Complete Film Opening!

Here is my group's complete film opening which we finished working on editing only yesterday. Whilst we have refined the opening to look as good and effective as possible there are nonetheless elements of it that make the film opening not entirely realistic e.g. the continuity error of the inclusion and exclusion of our bags, poor filming quality (possibly due to the filters used), an unknown cause for a dip in the volume of our score, and, in my opinion, the text: 'Hidden Pictures Presents' which required a shadow in the background which i don't think is particularly attractive but it's the only way for the text to be seen on top of the shots. Despite this we are pleased with the outcome of all our planning and production and we hope that you are too!

*Whilst watching in Full HD on YouTube, the image quality of our shots appears to look quite poor in the way that the image seems to look loose and indistinct. This is in no way part of our editing process to make the shots appear in this way.

Rough Cut of the Film Opening: Adding improvements

Unfortunately today Katy wasn't able to come into our 2 media lessons because of illness. Despite this, Indya and i did what we could and that involved asking our teacher and another member of staff for their opinion on our film opening and on how it should be improved. It proved that they both had feedback to give us with improvements which Indya and i spent adding. These included:

• Cutting down the shot of the antagonist screaming
• Making some shots shorter due to the camera jolting
• Slow down the establishing shots at the start of the opening

In our two-hour lesson Indya and i managed to work on these improvements and then began working on the improvements from our friend's sister. We've added another track of music just as the score gets louder and we reach the climax of the opening. Whilst it certainly adds more tension it's a bit over the top, creating more suspense than necessary. Indya and i have played around with the volume to reduce creating too much tension than is necessary but I think we'll have to see what Katy thinks about this before we definitively make a choice about building the music up at this point. Other than building up the tension with louder music etc. we just need to play around with looking at using lighter filters for the house interior and darker filters for the exterior, establishing shots. At the end of the lesson a friend of ours noted that he thought some of the credits could be moved- particularly the credit 'A Paranormal Production' which should be moved further to the right because the writing is quite difficult to see when contrasted with the light colours of the doorway. 

*As a note, Indya and i are rather annoyed and stupefied because the music at the start of our opening happens to go suddenly quiet before going back to normal volume. We don't understand why it does this since the volume hasn't been altered in any way so we can only assume that it's part of the track itself.

Rough Cut of the Film Opening: Audience Feedback 2

This video shows the feedback the group and i gathered on Friday from a different and yet smaller sample of our target audience. Unfortunately we didn't receive an incredible amount of improvements which is a bit annoying since i would be good to have a bit more to work on. Nevertheless the lack of improvement is good as it does in fact show the audience is actually pleased with the film opening we have produced. One person we interviewed was really shocked by our film opening and it did in fact make them scared which is a really positive sign for us as a group as it shows we have made an effective film opening.

Further Feedback:

One of our friends, who happened to provide feedback in this video, has a sister who is currently studying Design for Film and Television at Nottingham Trent University. Over the weekend she came back to their house and he got her to watch our film opening and provide us with improvements. Below are the improvements she passed on though our friend James, to us.

• The music should be more built up to enhance the tension
• The sound of the door should be slightly louder
• The shots of the house interior should have a slightly lighter filter
• The shots of the house exterior should have a slightly darker filter

Rough Cut of the Film Opening: 3

This is the third rough cut of our film opening that Indya and i finished off editing today (Katy was with us for the start of adding improvements). Once Katy returns (which will be tomorrow) we will be able to get more feedback on our film opening and after editing the film further it will be complete for evaluation.

Publishing the film opening

In a previous post i outlined the difficulties of exporting the film openings into a format that would work with our own computers. Earlier this week Indya and i combatted this problem through finding and watching a very useful YouTube video. Some of the shots in this post show the process we had to follow for a file format that would work with our computers. We had to select options before altering the size, sound and film quality in order to get the right film format for our film and also the best film quality as possible. 

Editing: Rough Cut 3

Today the class has a full day of media which has given Indya and i the opportunity to move forward with editing our film opening and applying the improvements given to by our audience (as seen in the previous post). Katy unfortunately isn't in today so although only Indya and i added the last improvements to the video ourselves, we can't move much further without the collaboration of Katy. To ensure each person is working at the same level and in doing the same volume of work, we have thus decided to not more further in terms of collecting audience feedback in response to our third rough cut. Currently we have spent nearly 2 hours adding improvements to our film opening. On completion we asked a fellow class member what they thought of the the rough cut to which they told us to alter some of the credits. One of the things he told us was that it would be better to delete '&' between the actors' names whilst moving Indya's name closer to the left. We have added this improvement to our film since we think it makes the opening look more professional. Furthermore he told us that rather than writing 'Directed by...' we should say 'A film by...' to make the credits seem less worded. However Indya and i decided to not add this improvement because we preferred to keep this credit the same.

Rough Cut of the Film Opening: Audience Feedback

In the week we came up with several questions to ask our target audience. We got 4 pairs (equal spread of gender) to enter the sound-proof room with us and watch our second rough cut of the film opening. Once they'd watched it we recorded their responses to the questions. It was really surprising how shocked people were to watch our film opening and even more astonishing to see that the film did actually scare people. I think it's quite difficult to think of our film opening as scary because we know what's going to happen which is why we were obviously unsure of whether the film opening would be scary enough for the public but apparently it was! The audience gave us a fair analysis of our work including several points of constructive criticism which we'll work on before creating another draft for the target audience to analyse for us yet again.

Rough Cut of the Film Opening: 2

This opening, different to the first rough cut, has been improved on as a result of feedback given to us by our teacher who told us to alter a few shots in terms of length as well as a few other improvements. One of the main improvements she gave us was to add a very dark filter, darker than the subtle filter that was added at the start. In this rough cut we didn't include a darker filter because we would like the target audience to tell us what they think should be done about a filter before we actually add a very dark one into the opening. (This will be presented to the target audience before more improvements are made).

Rough Cut of the Film Opening: 1

This is the first and initial rough cut for our film opening of Malediction. There are several things, from the volume of the music, to the length of shots that still need to be improved and will be worked on in a further rough cut.

Editing: Title: Audience Feedback

 To the left is an image of the 4 styles of typography we decided to look at in choosing which would be the best title to use for our film opening. This week the group and i asked the target audience which typography style they preferred. From this we tallied-up the results which you can see in the image to the left and in the pie charts showing the choice between males and females. Most people preferred idea 2 despite the fact that we have chosen typography idea 3 for out title. Nevertheless, an equal spread of both males and females preferred idea 3 which makes the idea more suitable because the results show that the title appeals to both genders which can be applied to the general population. Furthermore, despite favoritism towards the seconds idea, our group thought idea 3 was the best because of how formal the typography looked, making the film seem more professional and credible.

Editing: Title Sequence

Our title sequence begins with a preamble to the plot of our film before we used credits conventional of all films. The titles follow in this order:

• On the 11th February 1972 a family of four were found dead in their home
• The causes of death were unknown
• HIDDEN PICTURES PRESENTS
• A Paranormal Production
• Wilhelmina Denness & Indya Clayton
• Directed by Katy Jackson
• MALEDICTION

Editing & Research: Conventional Titles

This prezi discusses only a few conventions of the opening credits for a film. I have included an explanation as to why typography is important for my group so that we can create the best atmosphere and mood to our film opening as possible. Since i didn't go into much detail about the credits in The Exorcist, i thought i'd add an important point about the film using red writing. Red, of course, connotes blood, death and horror. It is a colour conventionally associated with horror films, thus immediately giving the audience the reading that the film is about a horror. The typography is bold and written using cap locks which helps to make the credits stand out and appear violent and threatening, therefore further validating the interpretation that the film is a horror film. The text also appears using fades in and out, creating suspense for the audience. The title however appears immediately and abruptly to shock the audience. From looking at this, i now know how important it is to think about the typography, colour of the text and how the credits should appear. Notably the title is the most important element of the credits and through looking at the title in The Exorcist i can see how my group and i will need to make it have more of an impact on the audience in the way The Exorcist establishes its importance through appearing differently and being made larger than the rest of the credits.

Rough Cut update!

The group and i finished our initial rough cut earlier in the week and we also created another rough cut following receiving feedback from our teacher about how some of the edits should be slightly different etc. She also told us it would be good to have a really dark filter on our opening but we've decided to add one in another rough cut. Using the second rough cut (without substantially dark filters) the group and i presented our opening to 4 pairs within a small room. Initially we were going to present the opening to the class but since a lot of people are behind on their work, we wouldn't have been able to get this feedback until a later date which would have meant we had no work to do. At the moment there are difficulties with transferring the film opening files across to our computers so even though we have the videos and notes showing audience feedback we cannot put them live on the blog. We are trying to deal with this problem as quickly as possible.

Continuity error

Whilst editing, Indya was very particular in pointing out that we've made a continuity error in our opening where in one of the shots of her face you can see our bags in the background yet in another shot they aren't there. It would be much more complicated to go back and film this particular shot again due to factors such as lighting, weather etc. Therefore we are left to deal with the problem. However the error cannot entirely fault our opening since even the best movies have mistakes and so the group deals with this issue constructively as a way of teaching us to avoid such an error if we film another time.

Editing: The Title

There are several typography styles that Katy and Indya looked at whilst i was away and in looking at the variety of them i am happy with the style of typography that they have decided to use in our opening. In this post are some of the fonts that were explored in LiveType whilst some other screen shots have been taken to show the different styles of typography that were given consideration into being choosen.

We decided to stick with the theme of using white writing on a black background for the same reason as with the credit sequence at the start of the opening where we created a preamble to the film. This reason is based on showing the juxtaposition of both dark and light elements such as demonism (the antagonist) and yet sanctity and hope (the protagonist and their heroism). Using upper case letters helps to make the title stand out and it also makes the title look violent, hopefully giving the reading that the film is a dark horror. The font on the right is very clear and the it helps to make the text look more violent and therefore hopefully giving the reading that the film is about a horror, however the font is similar to one used in many western films which makes it inappropriate for our film opening. Furthermore, it deludes from the fact that the opening is based on a supernatural horror.

In this shot you can see a different font with a more formal typography. The bold font makes the title more noticeable to the audience and provides an intensity to the film. I think it gives the reading that this is a horror film, although the typography isn't quite as sinister as i think it should be.





This shot shows two very slightly different fonts that were considered for being used as our title but eventually the font on the right was chosen as our title. I completely agree with Indy and Katy's choice for using this style of typography not only because of the use of upper case letters that makes the text stand out to the audience/viewer but also the formality of the font makes the title appear professional. This lends itself to giving the title credibility, making the film opening seem higher in verisimilitude and therefore creating a more ominous and sinister atmosphere to our film opening.

Editing: Rough Cut Production

So today i looked at the work Indya and Katy had achieved over the 3 lessons i missed whilst in Barcelona. I thought it was very good although i had a few minor criticisms/improvements that could have been applied to make the opening better. This included making some of the shots towards the end of our opening slightly longer and changing the music slightly in terms of fade and the length of it but apart from that we were all pleased with the rough cut. Obviously we don't think it's perfect but for the sake of being a rough cut the opening is looking good so far at the point of its completion.

Editing: development of the draft

Whilst i was away on my trip to Barcelona Katy and Indya continued editing the film opening with permission from me to do so. We thought it would be best to continue the work this way so that we can finish the film opening as quickly as possible. Some of the shots in this post show the development of the work across the 3 hours i missed editing with them.

A very subtle filters was applied to some of the shots 

Indya editing some of the opening

Editing: music

So we decided fairly recently that the music we would be using in our opening would be Fire Prelude (for the main body of the opening) and The Dread (for the immediate opening and when the title appears). We didn't choose to get audience input on this choice because we immediately knew the two songs would provide the best atmosphere. However, just in case our choice was wrong we will be conducting an interview on our target audience asking whether the music is appropriate to further justify our decision to use these two tracks in our film opening.

Draft: editing part 2

When the group and i opened our movie up today we found that the edit timeline and viewer box wasn't appearing so we searched Google for any possible reasons for this. We came across a source saying that the project would have to be edited again.We were just about to switch off the Apple Mac and switch it on again to see if the content would reappear, but when i looked into the 'Malediction' folder on our computer there was a sub-folder called 'Auto save' where i found a copy of the film where the editing timeline was visible. Although it had been saved a couple of frames short of what we completed on Friday it meant we hadn't lost our work so fortunately we were able to get on with editing. We managed to reach around 1 minute and 30 seconds today where we edited together the music with the film. We've had to change the idea that we would hear Indya's heels on the floor because the hum of the background noise takes away the ominous effect. During the two hours that we spent doing this (after school), i was in charge of editing whilst Indya and Katy gave their input on how the film should look. The reason for doing this is because on Thursday and Friday i won't be able to edit with Katy and Indya so on them days they will edit the rest of the video and when i return from my art trip on Tuesday i will have a look at the draft they have finished off to give my opinion on the film opening and whether i think any improvements should be made.

Preparing for showing the draft version of our film opening

This coming week, Katy, Indya and i will be working after school to edit more of our film, aiming to complete as much of it as we can. On the Wednesday, where we would normally have media, we have a day off to study work on another one of our subjects so that means we cannot complete any work on that day. Following this, i will be on an art trip to Barcelona from Thursday through to Monday which means the only editing that can be done will be on Monday this week. Indya also won't be present on the Thursday. Whilst many people in my class will be required to present their draft on the Thursday, we are allowed to do it the following week. Therefore, in roughly two weeks our group will be required to present this draft. Since we find time an issue already we will have to make sure we fit as much editing into the two weeks as possible.

Typography: start of our opening

Font ideas: Goudy Old Style (top), Calibri Light (middle) , Viner Hand ITC (bottom)

Text 'appears'

Using LiveType my group and i began creating the preamble to our film opening. We looked at the different fonts that would be suitable for the preamble and as a universal font for the credits. We decided to use Goudy Old Style because the typography is formal and looks professional. Therefore the viewer's reading should be one of professionalism so that they may believe in our fabricated story. It also lends itself to giving our film and the story within it credibility. As for the edit, we originally wanted the text to appear on the screen straight away but we found an edit that looked as if the writing was being typed using a typewriter and this was appealing because of its effectiveness. In refection we later decided that in using this edit the opening wasn't made to appear as effective as we wanted it to look, so we've decided to leave the text only appearing rather than appearing to be 'typed' in. Furthermore, we were thinking of having either quite quiet music whilst the text appears or a low/high resolute sound so by using the typewriter edit we would have to change our music choice to accommodate for this.

Text 'typed' in

In relation to the colours, we decided it would be more effective to have white text upon a black reason, just as is done in The Devil Inside, to present the reading that the film explored virtuous holiness and dark, satanical demonism. Since the background is black the viewer will
hopefully interpret the text to understand that the antagonist will have more power over the protagonist and light, sacred 'force' in the film.

In the screenshot on the left, the bold font and use of upper case lettering in the typography makes the text stand out more and thus it should grab the viewer's attention. Upper case lettering makes the title appear also very violent which the viewer may interpret as a reflection of the nature of the film showing violence.

Editing: Opening of our film

Progress on FinalCutExpress 27/02/14

So far this week Indya, Katy and have nearly finished creating the first part of our film opening where the opening titles come in. We were just about to finish putting the music into what we've completed so far before we ran out of time. It's taken us about 4 hours to approximately do the first 30 seconds of the opening which shows us that we really need to be getting this work completed outside of school as well as inside when we have our normal lessons. It's quite a stressful and lengthy process since we all really want to make this opening as perfect as possible yet we have to make a draft first before perfecting it completely. Creating the text in LiveType has probably taken the most time out of editing. What's more, we've found that in looking back at our shots, some of them don't quite work for how we envisaged the opening so rather than sticking to the storyboard we have been using some of the extra shots we made on the day of filming. Also we've added different edits to the ones identified on the storyboard because we think they make the opening look more interesting. In terms of improvements, i think there's a lot that can be improved on but since this w are making a draft of the opening it doesn't really matter too much.