Evaluation!

Hungry Films - 'The Hungover'

Construction: Introduced to iDVD

In todays lesson we were introduced to a new piece of software which was accessible from the macs, we were taught the basics of iDVD, we learnt how to create a menu so that when the examiner watches of film, they are able to chose from a variety of options, from watching our film to accessing our blog. We were then told the development stages the CD would go through from production right to the finished product, this will allow Hungry Films to send off our final edited film in a much more proffessional format.

Evaluation: Planning our evaluation

Today me and my partner Deet got together to plan our evaluation for our 2 minute film opening. To complete the evaluation we must answer the following 7 questions...

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

7. Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

To answer these questions, me and my partner have decided to work together on answering these questions through different uses of media, for example youtube and powerpoint. For each question we will brainstorm all the possible ideas in which we can write for it so that we have a clear idea of our planning.

To present our ideas we will be using the online presentator prezi.com which allows us to become creative with our presentation skills, prezi allows you to add images, previous powerpoint slides, videos etc which we believe we be extremely helpful for getting our evaluation across.

Construction: Video finished!

Today was the day that me and my partner had finished editing our opening movie clip, we knew it was finished because we thought there was nothing we could really add to it to make it any  better, we made sure that we had finished the titles, sound and any other transitions that would make the film look good. We hope our film is up to a good enough standard to be able to get us a good mark.

Construction: 'Hungry Films' video introduction

Today me and my partner decided we wanted to create an intro for our 2 minute opening, we believed that if we did so, the film would look much more professional and 'realistic' alike other movie openings, also it would that little extra time onto our maximum 2 minutes opening time.

The software we used to create our intro was Adobe After Effects as it would give us the best results...

 As I use After Effects quite a lot in my spare time, I learnt how to make a simplistic movie intro, however we could of used a template off the internet but we thought that may come across as to technical for us. Not only did we have to create the animation, we also had to find sound effects which would link in with the movements of the animation, this was a long, thought out process which took time however we believe we sorted out the right sound effects which matched the animation.

Below is our 8 second title intro....

Construction: Titles and sound

In the next stage of editing our 2 minute film opening, we started to add titles and sound. The reason in why we have added titles was because we partly wanted to lengthen the time of our movie but also i believe it adds tension to the start of the film. We had added music so the start of the film did not become boring and we also believe that the music is an incredibly important part of a film as it adds tension and creates the mood of the scene.

We edited our titles so that they are all the same and the font and background colour was the same so that the finished edit didn't look un-professional. We had used the colours black and white in the titles which create a negative mood straight away even if the audience haven't watched any of the clips yet, the white also shows purity whilst the black shows darkness.

We picked the music which would fit our movie perfectly as it is one of the most important parts of the movie because as I said it creates the mood and creates tension. Although we had tried to create music on GarageBand we didn't feel we could create a good enough song which would suite the film, instead we chose music of a copyright free website called freeplaymusic.com which allowed us to pick a good composed song for free.

Construction: Day 2 editing

Today in our lesson me and my partner decided we should start to think about creating the non diagetic sound for our opening.  The software which we were told to use was called Garage Band. This was the first time I had used garage band so obviously it was hard to find our way round the software and eventaully came up with a small practice sound which helped us understand more about how to use garage band and how to create better sounds.

Construction: Editing day 1

Today we started editing our first part of our film. The things we needed to start to do today was the very basics, these basics were to construct an idea of what the clips would look like when put together.  However we came across a problem as we started dragging the clips into the timeline the clips will become cropped, we are hopeful that this problem will be solved so we will keep putting the clips together so we have an idea what it should look like.  

Construction: Editing some clips

In todays lesson we finally got our hands on final cut express and started to learn the basics of the software. The basics we learnt we things such as how to cut a piece of clip and also how to add effects such as music and text. We were given  couple of clips which we filmed in class earlier so we could edit them together and make a short video, we were allowed to change where the clips go and how long the clips go on for. Below are some pictures of the editing software we used...














Our final edited piece of film didn't look professional however it is a good starting block as we learnt how to edit in the most simplest form. We aim to us these techniques when we start to edit our final preliminary task.

Research: Final Cut Express introduction

The Social Network was edited by Final Cut Pro.

As we have finished our filming, we are now able to edit our clips using a professional editing software called Final Cut Express. Final Cut Express is a software which allows a person to edit their video clips from colour correction to sound editing, it also allows the clips to be rendered into HD so that the clips are at the best of their quality. Final Cut has been used over the years by professional film makers to edit their multi-million pound film, films such as The Social Network movie and The Kids Will Be Alright used Final Cut x to edit their film and both were nominated at the Golden Globes last year for best movie.

You are able to buy Final Cut x for a pricy £500 but is it worth it? The following are some of the best features which can be used through it:

• Multichannel Audio Editing
• Unified importing
• Streamlined share
• Dual viewing screens
• RED camara support
• Copy and paste attributes
• One step freeze frames
• Flexible clip connections
• Drop shadow
• Enhanced compound clips

As you can see Final Cut has a wide variety of different new features, so many I haven't named them all. Below is a tutorial on an introduction on how to edit.

Construction: Day 3 Filming

Our third and final day of filming took place on the Thursday 21st Febuary.

Location:
Today we filmed in 3 different places, we started at the exit of Kettering Buccleuch academy, we then made our way to the path outside of school, finally we finished off filming outside of a house.

What we done?:
We needed to capture footage of our main character walking home from school, because of the various different flashbacks we filmed each shot individually instead of one long scene and cutting it when editing, this would make the edited film look more professional when played. We also waited a while until the sun came out so that the clips from when we first started filming matched.  

Construction: Day 2 Filming

Our second filming session took place on the Tuesday 12th February

Location:
Today we started filming in my partners garage.

What we done?:

We started filming the flashbacks which would occur during the opening 2 minutes, we were very cautious about mise-en-scene during filming as we had to make the garage seem a lot more secluded and creepy, we also planned out what the characters would wear so they would match the scary theme. Yet again we made sure we had at least each shot filmed 2-3 times in different angles so that we had a variety to edit with. We are planning to do our final set of filming soon.

Construction: Day 1 Filming

We started filming on Wednesday 6th February.
Location
We started filming our first part of our horror film at the main entrance of Kettering Buccleuch Academy.
What we done?
Today we started filming the first opening shots for our 2 minute opening, we familiarize ourselves with the equipment such as the camera and the tripod so that we knew the ins and outs before actually filming. During filming we used different shot techniques such as over-shoulder shot and also tracking shot. We filmed each shot around 2-3 times so that we have a lot of footage when it comes to editing and also filmed some shots in different angles to see what it would look like when we put the clips together. So far we have filmed around 20 seconds of footage.

Day 2 of filming will start during the half term break..

Planning: Shot List

Here is a list of all the different shots and movements we used in our opening, below is a key and a list of what shots and movements were used in each shot.

Key
Establishing shot - ES
Mid shot - MS
Over the shoulder - OTS
Close up - CU
Two Shot - TS
Extreme close up - ECU
Long Shot - LS

Movement used
Tracking
Crane
Panning
Point of view

Shot 1 - Camera shot : ES Movement : None. Shows the school building as a whole with Jordan walking out

Shot 2 -  Camera shot : MS. Movement : Panning. Jordan is now walking out of the school

Shot 3 -  Camera shot : CS Movement : Crane. Killers hand is hovering over weapons on a table

Shot 4 -  Camera shot : MS Movement : Panning. Jordan is on the phone

Shot 5 -  Camera shot : ECU Movement : None. Killers opening garage door

Shot 6 -  Camera shot : ES Movement: None. Killers footsteps are walking into garage

Shot 7 - Camera shot : CS Movement: Panning. Jordan worried from phone call

Shot 8 -  Camera shot : MS Movement: Point of view. Jordan looking around

Shot 9 -  Camera shot : TS/OTS Movement: None. Killer putting bag on victims face

Shot 10 -  Camera shot : CS Movement: None. Jordan receives another phone call

Shot 11 -  Camera shot : MS Movement: None. Victim is getting rope tied round his neck

Shot 12 -  Camera shot : MS/TS Movement: None. friend comes up behind Jordan and makes him jump

Shot 13 -  Camera shot : MS Movement: None. Legs dangling as he has been hung

Planning: Storyboards

For us to be able to know what we are doing when filming, we have created a storyboard so we can follow which shot would be next, this helps us so that we don't get confused when coming to edit too because it allows us to remember which clips goes next to each other.

Next to this is a picture of 2 shots we have added to our storyboards..

Research: Lighting in Horror films

As part of our 3 minute opening to our horror film, Lighting will be a big factor in how the audience percieve the characters and scene and helps express the mood and atmosphere within the scene. As part of our horror film we are filming in a dark garage with minimal lighting to show something bad might happen and also we are using minimal lighting because this is usually used in horror films to show that the scene is in a dark and secluded area. However we are contrasting the lighting as we are also showing the characters being outside which shows that the character isn't in any danger and that the lighting outside will reflect the mood within the scene.

The use of lighting in horror films is used to create fear or uncertainess, the most common use of light in horror films is darkness, directors make sure that darkness is always related in horror films because it is assumed that darkness is the most common fear within people and this helps create a effect within the audience watching to make them feel like the film is in the 'unknown' and that anything might happen.

Low-key lighting

Low key lighting is usually used in horror/thrilling films, this is because it is the use of black light. The use of this lighting is used to represent a darker and an 'unkown' atmosphere. It will produce a sharper contrast of light in darker areas on screen in order to develop deep shadows and silouehette formations.

Planning: Arranging our roles in a group

we have finally came to a conclusion about what our roles will be in our group when we begin to film, we have chose our roles by picking what we all feel is our best job and that we feel we know what we're doing when doing our jobs. The jobs which needed to be done are filming, planning the  mise-en-scene and casting. The following is who will be arranged to do these roles.

Filming - The filming will be done by both me and my partner as we will be able to discuss which are the best possible shots.

Planning the miss-en-scene - As we are filming in my partners garage, we feel it would be best if  he arranged what will be in the garage and where everything will be placed.

Casting - We have shortened our potential cast list down to the final 3 which will be featuring to our film, these people are Jordan Bignell, Josh Luthayi and James Pearce who we didn't actually shortlist however all of our remaining shortlisted cast would not be eligible to be able to film on our planned date but James can and fits the character he will be playing.

Planning: To-do list

Today me and my partner Deet planned what we need to do in the next 3 weeks for our blog, to be able to meet our deadline we need to complete the following;

• Shot list
• Storyboards
• Filming
• Arranging roles in our group