More Filming

These are some photos of when were were testing out shots for our "real world" scenes. We did this on 2 seperate days because we needed the extra time to plan out shots and get used to a new camera. We were useless with it.

 Deon testing some close ups of the shoot. We had a lot of trouble getting the camera exposure right.

 The background noise. we were also there to make it look like there was a class going on even though everyone had gone home for the day.

 Deon taking time out of his busy schedule to check his phone.

Another one of our amazing make shift contraptions for wheeling the camera around. this was so we could get a high shot of the class. This was from our second day of filming so more of the class were in and it helped us to create a more convincing atmosphere.

Our New Ideas

We wanted to adapt the poem to make it more of a story and to give it more of a narrative. We also wanted to modernise it slightly for our project.

-We removed the Curds and Whey
-The spider is now a person
-To run away from the spider "Miss Muffet" escapes into her own mind but is drawn back and then tries to physically run away
-Miss Muffet now attends University

For her fantasy world we wanted to take influence from Tim Burton's style, namely from his version of Alice in Wonderland. We liked his take on the story and the style he used for Wonderland.

We liked the unusual colours and the creepy style scenery. This is the kind of effect we would like to get for our fantasy worlds.

We also thought to emphasise the nursery rhyme theme, we thought to perhaps put in hints from other nursery rhymes, like how we got Oly to wear red in our real world shoots as a hint towards "Little Red Riding Hood". We were also thinking about using a certain music score which is a different version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" which was used in the game "Dead Space".

Green Screen

These are some photos I took whilst we were shooting our fantasy world scenes for our film.

Oly pulling a face whilst we were sorting out the camera for filming :P

Oly sometimes forgot that we were filming....in fact she forgot a lot.

Sarah then waving at the others, whist Gareth fiddles with the camera......we were actually useless with it.

Our make shift camera dolly. Sarah on a wheelie chair that me and Ashley stole from the university. Ashley was the camera zoom. It was fun doing these scenes because the kept crashing into Oly and making her laugh during an important scene.

Actress and the crew :P We had a lot of fun filming and enjoyed ourselves, it was a shame we only got one day in the studio :(

Another angle of our amazing new invention made from a camera, tripod, two people and a wheelie chair.

One of the low shots we took, we tried with Sarah lying on the floor but in the end we put it on the tripod. I also had to give Oly my shoes as hers were the same colour as the floor and would have messed up our CG. I got very cold feet for about half an hour. The things I do for work.

We were on a very tight schedule when it came to our filming, we got our days mixed up and had only one day to film in the TV studio, so we were all quite stressed because we wanted to get all our filming done and not have to worry about it, plus we wanted to be better scheduled than when we worked on our last project where time management wasn't our strong point.

Wardrobe!!!

 This was the dressed we used for our fantasy scenes, out of all the choices we had my dress was chosen as it was the most appropriate for what we were going for in our scenes. Unfortunately my dress didn't fit Oly and wouldn't zip up completely at the back, so we covered that up with a white jacket that Sarah provided.

I also got the awesome job of holding the hideously expensive camera tape. My other job was to help Oly change jackets for our transition shot, I was useless at it and I was surprised I didn't get fired and I missed my mark about three times.

Final Idea

Once the team had gone through some ideas we settled on Oly's idea of using the nursery rhyme "Little Miss Muffet"

I was a little upset we weren't going to use my idea but I liked Olys idea, it was different and interesting. The poem had structure and a story to it so we just had to build upon the idea

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet

Eating her curds and whey,

Along came a spider,

Who sat down beside her

And frightened Miss Muffet away

Origins and history of the Nursery Rhyme (from Google):

Little Miss Muffet was a small girl whose first name was Patience. Her father, Dr. Muffet, was an entomologist (someone who studies insects). Whilst eating her breakfast one day she was frightened by one of his spiders and ran away! This particular Nursery Rhyme reputedly dates back to the late 16th century! Unlikely story!

Here is another version of the origin of the poem (from Wikipedia):

The rhyme first appeared in print in 1805, in a book titled Songs for the Nursery. Like many such rhymes, its origins are unclear. Some claim it was written by Dr. Thomas Muffet (d.1604), a sixteenth-century English entomologist, for his stepdaughters; others claim it refers to Mary, Queen of Scots (1543–87), who was said to have been frightened by religious reformer John Knox (1510–72). The former explanation is speculative and the latter is doubted by most literary scholars, who note that stories linking folk tales or songs to political events are often urban legends

Initial Ideas

When we were still deciding on our initial ideas I originally decided on perhaps a Scott Pilgrim theme. I had recently watched the film " Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" and I loved how it was filmed and the special effects.

I loved how the film had scenes from the comic book and had comic book aspects.



I didn't necessarily want to do a fight scene but this clip I found kinda has all the aspects of the film that I liked. I love how over the top it is and the "KAPOW" and stuff that makes it comic book style.

Some of the team liked my idea but it wasn't liked by all members, it had potential but it would have taken us a while to finalise an idea as the "Scott Pilgrim" theme wasn't a stable enough starting point from my teams eyes.

We also thought about perhaps using a cel shaded theme for our work. We liked the idea and took influence from A Scanner Darkly and Sin City.

A Scanner Darkly


We liked the use of cell shading in this. To create this effect they Rotoscoped live action footage. We could have done this but its very very time consuming, and with such a short time frame with which to produce our work we probably wouldn't have enough time to produce a fully Rotoscoped piece of work.

Sin City


We liked the film noir style of Sin City, we also liked how it was comic book themed liked Scott Pilgrim albeit a lot darker.

New Project - Brief

The structure of this brief will be in three main sections.

· Film production and editing techniques
· 3D compositing techniques
· Formatting requirements of Broadcast output

Through a series of lectures and workshops you will be introduced to the theoretical and practical interrelation of film production, editing, post production and visual effects;

In the first few weeks you will be encouraged to form groups and assemble from live action footage a short piece designed to be integrated with 3D elements. You will be introduced to essential digital effects techniques and group working.

You are also required to produce an individual piece of work incorporating live action and 3d animation (to be agreed individually with your tutor).

In the middle section of the unit you will be introduced to the skills and techniques necessary to successfully integrate 3D content.

The last few weeks of the project will concentrate on developing your editing techniques as well as utilizing the effects available to you on yourcompositing software. You will also be introduced to industry workflow practices such as filing conventions and formatting requirements for broadcast content.

Go Teeeeam!

Go Team Alpha Super Awesome Cool Dynamite Wolf Squadron!

Deon Litchmore
Dominique Koomoshan
Gerome Oldfield
Olivia Walters
Sarah Strickland
Ashley Umanee
and Me :P

New project, same group plus one :P