'Damaged' Final Cut
Prelim Final Cut
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Sunday, 28 March 2010
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
[[ prezi.com/y-hewuas-pgp/ ]]
Monday, 8 March 2010
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
There are many different types of distribution like television, straight to DVD, theatrical release, downloading it from a site amongst others, however as our media product is a horror film we decided that we wanted it to use theatrical release into mainstream cinemas like Odeon, in the winter time. This is because the dark and tense atmosphere inside the cinema is perfect for our film and the sounds are so much louder which makes the audience even more tense and enjoy the experience more.
I did some research into film distributors in the UK and US like Dreamworks, New Line Cinema, Summit Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures, who have all distributed psychological thrillers into the cinema, for example Final Destination, Se7en, The Dark Night, The Knowing and The Ring. These have all done very successfully however, i have chosen to go with LionsGate Films because they seem to be very good at marketing films and building up alot of hype about films without using much money at all. For example, for The Blair Witch Project a website was set up with fictional information, stories and clips that were passing off for the real thing which made people get really interested in the film and create alot of hype just over something on the Internet, and then the film was theatrically released after. With this in mind we thought we could do a similar marketing technique to get people interested. We would release a short, intriguing teaser of the film onto tv channels like channel 4, and not provide any more information apart from providing one website where we will update ocasionally with extra little snipets of information. This leaves the audience wanting more because they haven't been giving many details at all.
This is very similar to what the distributors of Cloverfield did. They set up this website - http://cloverfieldclues.blogspot.com/ - and updated it with extra information every now and again to build up the hype and mystery to the film, and then once it had attracted anough attention the film was properly released.
We would then release our film out onto DVD a few months later so that a wider range of people can purcase it, and to get some extra sales we would advertise it with 'never seen before' footage and extras on another disc like the new Alice and Wonderland film is going to do.
I did some research into film distributors in the UK and US like Dreamworks, New Line Cinema, Summit Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures, who have all distributed psychological thrillers into the cinema, for example Final Destination, Se7en, The Dark Night, The Knowing and The Ring. These have all done very successfully however, i have chosen to go with LionsGate Films because they seem to be very good at marketing films and building up alot of hype about films without using much money at all. For example, for The Blair Witch Project a website was set up with fictional information, stories and clips that were passing off for the real thing which made people get really interested in the film and create alot of hype just over something on the Internet, and then the film was theatrically released after. With this in mind we thought we could do a similar marketing technique to get people interested. We would release a short, intriguing teaser of the film onto tv channels like channel 4, and not provide any more information apart from providing one website where we will update ocasionally with extra little snipets of information. This leaves the audience wanting more because they haven't been giving many details at all.
This is very similar to what the distributors of Cloverfield did. They set up this website - http://cloverfieldclues.blogspot.com/ - and updated it with extra information every now and again to build up the hype and mystery to the film, and then once it had attracted anough attention the film was properly released.
We would then release our film out onto DVD a few months later so that a wider range of people can purcase it, and to get some extra sales we would advertise it with 'never seen before' footage and extras on another disc like the new Alice and Wonderland film is going to do.
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We started off by researching different elements of horror films like German expressionism for example, we found out that this was a way of using different images or sets to symbolise certain things and create a deeper mood in the audience. We found this very useful because we had certain images, lighting and set to symbolise the main characters mind and insanity, for example the bright white light as he opens the door at the end is a way of symbolising him trying to start a new life. We also researched different horror film openings and got many ideas from them,
they all included some of the main conventions of the horror genre like the low-key back lighting in Creep and Cloverfield, which adds mystery and suspense to the film. The opening sequences of horror films always makes the audience ask a question, like again in Creep the audience knows that the women is running away terrified from something but they what to know what and why. We conformed to this convention in our sequence because the audience is aware that there is some connection between the man getting ready like an ordinary person and the images of him in a straight jacket and the other disturbing images but they then want to know why.
In terms of the conventions in film making we generally adhered to them, however we this wasn't always the case as some of the shots weren't framed centrally and sometimes not in a stationary position, for example the shot of the character walking through the snow was purposely shot with a handheld camera to create a sense of unease and involvement in the viewer for a brief time in the film.
Bascially, our research and further understanding of the conventions has helped us to conform and also challenge them in a diverse and productive way.
they all included some of the main conventions of the horror genre like the low-key back lighting in Creep and Cloverfield, which adds mystery and suspense to the film. The opening sequences of horror films always makes the audience ask a question, like again in Creep the audience knows that the women is running away terrified from something but they what to know what and why. We conformed to this convention in our sequence because the audience is aware that there is some connection between the man getting ready like an ordinary person and the images of him in a straight jacket and the other disturbing images but they then want to know why.
In terms of the conventions in film making we generally adhered to them, however we this wasn't always the case as some of the shots weren't framed centrally and sometimes not in a stationary position, for example the shot of the character walking through the snow was purposely shot with a handheld camera to create a sense of unease and involvement in the viewer for a brief time in the film.
Bascially, our research and further understanding of the conventions has helped us to conform and also challenge them in a diverse and productive way.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Extra Sound
In todays lesson we realised that each of our shots has their own quality of noise and when watching it through it makes it seem un even because the quality and level of background noise keeps changing throughout and is still slightly noticeable despite the music over the top, so we wanted to get some sort of background noise that could be played quite quietly and would act as a sound bridge and maintain a certain level of quality throughout the title sequence. I went up to the music tech room to look at some of the effects and sounds they had on the computers up there and found an ambient sound of a tape recorder and then looped it a couple times and exported it to my memory stick. We also wanted to have a sound play over our production company logo so that it looked a little bit more professional and more like actual films, so while i was in the music tech room i found a sound which would be perfect to use for that as it had the right sound to it.
In this time, Fred and Nicole had been sorting out the shot of the alarm clock because it had a hissing sound in the background which we didn't want so they were cutting out all the sound apart from when the alarm goes off and the character turns it off as we needed those sounds. After, we uploaded the production sound in and faded it out in the right place, we then also uploaded the background noise of the tape recorder and looped it over and over so it played through the whole thing to add to mystery and more tension, we also overlapped them a little each time we looped it so that it flowed well and constantly played and then finally put the volume down quite alot so that it wasn't obvious.
In this time, Fred and Nicole had been sorting out the shot of the alarm clock because it had a hissing sound in the background which we didn't want so they were cutting out all the sound apart from when the alarm goes off and the character turns it off as we needed those sounds. After, we uploaded the production sound in and faded it out in the right place, we then also uploaded the background noise of the tape recorder and looped it over and over so it played through the whole thing to add to mystery and more tension, we also overlapped them a little each time we looped it so that it flowed well and constantly played and then finally put the volume down quite alot so that it wasn't obvious.
Editing Music
Today i went in on one of my free lessons and started to edit the music we had chosen, which was about 20 seconds short of the length of our opening sequence. To make it longer i split it up a couple of sections when the music drones and copied it a couple of times, i split it when the music drones because it's not as noticeable when part of a drone is repeated. I did this in a couple of points throughout the track until the music was at the length we needed and was timed right so that when the music was rapidly increasing in tension the video was as well. One problem was that in some parts that had been copied there was a little jump as it went from one bit to the next, so i looked at the audio effects and found one called constant power and put it over each of the joins of bits that had been copied, and this then made it flow through the music much better and it's not as easy to hear that the music had been cut and copied.
In this time i also created another series of quick fire shots, but this time they were literally split second clips put together and put at the end of the quick fire shots, i put it here because our opening sequence increases in tension as it goes on, so this is like the final big burst of tension before it stops with the music and then cuts to 'directed by' and then the shot of the character opening the door.
In this time i also created another series of quick fire shots, but this time they were literally split second clips put together and put at the end of the quick fire shots, i put it here because our opening sequence increases in tension as it goes on, so this is like the final big burst of tension before it stops with the music and then cuts to 'directed by' and then the shot of the character opening the door.
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Titles - 3rd and 5th February
We continued adding in our titles in these lessons and made sure they were all on screen for a long enough time to read and faded them in and out at the right times. We put some titles on top of some of the shots and then also in between shots on a plain black background. We also changed the font of our titles from 'viva std' to 'courier new' and the colour to white because it looked better being simple and the colour white is a continuous thing in our opening sequence because of it's associations with mentality and hospitals. We took the glow effect we had on the writing as well so that it didn't look as tacky. Finally we put in the new music we found before and then deleted some of the audio on the shots like the door opening because we didn't need them there, however we did keep some like the sound of the footsteps in the snow and the toast being buttered because they sounded good and were emphasised because there were no other sounds apart from the instrumental piece of music.
Titles and Music - 1st February
In this lesson we put the music we had found onto the video and realised that the lyrics and vocals would attract too much attention from the rest of the titles so we needed an instrumental piece that was preferably quite classical. So we looked on the creative commons website again and found a piece that fitted well because the music increased in tension like our footage did, the music was also quite creepy and strange which made it fit in even more. The only problem with the music was that the original file was only 58 seconds long and our opening sequence needed to be about 2minutes, so we're going to find the section before the music gets increasingly louder and increases tension and copy it a couple of times so that when it starts to build lots of tension it will playing when the series of quick fire shots come on screen and last until the end. We also continued with adding in our titles in the right order and decided to make the titles on the normal daily routine shots black and the weird shots titles red because black is a calmer ordinary colour where as red is associated with anger and blood.
Editing and Start of Titles - 29th January
Today we recaptured our shot of the alarm being turned off because last time we had cut off part of it and then we uploaded our production logo that Fred designed and put some writing on it that said ' Ring Eclipse ' productions in a nice font that stood out, we put this at the start of our all our footage because thats the order it would usually go. After making a few minor changes to some clips like trimming them a bit more, we were ready to move on to putting the actual titles in so we looked back at our earlier research on the order of opening titles so that we knew where to start. We started to experiment with how to make titles and change things like the fonts, colours, tracking, aspect, positions and other things. We tested out these things so that we could see what looked good where and what looks good with the genre and theme of our film, we also set points on the titles so that they would fade in and out where we wanted.
Editing - 25th and 27th
Last lesson we started looking at some of the effects we could use and tested some on our shots like 'ghosting' for example. This was one that we really like because it makes it look really weird and creepy by giving it a shadow of the image thats delayed to the actual action. This looked especially good on the shot of the character rocking back and forth and struggling in a straight jacket because the movement itself is quite disturbing and is even more so with the ghosting effect on it. We also sped this shot up to make it look even more deranged and disorientated and it looked really good so we kept it. Finally we also logged our newest footage and then captured what we wanted and trimmed them up so that they could be re-arranged into a rough order.
Today we decided to sort out our quick fire shots so we copied a couple of shots and took only a second or two from each so that we would have a series of weird images cut in one after another quite quickly because it creates a big build up of tension. These quick fire shots represent all the madness and psycho parts of his life/memory come back and from then making his life no longer normal anymore. 'Se7en' is again a good example of our idea for quick fire shots because it had quite a few shots flash up on screen that aren't the nicest of images and are quickly one after another. However we've got a longer line of them so that the tension is all built up at once.
Today we decided to sort out our quick fire shots so we copied a couple of shots and took only a second or two from each so that we would have a series of weird images cut in one after another quite quickly because it creates a big build up of tension. These quick fire shots represent all the madness and psycho parts of his life/memory come back and from then making his life no longer normal anymore. 'Se7en' is again a good example of our idea for quick fire shots because it had quite a few shots flash up on screen that aren't the nicest of images and are quickly one after another. However we've got a longer line of them so that the tension is all built up at once.
Editing - 22nd January
In todays lesson we sorted out all of the shots we had already captured because we wanted to start getting a decent order of what things should be. We matched up a few of our shots so that one represents his normal sane life and then the next shot will be similar except it will be more deranged and creepy looking to symbolise his insanity coming back and breaking through. For example when we flick between the character simply doing up his shirt and then him then struggling in a straight jacket. We also have a shot of him tying up his shoe laces followed by fast paced footsteps going back and forth, it's the same part of the body with a normal side and an insane side. At the end of this lesson we decided that our last shots that needed to be filmed would preferably be shot in a house because they're all quite homely shots like turning off an alarm from sleep, buttering toast, putting on a tie and suit jacket and finally the end shot of the character walking and opening his front door with bright white light coming though to symbolise his new normal life because the colour of white is usually associated with hospitals and mentality but it can also be associate with pure and new which will work well with our opening sequence ideas.
Filming - 20th January
Last lesson we carried on with our filming and decided to film the shot of the rope tied in a hangman's noose hanging from somewhere. We thought this shot would be effective outside because it was quite gloomy outside and it then meant we could the rugby posts to hang it from. We tried a few different angles like a close up of the knot whilst someone was pulling down on the end to make it look like someone was hanging from it, but we found that a mid shot of the rope swinging back and forth, with a slight tilt up like we were looking up at it, was the most effective. We also tried a few indoor shots with the rope and got a good shot that was at an angle and a close up of the knot and part of the loop. It was good because of the shadow that was created on the wall behind it as it gently swayed which will add to the mysterious elements of our titles. Another shot we did was of a really tidy desk which we needed to show one of the characters weird habits which was an OCD for organising things in a certain way, so we set up a desk with some books, pencils, newspapers, folders etc all organised in their own little way. We did a couple of shots of this as well including a still shot of the whole desk and a close up which panned across the whole desk. When picking up books to put in order we found one titled 'Decline and Fall' which even though it was about something completely different we thought that the title would make another good hint at the characters personality and mind, so we neatly put this book facing up so that the title was clear when we filmed the shot.
Today we filmed a close up of the characters tying his shoes up for another part of the characters ordinary routine, although when filming it we found that it looked good when there was a slight emphasis on the pulling of the laces because it's like the insanity and anger is trying to break through his normal exterior. We then logged this and our previous shots so that we could capture them and then continue focusing on the rest of the filming.
Filming - 15th January
In this lesson we went and filmed a close up of a hand putting toothpaste on a toothbrush because this is one of our sane, normal shots of a basic daily routine. We shot a couple of different angles like a point of view shot to see what we thought would look best but at the moment we think that the high angle shot looks better. We also managed to film a shot of the characters torso buttoning up a plain white shirt along with a shot of the same section of his body but this time in a straight jacket moving frantically and struggled in it. We first shot it in the same place as the normal shirt one but realised that it didn't look right and the straight jacket shot needed to be in a different place, so we filmed it through a glass panel on a door with the character behind it just to see what it was like, and we thought it looked really good because it made the character look more trapped and distressed almost like an animal in a cage.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Storyboarding and Starting Filming
The past couple of lessons have consisted of us sat as a group coming up with ideas for different shots and the order they will go in for our project. We have been researching certain films that use the same sort of idea as ours of getting ready in the morning and payed most attention to the types of shots they used. We went through a few different places that we could film for our set but decided to do alot of it at college because we had found a few places that had quite plain walls which we would use to give the impression of a mental hospital, this also meant that we could easily go and shoot some of these during our lessons. It also didn't matter too much where we filmed because alot of our shots are close ups and you won't be able to see the background very much. For some of our shots though we needed quite a homely setting, so we decided that at some point of of us would take the camera home when needed and film a couple of the shots. We needed these in homely setting because there are alot of shots to do with getting ready in the morning, like turning off the alarm clock, buttering toast, getting changed etc. and they probably wouldn't look as effective around the college.
In terms of filming, editing and getting everything done in time, we've decided to try and get all of our filming done and ready to capture in just over a week so that we would be able to re-film anything, film any extra shots if we needed to and would also leave us a little bit of space in case anything went wrong. This will then give us plenty of time to edit everything and make the final cut run really smooth and fast paced.
We've storyboarded each of our shots with details of how long we want the shot to last, what type of shot it is e.g medium, close up, long shot etc. and also a brief description on what the shot is of. One of our newest shots we thought of was, after having a close up of a tie being tightened up to cut straight to a shot of a swinging hangmans loop because it's a great contrast and puts across the hint that the characters normal, sane life won't last much longer. We didn't need to write a script because we weren't having any dialect in our opening sequence at all, as we don't want to make it like a proper scene and felt it didn't need speech.
In todays lesson we were ready to film and we had a new idea which involved making good use of the snow outside. We thought that the sound of crunching snow as you step through it would sound really good if exaggerated a little in out opening sequence, also the shot of fast paced footsteps would make quite a good strange/insane styled shot so we went out and filmed each of these. In this lesson we also decided to film a shot of the character in a straight jacket, crouched up in a corner rocking back and forth. We found a good spot to do this which was quite plain looking which we needed because thats what mental institutions are usually seen as. We filmed this shot a bit longer than what our other shots will be like because we knew we wanted this particular shot to be shown a few times throughout as it's quite a strong shot in terms of insanity and what part of the characters like.
In terms of filming, editing and getting everything done in time, we've decided to try and get all of our filming done and ready to capture in just over a week so that we would be able to re-film anything, film any extra shots if we needed to and would also leave us a little bit of space in case anything went wrong. This will then give us plenty of time to edit everything and make the final cut run really smooth and fast paced.
We've storyboarded each of our shots with details of how long we want the shot to last, what type of shot it is e.g medium, close up, long shot etc. and also a brief description on what the shot is of. One of our newest shots we thought of was, after having a close up of a tie being tightened up to cut straight to a shot of a swinging hangmans loop because it's a great contrast and puts across the hint that the characters normal, sane life won't last much longer. We didn't need to write a script because we weren't having any dialect in our opening sequence at all, as we don't want to make it like a proper scene and felt it didn't need speech.
In todays lesson we were ready to film and we had a new idea which involved making good use of the snow outside. We thought that the sound of crunching snow as you step through it would sound really good if exaggerated a little in out opening sequence, also the shot of fast paced footsteps would make quite a good strange/insane styled shot so we went out and filmed each of these. In this lesson we also decided to film a shot of the character in a straight jacket, crouched up in a corner rocking back and forth. We found a good spot to do this which was quite plain looking which we needed because thats what mental institutions are usually seen as. We filmed this shot a bit longer than what our other shots will be like because we knew we wanted this particular shot to be shown a few times throughout as it's quite a strong shot in terms of insanity and what part of the characters like.
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