Thursday, 4 April 2013
Sunday, 31 March 2013
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.
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.
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.
Making The Titles
After Effects Tutorial
Making the Titles
Getting the right font:
The main thing we wanted to get 100% right was the font for the titles in our film. We wanted the font to represent the genre of our film but most thriller fonts were hard to read quickly so we went for more of a bold, action font which was called Nevis. (http://tenbytwenty.com/?xxxx_posts=nevis).
Editing the font:
We wanted our titles to be unrecognisable up until the last couple of seconds. The effect that we choose to do this was called 'Algorithm loop'. This was a pre-made effect provided by Adobe After Effects CS6. This effect allowed up to have the letters in the titles to alternate randomly up until the near end of the effect were all of the letters come back together. When the titles were finally readable I then used the opacity feature to make the titles slowly disappear.
Importing font:
We then wanted to import our text from after effects to our film (which was in the development stage). The way we went about this is after we had created all of the titles we needed for the film, we then collected all of the save files into one folder and imported all of them into premier pro. When then put these files into premier pro's sequencer and finished the final edits there.
Luke Escott's Evaluation
This is the link to my website for the evaluation of our film 'Only Takes A Second' http://lukeescottmedia.wix.com/onlytakesasecond1
Saturday, 30 March 2013
Facebook Page
Facebook Page
Why we created a facebook page:
There are currently 32.5 million registered user of Facebook in the UK alone. This incentive lead us to creating a Facebook page for our film. The use of a Facebook page allows us to keep people up to date with the development process of our films and if they choose to like our page they then get updates of our film on their news feed. By liking the facebook page for our film it also notifies all of their friends that they in fact like our film and as the average user of Facebook has about 187 friends it leads to an incredibly effective word of mouth effect.
What do we post on the Facebook page?:
On our Facebook page we keep our audience informed and up to date with the development of our film. We also upload pictures like posters for example to keep the audience interested in our film. Due to Facebooks new feature that allows us to reply to comments we are also now available to actually communicate with our fans. All of this together greatly increase the likelihood that people will go and see our film in the cinemas.
Link to the Facebook page:
Premier Pro Tutorial
Premier Pro Tutorial
How we composed and edited our film
Composition Setting:
We had to make our composition settings equal to the aspect ratio of our footage which was 1920 x 1080. We then had to choose the 'frames per seconds' setting and just like with the aspect ratio we had to make it match our footage which was 24fps.
Editing our footage:
The main part of the editing process for our film was composing the actual film. The way we went about doing this was to get all of the footage we had filmed onto the mac and into its own folder. This allowed us quick and easy access to all of our footage. We then imported the footage with the import feature which was under options/import. We then had all our footage on Premier Pro. This allowed us to actually put our footage into the sequence. After putting all of our footage into the sequencer we then had to use the clip tool to remove small parts of our film which we decided was not necessary. We also trimmed parts of our film to meet the required film time of two minutes. We then decided that our film didn't give off enough conventions of an action/thriller film. The way we combated this was to go into the video options and added a tint to our film. We edited the tint options so that it gave our film a slight blue tint. After doing this the original colour of our film seemed to have faded so we went back into the video options and added hue/saturation to all of our footage. We then tinkered with the hue/saturation settings until we found a spot that boosted the colours just right.
Adding audio:
A very large part of our film is the audio. The way we went about adding audio to our film was to put all of our desired sounds into one file and imported this into Premier Pro much like we did with the footage. We then added these sounds to the sequencer so that we could move them into the desired location. Through using the playback option that Premier Pro offers we were able to review our footage to make 100% sure that the audio matched up with the footage.
Transitions:
After reviewing our film with the playback option we realised that some of the cuts didn't flow well enough. The way we fixed this was by going into the video option and adding a 'fade to' option to some of the footage we felt didn't flow well enough. This made the shots blend into each other instead of jumping straight to on another.
Photoshop Tutorial
Photoshop Tutorial
How we created our film poster
In creating the 'Only Takes A Second' film poster we learnt a lot of useful tips and tricks to gives us the desired outcome.
Editing the original picture:s
Our original picture was a photo of our actor Josh Sloane who players the character Adam. The first thing we done to the photo was reduce the opacity of the picture, done by sliding the opacity bar, so that Josh appeared to look ghostly and to help him blend in with the background. We then used to eraser tool to further make Josh blend in by rubbing out the sides of his body and face. The next thing we done was to make it look as if Josh's eyes were on fire. To do this we imported a photo of fire into our PhotoShop document and placed this fire of Josh's eye. We then rubbed out any fire they went over his eye. The next thing we done was to reduced the opacity of the fire so it didn't stick out to much against his face. We repeated this step for the other eye.
The next picture we then had to edit was the shot of the London Eye. We wanted it to look like something drastic had happened to it but for it to also be recognisable. The first thing we did to the photo was to add a colour overlay to it by going into the blending options and selecting colour overlay. We then selected the colour red but we didn't want the red to overpower the shot so we then toned the opacity of the red down to 40%. We then wanted the London Eye to look distorted and changed, so under the filter and blur options we used a radial blur to make it look as if the start of an explosion had just happened. We played around with the motion blur setting and decided a motion blur of factor 2 gave us an image that was distorted but recognisable.
Text:
We spent a lot of time editing our text and credits to help represent our film. The first thing we done was to search the Internet for a font that was viable for our film. The font we decide to use was called 'Nevis' (http://tenbytwenty.com/?xxxx_posts=nevis). The next thing we done was get a movie poster of the similar genre and use its credits as a reference (http://mediatrailermattv.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/the_dark_knight_movie_poster.jpg)
Then we set about creating our movie poster credits. We used the text tool to first create all of the credits we had for our film. This left our poster covered in unorganised credits. We used the use of layers to separate our layers and then with using the move tool we got all our credits where they needed to be. After we got all our credits in the right places with merged all of the layers together(Ctrl+E) and this meant that all of our credits were on one simple layer. We then went into the blending options of the layer and like with the London Eye picture we added a colour overlay of white.
Layers:
The uses of layers allowed us to easily organise our images and place them effectively in the poster. The layer system works that the object that is on the highest layer will be the thing that is at the front of the shot and the object on the lowest layer will be the thing at the back of the shot. We took advantage of this to move our edited image of the London Eye behind the image of our actor Josh. Te layers also helped us incredibly when we were composing our credits. As each credit appeared on its own layer we could easily find and change any one of the many credits with ease.
Friday, 29 March 2013
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Feedback Questions
1. Do you know the type of genre we are doing for our film?
3. What do you think the worst part of the film is?
4. Does the music fit our genre?
5. Any improvements you could add to our film?
Josh sloanes evaluation
This is the link to my evaluation website, i have created this on wix.com and have used a series of multi media techniques to present my awnsers.
Http://joshslo56.wix.com/stemproductions
Http://joshslo56.wix.com/stemproductions
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
After effects tutorial
After effects tutorial
After effects is a multimedia creating website where you can create all kinds of different effects to add to content such as films etc. The great thing about After effects is that it's a endless possibility towards creating new ideas, and everybody will have other different ideas to create for different projects.
With After effects, being a beginner there will always be a learning curve to overcome, but once you have overcame this learning curve the possibility are going to be endless to what you can create. With Affects effect you can add all kinds of effects to colouring the images or film to the Shading and tones. In After effects, you can add all kind of layers and structures to the the film or images to add more effects to create a much more multimedia look and improve the look of your film.
Layers in After Effects and a few tips and tricks.
Having layers in affect effects can create more effects for the film you're trying to create, To Create a layer go to the icon called "Create a new layer" This will allow you to create a brand new layer for your film, so you don't interrupt different edits on the previous layers. To select certain layers, click the layers in the composition panel and click the name of the layer or the duration bar in the timeline panel , or click the layers name in the flowchart panel provided.
To select a layer which is in it's own layer firstly, choose the layer name from the windows menu or the layer menu panel viewing menu. You can create several different layers and select them in the composition panel and drag them into the selection tool button and create a selection box with many layers you can select them. To do that you can hold shift while clicking or dragging to select several and different layers.
Link to the information i got the source from.
Mood board Research
http://prezi.com/krkuqcbhcsdt/untitled-prezi/?kw=view-krkuqcbhcsdt&rc=ref-35774689
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Claude Levi-Strauss Theory.
http://prezi.com/vo0onu8ayoo8/untitled-prezi/?kw=view-vo0onu8ayoo8&rc=ref-35774689
Monday, 25 March 2013
Props for Antagonist
Props for Antagonist
Lamp:
We used the lamp in our film to help signify to the audience
the split personality of our antagonist. When our antagonist is talking to our protagonist
the lamp is switched on, which keeps the room bright which gives of an calming
feel as you wouldn’t expect a bad thing to happen in a well lit room. When he
is finished talking he then goes to switch of the light filling the room with
darkness. This darkness is more of what you would associate with the
antagonist.
Black Leather Chair:
Our character spends most of the opening scene sitting
within a large black leather chair. The leather chair signifies that he is a
person of great importance (for whatever reason) just like the boss of a
company would stereotypically have a leather chair at a desk. The way we used
this prop was to keep our protagonists identity hidden as he had the chair
turned away from the camera. This gave of connotations that whatever he has got
planned, he doesn’t want people knowing it was him that had done it.
Props for Protagonist
Props for Protagonist
Radio:
Our protagonist has the radio set to the news so when he
wakes up he can find out what the latest events are around the world. This
shows that our character as a key interest in world events and likes to be kept
up to date. In our film we used the radio to carry the message of the potential
terrorist attack in London. We used the
radio as it lets us easily create a voice-over for a person speaking on the
radio, leading to a simple but effective shot.
Phone:
The phone our protagonist uses is an Iphone. We used an
Iphone to show that our character keeps up with the latest trends in technology
and also it shows that our character has some wealth. We used the Iphone in our
film to easily show two of our characters talking together.
Cup of Coffee:
When our character enters the kitchen he drinks a cup of
coffee. We used the coffee to signify how
our character wants to wake up and forget about the stressful nightmare he had.
This shows that he has a form of dependence on the drug caffeine and he is
conventionally then not as strong as a person would stereotypically consider a
protagonist to be.
Friday, 22 March 2013
Narrative Propp's Theory
Narrative Propp's theory
Propp's theory was that there only a certain amount of characters who appear in most narratives, Where these characters and the typical things they do can be seen across a wide range of narratives, and we expect in the films for the characters to portray their roles and expect them to be there and behave in a certain manor.
Vladimir Propp's theory came from breaking up fairy tales into sections, from doing this he was able to identify the tale into different series of sequences within Russian fairytales. Vladimir propps theory could be used to identify two different genres of Russian folklore and fairy tales. Russian folklore has two different structural analysis, One of the Russian folklore was the story in a chronological order of the linear sequence of element in the text which could be read from an informant.
The other Russian folklore was structural analysis of to describe the pattern of which underlines the folkloristic text. This pattern is different to the chronological order because instead of the elements being taken out of the context in certain places and being re-put back in, the patterns in the second theory is more borrowing the paradigms and studying the language of the text.
Thursday, 21 March 2013
Vladimir Propp Theory
Vladimir came up with the theory of that there are only a certain number of characters who appear in most narratives. For the opening of our opening scene we have included 4 different characters which are:
Protagonist: Leads narrative, is usually looking for something or trying to solve a mystery. (All of the characters)
Helper : Helps the hero - often acts as a sidekick. (Luke Trower)
False Hero : For the films false hero, we have josh who is pretending to be a hero, trying to help the cause out, But really is an antagonist and is doing the complete opposite. (Josh Sloane)
Theses characters are the typical things they do and they can be seen across a wide range of narratives. we expect in films they should behave in certain films and expect them to be there.
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Empire Magazine analysis
Masthead
The Masthead is the name of the title of the magazine. For example, the title name of this magazine is “Empire”.
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Different Fonts
Different fonts are used for different stories,
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Barcode
The barcode is on a magazine for the central information for the issued date and website.
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Colour Theme
The colour theme for this magazine is Black with Red and white writing. Every magazine has its own colour schemes.
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Central Image
The central image is related to the cover story in the magazine of the certain issue of the magazine. The central image is of Spiderman as the magazine cover is a magazine talking about the new Spiderman movie coming out.
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Price
The price of the magazine for this magazine is in the title and shows you the price of the magazine and the date of the magazine being issued.
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Tagline
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