THE FINAL VIDEO

it has been a long journey but here is our final video, i hope you enjoy it :)

A simple shot of a tree can be made to look threatening by stripping it of leaves, adding a vulture and some lightening and shooting it in darkness. The same tree can be given a very different look by having children playing beneath its sunlit branches. As an experienced film audience we are able to read these hidden signals of lighting, colour, props and characters and add these to our understanding of what will happen in the film.


In this way, the elements of mise en scéne are an indicator as to the genre (type) of film we are watching. We have certain expectations of the mise en scéne in different genres of films; e.g. Horror; Dark, creepy, evil.
Comedy; Bright, colourful, lively.


The elements to consider in the mise en scéne are:
a) settings & props
b) costume, hair & make-up
c) facial expressions & body language
d) lighting & colour
e) position ing of characters & objects within a frame


Heres a brief look at each of these in turn;


SETTINGS & PROPS


SETTINGS:


The settings used in a film are very rarely just backgrounds to the characters' dialogue and indeed we will often see shots of places without any action taking place. In this way the setting of a film is far more significant than the setting of a theatre and is almost always infinitely more detailed. Filmmakers can choose to build a setting from scratch using the bare walls and floor of a studio set; alternatively, a great deal of time and effort is put in by a location manager in the initial stages of making a fil;m to find a setting which already exists. Invariably this location will then be altered further to reflect exactly what the filmmaker wants to convery.


Settings can be used to manipulate an audience by building certain expectations and then the action takes a different turn, for instance, a tale of horror set against the familiar background of modern everyday urban life is showhow more disturbing than one set a century ago in a house in the wooods. This can be particularaly effective if the setting goes against what we would expect from this genre of film.


PROPS:


Props is the term we give to objects in the setting which play a part in the action, rather than just being part of the background, for example, the glass containing the poisioned wine.




COSTUME, HAIR & MAKEUP


COSTUME:


Costume plays a large part in the mise en scéne because it can be an instant indicator to us of a character's personality, social status and job. It tells us immediately whether the film is set in the present and what society and/or culture it will centre around. It may also provide a clue as to the part of the caracter will play in the action. Certain types of costume are identified closely with indicidual genres, for instance, the black cloak of the vampire with a horror film.


MAKE UP:


In the early days of cinema, make-up was used to highlight facial features as black and white film stock could not register detail very well. Certain genres traditionally use make-up more than others.

Storyboard

Here is our storyboard, it is a brief copy as during filming we lost the original copy.

the benifits of using a storyboard is it gives us a good idea about how we want shots and what we want them to look like while story board i have to think about if the camera angle was possible for us and if the lighting would be correct. we used it during filming briefly but as we were filming we though of new ideas and adapted them to are production and as we went though the filming we realised some shots would look better in different ways .In the origional we put shot duration, sound and lighting and a brief discription of what was happening in the shots.

i had to be efficant with my time as i had to draw alot of shots and at the same time have to make them reconisable for anyone using the storyboard. i obtained the storyboard sheet via mr deVita and used a A3 printed to print it out so i could draw more detail into it also thiswould make things clearer, i used a pencil and pen to draw/write this.

as you can see from the images we have tried to stick to are original idea as closely as we can  here is a comparision of the storyboard vs the video

as you can see we've stuck to the environment shown in the storyboard as before filming we had to go down to the filming location and examine where shots will possibly go. as you can see the charater is wearing the correct clothing as this was decided before the storyboard was created and shadows are drawn in correctly the correct places on connors face

us at the location

Editing of Individual Clips

I have had to edit all of the individual clips for our movie, this is because, the programme we are using (Premiere Pro) to comprise all of the footage together requires the files to be a different format. Seeing as the clips needed to be darkened and tweaked, I did it at the same time using after effects. In after effects I used the brightness and contrast however, i didn't apply it to the clips themselves i created an adjustment layer, applying it to that. this adjustment layer meant that I could delete the clips and add the next one to be edited without having to transfer effects across.if you look below you can see the before and after, (before on the right and after on the left) you can see how the clip is darkened and the shadow more pronounced.

I have also created a CCTV look for the clips which is shown below however, the video is a teaser trailer i made for our film consisting of CCTV footage in reverse. there is also a step by step guide to how I did it.

step one - the first step is to add a vignette, you can find this by typing vignette into the effects and presets tab. this adds a black gradient around the edges.

step two - the second step is to add a pre-made effect called "night vision", once again this can be found by typing night vision into the effects and presets; simply drag and drop it on to the clip.

step three - is to change the colour of the night vision effect, from green to either black or a green/blue, this is to add a close circuit TV camera

step four - after the colour is perfected it is time to add the timecode, this can be found in the effects tab Effects-Text-Timecode you can then change the frame rate of the counter, and the starting frame.

step five - now to create the camera name and date of recording, to do this create two black rectangles, then wright camera number, area, and date. then turn on action safe and adjust the position of the boxes. 

step six - lastly the frame rate of the clip has to be changed, this can be done by pressing ctrl/cmd K then changing it down to about 4 frames a second this will give it the jumpy look you get on cctv cameras

I was also going to add some special effect into the clips such as, blood splats, fog, etc. However, with the technical difficulties with the usb stick I lost all the video copilot files, files containing preset clips of blood, fog, mist and more. These files can be dropped straight on to a clip and edited from there onwards.

Facebook Group

This is our Facebook group, I set this up to firstly draw in people to our productions however, it is also so that we can do some research into our target audience. we can post links to our blogs, our YouTube account and keep people up to date with our production; we also can ask people who follow our group questions such as what films do you like, where do you watch them and many more. we have been able to gather so much information about our target audience due to this group.

we are also going to use this in our evaluation, asking people to post reviews and score our final video.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/home.php?sk=group_139347546114394&ap=1

technical failure

Earlier today, well yesterday, I had some technical difficulties involving the usb storage stick I have been using lately, I stored all of my edited clips for our production on it; this was to take to and from school. unfortunately I didn't create a back up, and the stick has broken, meaning that all the edited footage has been lost along with the premiere pro files.

luckily I backed up all of the original footage, so it should be a simple case of re editing the clips and comprising them together

Foley art

Liam, Scott and myself set about recording some sound effects for our media piece “Relentless Possibility”; we researched into Foley art, a technique used by film industries to add sound effects. I found a video online showing sound technicians for a popular video game, recording sound effects and then demonstrating how they use them.

This video gave us a lot of inspiration for our video’s audio. We arranged a date where we would go round to Scotts house to record our vegetable genocide; Liam and myself went to town to collect equipment and fruit and veg, we considered health and safety by buying some overalls, glasses and some other protective clothing. We also bought some Tarpaulin, Duck Tape, Bamboo, Tights, Hair Gel, CDs, a Hammer and lots of Fruit and Veg. 

We constructed a Pop Shield out of some tights stretched over and embroidery ring, this was to help reduce any hiss sounds the microphone may pick up, it also protects it from any foreign projectiles (banana juice/goo) once we made these we duck taped them on to some bamboo and tapped that to the tripod, positioning it in front of the microphone. We then got started on destroying some fruit, setting up a stand made out of cardboard and wooden beams, using our array of tools we dismembered the fruit; recording the result with Scotts audio equipment and Liam’s D90 for visual. Once we had cleaned up the putrefying mess we listened to the result, find some thing worked really well and others were a dismal.

Scott and myself then went over the recordings at a latter date to compose them to fit our film segments; we did this using Cubase sound recording and editing software we layered the sounds up on top of each other to create a stabbing sound. Once we created the ideal sound we exported it and Scott uploaded it to soundcloud for me to download and use when I needed it.

It was then a simple case of downloading it and adding it to our media film, this combined with the editing has helped to intensify the genera of our film. 

Editing Main Title

I have been help Ryan, by teaching him how to edit titles; and from a previous post you can see that he managed to get to grips with it. However, I forgot to show Ryan how to change the comp size to fit our movie; resulting in more work correcting this error. Although, this was an easy job and didn’t require much knowhow. Simply expanding the comp size then re adjusting the text in the titles to fit the new dimensions (as this was a simple task that could get complicated if unfamiliar with the program, I took over).

Once Ryan had finished with the titles I made the main title this was done by gathering inspiration from a videocopilot tutorial I saw and adding my own twist to it. I have taken some screen shots of the processes to go along with a description of what I have done.

One of the first steps in creating the main title was, to create the comp area (ensuring it was the same as the rest of our project). Following this I created the text which was “Relentless Possibility”, the name of our film, this was using the same font as the rest of the titles. Some of the specifications are:

• ·      Font – Chaparral Pro
• ·      Font size– 190
• ·      Font style – Bold
• ·      Colour – White

Once I have created the text and positioned it how I want it to be laid out, I set some key frames. These key frames can control opacity, position, scale, etc. By setting a key frame at the beginning of time line, it will control what the text looks like at the beginning of the clip. For example, at the beginning of this clip I have a key frame set in opacity, to zero percent; this mean that the text will not appear, until I add a second key frame with a higher percent.

This will mean that the text will gradually increase it's opacity percent until it hits the key frame with the maximum in it. This same technique can be applied to other fields such as scale, this means you can create the illusion of the text coming towards you.

Once I have the text lined up, the hand made effect perfected and the length of the clip corrected, I can start adding some cool effects. To do this I downloaded the evolution pack from videocopilot. Videocopilot is an online group that record and produce special FX for purchase; using these I added some vines that will appear as though they are growing out of the title.

Once I completed the title, I exported it as a .mov file (quick time movie) I used this format instead of a .wmv (windows Media Video) as I am using a apple Macintosh to edit my clips.

Filming

Filming went pretty smoothly, with no problems really arising allowing us to flow through it quickly. It was done over the course of about 3-4 Weeks taking place at around 7/8-10+ O'Clock. The issue we have noticed though is that we haven't included an estalbishing shot. However, this will only take a quick session to get completed so it's no real problem. We plan to get this done ASAP, maybe even later on today (25/03/11). since we have whent back to location, and reshot some scenes that needed retouching; also taking some more shot for example, filming heather walking to the door. we reshot this scene from different angles so that we can split up the first person shots.

 In our rough cut which we have put together, we've noticed an issue with one of the shots. Unfortunatly, in one of the shots of Heather (Dead character), you can see her take a breath. It's only minor and not too noticeable, however it is an annoyance. We don't have time to correct this now so we've got to stick with it.



Filming Location (In day light)



Over the course of our filming, we encounted that things were different to how we had planned they would go. Whilst it still went fine, it was challenging. We experimented with many different shots and, in the end, changed quite a few of the shots on our storyboard.

We had to improvise for some of the shots, at some point liam had to lay down and shoot without the tripod to get the right angle which the tripod wouldn't allow. Quite a few shots were challenging, for example, the panning was more difficult than Liam and myself thought, when the shot recuired us to pan both right and down, trying to keep the pace of the character whilst also framing another thing of interest in the shot.

Also, the cameras metering system could not be controlled manual whilst filming, so we experienced some lighting problems. In one of the shots, where the car is started, when the headlights come on the camera auto-adjusts to meter for the bright point of light, which darkened everything else in the shot. Thankfully, however, it wasn't really a problem because we felt that the effect was pretty cool and suited the dark, sinister feel of the film. Another issue with the camera, was that in some shots there appears to be large black bars scrolling down across the shot. I think this was due to metering issues aswell, and unfortutantly, it can't fix it now.

We did try to pre-plan the lighting, where liam, Scott and myself made a visit to olympus house (Where we filmed) to check out the lighting and to find out, based on the lighting, how we would shoot. The large flood light above the main entrance to the building provided excelent lighting which was very helpful. However, it did turn off sometimes and since we had no control of this we had to pause/cancel filming sometimes.



Running through the storyboard with the DV



We filming using Liams Nikon D90 SLR but one of the shots were using my iPod. The advantage of using Liam's camera over the DV Cameras provided by the school was that we could film in higher quality and resolution. Also, the ability to change lenses helped. For most of it, we used a 50mm Prime F/1.8 lenses; this allowed us to take good advantage of focus and depth of field. However, the D90, is a photographic camera mainly, with just the side option to record, so unfortuatnly the settings were limited in video mode. We filmed on the standard video mode with the ISO set to 400-600.

Since none of us hold a lisence yet to drive, in the shot where we had to car speeding off we had to use a 'stunt double'. We filmed Connor (Protanganist) climbing into the car, then switched the shot to a different angle where we switched him with his Dad (The 'stunt double'). This allowed us to film the shot of the car speeding off.

Overall, we're happy with the production we have compiled. Here is a link to our rough edit;

Deadlines

Today we recieved our deadline for our post production work.


It needs to be completed by the 10th of December - 4 days from now.


This includes, Storyboards, Shooting list, Scripts and Research.


Storyboard ruff draft is complete, and Research is continous.