Sunday 10 February 2013

Blog Feedback - Part 2

Once again, I received feedback on my blog, to see how I am doing and how far I have reached in the whole process. It was marked, and then I received verbal feedback.

One of the points on improvement where the fact that I need to add some more images to accompany my text, wherever necessary. Due to this point, I have viewed my posts and seen where I can add images, and done so accordingly. Also, it was noted that sometimes my explanations and posts where a bit on the short side, and required a better quality of writing. I then proceeded to add more explanations on my posts, and tried to write more where I could, but not trying to make it appear longer where it does not need to be.

Friday 8 February 2013

Blog Feedback - Part 1

This is feedback from my teacher about my blog.


Changes I made

The main issue occurred was that my blog posts didn't flow in a reasonably suitable order. The posts were all cluttered up, due to posting them each at different times. I learnt how to change the date and time, and have now arranged them so all the journal posts flow in order. For example, all the pitch posts now go together and so on with the other posts. This had to be changed to make it easier to read and easier to find. Also, I had to change all the names of my lesson posts to journal, due to them sounding more like the journal entries.. I changed the post titles on each of the lesson posts by editing it.



Friday 25 January 2013

Finishing Touches

After receiving our feedback during the screening of our title sequence, we then had to review the feedback and see how we could address the problems that occurred. 

We firstly had to go back and make the clips shorter, due to people stating that some went on for too long - which we agreed with. The clips that mainly went on for too long were the walking scenes, so we trimmed off one or two seconds of some of the walking scenes. We noticed that it still felt a bit too long, so made the decision to remove clips that we felt unnecessary, particularly the running scenes, but still kept some in. This reduced our title sequence to run under two minutes.

We then was told that we had too many fades/dissolve effects, too the point where it became a bit silly. So, we looked over the clip too see where we could remove dissolves and replace them with cuts. This gave our title sequence a better pacing. We also had the issue of pacing, where the teacher pointed out that the pacing becomes slow as the last character is revealed. To make it faster in pace, we cut the clip into little sections to make it appear as if the killer has jumped instead of walking straight.

With these changes, we improved our title sequence into the final version.

Thursday 24 January 2013

Screening Feedback

This is the feedback we received when we screened our title sequence to the class, which what we need to improve and what went well to help us create our final version:















Wednesday 23 January 2013

Screening

We screened our first draft of our title sequence to the entire class. The reasoning for doing this is because we wanted to receive feedback from other people, and the fact that we have been editing the clip for so long, it is noted that we may not notice the mistakes, whereas other people could easily point them out.

Once we screened our clip, the class were asked to fill out a feedback form, containing various questions for them to answer. When they had filled that out, they were asked to give verbal feedback on positive and negative aspects of our clip.

As a whole, we received good feedback from the class, with some minor issues that can be solved relatively easily, such as the pace seemed to change at parts it should not, and that the titles at the end needed to be sorted out, which we knew already and minor editing like shortening some clips, and extending some others - which could all be done quickly.

Tuesday 22 January 2013

Weaponry Issues

As a group we discussed the possibility of using a real axe when shooting as we all thought it would look realistic and eery, however, taking an axe out into a public woods would probably cause some unwanted attention from the public and most certainly, the police. We then looked into other options, with the only option of buying a fake weapon. We found this on a website:

http://www.partytowers.co.uk/fake-weapons-guns-swords/plastic-axe-fake-weapon-fancy-dress-accessory.html

This is the only realistic looking axe we could find. The advantages were that it was a cheap price- £2.49 however, it still was not realistic enough to create that scare factor for our audience.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre Prop Chainsaw
http://struts.co.uk/party-fancy-dress-shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1222&ref=1

 We considered changing our weapon and looked into buying a fake chainsaw. This seemed more promising however we realised that we could not wait for delivery if we wanted to film the day we had planned.

As a result we came to the conclusion we would use a fake knife which would still work effectively on camera but would be much safer and easier to get to the woods and back. 

Monday 21 January 2013

Choice Of Music

Since we downloaded four different sound tracks for our title sequence, we realised that we could not use them all, and would have to decide which one we would want to use.. We played the tracks numerous of times, and found that we liked the sound track "Crime Against The Person" quite a lot, due to it starting off quietly and unexpectedly there is a loud "crash" sound which produces a "jump" reaction, which we hope will occur during screening of this. We liked the sense of uneasiness this created as we listened to this, and felt as though it made the rest of the sequence notably more intense, ad anticipated what other surprises are to come.

The only negative thing that occured with this song, is the fact that it did not last as long as our title sequence, and there was no way of stretching or making the song last longer without it sounding stupid. Due to us liking the crash so well, we decided to keep the beggining of the song, right up until the crash sound, and then decided to place only song to continue throughout our title sequence, called ''Abyss''.

Editing The Sequence: Part 3

Since not completing the editing process entirely, we had to go back and view what we had done, and see what changes we would have to make. To do this, we watched what we had edited to see if that is really how we want it and if we could improve this.

Before looking over what we had done, I continued to edit the video by myself and finished it. The whole first draft of editing was all edited by me with the assistance with Kate and Lucy.

Once we looked over a title sequence, we noticed that we had too many black gaps between each shot. We decided to remove the spacing between the clips, to get rid of the black gaps. Also, we noticed that the colour of the scenery seemed too warm and bright, so we went into colour correction to correct this issue and make it seem more dark and mysterious. Finally, we noticed that our clips did not have a lot of effects on them as we planned, so we tested out a different array of effects to see which best suit our clips. 

Sunday 20 January 2013

Editing The Sequence - Part 2

We made our logo title in Adobe After Effects - which was very time consuming - so we decided to not use this when making our other titles, and instead use the software already built into the edting software, Final Cut Pro. First, we selected the ''A'' symbol at the bottom right hand corner of the ''Viewer'' window. Then we went to ''Controls'' which allowed us to type in the text that we want to appear on the video, select the right colour and type font, then position it. Once we did that, all we had to do was drag it on top of the clip where we want the text to appear. This process was repeated for each title, with the obvious exception of the logo title.

This process was successful and much less time consuming, as this was all in our editing software, and we did not have to go through the long process that was with Adobe After Effects.. However we did come across some problems. The main problem was that we could not drag the title into any place we wanted, and could only have left, right and center. Although we followed this, and placed all the texts on the right, we didn't feel like we liked the way they appeared, and felt it looked too rushed and cluttered, and looked like credits rather than titles. Then we decided to place multiple titles on at once, which made it look even more of a mess, but we run out of space so we had to keep it like that for the time being.

Editing The Sequence: Part 1

Once we finished filming and made sure we had every possible shot we needed, we had to move onto editing. We decided it would be easier to place all the clips onto one user area (Lucy's) and all take turns in editing the clips so we all get a chance to contribute and play around with the clips. Once all of the clips were placed onto Lucy's user area so we could begin editing the clip with Final Cut Pro. 

When we placed the clips within Final Cut Pro, we all begun playing around with the effects, and decided that some of the effects work well with the clip, making our clip look better and adding to the mystery we are trying to create and some that didn't work so well, so they were removed and changed to others. Playing around with these effects, gave us a better idea of what we were trying to achieve with our title sequence and gave us more ideas in ways to make the clips we filmed appear better than they are with no effect.

We also encountered some lighting issues with our clips, as they appeared to be too warm looking, as they featured fiery oranges and warm browns. This wasn't too much of an issue, as there is a way to editing the look of the clips, thus making them appear to be darker. We made the oranges disappear and changed the colour to a deep blue, making it appear to be scarier and looking more like a horror genre title sequence. Also, the music was far too quiet in some shots, almost sounding like it wasn't even playing, so we again, had to change it by increasing the sound levels, making it play louder.


Saturday 19 January 2013

Logo Title


Before making our titles we decided to focus on the title of the film, as we felt this would be most important as we want to try and identify our genre through the logo and title. We tried out various effects, keeping the ones we like most, and uploaded them onto YouTube. Once on YouTube, we got other people to view them, and took a survey into which was their favorite - surveying our target audience. We short listed out titles into twelve, and here are they twelve we selected to survey people on:












Friday 18 January 2013

Creating The Titles

To create the titles, we decided to use Adobe After Effects due to being sort of familiar with After Effects, and looking into other After Effects videos being creating, we noticed they looked exceptionally professional and decided this software would be best for us.

This is how I made the title for 'Lionsgate Pictures Presents':







Firstly, I had to create a new project. I did this by going to 'File' then 'New' then 'New Project'. Once there, all I had to do with click on the button.










After that I had to place the video I was going to edit for the title, into After Effects. I did this by selecting 'Edit' at the top, then going to 'Import' and finally going to 'File'.














Once selecting 'File', it brought up a menu with the video clips I can use for the placing the titles onto. To select one, I had to click on the once I wanted, which was number two, then click 'Open'.














This then placed the clip into After Effects, and will now allow me to drag it into the editor and begin working on it.







This is what it looks like once it has been dragged into the editor.











And here is the video preview for the clip once it has been placed into the editor.













Now I had to add in the text to display the title 'Lionsgate Pictures Presents'. To do this, I had to go to the editor where the video had been placed, right click on the mouse, then click 'New' and then 'Text'.





















Once the video and text had been placed into the editor and positioned, I then moved onto adding the effect to the text to make it animated. To do this, there was a little menu next to the video that stated 'Effects & Presents'. Once there, I found the effect I wanted called 'Evaporated'.
















Then I dragged over the effect on top of the text layer, let it load properly, then played it to see how it worked. This is what the effect looked like.
















After viewing and sorting out any necessary tweaks to the text animation, I then had to export the clip so it would be suitable for Final Cut Pro. To do this, I had to go to 'File' again, then to 'Export' and 'Add to Render Queue'.








This then took me to this menu, where I can change the name, format and anything else.










After all that, all I had to do was click 'Render' then my clip would be complete and be used for our title sequence.

Thursday 17 January 2013

Order Of The Titles

Before we begin editing our shots we have filmed, we researched the way in which the titles appear in the title sequences. We looked into the order of these titles, and applied them to fit our film Hypnosis. We decided to also view some title sequences, and see the order in which there titles appear and base it around what we notice. We also tried to follow the codes and conventions that arise with the order of the titles.

This is the order in which our credits will appear in our sequence:

1 - Studio logo - Lionsgate
2 - Production company - A Lionsgate production
3 - Producer - An Oren Peli film
4 - Film title - Hypnosis
5 - Actor name - Lucy Ford
6 - Actor name - Dylan Webb
7 - Actor name - Kate Kurton
8 - Actor name - Alex Easlea
9 - Actor name - Simone Chapman
10 - Casting - Nancy Nayor (worked on The Grudge)
11 - Costume designer - Kristin Burke (worked on Insidious) 
12 - Music - John Kurlander (worked on Woman In Black)
13 - Editor - James Cowan (worked on The Possession)
14 - Director of Photography - Daniel Pearl (worked on Friday the 13th
15 - Writers - Jon Spaihts (worked on Prometheus)
16 - Director - Oren Peli

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Filming Our Sequence: Part 3

While reviewing our clips that we had filmed, and begun to to decide which we would use, and how we would edit them, we noticed that we did not have a sufficient amount of shots to use for placing typography on - as we wanted to place our titles on clips of the scenery. We realised as a group, that we would need to go back to the woods and get the necessary shots for the titles.

We decided to go out during lesson time, due to making it easier for us to collect the equipment we need, and it would make it easier for us to all meet up and plan due to obviously being in the same classroom. Once we planned and collected the equipment, we set out to visit the woods again. When we arrived, we begun exploring the different locations in the woods, to get the best possible shots for out title sequence, and to make the shots diverse.

We faced the problem of difficult weather conditions, which left the floor full of puddles and mud, and Lucy occasional got 'attacked' by branches and stinging nettles - but we braved this and got the shots we needed and this time, made sure we had as many shots as possible so we wouldn't have to return to the woods anytime soon.

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Filming Our Sequence: Part 2




For the second part of our filming, we had to film the destruction of our images that feature in our title sequence, that foreshadow the ways in which the teens die. To do this, me Kate and Lucy went round to Lucy's house with some other friends to play the other parts, and take pictures of ourselves doing various activities as a group, to link in with our theme of testing friendship.

After we took the photos, we got them printed and begun to film the destruction of the photos. We decided who stood out the most in each image, thus making it there image and there name will display on this image in the title sequence. Above shows the images we used, and one shows the damage done to the selected photo.

Monday 14 January 2013

Filming Our Sequence: Part 1

To film our sequence, we had to go to the set location we selected prior to filming. We decided, since we were doing the horror/slasher genre we would want a desolate location - the woods. Before going off to our location, we made sure we had all the equipment and had a plan of what we were going to do and how we were going to do it.

Once we got to our location, we had to select a suitable location in the woods that would fit our imagination of our woods. We selected a location that was not over crowded by trees, and had a decent amount of walking space. Since Lucy was in charge of location, she had the final decision where we started filming. Kate set up the positioning of the camera, and decided where people should enter and leave and the different camera angles, whereas I, being the director, oversaw these decisions and had to see if the decisions being made where ultimately good enough - which all were and there were no problems.

After picking a location and setting up the camera, we had to begin filming our sequence. Since we wanted to make sure we had everything, we made sure we had multiple shots of each incase we decided the shot we had wasn't good enough. Once we finished getting each shot we needed, we quickly browsed over the clips we have to make sure we had what we needed. We then decided everything was okay and begun to think about editing the shots.

Sunday 13 January 2013

Behind The Scenes Shots

These shots were taken during the filming process of our filming. We, as a group, decided to take photographs of us during the filming process, to prove that we are taking our roles in which we were giving seriously and are actually doing the roles we were given.


Lucy beginning to film the scene
 
Kate, the cinematographer, doing
camera work
Kate filming the scene



Lucy positioning the camera

Saturday 12 January 2013

Setting Shots

We were looking for a location in the woods to shoot our title sequence. We decided to take pictures on our way to find out location, so we could refer back to the pictures to find the location again. We also wanted photographic evidence of our scenery to put up on the blog. Once we found our location, we took various shots in the positions that the characters will be and the positioning of the camera, and they may even be used in the title sequence.

These were the pictures we took:








Friday 11 January 2013

Production Plan

Filming Schedule:
Date: December 16th 2012
Location: Oxleas Woods
Times: 
2:00 Meet at my house
2:10 Leave my house and get bus to Oxleas Wood's
2:30 Take loaction shots
2:45 Film scenes of the "killer" cutting rope
3:00 Film scenes of "killer" walking through woods
3:15 Film scene where group of friends "enter" the woods
3:30 Film scenes of running through woods in panic

Things needed: 
Rope (Provided by Kate)
Torch(Provided by Kate)
Fake knife (Provided by Simone)
Camera and tripod (Provided by Lucy)
Bags to use as props (Provided by Dylan)
Must ensure costume is dark and suitable for camping

Problems that may arise: 
1.Bad weather
2.Camera running out of battery
3.Location is not suitable
How they will be resolved:
1.We have ensured we have chosen a dry day to film by checking the weather report
2.We have brought spare batteries along
3.We have organised a backup location in the Abbey woods


Date: January 10th 2013
Location: Oxleas Woods
Times: 
11:25 Leave school
11:30 Get the bus
11:45 Arrive at bus stop
11:50 Get the second bus
12:10 Arrive at Oxleas Woods
12:15 Arrive at filming location
12:20 Get the shots we need
12:40 Review the shots
12:45 Continue with more shots
1:00 Leave Oxleas Woods


Thursday 10 January 2013

Roles In The Group

In our group, we had to take specific roles. The roles were director/producer who basically had control over everything, cinematography who checked the camera angles, lighting and so on and someone had to be in control of the props, make-up and location.

The role the group decided to give me was: Director/Producer
The role Lucy was given was: Props, make-up, location
The role Kate was given was: Cinematographer

Wednesday 9 January 2013

Storyboards

Here are the storyboards for the title sequence to our film Hypnosis. This shows us the overall idea we have came up with for our title sequence, and will help us when filming to show what we need to shoot and how we are going to do it, due to the camera shots specified and the camera positioning. 

Number 1
Number 2







Number 3
Number 4





Number 5