Final Opening Film

Week Commencing 8/12/14

Week Commencing 8/12/14

This week we showed our finishing product to our peers and teachers whom gave us feedback all of which was positive. Our teacher told us one thing that could be improved which was our titles. As we was unsure how to use the title settings we found this very difficult, the reason why she told us to change it was because they wasn't in a typical 'thriller' format therefor to improve it we changed the titles around to fit the conventional theme. Another improvement for the titles was that they wasn't all the same size and they were all scattered in different places over the scenes. To improve we moved the titles around and making them all similar sizes, we also put them in more of a fluent timing so they wasn't coming onto the screen at random times. Here is the film before we changed the titles around.

 

 

Once we changed the titles around we was finished with our opening scene.

Week Commencing 1/12/14

Week Commencing 1/12/14

Our aim for this week was to finish our film and editing. We planned for our film to be finished last week however there was too much to be done and we couldn't finish it in time as well we wanted to.
All the stuff that needs to be done this week is all the finishing touches that we feel will improve our film. These things included adding more sound effects, changing the order of where some clips come in. We originally had 'The Camp' title at the end of the opening scene with some music over the top however we felt it looked too much like a trailer therefor we put it at the beginning of the film, after 'Blackout Productions' but before 'A Katy Gopsill Film'.
There wasn't much to do this week as we more or less had completed the film we was just adding the final bits to it.

Week Commening 24/11/14

Week Commencing 24/11/14

This week our aim was to have all the sound edited onto the film. By the end of the week we had the majority of the sound done however we feel that the sound is still a little bit thin throughout the film. To give it more texture we used a free sound website to create more of a sound scape to thicken it up a bit more. When editing the sound onto the footage we found it quite hard as we didn't plan for this to happen. However we persevered to make it the best that we could possibly do by adding many different kinds of sound throughout.

We also started to put an effect on the clips to distinguish between the protagonist and the antagonist. For the antagonist we used a kind of spotlight effect which looked quite dark around the edges and lighter in the centre. We liked this as we thought it was mysterious and thriller like. For the protagonist used a kind of flashing light which looked like she's remembering it and quite dream like.

Also we attempted to put the titles onto the film to make it more like an opening scene.

Week Commencing 17/11/14

Week Commencing 17/11/14

This week we had to film some sounds for our film because during the filming we had spoken over quite a few of our clips as well as there being a lot of background noise. Therefore we used a camera and sound recorded to re-record the noises that would of been made. Originally we was just going to put a song on over the top, however this could make it look like a trailer and not very well put together therefor we sat down and came up with a load of ideas that we could use for the sound. We then recorded a wild track in which we would put in the background so the film didn't sound flat. Some other sounds we recorded was screaming, wind, trees swaying in the wind, running, footsteps, police statement, heavily breathing and also used a bass drum to create the sound of a heartbeat. However the recordings we did outside didn't sound realistic therefor had to improvise and search for free sound effects so that we could use some of there sounds. For the footsteps we found a corridor of similar flooring of our filming location to record footsteps on which one of our friends walked down so we could record it. However the recorder was extremely sensitive and picked up the wind as he was walking. To fix this we used a camera and walked on the spot and we found this worked a lot better. We got all the sounds recorded this week which made us very positive about our film as that was causing us to worry.

Week Commencing 10/11/14 - First Cut

THE CAMP: First Cut

This is the first rough cut of our opening scene. We have gone through all our footage and edited together the parts that we thought fitted our film using our storyboard to help. However when editing it we thought that when we followed the storyboard and put the footage together we found that it became very repetitive and slightly boring. So we decided to add in extra parts where needed however the edit is still rough and a working progress.

Feedback from teacher:

• Add title logo to the beginning 
• Add interesting flash transitions
• Colour correct
• Cut out slow motion of girl
• 'water' cut needs fixing
• Shorten window shot
• Add titles
• Add final film titles

Sounds to add:

• Indoor wild track- somewhere quiet
• Footsteps on hard floor
• Finger tapping
• Screams/trees
• Heartbeat
• Voice over
• Police rights

Feedback from peers:

• Good use of camera movement and shots.
• Good choice of setting, made it believable.
• The make up is done really well.
• Slow motion at the end was great.
• For improvement add sounds and don't let the shots play for too long. 

To make our film better we are going to record some voice overs and tracks to go over the top of the film to make give it some texture and dimension. We was going to put a instrumental soundtrack over the top but changed our mind as we thought it would look too much like a trailer. Using the feedback we will use this to help us record some sounds as we know what will sound good. The feedback helped us a lot when deciding what to do to improve it as we new it needed to be improved but wasn't sure how to do it. By having the teacher and some peers assess us it helped us know what was good about our film opening and what needed adding/changing.

Film Progress Post

Film Progress Post
 

Its been about half way in our film process and it's starting to come together to look more like a film opening scene. Since we've started editing on Premier Pro we have learnt how to use it to its full potential including how to use the tools, what techniques to do as well as many other things. 

Here are some of the tools I've learnt to use:

This cuts a clip wherever you click it so you can move parts of the footage.

This tool stretches out the clip as well as speeds it up.

This moves all the clips at the same time so you don't have to do it               individually. 

When using After Effects to make the first logo we found it hard to use the programme so we used a YouTube tutorial to help us create the animated logo. However we don't like our current logo therefore we are going to make a new one. 

Another thing I've learnt since using Premier Pro is that you need to render your timeline every time a part of it is red. By rendering it, it makes the clips more smooth and fluent. If the part is green that means it has been rendered and you do not need to render it again. 

To render it you highlight the parts you want to render and then click on 'sequence' then 'render effects in work area'. If you want to render all of it at the end you can press 'render entire work area'. 

Problems we've had...

We have had a lot of issues with our editing as we had no sound to go over the top there for as we were editing we were going into a sound studio to record some voice-overs and sound to go over the top of the film. However we had more problems when filming the sound, the sound recorder we used was far too sensitive and picked up extra noise that we couldn't get rid of in editing. Only some of the sounds were okay to use. To solve this we used a camera to record the sounds as a camera mic isn't as sensitive. Hopefully in our next few editing sessions the sounds we have recorded will be okay to used.