Ghost face makes a return and being thrown in at the deep end!

Most people will instantly recognise ghost face (aka father death) from the Scream movies. And with the recent release of Scream 4 bringing him back to our screens I'm curious to hear your opinions on them.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Craig (some of you will recognise him from

some pictures I posted back in February) approached me and asked if I'd like to help him make a tribute film. Now I haven't seen any of the scream films for ten years, and what

better excuse to buy yet more DVDs than 'research'? (Yes, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) So I found the trilogy on eBay and waited with bated breath to see if I had outbid the other person. I always hate bidding for things, but the buy it now prices were a little more than I wanted to spend. Luckily I won them, and in the meantime Craig and I sat down to write up a script.

The basic story is that Roman Bridger is looking for his mother Maureen Prescott (previously known as Rene Reynolds). After a failed visit to social services, he breaks in and finds her details and heads over to her home. If you've seen the third film then you will know what happens next. That and I don't want to give too much information away. Craig is quite the perfectionist and has a very clear vision for how he wants this film to look, I am happy to be able to work with him on a different level. We're talking in

depth about props at this stage and looking into a replica knife, and sugar glass. He has already ordered the costume from America, it's being custom made and of course he'll be playing the part of the killer himself. Something I think he'll pull off well. I very much look forward to being part of the filming and seeing the final outcome.

Continuing along the theme of films, we have finished the short film we've spent around six weeks editing. It has been a huge learning curve and without the help of Simon, and the two Daves we'd have probably pulled out hair out by now! Mind you, I'm sure they're sick of the sight of us!! I've added a couple of stills from the film, firstly the logo I designed.

We chose the name 4sight for out group. It works on a few fairly obvious levels and the 'bleeding cowboy' font works well for the film! You will see it at the end where it is inverted. The second is a still from the credits that Sue made. Using a series of photographs taken around the caravan park where we shot part of the film, she turned them all sepia. Photographs of us appear in the titles too. Showing any other stills from the film will give it away too much.

Again, watch this space for a link.

Once again staying with the running theme of film, we've been having lectures with Dave Robinson for a few weeks now. They've been some of the most interesting and useful lectures we've had since arriving I think, covering the numerous buttons and settings of the camera, and how they come into play when filming. This week we had two one-hour sessions, the fir

st was on sound, how there are three main components, music, sound effects and dialogue and how these can change a film's mood or set a scene. We were shown a fifteen second silent clip of The Birds and asked to give it sound using any means at our disposal. We were split off into two groups, ours used laptops, a narration and Foley style sound effects to give ours life while the other group chose a mainly silent approach which although comedic, also set a somewhat creepy feel. Well that was until they played Achmed the dead terrorist at the end!

Later that day we had our second session, it has recently come to my attention that Dave is rather fond of springing things on people unexpectedly. 'Sixty seconds in sixty minutes' was the name of the game, a sixty second short film in an hour, we were split up into groups we'd never worked with before and asked to come up with any idea we wanted for our short film. Dan, Chris, Alex and I sat around f

or ages trying to come up with something, we were really stuck. The idea of a treasure hunt was suggested and suddenly we flew into action!

Some of the stipulations were that we couldn't use After Effects (much to the distaste of the level fives), sound effects were ok, but no visual effects. We also had to film the footage on our mobile phones. Just to be sure we wouldn't cheat Dave took all the footage from the different groups and put it on his laptop. We're to get together over the next couple of weeks and edit the footage as a group before we have a showing. It was actually quite a lot of fun and it was great to be able to work with different people :) Although this picture may not mean anything to anyone (who wasn't in our group) it was the start and will be the end of our picture. Once again, watch this space for the video. It's hardly going to be a blockbuster but it was a hoot to make!