MC: Post Production

In previous lessons we have been focusing on editing our sequence together and not worrying about sound yet. We had to use the scissor tool to cut clips in half in order to intercut our work. We also had to alter the colouring of some clips in order for the lighting in each scene to match. We did this by using the Colour Balance (RBG) effect and dragged that onto the clip we wanted to change the colouring of. We then played around with the balance of each colour and mostly turned the red up and the green down until we got the colouring we were happy with. Once the majority of editing was done, I decided to spend one of my frees, lunchtime and the lesson on getting the sound right in our sequence.

On Tuesday 27th January, I focused on getting most of the sound into our opening sequence. To start with, I placed in our original song choice of Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows by Lesley Gore into the soundtrack bar on the timeline. I then altered the volume of the soundtrack to a level I thought worked best. I then added in a underlying horror drone which lasts throughout the sequence. This was to make the opening have a lot more of a horror, tension building feel about it.
Next, I thought it would be a good idea to add in some tension building, volume increasing sounds every time we see the antagonist. I found these sounds on freesound.com and added them onto a different audio layer. We decided these sounds work best if they are faded in and out each time so we right clicked on the sound that we dragged into the timeline and went onto 'fade' and chose the 'fade in audio' and 'fade out audio' options.

 

Then I got some more sounds off freesound.com to add drag and drop into another audio layer for some diegetic sounds. As shown below, here I placed the sound of a knife being picked up and aligned it with the video. This makes the scene more tense and exciting to watch.

 

Finally, after listening back to the whole sequence, I decided there needed to be some more diegetic sounds throughout the sequence so I went back and altered the sounds that originally came with the clips we filmed. This added a sense of realism to the sequence and again made it more interesting to watch and listen to. I altered the sounds of it by making some clips silent as the sounds within them had no relevance to the action going on so I turned the volume of these clips right down by clicking on the properties button and dragging the volume bar right down. Then I listened for the clips I thought the sound should be kept in on and then altered the volume of these sounds to the volume I thought was most effective. 

 

In our next lessons, we will start to add in titles as that is the final thing we need to do to complete our opening sequence. 

Group: Reflection on Shoot 4

On the 28th January, we re filmed some of our footage for the last time. We went to town to re shoot some shots at the bus stop and get a shot of a bus. We then filmed at Katie's house again to redo the killing scene as the shots we got before did not work.

What we thought went well was the pull focus shots we got as they look very effective.
The challenges we came across was tracking into one of our actors backs as we didn't have a track to do it with. Also, making sure we had all the shots we needed in order to make our sequence a continuity piece of work was quite hard to work out.

Mel's individual contribution to the shoot was that she filmed a lot of the killing sequence as well as organising actors, costume and props.
Katie's individual contribution to the shoot was that she filmed a lot of the bus shoots as well as help out with ideas of how to do the killing scene.

On this shoot, our storyboard did not affect our filming as we have changed our concept ideas a lot since we planned the storyboard. This shoot was mainly focusing on redoing old ideas we have already shot that needed to be improved.

Group: Soundtrack

Our idea for sound is to use Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows by Lesley Gore throughout the background of the sequence.

We will also add in some diegetic sounds of a girl gasping, footsteps, keys, taking her shoes off, some horror drones and bangs and a knife woosh.

We have decided that whenever the antagonist comes into shot when the victim is in town that there should be a tension building sound to make the scene more scary.

Knife
Footsteps
Background music - Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows

Group: Typography

When deciding our font title, we looked at a range on fonts on Photoshop and other websites to try find one we thought best suited the type of opening we are creating. We decided to go for this font on Photoshop called 'Capture it' as we liked how bold it is and the speckled pattern on it has connotations of blood splatter.
 

 

 

The animation we have decided to do for our title is that it suddenly comes onto the screen and then fills up with blood from the bottom to the top. We feel this makes it look more effective and links into the horror genre as well as our film as the girl gets her neck slit. 

 

These are some other font ideas that we had when trying to find the best one.

 



 

We also looked at a variety of fonts to use for the rest of the titles throughout. Again for these titles, we decided to use a font on Photoshop called 'Skin & Bones'.



Group: Rough Cut

This is our first Rough Cut of 'Followed'. We are yet to put in any background music as we need to fit it around the clips and edit down the ones we have already filmed and work out which clips we need to refilm to match the music afterwards. We are also still deciding between a number of endings; which is shown by the end of this clip where there is two alternate endings as we need to choose the most effective one. We also need to still put titles into the opening and work out how we are going to embed them into the footage. As well as this, we also need to put a filter on the footage to give it a more orange tone as it doesn't match the lighting in our other clips. This will create a look of verisimilitude.

Audience Feedback:

Good:

• Range of shoots used made it look effective
• Disappearing behind a bus shot looked good

Criticisms:

• Lipstick part had no relevance and took too long
• Lighting colours were different
• No sound effects

How we plan to improve:

• Add in a reflection shot of the antagonist using the compact mirror within the lipstick part to make it relevant and not boring to watch.
• Alter the lighting colours using effects on Premier
• Add in a background soundtrack as well as some conventional horror sounds to build the tension and make our sequence more exciting to watch.

MC: Individual Contribution 21/01/15 & 22/01/15

On the 22nd January, I added some tasks onto the blog to show how our project has developed. I also assisted with the editing of our project and making some important decisions.
On the 23rd, we mostly focused on the editing of our piece and tried to get a rough cut together. We haven't been able to add any titles or sound in yet as editing all the clips together is our main priority at the moment.
Our project is coming along quite well, however we have noticed some parts we need to re film and what shots we got that didn't work. We mostly focused on editing a lot of the new footage filmed at Katie's house and we are trying to place it all in the order we want and we will then go back to refine everything.
Our biggest challenge at the moment is figuring out how to do the ending. I tried cutting it in the way I thought worked best with what we have and Katie also did the same. We have scheduled another time to shoot to make sure all the gaps we have are filled and to make sure our sequence flows well.

Group: Logistics

The purpose of creating a call sheet and risk assessment as an institutional practice is so the director is aware of any risks in that area and knows how to prepare for them. Also, it allows them to know what locations they will be filming in and everything technical involved e.g. costumes, props etc.

The challenges involved when doing a call sheet and risk assessment are trying to work out all the technical details involved in each location you're filming at. It is also quite difficult to identify all the risks that could potentially be at the location as you might forget some obvious ones.

Group: Reflection on Shoot 3

Our third shoot was at Katie's house on Saturday 17th January. We plan for this to be 'Lizzie's House' and we recorded a number of shots of her walking into the house, unlocking the door and entering the house. We learned from our previous shoots that we should film every action in a number of angles in order to achieve continuity and in case certain shots didn't fit. Since we need our clips to be short and snappy to fit with our background music, we decided that have a fast cutting rate between different angles would achieve this without having to not show each action properly.

We used the Track and Dolly for the first time on this particular project. We came across some problems in that the corridor we wanted to film in was only just big enough to set out the rack; therefore it sometimes rattled and hit the radiator on the side. We fixed this problem by filming front on from the back half of the corridor, then filming behind Lizzie at the front half of the corridor so we can cut between the tracking shots. These shots did end up coming out looking quite effective and we are very happy with them.

 

 

Another problem that occurred was our fake blood. We tried using a fake blood tutorial from youtube but it ended up not being the right consistency, However we decided to just use red food colouring instead and drip it down Lizzie's neck. We discovered we would have to use after effects to make sure there was a sense of verisimilitude in the way the blood was placed.

Mel's individual contribution to this shoot was making sure the actors knew exactly what they had to do as well as put the fake blood on Lizzie and help set up the room as well as contributing with the filming behind the camera.
Katie's contribution was that she came out with good angle ideas and was in charge of the track and where was the best place to use it in her house.

Group: Reflection on Shoot 2

Our second shoot was on the 15th January in the same place as our first shoot; Tunbridge Wells Town Centre. What our aim for this shoot was to re film a lot of the shots we had already taken as we felt the shots we had got from our first shoot were too long. We also attempted the bus scene in this shoot as well.

Mel's individual contribution to the shoot was again to give strict instructions to the cast so they knew exactly what they had to do so our shots could turn out they way we want them to. She was also in charge of making sure they came wearing the same clothes and looked exactly the same as they did in the previous shoot.
Katie's individual contribution to the shoot was being in charge of all the equipment we needed and making sure we had shot everything we needed.

Again, in this shoot, we didn't really use our storyboard as we had to think of what shots would work best in the location and space we had to shoot things. We used the storyboard to get our basic ideas of what we wanted to film and so it kept reminding us what we needed to film so we didn't miss any key parts out, however the specific shots we took were not drawn on the storyboard.

What we thought worked particularly well was the bus shot we one moment the antagonist is standing there and then the bus goes past and he's gone. We thought it looked really effective and it makes our piece a bit more creepy.

We also thought our use of close ups were really effective and came out looking good. Here are some examples:

The challenges of this particular shoot was getting the right angle to film the reflection in the compact mirror. As the mirror was so small, we found it difficult to be able to show that the protagonist is using the mirror but there is also a creepy reflection of the antagonist in it. As we were filming it as a bus stop, the glass from the shelter was a big obstruction to us as we couldn't quite get the angles we were hoping for. Another challenge was filming on the bus. When planning this part of the opening, we didn't take into account how much the camera will move around on the bus and how hard it is to keep it still. This caused us to end up with a lot of jerky and wobbly shots but hopefully we will be able to crop those parts out so we are still able to use this footage.













In our next shoot, we will use this experience and try to film in a place where we have lots of room to move the camera so we are able to film from the angles we want. We will also now carefully plan our shots so we don't get a situation like the wobbly bus again.

MC: Analysis of Title Sequence - Alien (Scott, 1979)

Throughout this opening sequence the title 'Alien' slowly appears bit by bit across the top.

The titles shown are:

• 0:04-0:07 - 'a Brandywine - Ronald Shusett production'
• 0:09-0:12 - 'a Ridley Scott film'
• 0:18-0:21 - 'Tom Skerritt'
• 0:23-0:26 - 'Sigourney Weaver'
• 0:28-0:32 - 'Veronica Cartwright'
• 0:34-0:37 - 'Harry Dean Stanton'
• 0:39-0:43 - 'John Hurt'
• 0:45-0:48 - 'Ian Holm'
• 0:50-0:54 - 'an Yaphet Kotto as Parker'
• 0:56-1:00 - music by Jerry Goldsmith/conducted by Lionel Newman/original music copyright 1979 Fox Fanfare Music Inc'
• 1:03-1:07 - 'executive producer Ronald Shusett'
• 1:10-1:14 - 'screenplay by Dan O'Bannon/story by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett'
• 1:18-1:22 - 'produced by Gordon Carroll/David Giler/and/Walter Hill'
• 1:25-1:29 - 'directed by Ridley Scott'

Typography

Each title fades in and stays for an average of 3 seconds. 

The text is white and quite plain. The font has straight edges and nothing fancy to it. This could connote to the blankness of space.

The titles appear in the middle of the screen with a background of a slowly appearing planet shows. 

The Alien title appears differently to the rest. 1 line at a time the letters appear to finally create the title. It is in bold, white writing similar to the rest of the credits. However, it is spaced out massively and is a lot bigger than the rest of the text that appears. This could show that the 'alien' in the film is big and domineering.

Relationship between text, visuals and content of titles

From my research, I have found that the text needs to link to the theme of the film. It helps to bring the whole thing together and so it is important that all titles link in some way.
The text used in this opening is quite rigid and computer like which helps to link it to the sci fi genre that this film is.
Also, I have worked out that there is a specific order in which the titles appear. The less important people within the making of the film appear first, near the beginning of the clip and then the most important people such as the producers and director appear last, near the end of the clip.

How can I use this research in my research?

Although my production is not the same sci fi genre as Alien, it has made me realise that the texts do need careful consideration on how they link to the film and the connotations of them.

I quite like the idea of using the fade in animation so I might try to add that into my production. I will also place the least important people involved within the making of the film first and the more important ones last.

KT: Individual- Analysis of the Title Sequence: Saw (Wan, 2004)

Throughout the opening title sequence in SAW, the titles appear in a number of different ways. Firstly the publishing house being presented on a black screen and using diegetic sound of swooping and an effect to appear on the screen. After that barbed wire is strewn round 'Twisted Pictures' and it used SFX to tighten around the font, instantly setting the scene for the movie.

The Titles shown are:
0.04- -0.12 - LGF Lionsgate Films
0.14-0.24 - Twisted Pictures
0.26-0.31 - Twisted Pictures Presents
0.32- 0.35 - A Burg/Koules/Hoffman Production
0.37-0.42 - A James Wan Film
0.51-0.56 - SAW

Typography
Each Title fades in and out fairly quickly and is put on a black screen behind so does not overlay any video footage and it is created as a build up to the final point where the setting appears. The text is a blue, glowing colour and is mostly capitals. The font has straight edges and a swirly, posh ends that would be similar to a handwritten message.
As the titles disappear, they dissolve into the background in a wave like motion. Each Title is present for around 4 seconds each.

Relationship between text, visuals, and content of titles
Saw has a unique way of showing titles as it does not give the actors names in the opening scene. The titles are not integrated with the opening footage and are only present right at the beginning where the follow the animation of the production house name. With the music behind this technique is used to create suspension and keep the audience on edge about what is going to be introduced.
The more important titles are shown towards the end, so the footage will follow them.
As James Wan is the last name shown before the title of the film it signifies that he is the most important person in the making of the film.

How can I use this research in my research?
This research is helpful even though the film opening I am making is in the slasher/stalker genre, not torture. It has made me realize that it is important to integrate the titles within the footage, or even place them on black screens between footage as having them all at the beginning with only footage following isn't very effective. I have also realized that it is vital to have a text font that reflects the opening and also to keep using the same font as SAW's title and sub-titles have different fonts, therefore it isn't instantly recognizable as that film. Therefore I need to make sure I use all the same fonts within our opening to create a recognizable branding for the film.

Group: Reflection on Shoot

On Thursday 8th January, we did our first shoot in Tunbridge Wells high street. We were focusing on the scenes where the victim is walking through town and is getting stalked by the antagonist. We managed to get some footage of her walking through town and then arriving at a bus stop.

On shoot, Mel contributed by taking part in some of the filming as well as giving strict instructions to the actors about what they need to be doing.
Katie contributed by also taking part in the filming and bringing the props and organising the equipment.

We took our storyboard with us to remind us of the type of shots we wanted to do however, we realised we needed a lot more shots than what was on our storyboard and we had to adapt to the location we had. This meant we didn't do a lot of the shots originally planned on the storyboard as we realised they wouldn't work in the location.

What we thought worked well was the pull focus from the tree to Lizzie as she walks past as it looks effective and makes it interesting to watch.

The challenges we found on this particular shoot was the public getting in the way of our shots and getting the right angle to film in the compact mirror. We realised we needed to plan a lot more before going to the shoot as when we got there, we had to do a lot of on the spot thinking as we realised our locations weren't as good as we had hoped.

We will use this experience in our next shoot by making sure we know exactly what we are going to be filming and from watching back our clips we realised what shots worked and what didn't so we know what we need to re film and what needs to be added in.

Group: Animatic

1. The purpose of this task was to visualise our horror opening. We drew out a storyboard then edited together in Premier and added music, we could see how long we wanted each shot to be and how we wanted it to fit along side the music. We drew out each shot after discussing our plot synopsis. We decided to use a range of angles, movements and ranges of shots in our opening to keep the audience interested as the camera isn't focused in one place for too long. After completing our storyboard we took pictures of each shot and uploaded them to Premier then added "sunshine, lollypops and sunshine" as background music as this is was our preference for non-diegetic background music as it is an upbeat song yet still holds childlike qualities and can be perceived as creepy.

2. From doing this task we have learnt that each shot needs to be shorter than we first expected to fit in with the music so there needs to be a faster cutting rate. We also learnt that there was some faults in our plot line as some things didn't fit, we have now fixed them as we had to work out how each frame linked to the next. We took into account the rule of thirds in order to achieve a visually interesting shot.

Group: Storyboard

 

The purpose of storyboarding as an institutional practice is so the film makers can previsualize exactly what shots they want to do and so it makes the process quicker.

The problems we found when carrying out this task was that we weren't 100% sure on every shot that we were going to do so it was hard to make sure each shot linked to the next. We found it difficult to show camera movement and visual effects within our storyboard.

When carrying out this task we learnt that our concept wasn't as developed as we think. It made us think about every little thing involved in the shot and our shot ideas developed when doing this task. It allowed us to notice any faults in our idea and so we had to fix them in order to make our concept flow.

Group: Planning our Shoot

Shoot times:
Thursday 8th January - In Tunbridge Wells town centre
Thursday 15th January - In Tunbridge Wells town centre
Saturday 17th January - Katie's house and maybe more in the town centre

Crew and Cast members:
Katie Tyler
Mel Cooper
Lizzie Price
Sean Ray

Equipment and Props:
Katie's camera
Tripod from Mr Fiveash
Compact mirror
Lipstick
Handbag
Knife
Fake blood
Shopping bags

Contingency:
As our shoots in Tunbridge Wells are outside, weather could cause us a problem. If it rains we can work with it and make the day just look a bit more depressing. However, our ideal conditions would be for it to be slightly dark with no rain.