I created a slide show which contains the process Tinika and I went through to obtain our film footage before the editing process. It was not an easy process as a lot changed in a small space of time but, Tinika and I now know, for the future we will have to be more prepared for such changes to happen.
1. Finger Music- Ultra The first soundtrack we had was copyright free. We thought it would work well with our genre, as it became quite faced paced and created a lot of suspense. which would work well as our genre is a thriller/action hybrid and the soundtrack feeds into the genre. although at 1 minute 30 it goes into a more action/ Sci-Fi theme, so we may not use all of the soundtrack depending on how it fits with our trailer. However, it may work for the beginning of the trailer as we want to keep the audience engaged until the beat drops and we use a lot of faced paced cuts/scenes. 2. Twelve Titans Music- Monolith The second sound track was also copyright free. It was a favourite, as it fit all the criteria for a thriller/ action movie that we wanted to showcase- as it is very creepy, eerie and built up a lot of tension and suspense. The theme we were going for was thriller/action and we wanted to represent that through an upbeat but creepy and distorted. This would create enigmas, as well as foreshadowing the past for the characters, leading to the kidnapping and the reasons behind it. The beginning of the soundtrack started off a bit slow, so we might cross-fade it with the first soundtrack as we liked the beginning of the first one. We really liked the ending to this sound track as it created a lot of suspence, which we both found encouraging, as it would look good in our trailer
Tinika and I used the feedback from our first draft to edit our trailer. We needed to make a lot of improvements but, this was a lot easier as our friend Amber let us edit on her macbook. The software was so much easier to use which also helped with the limited amount of time we had to edit it. The constructive criticism we received from our teacher and our class helped us to develop our trailer to increase our grade. After hearing feedback about our second draft of trailer, we are a lot happier. We are now on a high c grade, low b grade. This is promising for us both. The main piece of feedback we recieved was to change the text on screen to reference the character more rather than the audience. This is due to the fact that some of the text on screen does not make sense. We will be changing this as soon as we have time and access to the macbook but, hopefully as soon as possible.
Codes and Conventions and 'Best' Action and Thriller Films
I conducted research into the codes and conventions of each genre that our film trailer is, as its a hybrid, and put them in a cloud chart format.
This research will benefit the content of mine and Tinika's trailer, as we can see what we need to include to make sure our film trailer is of the correct genre.
We are also able to look at all the films for this genre and study the trailers to see how they have included these codes and conventions. This allows us to get a real feel for the genres we are looking at and will hopefully help us create better work.
We created this shot list so before we film, we will have a set structure of all our scenes so we can have enough shots. By creating the shot list, it has allowed us to plan efficiently what we need for each scene, and the different types of shots in particular scenes. Used Celtx to create our shot list, it allowed me to pick the shots for each scene using the screen play we created- so that all our work would be in sync with what was happening in the script, so we will know which shots are needed for each scene:
This was very beneficial as they gave me various, different shots to choose from and gave me a layout to choose from, so it helped me create the shot list using my screen play.
This will help us we decide to film as we have everything in scene order so we know what to film, and when.
Tinika and I, along with other students, were asked to put together our first draft. This was so we could all critique the work we had put together and receive constructive criticism. We showed our trailer in class and got feedback from our peers and teacher, we recorded the response: We were put in top Band 2, which was quite disappointing because we thought we had some good qualities. We will use this feedback to improve our trailer significantly. We worked really hard and felt quite disheartened. However, this feedback will allow us to edit and change our film trailer for the better and hopefully we will be able to achieve a better grade. The main points of concern we received from other students and our teacher were:
Repetitive scenes
Add a binoculars section
Film more scenes focusing on the antagonist or a side-line story of our protagonist’s relationship with someone else
Make the fact that our plot includes our antagonist deafening her
Darken the lighting of some scenes
Finish our voice overs for the beginning section
This gave us enough to work with in terms of changing things, re-filming and adding a few more scenes or sections. Hopefully this will allow us to improve our grade. The first thing we plan on doing to make in terms of making improvements is the editing itself. This involves the changing of the lighting; we will do this by editing the brightness of particular scenes and deleting the repetitive scenes so we have a rough estimate of how much more we need to film. We have an opportunity to film a new side-line story which will involve our protagonist having a relationship with a new character, if we need to add more time to our trailer. This will allow us to move on to the next stages which is the filming of new scenes. This will involve both our existing characters and possibly a new character. This character will be linked to our protagonist. After all of this has been completed, we will focus on the voice overs of the characters, especially the beginning section with the emergency dispatcher. These will help us to establish the beginning sequence and make the editing smoother. We can also remove the text that is on screen which, from our feedback, we found out is too much for the audience to see along with the running sequence of our protagonist. We have not yet decided if we will include the binocular section as we are unsure how professional it will look. If all goes well, then yes we will include this in our film trailer but, it isn't a necessity. We have taken all our feedback into consideration, for filming our second draft to ensure we reach a higher band
Tinika and I created a vlog about the costume and props that we are going to include in our media trailer. This was part of our planning process and decided it would help us become more organised when planning the filming for our trailer. The costume and prop planning helped us also inform our actors what they needed to wear and helped us try and find the correct props as we planned our film trailer.
I have recently been experimenting with idents to see which would be suitable for my trailer. I created all of these on Serif Draw Plus X6.
I used the already programmed shapes on Serif Draw Plus X6 and chose a clock. I increased the size of the clock and continued to edit it.
I decided I would use three clocks and change them to different colours and combine them. The colours blue red and black always compliment each other and create an amazing blurring effect.
I then added the three colours together to create this amazing effect with the clock. I made sure the colours were in the right order to have the best effect.
I had to add text to the possible ident. I decided I would pick a font that didn't look too available on word. This font is called Umbra BT.
Finally I added the text inside the clock and rotated it slightly to fit inside the clock and have the best look. Overall, it created a very blurred look. I loved the ident and was the best I have made so far.
Tinika and I, along with other students, were asked to put together our first draft. This was so we could all critique the work we had put together and receive constructive criticism.
Tinika and I were quite disappointed to find out our first draft was in top level 2 which is equivalent to a high D grade. We worked really hard and felt quite disheartened. However, this feedback will allow us to edit and change our film trailer for the better and hopefully we will be able to achieve a better grade.
The main points of concern from other students and our teacher were:
Repetitive scenes
Finish our voice overs for the beginning section
Darken the lighting of some scenes
Make the fact that our plot includes our antagonist deafening her
Film more scenes focusing on the antagonist or a sideline story of our protagonists relationship with someone else
Add a binoculars section
This gave us enough to work with in terms of changing things, re-filming and adding a few more scenes or sections. Hopefully this will allow us to improve our grade.
The first thing we plan on doing to make in terms of making improvements is the editing itself. This involves the changing of the lighting, we will do this by editing the brightness of particular scenes and deleting the repetitive scenes so we have a rough estimate of how much more we need to film and if we have an opportunity to film a new sideline story which will involve our protagonist having a relationship with a new character. This will allow us to move on to the next stages which is the filming of new scenes. This will involve both our existing characters and possibly a new character. This character will be linked to our protagonist.
After all of this has been completed, we will focus on the voice overs of the characters, especially the beginning section with the emergency dispatcher. These will help us to establish the beginning sequence and make the editing smoother. We can also remove the text that is on screen which, from our feedback, we found out is too much for the audience to see along with the running sequence of our protagonist.
The binocular section is not confirmed yet as we are unsure how professional it will look. If all goes well, then yes we will include this in our film trailer but, it isn't a necessity.
Creating a risk assessment enables Tinika and I to be aware of the risks that our actors should be aware of during the production of filming for out trailer. Moreover, it will let the actors know what risks to be aware of during the process of filming. This is to prevent these risks from happening. We will also create a risk assessment sheet that each actor will sign. This will allow them to be properly aware of the risks they may face and also allows us to have their permission to take part in these activities.
Tinika and I chose these locations for our trailer filming. This is due to the fact that all of the locations have easy access and are nearby. They also are easy to add props to, to fit our genre of film. We managed to get permission from Samuel Coleridge Taylor Youth Centre, to use their facilities before Tinika's youth club starts which is 6:30 but they book the hall from 6. It has a basement which has a lot of rooms which allow us to have a wide inside space to make our trailer fit the conventions of an action thriller even more.
Analysing questionnaire Creating a questionnaire was a great idea for Tinika and I to establish the features we need to include in our film trailer according to our peers and our primary audience. This really benefits us on creating the perfect film trailer. The opinions of our audience will really benefit us to engage and appeal to our target audience.
This is the draft I created of the script using the website Celtx (which allows us to create scripts using their online software), It is not final as we have not come up with a final ending to our trailer and we also may change things in our script:
The script will help with planning what is said/ the direction of each scene, because they are not full scenes it only gives clips to the audience to keep them engaged and we also created the script as a guide for the actors as there are some stage directions they should follow and how they act comes with their character profile. Our script also helps us know where we want everywhere is the trailer so it will flow and work well together. Also the dialogue that is on the script would be pre-recorded so it is Foley sound that would be dubbed on top of what is going on in that scene. By designing a script, it will give us a clear understanding on where we want our trailer to go and it is a step by step plot on what should go on in each snippet of a scene. As you can see from our script draft, a lot had changed with the actors in our trailer. Laura Bishop became our protagonist as the original person playing her became very busy with their work and their schedule and ours would never have matched up. Moreover, a couple of our extra characters dropped out. Tinika and I were initially upset but, I think it really benefited us in the end. This is due to the fact that we only had to worry about filming with two characters and didn't have too many schedules to match up.
Tinika and I had a very limited variety of equipment. Therefore, we used a tripod and a Canon Legria HF 606. The tripod had an adjustable height, allowing us to film at different elevations. It also had a spirit level, which allowed us to make sure our shots were level when we moved the tripod around in different terrains, this was especially needed when we shot in the woods.
The Canon Legria HF 606 allowed us to film in full 1080 HD, as well as having an optical image stabilizer which will help as we captured footage by using our protagonist to hold the camera whilst running. The camera also had a built in microphone which is helpful as some sounds may not have to be re-recorded which will save us some time. One of the other options we has was a flip video camera. We decided against using this as I had personal experience with using it the year before and found the quality very poor of both the resolution and sound. Also, if we were to have used the flip video camera we would not have been able to use the tripod as they did not fit together.
So far, this is the cast list Tinika and I have chosen. This may change drastically as we haven't received confirmation from any of the cast members for their role in the trailer.
However, we do have some options if our original actors were to pull out. These people include, Rebecca Maguire, Laura Bishop, Monique Jackson and Jessica Whitehurst.
Tinika and I created a presentation, which includes who our cast members are, an actors profile, costume design, why we chose that person to play that role and a character profile. Even though we have already cast our actors, the character profiles will help us in case somebody decides to pull out. Our character profile helps to show us what we want from our actors. It will also help the actors with creating the perfect characters in our trailers. The costume is also a guideline to how we want our characters to dress. They may not look exactly the same when we film, but there will be some similarities. As you can see, our cast dramatically changed as a lot of people dropped out. Tinika and I had to make a lot of last minute changes. Therefore, our cast now includes Jack Daniels and Laura Bishop. We decided to keep it as two cast members to make sure we didn't have the same difficulty in having lots of people drop out. We already had enough trouble trying to find when us two and Jack and Laura were all free so, adding more cast members would have been silly and making it a lot more difficult for ourselves.
This is the draft I designed, I drew it out on paper first and I have designed some on the computer.
I designed the credit block in a word document and tried out different fonts. I followed the criteria of a word block.
Within a trailer and poster, it is always common that at the end, the credits/detail of the production are shown to credit the different people that have been involved in the making of the trailer and the original movie itself.
Plus, also crediting and telling the audience, the big major media companies that have produced, funded and distributed the film. This is an example of a production credit for the trailer of 'The Impossible'. As you can see, the credits for the production is split into separate.
These are some of the names Tinika and I came up with when brainstorming. They may not contain the official name that we use but, I will receive feedback from peers and decide what to pick. These are some of the ideas:
I decided I would create a new ident for mine and Tinika's film trailer. This is due to the fact we were unhappy with the one we had previously made. We kept having to tweak things and it wasn't quite right. Tinika and I both agreed this was a much better ident then the one we previously created.
I found the equipment I used in my AS project worked well, so I will continue to use the cameras and tripods. This enables me to get the best footage as the equipment is perfect and suits my needs for filming. Also, as I already know how to use the equipment, I am able to experiment further with the cameras and tripods as I already know the basics. Thus, allowing me to have the best experience I can with the equipment I am using.
Camera:
Hitachi HD Video Camera DZHV595E
I am using the same camera I used for my AS project. This is due to the fact that it has all the functions that I need.
These include: good sound quality, HD recordings and easy functions and settings.
The only thing I may need to change is the way I light my scenes. Additional lighting may enhance the quality and as I am planning to film in the dark, the additional lighting may help the camera to focus better.
Moreover, I may shoot some running scenes as it is a thriller/action film. The camera comes with optical image stabiliser which would make filming a lot smoother. It is lightweight, so the running shots would be easy to do as it is transportable which will make it easy to use a variety of shots.
Tripod:
Hama Star 63 Tripod
I am also using the same tripod I used. This is because it can adjust to various different heights. With the handles, I can adjust the movement of the camera to capture different angles. The handles also help to keep the camera in a fixed position so it does not move round. This allows me to pan and tilt the camera.
Additional Equipment:
A back up camera is always necessary. This is in case the camera does not work or the battery runs out. I will use an IPhone 6S camera. This is still an HD camera, but it will be used in the worse case scenario. There are apps on my phone which allow me to obtain different effects (e.g I may want to get hold old footage of a VHS - I can download it to give a better effect or it could be used as a security camera. Also, I might want to use the feature of binoculars, so it is from the kidnappers point of view - this could be good, but I am not sure yet).
Sports Cam:
Tinika has a sports cam which is HD (1080) which can be used as a point of view shot, as well as a 'security camera' in the corner of the room. It can also be used to capture action shots and fast paced shots. It is also water proof, so if we wanted to film anything in water.
The U symbol stands for Universal. A U film should be suitable for audiences aged four years and over. Most of these films consist of family friendly scenes
PG stands for Parental Guidance. This means a film is suitable for general viewing, but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children. A PG film should not unsettle a child aged around eight or older
No one younger than 12 may see a 12A film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult. Adults planning to take a child under 12 to view a 12A film should consider whether the film is suitable for that child as it may have content that the child may not want to see.
Films classified as 12 contain material that is not suitable for children aged under 12.
No-one under 15 is allowed to see a film rated 15 at the cinema or buy/rent a 15 rated film. 15 rated works contains material that is not suitable for children under 15 years of age
Films rated 18 are for adults. No-one under 18 is allowed to see an 18 rated film at the cinema or buy/rent a film of this classification.
The film classification I have chosen for my genre is a 15 certificate. This is due to the conventions of my film genre (thriller/action) not being suitable for people below this age. The main themes in my trailer are targeted at an older audience.
Moreover, this film classification allows me to create a mass audience as it targets audience members of my age bracket and is easier for me to appeal to.
In addition, the 15 classification leaves a wide enough age bracket for me to appeal to a mass audience as it doesn't restrict many audience members from not being able to view the film trailer.
Tinika and I decided we would go to our location choices so we would be able to see if they work with what we wanted to film.
We headed to Shirley woods and decided that there was a path/more pedestrian area and an area surrounded by trees which was perfect.
We took a trip to a trip to Stanley Halls and had a look around inside with permission. The size was perfect for us to create some really creepy scenes which is exactly what we wanted.
Tinika and I then payed a visit to Samuel Coleridge Taylor Youth Centre, where we had a look upstairs and decided the hallways and rooms were perfect to shoot some other scenes.
Finally, Tinika came round to my house and we decided that my car and house would be the best to use.
A credit block is a list of names at the bottom portion of a film official poster. It is also features at then end of a movie trailer.
What is included in the credit block?
The first thing you see on the credit block is, 'Pictures' presents followed by the name of the production company. Sometimes it is by ' ' film, or it will just list the main cast/top billing cast (UPS). Then music by ' '. After, it goes onto the costume designer, editor, it could include all of the executive producers (that would usually be in a big blockbuster movie). In addition, the last line includes the director, the producers and written by.
This is the first draft of my production logo. I created it with serif draw plus. I decided to go with Obsidian Pictures because it was my peers favorite.
I will animate it later on because it looks a little plain. I will ask my peers which one they like the best and that will be my production logo.
Taken Poster Analysis and Jurassic World Poster Analysis
Tinika and I analysed two film posters that had the same genre as our film trailer that we are planning on creating ourselves, an action thriller. We thought it would be a good idea to analyse film posters because we could get an idea for what features we should include on our film poster.
This really helped us both understand what features are beneficial in creating an eye-catching film poster.
These film posters need to include a main image with darker colours to connote some sort of mystery and action throughout the film. This main image should include the protagonist at least. This will allow the audience to see who is featured in our film.
A bold main title that stands out or a bold central image. These posters to differ but, still manage to catch peoples attention in a different way. The Taken film poster catches peoples attention through the use of the bold film title and font. The Jurassic World film poster catches peoples attention through the use of the main image. Both use good techniques to build a mass audience through their posters.
The layout of posters is also very important as it can't be overcrowded as the audience member is likely to disengage. Also, it should include a catchy tag line. This is a short sentence to engage the audience without having to read too much.
Enigma codes are key for a good selling poster. The audience should question what is happening on the poster. This will make them want to watch the film to find answers to those questions they have just wondered.
I think Tinika and I plan to use all of these features in our poster and now have a much better chance at creating a successful poster to capture a mass audience and our target audience.
He studied Russian folk tales, which are well known for their narratives dependent on characters to move the narrative along, he came up with the following ideas:
THE SEVEN SPHERES OF ACTION - What the character does in the narrative to help it move along:
The Villain (Antagonist) - creates the narrative complication
The Donor - gives the hero something which helps the resolution of the narrative
The Helper - gives the hero help to resolve the narrative
The Princess - has to be saved by the hero, often a romantic interest
The Dispatcher - sends the hero on his task or journey
The Hero (Protagonist) - saves the day and resolves the narrative, sometimes he has been on a quest or similar
The False Hero - appears to be good, but has actually been a bad guy the whole time
This theory is stating that characters are crucial to move the plot along and these stock characters are vital to create a successful film. In our trailer, we will only be introducing a few characters, the ones we think will be the most important in the trailer, to entice our target audience to watch our film by finding out more. In our case, the protagonist is both the hero and the princess, as she needs someone to save her, but ultimately that is her. The villain in our media trailer fits this profile perfectly. He creates the narrative complication. This is perfect for our media trailer as it doesn't fit all of Vladimir Propp's theory but a few of the characters.
I conducted a survey in my class to find the best name for my film, these are the results:
Silence was the most popular name as 23/50 voted for it.
Magazine name:
Film hub was the most popular receiving 26/50 votes.
I like the choice of the two names as the results were pretty unanimous I think they will be appealing to my target audience and as my peers fit in the bracket for my target audience, my market research should have paid off positively.
Audience profiling really helps us to establish who our target audience is and who we need to appeal to. Moreover, establishing our audience will only help Tinika and I to broaden our knowledge further of who we need to appeal to.
Wednesday, 14 December 2016
How we created our Logo?
After we obtained our font, I went on to create an animated ident for our production company, Bittersweet Productions. I created our ident on Serif Draw PlusX6. I created the logo first and was going to add the name of the production company when we decided on the right one.
I used triangles as it looked quite unique, and also modern so it would intrigue and interest our audience. I wanted it too look interesting so I added another triangle to create a show design, which was effective. We decided we liked the middle one better as it was different and we thought it was more interesting. We got feedback from our peers and they also preferred the middle triangle.
We added a font to the logo, we thought it looked quite good. We decided to ask from some feedback from our class.
They said they liked the font and it looks good. So we kept the font, so all we needed to do was to animate it to look interesting and more appealing to our audiences.
After a lot of trails on the animation,we decided to animate our ident, we would change the shade of the coloured triangle and make the logo fade onto the screen to make it more creative and exciting as we wanted to create a basic yet eye catching animation. I changed the times of slide so that it would take longer to fade in, therefore I changed the time from 100ms to 50ms, because we wanted to make the animation flow rather than it be robotic.
However, at that speed it was too quick so I changed it to 75ms. I cloned each slide, so that it was in the same position, just changing the colour of the triangle and the fade in of the text- using the colour opacity so that when it got 50% it was the right colour.
Once we was completely happy with the positioning of the triangle, the speed of the opacity and the size of the font, we showed it to our peers in my year 13 class for feedback.
The feedback was completely positive.
Examples include:
Monique Jackson "I love how simple yet effective it is!"
Sarah Nurse "Wow, that is really original and I wouldn't have thought to have changed the opacity. That is very effective."
Amber Ellis "That is fun and yet creepy as it changes to such a deep red colour. That will definitely catch peoples attention...if the great name doesn't already!"
This then lead me to export my ident so that Freya and I could use it when we edit our film trailer. Once I exported it to a PDF file, Freya uploaded it to YouTube. This is because it would be the easiest format for us to access it in.
We decided to create two production logo's, Bittersweet Productions and Obsidian pictures- this hows our audience that although they are both independent they would be featured in a big blockbuster movie.
I found the font on word, even though it was basic, it looked really effective. So, we decided we would keep it as it was unique. I also created through serif draw plus X6, which allowed me to animate the logo. Because I already designed my logo, I just had to animate it.
I created it with a circle, which allowed me to change the shape of the circle so it looked like a 'PAC-Man'. which looked cool so we decided to keep it.
I changed the background from white, because when use the Ident in our trailer it may wash out if it was black- and won't go with our poster either. So, we decided to change it to black. Which meant, I had to change the font colour from black to white so you can see the text.
The only thing I may change in due course about this ident is the background colour. This is due to the fact that I am sure Tinika and I are going to want to use a black/navy colour on our poster and the background colour on our film trailer should be dark to connote the message in the trailer too.
Overall, I am really pleased with how the ident turned out and I think it leaves a lot of enigma codes to keep the audience engaged
