48hr film project "This movie sucks..."

Presenting the results of our 48hr film project: 'This movie sucks...'

It was great to show our film to the rest of the class and we were glad there were plenty of laughs throughout :D

Editing the '48hr film project'

Friday 20th and Saturday 21st were our main days for editing. Having only used After Effects and Final Cut  for video editing before; Adobe Premiere was new to me and the rest of the team but didn't take too long to get used to. The scene I edited was the 'Flat Scene'. First I got all the shots in order, then cut each shot down to what was needed. The first part of the scene is the Vampire arriving home in distress after losing his vampire fangs. Time passes - shown by a winding clock and a montage begins of the Vampire getting more and more hungry: I overlaid footage of the winding clock over the montage to emphasise the this plot point.

On the Saturday I finished editing the first Graveyard scene which Steph had started on Friday night. Kieran figured out how to edit the audio in Premiere so I helped cross-fade audio on some of the shots which didn't flow as well inbetween cuts. Then Kieran put together the final edit of the film whilst myself and George searched for additional sound effects needed in the film. Editing was complete minutes before university closing time, so we left the film to render and pick up on Monday - hoping nothing goes wrong with the render!

Filming on location - Day 2

Wednesday 18th - Filming started back at the Graveyard in the morning. Some of the shots from last night's filming were a bit too dark so we re-shot some of the scenes. There was also some unscheduled rain which actually brought out the colours of the stones a bit better on camera.

Here is some behind-the-scenes photos from the Graveyard shoot...

After the rain:

Spooky graveyard:

Winding path:

George playing dead:

A walk down the path:

The very old wall:

Vampire spotted in the graveyard:

Trying to use white-tack to make the vampire fangs stick:

One of the main problems filming today was the ever-changing light because the clouds were patchy:

Jumping and turning into a bat:

George filming:

More "bat transformation" leaps:

Spot the stunt flying bat next to Steph:

Focusing the camera:

Production values... a plastic bat tied to a pole:

Oneeee ketchup...:

Twooooo ketchup...:

After finishing filming at the graveyard we found a street to film the scenes where the vampire knocks his teeth out...

Car stunts:

Checking in the mirror:

The knocked out vampire fangs:

Positioning the camera:

The perfect car sticker:

The Vampire chasing Steph down the street:

Chomping down on Steph's arm:

The Vampire's sad walk home:

A poster the bat should have read before flying:

Mike's skateboard for filming bat flying scenes:

And that's a wrap on filming! Next stage is editing :)

Filming on location - Day 1

Tuesday 17th was day 1 of the filming schedule. We started the day filming at Kieran's flat, who was also our vampire for the film.

Here's some behind-the-scenes photos I took...

Steph applying the "vampire make-up":

 Set Dressing for a vampire's apartment:

Winding the hands of a clock to show time passing:

The supermarket leaflet being posted through the door:

The 'Nosferatu' inspired scene:

We then did some filming at a local supermarket, before ending the day at the Graveyard in town with the added obstacle of the garveyard being locked by the evening... It was a long but hilarious day of filming and the clipboard of locations and shots was very useful in keeping track of what we had and still needed to film.

48hr film project launch

Monday 16th was the launch of the 48hr film project. We were given groups and then had to pick some required elements for the film out of a hat. The group I was in included Kieran, Steph and George and our required elements were as follows:

Theme: Comedy
Line: "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."
Prop: Leather Gloves

There was some initial panic over these elements as they were so random, but we sat down and had a really good brainstorming session. We started with the origin of the quote... Dracula! (1931)

This became our inspiration for the entire film. With it being required to be a comedy we decided to make it a "vampire spoof". Here's some of my notes from the initial brain storming with the group:

Ideas were thrown around such as a vampire who feared blood, a vampire who was a blood addict, a vampire with teeth problems, a vegetarian vampire... We ended up with a plot based around a vampire who loses his fangs and therefore is unable to drink blood, but ends up finding an unusual alternative at the supermarket.
We wrote out the main plot points and figured out filming locations, filming schedule, props needed and our cast. I typed up the plot points under the relevant filming locations so we would have a filming schedule of sorts to use whilst filming - a clipboard became very handy to keep all these pieces of paper together:

 

As we had some outdoors filming to do in a graveyard, we figured out a suitable location - The Howff, a graveyard in dundee city centre, this one we deemed the most suitable due to it's very old and Gothic appearance (some of the outer walls date back to 1601), which would be more atmospheric in our film:

We also checked the weather as there are some scenes that would be best filmed with overcast weather (vampires aren't so keen on sunshine), no rain scheduled over the 2 days - or so it says...

Back home I searched for some required props which involved a hunt in the attic into the Halloween box for some bats. Also found some leather gloves, however they were driving gloves, with big holes in the design - probably not the best gloves suitable for a vampire trying to cover up in the sun - but maybe this would just add to the comedy of our film: