember to leave it a few seconds before starting to say what I needed to . Keeping the background noise to a minimum was also rather challenging as the microphone on my; laptop was quite sensitive to any sound from. any area of my house.