Ident 2 improvement

We decided to rename the 'Mystical Productions' to 'Mystic Productions' as it sounds a lot more memorable and less fantasy-like. We also changed the font to make it more visually appealing. We also used a white font in order to create a strong contrast. The smoke unveils the title showing possibly a confused narrative which clears as time passes.

Sound Track

For the extract we tried to keep the sound track subtle until the last third as that is when key events start to take place. This was made using Logic Pro and Omnisphere. 

We chose to keep the track subtle throughout as that suits conventions of the thriller genre, for example, silence is a dominant feature of a lot of thriller films, silence can be as effective as sound it's self. 

We chose omnisphere and logic as logic is a very advanced music production software which we are used to using. An omnishphere was used to retrieve the desired sound. We chose to use the long winded wining sound as it is eery but not too much so, it is enough to allow the audience to know that something is consciously there.

Also, trillion was used to find sound effects such as, the heart beat and the car screech.

Ident 2

This is our second ident (incomplete) it currently lacks sound and needs to have its font changed. We chose to have another ident as it looks more professional than just one. We recognised, that as a convention of a lot of genres, more than one ident is shown and is often that of either a production company of distributor for example, dream works and 20th century fox.

Re-Filming complete

As of tonight, all refilming has been completed fully. It is now all ready to be edited together and have sound added to it. 

We had to refilm as the previous footage which we collected was not up to a good enough standard, some shots were slightly blurry due to a faulty lens and others were overly shaky, so we thought that refilming would be there correct route.

Risk Assesment

  

Locations, dates, equipment, people

We on the 3rd of this month, however, we will require at least another night of filming. Possibly this sunday (10th).

We used a sony nex-5n for filming on the 3rd, however, there has been an accident in which it has been broken and we are now using my new canon 700D for filming, as I said in the earlier prezi.

For our location, we have chosen to use a town centre at night, this is so that we achieve the correct balance of some traffic but no pedestrians so that the character will appear isolated. All alleyways and streets used will be in the town centre.

On the 3rd, Mark, Liam and myself were at the filming, that is all group member and using Mark and Liam as actors.

Product name

In order to find a name, we looked at the themes that would be shown in the rest of the film and in our two minute extract. We whittled the possibilities down to a final three, Auto Oblivion, Auto Eradication or Subversion. We chose them to try and show the main character's mental state of mind which would become more clear in the latter parts of the film. Auto means self, so we chose this to try and show 'self destruction' with Auto Eradication, however, it sounded too long winded and sinister for a thriller film, which led us to one work titles. Subversion seemed to fit well as it carries  similar themes to that in the film, had not been taken by a film that has already been produced, and sticks in the viewer's minds. 

Ident improvement

Earlier today we received feedback commenting on our ident. We were told that it was a good and effective ident, however, it needed to be shorter. We acted on this by making the initial part of the ident faster, thus shortening the final outcome.

Equipment and software used for filming and editing

This is a short prezi simply to show what equipment and software we have used during the making of our product.

First ident

Here is the start of he ident, before sound has been added. 'New Moon' shows that something new has been created and is also a symbol of mystery and questioning, but the shadowy cloud coverage makes the questions and answers unclear. These are conventions of thriller genre and so fit the final product's genre well.

Ident development

The idea which we intend to follow up for our ident is that of a moon passing across a black nights sky. Clouds will be passing across the moon, this should give an almost confusing effect to the ident, then, the text 'New Moon' shall appear in white on a black screen, this shows the questions being answered, this follows the narrative of a thriller and should be an effective ident.

Re-filming

I decided to offer the suggestion of re-filming our product for continuity reasons. The first resin being that camera quality had changed due to the purchase of a new camera, also, the weather had chained during the filming and was set to stay like that for a further few weeks.

After re-filming, the footage looks a lot more professional, although we have cut it finely to our deadline date of the 29th. Re-filming was also recommended in our student feedback.

Editor's first cut

This is the first cut of my main product. This is simply putting the clips together and added some basic effects, titles and sound will be added later. Things I like about it are; it flows well as a film should, it looks reasonably good quality wise and as a first cut, it doesn't yet have to be perfect. Especially as we will refilm as I do not like some shots.

Editing- Nearly there!

This will be my final first cut editing post as I have nearly done. After that there may be more general editing posts but there will be few adjustments besides sound and feedback improvements.

Both flashbacks have now been completed. Including the second one which features the layered shots of Liam in the bathroom. This was simply created by changing the shot opacity.










The first cut is now ready for exporting and to 
be shown to the class. It will also be critiqued by a class of year 13 media students who will anywise meanings and representations created in the product.













This is how I will export it, and then send it to a compressor to reduce the file size as it is too big for blogger and an inconvenience to transfer.

Student feedback

Today we received feedback from A2 media students, who have all experienced this as course, in order to help us develop our extract.

We were told that we could do with refilling some shots and integrating titles more into the scene rather than having them on black frames through out the extract.

This has proven to be very helpful as we are refilling on sunday the 24th and are going to correct the titles when footage is collected.

Audience Feedback changes

In the audience feedback, it was suggested as one improvement that we change the shot of money being thrown into a sink. Unfortunately, due to time and the creation of the soundtrack, re-filming this would have been too tricky. Time was very tight as we all have commitments elsewhere with other A-levels and jobs. But also because the soundtrack was made to fit the product and would have desynchronised the soundtrack if any time errors were made.

Also in the feedback, it was suggested that we added in some hyper real sound. We did this by close mic-ing some breathing and footsteps. These sounds will help to make our product more suited to the thriller genre and will add to themes of mystery and paranoia in the extract as the sound will start to overwhelm the viewer. On the left, all of the yellow highlighted sound tracks are hyper real sounds in our product.

Another change that we will make is to create a relatively subtle soundtrack, as mentioned in the video. This will add to themes of isolation as silence signifies that no one is there. This further develops themes of paranoia in our extract. To the right you can see our first cut with a draft soundtrack in place.

Audience feedback

This is a video of our audience feedback from the first cut of our product.

Editing- Flash Backs

Today I began editing the two flash backs shown in the product. As you can see from the timeline, I have done up to the flashback. We filmed the flashbacks in a very bright toilet and so will not need tweaking to get the bleached effect we want.







In order to create the transitions within the flashbacks, I decided to look in the stock transitions as I had one in mind that would look terrible anywhere, except for in this particular flashback. I recalled the transition 'Bloom' from the previous version of fcpx.









The stock transitions aren't very good which is why I refrain from using them. However, tis particular one appeared to be very good when used in our flashbacks. This is due to the brightness of both the shot and transition.

Lighting

Before we filmed, we went to our location and tried a few types of lighting to see which would be most effective. We went with the intention of lighting all of our shots in order to change the light cast from streetlights. After we had arrived and tried some techniques (3 point lighting, back lighting etc) we decided to try without, and with only the street lights, we felt it looked a lot better and would flow a lot better throughout the product.

Editing - Getting to grips with the update

In order to keep everything up to date so that all technology communicates with each other correctly, I updated final cut on my mac book. There were some slight changes to the last update, however, non too major to throw me off course.

The overall layout is fairly similar, just with some button changes, tis is an overview of fcpx on my macbook with a few of the clips positioned for the first cut.









The 'Shot information' button had changed slightly which confused me at first but I eventually found it and was back on the road again. As you can see on the right, that is the shot description tab. It comes in very useful for tweaking every aspect of a shot. It too has changed slightly from the last update that I was used to.

I instantly imported all of my footage into a project folder of their own, in order to keep my work organised. The new update brings up a menu automatically which I hadn't realised until I inserted my card. 

 This is just a basic view of my timeline with a few ident clips on it.

Problems encountered in filming (8 nov)

During filming, we encountered group timing problems, for example, I work 3 nights a week from 5-10, this limits the amount of work I can do per day and when we can film. Liam has piano lessons on a Monday which is generally the only day I can film, mark is usually free. We had to compromise by doing group work on Sundays and filming on Mondays in order to overcome these problems.

Location photos on the night of filming (3rd nov)

 Liam - Main actor

 Liam & mark - group members

 Blurred lights and street of location

 Mark - group member

 One of two used alleyways

 Over view of the alley

 Exit of alley one

 The high street we used

 Second of two alleys

Shops used in the background of shots

Intentions for opening sequence

• From the start of the extract we are going to have an unknown man being chased by an unknown chaser. It is also unclear who the protagonist and the antagonist are, therefore leaving the audience confused which is a convention of the thriller genre.
• Fast paced editing will be used to show the rush of the escape. 
• Flashbacks used to give a back story of the characters and to confuse the narrative to make the audience ask questions 
• The lighting used will also add to the mystery, we will use dark intimidating lighting to show nothing is quite clear.
• The location in real time is a small town centre, which you would expect to be busy, however, the fact that it is deserted adds to the feel of isolation of the characters
• in the flashbacks the character is shown to be worried but the audience does not know about what. This would only become clear in the main sequence of the film.

Plot outline

The film will open into a man running through (what should be) a busy town center at night. He is running frantically away from something, however, the viewer never fully see's what or who he is running from.

The film will be narrated by a calm and gentle male voice. This will contradict what is being seen on screen. The narrator will identify himself as the running man and explain (vaguely) a bit about his situation.

At the end of the chase the man will come to a busy road. the camera shows the mans legs stepping out onto the road, goes blank all that is heard are non diagetic car screeches and horns and the barking of dogs. It will then jump to a title sequence, or could have titles integrated into the start sequence. Continuing on from the sequence we would be filming, the film would skip to the start of the narrative, before the chase and would go through the film showing how the character got into money troubles and went to a loan shark for money and couldn't get it back. So he gets involved with drug dealings in order to get the money  back, after he repays the loan shark, he has made new enemies, who come in two main groups. Both of which begin to chase him as the film returns back to the point in the narrative where the film began, revealing the plot and answering some, but not all questions.

This suits it's genre well as it hives the incentive that the audience should ask questions, and provides the audience with sufficient material to try and piece together, but not to get an answer.

Mise en scene planning

This is our mise en scene planning for our AS thriller extract. This will explain all features of mise en scene in the extract and what they will do to enhance the extract, and in what way it will do it.

Props: There are very few props used in the extract, this is to keep everything quite simplistic, but also means that we need not worry about continuity within the extract. However, props that will feature are notes of money in the flashback's, these will be used to add a sense of realism to the extract.

Actors : We will use two actors, one main character which you see clearly throughout and another character that is concealed. We have chosen to use two actors to keep shots focused on them, also a factor that made this decision was that it would be easier to organise filming and planning sessions.

Setting: The setting we decided to use is a dark alley way and town centre to show the isolation of the main character, this suits the genre as it emphasis isolation as a significant key theme.

Costume: Normal clothes are going to be used but they are dark. The darkness of the clothes relates to the mystery portrayed in the character, this being a further connotation and key theme of genre. The audience are able to link to the normal clothing and are shown how their lives can be turned around changed for the worse.

Lighting: Mostly street lights will be used for lighting as it will look very realistic as opposed to a heavily lit shot. Also, the streetlights cast good heavy shadows from the actors figure which we aim to achieve. 

Representations planning

In the extract, the actors shall be represented as (for the running character), mentally unstable, vulnerable, weak and trapped. Vulnerability and a sense of being trapped shall be represented by camera shots and angles, for example, high angle shots shall show the characters vulnerability. But also props, lighting and the way both are used shall influence representations. Props, such as, money shall be used in a way that will help show the characters mental state. And shadows also used to show this.

Ident Research

Ident research

Ident 1 (thriller)

Legendary films, this ident suggests to us that the movie will be action packed and tense through the colours and music. This links to the genre as thrillers are meant to be intense.  The built up soundtrack also provides the idea that it shall be full of action as it is a built up brass band of high dynamics. Also the image of fire gives a warming feel to the ident and gives a dangerous feel. The logo itself has a celtic feel emphasizing the effect of danger.

Ident 2 (different genre)

DreamWorks, the ident suggests fantasy and imagination as the animation shows a young boy fishing on the moon. This relates to the genre, as the movies they make are usually fantasy.

What I have discovered from this is that the idents link to the genre of the movie by giving similar representations and meanings. The fact that the Dreamworks ident is up above the clouds gives it a dream like state for example, and also the boy is sitting on the moon makes it seem anything is possible.

the soundtrack also gives a uplifting mood linking to the genre.