Only Takes A Second - Final Cut

Music Audience Feedback

Music audience feedback 

For our music audience feedback, We had a question on the questions we gave out to the class to to get feedback for our first rough cut we produced. In the feedback sheet, we had a question on music. Our question was:

 Does the music fit our genre? 

The main answer from our audience was that the music fit our genre we was trying to create which was a horror/thriller.  The music we choose for the opening scene was fast paced and cut throughout each sections of the opening sequence.

 End of the opening scene sound track 
For example, The track called : Army Angels. Was used at the end of our opening scene, because it gave that extra edge for the audience to make them want to know what is going to happen for an example like a cliffhanger, causing the audience to want more and drawing them into the film.

Voice-overs

In the opening scene, we used many voice-overs such as for an example, the start of the opening scene where josh is going mental in the corner of the bedroom, we used josh as a voice-over saying " They call me mental" 

Another voice-over used in our opening scene was when Luke woke up in the bed and in his dream, in that part of the opening scene there is several voice-overs in this part for example , where Luke is sleeping there is voice-overs of people screaming in the background etc. And when he turns on the radio and hears the voice-over of josh saying things about London.

changes to our opening sequence

During the process of production of our opening sequence, we carried out an audience feedback survey which would help us identify any weak areas in our product, which you can find in our blog. The survey has shown us that the scene where we witness the two protagonists talking in the kitchen is the weakest part (0:35-1:15), therefore in order to increase the impact that our opening sequence has and keep the intense action at a constant throughout the scene, we re-filmed that sequence using a series of cross cutting to create an action packed running sequence as our protagonist finds out that his dream is becoming reality. in the first draft of the scene, there was no music to accompany the action, in order to make the scene more dramatic, making the audience want to watch on. we and the audience felt that we needed to add some iconic London shots that would increase the amount that the audience can relate to the film, as they recognise the location of the film, also to make the film look more professional and have the correct conventions of an opening sequence, we needed to add a few more stereotypical credits into our sequence, like director and casting crew, which would also require a specialist acronym C.S.A if the person was a member of the Casting Agency of America.
As a group we feel that by listening to our audience and making these improvements, we would have a more professional looking end media product.

Using effective voice-overs

Using effective voice-overs

"They called me mental"

In our films introduction we used a variety of voice-overs to help convey a persons inner monologue and to help the story develop. The first voice-over we used in our film was during Adam's mental breakdown scene. We got Josh (The actor of Adam) to say 'they called me mental' in a deep, intimidating voice. This instantly represents Adam's character as the protagonist however the footage shows him as being very vulnerable. This shows that he has two sides to him, on the outside he seems weak and wouldn't harm a fly, however on the inside he has a darker, unknowing side to him.

Radio announcer

When our character Luke wakes up he hears the radio playing and the radio announcer talks about the threat of a terrorist attack. This tells the audience that this threat is more serious than they may have already thought as it is coming from the radio. 

"The London we know, is going to be destroyed"

During the phone conversation between Adam and Luke a cut-scene occurs. The audience see shots of London but a voice-over is used coming from Luke saying how London is going to be destroyed. Even though this voice-over flows with the conversation between Luke and Adam it feels as if Luke is talking more towards the audience as they can no longer see Luke talking.

How we created the voice-overs:

To create the voice-overs we attached a microphone to the camera we used to film and spoke the lines closer to the camera. We then took the footage and put it into Premier Pro and added the footage to the sequencer. To just keep the audio we deleted the video so just the audio was left.

How we created the lighting effects

How we created the lighting effects

Adams mental scene:

The darkness in this scene effectively reveals Adam as the protagonist. The way we created this lighting was by blocking out the windows with curtains and duck tape. This allowed us to trap most of the outside light, only letting in enough for the characters to be just recognisable through the camera lens. 

In editing we added a brightness effect to the footage. We then went into the brightness settings and turned the brightness down by 10% because we felt that the footage was still slightly too bright. We then added a hue/saturation effect to the footage in this scene and then under the hue/saturation settings we boosted the saturation so that even through the darkness the audience could still recognise the colours.

Luke waking up in the bedroom:

The still low key lighting and blue tint gave off connotations of suspicion and uncertainty, but not as extreme as the shots in Adams mental breakdown. The way we created the look of early morning was to remotely open the curtains to bring in only a small bit of slight. This created long shadows in the room as if the sun was still low in the sky.

We then realised the footage was quite too bright and didn't fit the conventions of an action/thriller movie well enough so we done some research into action/thriller films and found that a blue tint is quite commonly used. To create this blue tint we went into Premier Pro's video editing options and added a tint to the footage in this scene. We then went into the tint options and changed the tint colour to blue and we also turned the opacity of the tint down to 35% so the blue didn't overpower the shot.  

In the kitchen with Luke and Freddy:

The high key lighting in this shot shows that the characters are safe in the presence of each other. The way we created this high key lighting was by opening up the blinds so that most of the light outside came in. Due to the blinds being made out of wood it also filled the kitchen with a slight orange light which we found gave the footage a calming feel to it. 

The Different Lighting we used

Lighting

The different ways we used lighting:

In the start of our film intro the only scenes you see are the one of our charter Adam going through the mental breakdown. We wanted this to have a sort of nightmare feel to it so you used very low key lighting. This makes everything in these shots more harder to recognise and gives it an aspect of suspense as you cant really tell who or what is in the shadows.

When it comes to the shots that involve our character Luke waking up in his bedroom we wanted their to still be low key lighting but not as extreme as the shots before. We wanted this to convey a feeling of the nightmare being over and the peace and calm of morning beginning to arise, however we didn't allow to much high key lighting into the shot to show that everything is still not perfect.

In the shots in the kitchen with the characters Luke and Freddy we allowed a lot more high key lighting into the shot to represent the bond of friendship between these two characters  This high key lighting also allowed us to create a lot of contrast with the next shot of the character Adam sitting in the leather chair. With these shots of Adam we used low key lighting and the only source of light being from a lamp above him. Having the source of light so high created longer shadows giving the whole shot a menacing look. The constant switching between the kitchen and the leather chair further emphasis this good and evil feel to these shots. 

The last bit of lighting we used in our film intro was with Adam turning of his lamp, leaving the whole room in darkness. We wanted this to bridge the gap between the two sides of Adams life, with the lamp being on representing Adams friendly, concerned side however when the lamp turns off it reveal his evil, darker side.

Applying poster research to our films poster