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;

Police meeting

Liam and myself met with sergeant Coleson, a member of the police the police this was ask for permistion to use a decretive, training sword. it was also to ensure that we would be allowed to film out in public with a realistic looking weapon. After the sargent inspected the weapon, we went over the offensive weapon act. this included such things as determining the length, sharpness and most important of all the intentions of the weapon. 

This video is a debrief of the meeting;

Informant

This post is just to say that throughout the past moths the group and myself have been working on the project, this has resulted in myself not posting in a while. however in this time frame we have done a lot of work that we shall be sharing with you shortly. for example we have:

• had a meeting with the Werrington police
• selected our set
• check the lighting
• organized everyone
• over came many problems
• filmed our movie
• edited our clips together
• and discussed many ideas for our title sequence

I will post more entries over the coming weeks where i will go in to more detail about the above.