Equipment used

The equipment I'm going to use is:

• Video Camera Panasonic HDC-SD900

I used this camera because of the HD capacity so the quality of my final draft should be very good. it's also very easy to use.

A tripod to steady the camera and allow for smooth panning shots

Serif Movie Plus 5 for final editing. Premiere Elements wouldn't work without crashing so I used this. Again it was very easy to use and allowed me to export the final film in a variety of formats.

I used a class 10 SD card as it allowed  for better capture of the film. A class 4 card hasn't got the speed of recording a class 10 has.

Finally I used my Dell laptop at home when editing and updating the blog.

Music

There will be some scenes in the video where there will be dramatic music. I have chosen some songs to see if they will work with the scene:

both these tracks sounded fine but as they are both copyrighted I had to look elsewhere for them.

So I downloaded the music and opening clip from Videoblocks.com as we had access to it. This is subscription service where you can download and use the clips and sounds for any purpose.

Script/sound effects

My video will have no dialogue.


There will be a few sound effects:

• Cleo screaming when she gets attacked
• Richard hissing in the end scene
• heavy breathing
• 'whooshing' sound
• heavy running footsteps

These were acquired from Soundbible.com or created by recording them on the video camera.

Actors/Actresses

When casting for a video or short film it is vital to get the right actors to play the part otherwise the viewers will not believe in the character portrayed by the actor. Timothy Dalton as Bond was just wrong and he was quickly replaced by Pierce Brosnan.

So I looked at 3 potential candidates for my short film.


I have chosen Cleo to play the human girl in the video.
I chose Cleo because she is an amazing actress and she offered to play the part. She also got Grade B in GCSE Drama so she was my first choice.

I have chosen Richard to play the vampire guy in the video.
I chose Richard because he is an amazing actor and he is pale which is good for a vampire. Richard also did GCSE Drama.

My 2nd choice for the vampire was George. George is an amazing actor too having done GCSE Drama.
The reason I didn't choose him was because he is too tanned and he hair isn't the right colour & he doesn't fit the character.

Props

I didn't need much in the way of props for this film. The actors supplied their own clothes and outfits. I supplied the list below. These are the props I am going to use for my video:

• fake blood (sachets)
• fake blood capsules
• white face paint (snazaroo)
• blonde wig

Location

For the location of my video I chose the film it in the woods at school as it gives the film a spooky affect.

 

I did look at another location within the school grounds but it felt far too close to the school buildings and didn't have the same feeling as the woods had.

 

 

review on Video Feedback

After shooting my Preliminary Exercise I then decided to do a survey on Surveymonkey.com
I got 6 responses - here is what I got from the results:






























For my main video I will be shooting in a different location so hopefully the lighting will be ok.
I will be editing it much better as there is now Movie Maker and editing software on the school computers!