DJ SESSION - 23/09/11

Today was so fun! We spent the third and fourth lessons practising a DJ WORKSHOP with Mr.Nigel (who was very assisting and helpful). First of all before actually proceeding practical work on the DJ decks, the diploma team had to read pages 2-12 in the "BASIC DJ LEARNING GUIDE". This gave us a brief understanding of DJ ACTIVITY. This also gave me an introduction to all of the set-up apartment and the ability to identify any equipment visually and know how to use it. The booklet also warned me of the cautions and hazards so that I was preferred to know what to do if anything had gone wrong. After the pages of the booklet was read I was ready to take on the practical.

Next step - The diploma team were given an introduction by Mr.Nigel about the DJ Set-Up. He asked us some basic questions just to insure that we was ready and prepared for his assignment. We spoke about what we was going to do and he explained to us how to set up the decks. One of the modern and most advanced turntables is the tech1200 but unfortunately due to the schools economic budget, we were supplied with a cheaper set of old school decks. We connected two wires from each turntable (left:CH1) and (right:CH2) into the main DJ mixer and then connected the outcome wire from the mixer into the amplifier. Two other outcome wires were then connected from the amplifier into the speakers. After the set-up was successfully working - we then discussed more about the differences from the school decks and the techno 1200. After that, we placed slip mats onto each deck enable for the record to keep stable and not slip off. When I saw that everything was secure, I placed a blank record on top of the slip mat up right where the label was facing. We were then taught how to drag and drop music on the virtual DJ base software displayed on the laptop which automatically played when the turntables were switched on. Mr.Nigel also told us that if music was not played through the virtual DJ software, then a vinyl or blank record was to be used.

[PS: A TRICK IS TO TAKE THE RUBBER BAND FROM THE BACK OF THE STYLUS TO WRAP IT ROUND THE ON/OFF BUTTON SO THAT IT DIDN'T ACCIDENTALLY GET TURNED OFF BY THE DJ].

He told us that before we actually started working on our DJ skills we had to do one last thing. On the virtual DJ software we had to select a tab called "set-up", on the screen appeared a green scale with a circle in the middle. He taught us how to adjust the circle through the settings to make sure that the circle was as round as it could be and that the percentage displayed in the corner of the screen was *approximately 100%.

Step 3: Mr.Nigel demonstrated for us a few DJ basics and then left us to fiddle around with the bass and volume settings for while. After about 10 minutes Mr.Nigel thoroughly spoke to us about another technique called "scratching". After he demonstrated himself, we all had to try for ourselves. It seemed complicated at first, but after 5 minutes I started to get the hang of it. I learnt that it was wrong to scratch the disk on the outskirts of the disks (the further/outer lines). It is only suitable to scratch the centre of the record to cause less damage. There has to be s slip mat between the desks and the record at all times. The cartridge which holds the stylus (needle) had to be held by a tiny handle places just next to it at all times and must not be picked up by the head. The needle is so fragile, it can break very easily.

Step 4: Mr.Nigel told us to select two songs for the Left and Right turn tables from "electro house" and "house" as they were the only two folders that included songs that could mix well together. We all put in our headphones but kept one ear open enable to listen to Nigel's instructions. He taught us how to use the Mixer to fade one song into the other and overall mix them - this can also be called blending. He also told us about the techniques of bars and beats. I learnt that one bar = 4 beats. An additional aspect of DJ-ing that I learnt was how to make two songs match the same tempo. The trick is that if one song isn't in time and beat as the other - you simply slide the record back to the beginning, count four whilst slightly sliding the record back and let go without force. This is called "Beat Matching".

Lastly each of us were observed separately on Mr.Nigel's DJ Decks to test how much knowledge and technique we learnt. He said that I was excellent and fast learner. I think I worked extremely hard this lesson and tried the best to my ability. In preparation for next time, I plan read over the booklet to memorise all the keywords and names of the equipment to their meanings. Today was a great day to finish up Diploma Friday.

June 11 - July 24 Overall Progress

We spent this time fitting everything together and sorting out bits and pieces that didn't quite fall into place. Everything was exceptionally well and I believe as an individual I tried very hard to maintain my best this year and I am proud of myself. Early June the #DiplomaTeam had to help the editor of our horror film sort out slots and cutting/trimming timings within the footage. This took a long time and by the end of the day we still wasn't completely finished but I spent the most time helping Mr.Johnny mark down slots and all the different separate period of timings within the footage that needed to be trimmed and cut. 

We spent some time during the end of july providing some evaluation sheets. By the end of the year everything seemed sweet it was a bit of a struggle but I guess we accomplished and achieved :)

Summer Arts Guide Leaflet!

Well.. Well.. Well.. This is the exciting bit! Today we were set a task to create a full detailed and descriptive Arts Guide based for Summer Events. In the guide we were aware that it had to include 4 categories : Dance, Drama, Music, Media and Art was optional. We were allowed to choose our own target audience set for the leaflet. We were advised that it should be colourful and interesting - packed with loads of up to date events and activities happening based in London.  I am very excited about this but I worry that I may not get it finished in time and I feel stressed about the amount of information we have to analyse but its not impossible and it can be accomplished. On the other hand I feel that I am able to make it look professional which is my advantage to this task. By the end of the lesson we managed to fill out our Plan Sheets and we also watch our horror film which was terrific and horrifying. This year the diploma team have really done well.

Boxed Note Cards

Today we made our boxed noted cards which we had been looking forward to making. We spent the whole friday doing the process of this! First of all we spent our first two lesson selecting our best images.(*minimum of 5 and limit of 10). We had to choose photo's of a certain theme which was of our choice such as: seasons, holidays, birthday, nature cards and many more. Although most of us choose the seasons theme but some of the diploma team chose the birthday theme because they might have thought it could be something different to do. The next put our selected images  into a 'artifact folder' inside our 'creative and media'  folder. We then used 'Micrsoft Office Publisher' to equal all of the images in size in a post card design set up sheet.

We then printed the images out on a A4 sheet of glossy paper which came out 4-by-4. We printed each image at least 4 times so that the post card could be given out to more than one person. We cut them out and task 1 was complete!

Now for task 2..
We prepared to create our box for the set of note cards. But at first we created a plan/practise paper just incase we made any mistakes on the real one. After we got the technique we then staretd oto created the real one, we choose colours and I finished mine first I was happy with it. We also had to create a little info sheet on either the photographer or the box note cards just to explain what it is about or the theme. I chose to do a info box about myself but I did not finish it off.

Overall today was a great lesson :)

DIPLOMA FRIDAY - ANALYSING

Due to some missing footage of scenes, we spent our last 3 lessons spending time filming for replacement of the corrupted footage. Continuity was a problem for this because I was not prepared, but I tried my best to carry out improvisation. I as an indiviual only was included in one scene which was the scene where Kortney and Kimberly found out from Tammie that Dawn was dead. Because I had a different hairstyle I had my back to the camera and tilted around only slightly so it was not blaiten.

I also spent some time as the camera person because I needed some more experience to get my overall grade.

Today was alright but stressful because I was not prepared for next time I will ask before hand what is expected to happen on the diploma friday. :]

DIPLOMA FRIDAY - ANALYSING HORROR FILMS

Today we basically spent most of today analysing horror films and writing down on a feedback sheet all the different shots, sound affects, lighting and editing technique e.g cross cutting, pan, wide shot, extreme wide shot, slashing noise ect. We also spent some time finishing off our blogs and our dance research notes and I started on my music venaue research as well. Overall today was handy.

Diploma Friday - 18th Of March

Unfortunately I missed out today's lesson because I was Ill, but from second hand information I was told that our planned Easter Pictures were taken in the park and were then put on to the school's harddrive for them to edit. I suppose seeing as I was absent I have to catch up next friday - which has to be confirmed from miss.williams.

DIPLOMA FRIDAY - 11TH OF MARCH

Today I spent the whole of lesson 1 and some of lesson 2 typing up my dance evolution in word processor and I corrected and spell checked it. I also showed Miss.Shrubb the rest of my work which was currently in my folder. She approved of everything. I started catching up with some blogging and started to neat up some previous published blogs.

For the rest of lesson 2 I started the beginning of Level 2 Unit 1 Scene Research and I offically finished it off in lesson 3. In this task we had to research Dance Classes that are being currently offered for Lambeth. I decided to research for the age group of 8+. I found some unexpected results e.g Street Dancing in Lilian Baylis Old Building and the Brixton Art House etc.

I also had to research careers and jobs that are have been introduced to people that are interested in Dance. There were a various of overall results. I discovered that there were more then 30 different jobs/careers that involve dance that exist.

But, for lesson 4 and 5 - me and the Diploma Team spent these two hours with Miss.Williams dicussing about what we are going to be doing the next couple of lessons with her. Its actually quite exciting! We are going to be doing some photography decated for Easter. This includes working with props such as rabbits,eggs and chocolate. We had to research Easter Photography and aspects that are involved with it. We also had to do another research task on Easter Shots and Box Note Cards and how they are made.

I learnt that Box Note Cards are all different and smiliar e.g a Box Of Note Cards are given the theme of flowers - so each note/post card is given a different flower.

So our overall plan is.. to capture some lovely photography photo's based on easter. Edit them in photoshop, get them printed and produce a Box of Note Cards :)

Today was good (Y)

HELPFUL HANDY DAY - 4TH OF MARCH

Today the diploma team helped out year 11 eleven diploma student with their publicity and advertisement for their festival on... Tuesday 8th and 9th of March. We done this in many ways:

• We laminated posters after they been cut by a guillotine.
• We cut flyers from a A4 paper size and then folded them.

This was very useful for our experience because our goal was to understand some kind of perspective for what we will be expected to do and perform for next years festival - which will officially be set up by our current year 10 diploma team. Miss. Williams also mentioned how we may be visiting the festival next week flexible learning day or the tuesday just before that if possible.

Today was a nice break from all the editing.

DIPLOMA FRIDAY **LAST DAY OF TERM - EDITING*

There was a unexpected twist today!  Although we were meant to be doing our editing all day, we actually ended up finishing some more running scenes and talking scenes. This was a disadvantage towards our film, because unfortunately there was a error in continuity - for me. I was told last week that I did not have to participate in finishing the scenes with Aaliyah and Demi today. But because the filming had to get finished off we had to improvise and Frank (editing and video specialist/director) used a technique where he would film at a angle from my point of view so that the audience could not really see the differences in my hair and clothes.


After finishing the last minute scenes, I had some experience with filming and directing enable for me to pass this course. I enjoyed mostly spending time writing down time slots and good and bad scenes with Fabio (film editor), I finally got to see the slips and improvements in our film clips.  It was interesting and I felt on-the-roll as I was writing it all down. Today we got a lot done, hopefully by the next two weeks (the next Diploma Friday) we should be on to finally starting to edit the film.


:)

Diploma Friday - ** FINISHING OF FILMING**

Today went quite well, we got a lot more filming done than we did last week Friday. We spent quite some time on the classroom scene, we rehearsed through it a lot of time possibly 20 times. Demi and Shenell were very expressive with their characters personalitys. My character Kimberley was very isolated to herself, but she seemed to come out of her shell when the two bullies (Tammie and Dawn) were bullying the nerd who told the myth (Kortney). The funny thing about my Kimberley was that she was a bully but she liked to bully the violent bullies by playing mind games with them. So its almost as if she bullies those who bullies other people. She loves weird things and strange stories, she thinks so deeply that it actually is disturbing. She is highly intelligent.

There is a part in the classroom scene when she and the other two bullies start insulting the teacher. Dawn and Tammie made comments such as "Are you eyebrows tattooed?", "Miss your not ugly but your not very pretty either". Whilst my weird individual of a character made comments such as, "My instincts tell me that I don't like you" and " You remind me of my friend, Dobby from harry potter".

This is proof that Kimberleys personality is in comparison with Tulip from the book "Tulips Touch" personality. But probably not as advanced and sickening. 

I am so proud of myself! *Hugs*, because I seriously do believe that I put in the work for this scene. And I used my enthusiastic drama skills to my fullest ability and I stayed fully in character through out the whole scene.

The hired actor that Don had employed for our film was really good and she looked highly sophisticated and suited to her role. 

We brought professional lights in for the classroom scene which was a good Pro for our scene. We used props such as newspapers for when the bullies started to trash the classroom when the teacher left, books, table and chairs.

Thankfully there were no Cons for this scene.

The next scene that Me and Aaliyah (Kimberley and Courtney) acted out was the scene where they both approached the cupboard. I had to seem very shocked for this scene as Tammie and Dawn jumped out at us and scared us. This scene was short. 

Aaliyah and Shenell completed their other scenes aswell. The props that very used for the scenes were useful and best suited for the scenes. 

We did not do any more running scenes today as there was not enough time. But Aaliyah and Demi have to finish their running scenes next Friday. *Phew*! This is a alternative for me because finally I can stop the continuity, which was started to get a bit annoying, because I love my fashion ;)

At the end of the day we then were rushed off to Miss.Coopers office (HEADTEACHER) so that we could record our Ring-a-ring-a-roses soundtrack. This turned out great, we included a cheeky laugh at the end.

Overall today went well and I really do hope that our film comes out in high definition and is successful. Something to look forward to - Editing next week Friday

CLEAN UP TIME!

Today was not a big deal, we practically just spend our lesson with Miss. Hassler tiding up the old maths cupboard in preparation for filming on friday. We managed to get the job done and surprisingly it did not take long! Matter of fact we even had time to head back to the music department and finishing off some blogging.

Just a QUICK reminder.. this is what the Maths Cupboard looks like:

x

Our First Recording Session - FINALLY!

After 3 lessons of preparing we finally got to start recording some of our scenes. Due to a delay of some students latenesses we started with something different. Me and Shenell did not come in uniform so we improvised with what was given: A clean P.E top and Red Ties. Although I was not in full uniform, I wore boy jeans and trainers which went with my "Emo Look" as if I was rebel who did not care what the teachers thought, I had the attitude that I can do what I want and no-one can has an approval of it because I believe that my soul is protected. Although my character is played as an Emo, I socialize a lot to people whom myths and stories I am interesting in. As I am always curious to find out new things!


Naomi changed my appearance by putting makeup on my face with a emo effect and she did my hair in a freaky hairstyle. I had pink strikes in which looked cool! But Miss.Williams told me this was not allowed which spoiled the look *sigh*. But at least I managed to cover it up with a headscarf and I still looked great for my role.


We wrote up in word everything we was wearing and what our facial appearance looked like, we then had our pictures taken and attached it to the document, had it printed off and sent it to Don.


* attach photo*


Shyanne and Naomi went off to look for certain locations that we were using, Shenell went off with them. Which left me and Aaliyah waiting to get the confirmation which room we would be rehearsing the scene in and recording. In the end we decided to use the SLC room. 


Which just for a recap is this room:


  

In this scene, Demi and Shenell aka Tammy And Dawn thought they could go off and run about the school. They came to discover that the teachers staff room was empty and open (strangely), normally it is looked. This would make the audience curious, but the two bullying students were far too stuck up to think of consequences right now. Dawn and Tammy start to peep their noses into other people's businesses by looking through other people's documents and files. Shenell and Demi were very good with improvising lines.. such as:


"Guess what I just found?" said Tammy with a satisfied look on her face.


"What!", Dawn said looking suprised.


"I just found a teachers bag! I wonder what's in it?".


Just by reading these three lines we can tell that Tammy and Dawn are trouble makers. Don made them repeat through the scene many times until it was perfect. I think that Demi seemed very experienced with acting, she played her character very well and had no disturbances. A actress should never get her social life and her acting life mixed up and Demi was very good at separating them when it came to acting on set. I think Don made the right decision when he let  Demi down with the mini audition that Demi and Aaliyah auditioned for when they both wanted to play the main character. Shenell also is very enthusiastic!


Don made Naomi in charge of recording this scene at all different angels, whilst he made Shyanne the director and I observed whilst Aaliyah took photo's.


Wow! That was 2 lessons finished already.. 


After break, we then focused on our running scenes. This was Me, Aaliyah and Demi's chance to put on great facial expressions, because for me there was no verbal acting today, we used the Gym, Hall and turning of the corridor near the toilets as the locations for the scene when we run about the school in scare when Dawn is missing. This was very tiring because we had to run in perfect angles enable for it to look realistic, which meant we had to repeat the scene over and over again. I used the technique that they commonly use in films which is looking back whilst running to see what is behind you with a breath-taking look on my face.


Aaliyah (Courtney) was holding on to my arm tight, which is also what they do in a lot of films, the slowest characters always get dragged.


After 2nd break, Courtney and Tammy aka Aaliyah and Demi focused on their together scene. We used Dead End as the location for this. In this scene after Dawn, Kimerley And Courtney turn the corner. Kimberley aka (me) is the 2nd witness to go missing. This means I was eliminated out of the film :( But I had some time to kick back and relax :D.


Aaliyah was very expressive for this scene, as Tammy and Courtney run down the stairs as fast as lightening they hit a dead end and start pushing and banging on the locked out as hard as they can. But the door will not budge open, only then do they both notice that Kimberly has gone missing.


They use lines such as:


" Oh my gosh! It wont open" said Tammy in a crying voice.


"Hold on!" *There was a long pause. "Where's Kimberly?" said Courtney.


"Oh No!" says Tammy as she looks back fast.


Both Tammy and Courtney reverse back up the stairs and run as fast as they can!


We can tell just from these lines that they were both scared at most out of there lifes now, this is when tension starts to build up even faster! What will happen next?


Today was a good day overall, next time im going to ware less clothing underneath and a easy-to-carry-about side bag, because I was carrying a heavy bag which made me very sweaty and tired quickly.

A TRIP OUT TO BAHLAM WITH DON AND THE CAMERA CREW.. ;)

Well well well.. A outing finally with Miss.Williams! :)


Today went great, first of all in the morning we all met up in the back room in the library and we were given a brief about what we were expected to see and what was to happen. Don was creating his own mini-episodes of a soap show which will potentially be a weakly downloaded clip and hopefully he could take this onwards to maybe even an official scheduled programme on television. After being explained, we travelled up to Bahlam by 2 separate cabs, on the way we saw all these beautiful views and venues around Bahlam and came across the common station. It was a relaxing ride up there, although when we got out of the cabs. It was freezing cold! 


We headed first towards the outside of a clothes shop next to "GC Kitchen" which was where the first shooting took place. At first we put all of our luggage down and discussed who shall be assisted by the different sections of staff.. after coming to a conclusion who we would all work with. I ended up working with the make up specialist Joanna Sim but we all called her Jo.


This is her professional work card:

Here are some of the examples of work that she has created previously:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Leer And His Daughters

This is what has been described for the purpose of her artistic work in her own works:

Feb 2010
This play was an adaptation of King Lear, set in the 1960's. I worked alongside other CBMA students doing 1960's make-up and hairstyles. It was performed at The Rosemary Branch Theatre, in north London.

         

• The affects that she has included in this women's face is simply amazing, first of all you can tell that the concealer she has used really stuns out the women's face and the small amount of blusher that was used on her cheek was a excellent affect because she has such high cheek bones it has a good reflect. 

• The red lipstick also blends in with the purple dress and blue eye-shadow because they are invert colours.

• I love the way she has done the eye-shadow because its an unusual look and the photography used looks professional, not a lot of people would think of doing that technique and both eyes look identical.

WOW! From this photo I can already tell that Joanna is quite experienced with working with Horror Film actors and their makeup. The storyline for this photo was of a young girl who committed suicide and as her parents were in struggle to find her, it was too late. She had killed herself and as you can see this photo is really affective and we can empathise the emotions that were going through the girls head, she must have felt alone and upset, or even heartbroken. This was a short film called One Last Note by Epping Forest Fleet.

• The makeup affect she has used makes the character look dull and deadly and her hair looks very warn out and dirty, she looks almost dead but as in she was born with no blood in her body. Her head looks like it could have the texture of rock. 

• Her lips blend in with her skin which is not good.

• Her face looks gritty and dirty, she also looks slightly bruised.

I enjoyed researching her work.. So as I was saying!

After meeting our working partners, we then were told to sit back and watch what was happening in the first scene, we were told to take some photos as well. 

• In this photo of scene 1 a women who is out shopping in Bahlam stops beside a shop window and slowly drops her bag and starts to gaze into the window and 'checks herself out'. She seems almost amazed with her new look . As if she had just came back from the hairdressers and had purchased a new cut!

•  Don the director kept cutting the scenes and many acts had to be done over and over again until she got it perfect. After the clip at that angle was perfect, he would then move it on to the next angle. He done this at least four times.. with the: close up, side view, long shot and ext. 

In this picture we can see Shenell in the same scene that the actress before was in.. that's because Shenell's job was to improvise and be a stand by for the lady. The camera crew wanted to use Shenell almost as a prop to see if the positioning for the scene was good.

After about an hour we headed off to our next location for scene 2..

Fortunately this scene was inside a posh pub which was very warm!

When we got inside we all headed off to our separate working spaces.. As I expected I had to watch as Joanna aka Jo as she created her master piece with her patients face. Although I did not get to actually put make up on someones face, I did observe the situation and I learnt a few tips on how to do a smokey effect with eye shadow. And I also learnt that even males(actors) get their make up done not just females (actresses).

After the actors and actresses were all dolled up, they then set up for scene 2.

This is a image of one of the heads of the film cast crew giving instructions to one of the staff telling them to adjust something in the scenery area used to produce the clip: 

This is a photo of one of the film crew showing us how they use a DVCM microphone enable to project the actors (in terms of both sex) voices. The lighting in the scene is bright enough to blatantly see that it is meant for a day line scenery.

    

This photo shows how the actor looks frustrated and angry with the actress as tension is building up. They have also positioned the microphone closer to the both of them, because what the actor was about to say was important and a highlight of the scene. 

This photo is VERY important - tit shows a various of activity happening. The main film recorder who is the director in terms of actually rolling the film who is in the black top looks as if he is focusing on something near the wall.  Whilst Don is the overall director is exploring it with him, they are setting up and everyone is getting ready. The script writer in the pink shirt seems to be interested as well, but the man with the long hair in the greenish top is more worried about getting lightening and sound to be in good condition for the next scene.

So can you see how everyone is connected? And trying to do their best as a team to make this mini-film happen?!

This last scene .. Scene 3 was intense.

Don used a technique with the position and height differences with them both to show how tall the actress looks sitting down as if to show how in power she is. She is blackmailing the actor with a tape proofing that he has been cheating on his fiancee (pronounce fi-onse-say). His attitude seems as if he is trying to put on an intimidating act, but he knows that he is desperate to get that footage. He even offers her money, but she seems to be more interest in playing mind games with in. She seems logically intelligent and has a cheeky attitude. Kind of like the role of Janine Butcher from "EastEnders" when she blackmails Ian Bill.

After this scene, we received email addresses from the people we worked with and set off back to school 

THIS IS A PHOTO OF ME AND THE DIPLOMA CREW NEXT TO BAHLAM SUBWAY! 

Today was a great experience and I will never forget it :) !

Dance - MISS SHRUBB IS BACK!!

Words cannot describe how overwhelmed I am to have my regular dance teacher back. Ms.Shrubb was gone too long, I missed getting back into a regular routine of just having one teacher. *Phew* glad that hassle is over!


This lesson we spent the time to write out our Winter Evaluation sheet which we have to finish and put away in our examination folder. We had to answer questions such as?

• How has your presentation helped your overall created dance?
• How did you explore the theme of winter? How did this help you to create your dance?
• What movements did you use that is in the contemporary dance style?
• What aspects of the choreography/performance did you find difficult? What helped you to overcome these difficulties?

We had to answer all these questions and more.. on lined paper in which miss said we should write up on document and print out.

I made sure that my answers were full of detail and description. I included advantages and disadvantages, I also included the theory that enable for you to write and choreography a dance about winter. You must be able to understand it first, so I did some individual research at home about contemporary dance separately and how I could connect it with winter aspects to actually create a WINTER CONTEMPORARY DANCE PIECE. 

Overall, Today was a helpful lesson. :)

First Diploma Session - Director Don.

Today was actually quite interesting, I was introduced to our director that we will be working with for the next couple of weeks. Although, he was involved with a previous project which took place in June which involved the filming of a performance in the BFI project - which was a success. I feel as if I have accomplished and acknowledged a lot today. I learnt a lot of advanced physical work based on film, cast and lighting. First of all, I was shown how to put up a tripod and expand the three tripod legs. Which took me approx 5 minutes.




REGULAR UN-EXTENDED TRIPOD 






A Tripod as small as this could extend out to a tripod as tall as this..

Now can you tell the difference from an extended tripod to an un-extended one?








I also learnt what all of the technical names are for film casting whilst the camera was on role (filming) such as:

• Tilt: The camera lens are moved up or down whilst the horizontal axis is still constant.

• Zoom: The focus of the camera lens are changed, it can be tightened too make the view appear smaller or loosened to make view appear larger. Some camera's have different speeds than others! Beware!

• Pan: Moving the camera from one side to the other e.g from left to right, then right to left.

• Pedestal: Moving the camera up and down without changed the vertical/horizontal axis of the camera. Imagine as if the tripod is a body and the camera is the head, and you are just nodding the camera head up and down.

• Dolly: Stepping towards the target of the scene whilst keeping the zoom the same at all times.

• Truck: Similar to panning but rather than moving from one way to another, this hand-held technique most likely e.g trucks to the left and constantly follows the women down the road. 

It might seem like a lot but seriously its not that far to figure out. Although, all of the above are hand-held techniques. But to make any of the footage look  good the tripod and the camera must be screwed on properly and in a good maintainable stand. Don (Our Director) taught us how to use the controls on the 3.2 Mega Pixel camera.

Heres some of the other equipment we used

3.2 MEGA PIXEL CAMERA "16 ZOOM

• This camera is the highlight of our equipment - we use this enable to capture the footage of the film.
• Our camera was a typical 3.2 mega pixel, but 
• the molecules in the camera was highly clear.

RODE Directional Video Condenser Microphone (DVCM)

• This little handy tool is used to capture audio sound clearly without all the disturbances within the working space. Hence the reason why most films sound proffesional

Using this tool was actually quite interesting, because when the diploma team was testing it out. We chanted "bloody Mary" into the microphone and we attached it to the headphones and it sounded really spooky!

NORMAL SLR 3.2 MEGA PIXEL CAMERA

• This type of camera is specified to capture imagines and most likely does not have a sling fitted to it as it is hand-held most of the time but for some safety issues it may be necessary to attach it.

• We used this enable to capture images around the school of the diploma teams exploring places in which we could start filming in.

We came across places such as:

DEAD END OR NO WAY OUT SCENE

TRAPPED IN THE CUPBOARD SCENE

This spot in the maths room looks perfect for the scenes when the various of students are poisoned in the cupboards by the smell of roses and are surprised by the soundtrack to ring-a-ring-a-roses.

RUNNING SCENES 

This is a running shot and could be used for when a student is running away from danger and is in shock. This particular picture would also look good for a high angle shot.

STAFF ROOM SCENE

These two rooms would be really good for the staff room scene, especially with all of the draws and filing cabinets as the two rebel bullies could ramage through peoples files and look for thing to blackmail people and use their personal info to commit practical jokes on them.

OTHER LOCATIONS THAT COULD BE USED

Locations:

• Balcony outside the headteachers office
• SLC room (Staffroom)
• Detention room (RM 401/402)
• Maths storage room on top floor (*needs cleaning out)
• Corridors: Top science floor, Hall at bottom floor 
• House on off site/on site

We also rehearsed through our scenes and we decided that our horror film is going to be based on improvisational and not a script. Plus it will be more enthusiastic that way because lines and facial expressions will come without practise and it makes us look professional.

Here are the Characters: 

(*cast list)

Character name	Character traits	Year	Played by
Courtney White	Good Girl	2011	Aaliyah Bell
Tammy	Bad bully	2011	Deme Bekir
Dawn	Funny bully	2011	Shenell Poorman
Kimberley	Believer bully (emo)	2011	Jessica-Lily Ellis
Teacher	Ms Graham	2011	Actor
Teacher as child	Bella Graham	1991	Shyanne Watson
Cynthia Walters	Murder victim (unseen)	1971	-
Caroline Warren	ditto	1991	Naomi Mwakamowo

Because, I play a much more logical character, I like to play a lot of mind games. We rehearsed the first scene when Tammy (Deme) and Dawn(Shenell) are the two cheeky bullys. Whilst Kimberley (Me) and Courtney (Aaliyah) are just thinking that they are such immature idiotic attention seekers in detention. This scene went well and I think we got through a lot, although I found trying to find my characters overall personality difficult to create. But then again the character is 
what you make it! 

There was a bit of a hard decision deciding who should take the place as the main character, Courtney (the nerd). They both had to improvise for a mini-audience as to how Courtneys reactions would be locked in a cupboard. I was amazed with Aaliyah's acting skills, she just blew me away with her facial expressions and tone of voice. With the standard of her audition, personally I would have believed that; that was practised before. Because, it was that enthusiastic and great. She is very advanced when it comes to drama, she did not even hesitate to laugh with is quite hard to do with the maturity levels of our generation age group.


Demi's mini audition went well aswell, she was very enthusiastic, but she needs practise with repetitive lines. She kept saying "Oh my gosh!" and "Oh my god!" too many times, which looked unprofessional - that is probably why she did not get the part.


We also played a game where we would have to pass the bottle around and say the months of the year - This is 
practise for us to be able to let one person speak at a time.




Photo of the game:







Here is another photo of Me, Naomi and Demi testing with the camera and looking away for effect:

Today was great and I got a great experience

BYE! THNX 4 READING ;)