Blackout - Final sequence

Thursday, April 1, 2010

THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED_

THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED
THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED
THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED_

Friday, March 26, 2010

Technologies

Here is a few images of come of technologies we used:

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Technology:

Here are some pictures of our edit suite:

  • We used Adobe Premiere Pro to edit our film sequence...



We then exported our finished film to youtube...
 There are also two other films which we created to go with this project:
  • A 'Behind the Scenes' video
  • An 'Errors' video
        Both of these bonus videos are also on youtube.
Here is Hugh (on St. Patricks Day) on the Latymermedia youtube channel...

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Poster for BLACKOUT:

I, Tom A, decided that after collecting many screenshots for my evaluation, that I could attempt to create a poster for our film using them. So I did. Realising however that not all the information that goes on a film poster was in our opening sequence...

Still, here is my attempt...

I chose a screenshot which really showed off the fast paced action side of our film, and used black and white and an increased contrast to place the titles in the top left of the poster. 

Monday, March 22, 2010

Real Opening credits:

Below are examples of films which have their opening credits like ours, creating an atmosphere of suspense and anticipation for the film, helped by the main soundtrack...

BLADE RUNNER:
YOUTUBE LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbWNZkoQHuE
(unfortunately the embed option for the video has been disabled, so I will post some screenshots instead.)




Teacher Feedback: The Final Cut

We were very pleased with the feedback we received from our teachers. They all were really impressed by what we had managed to acheive.

  • The new fight scene worked well, with the 'bad guy' looking more professional and less like a thug!
  • Continuity works perfectly with no very noticable flaws.
  • The camerawork is imersive and lively, with handheld techniques giving it a raw quality.
  • The editing is fast paced and action packed, but also thrilling and suspense-filled.
  • The acting is really professional and makes the narative really dramatic and scary!
  • The music works brilliantly with the picture and helps build suspense.
  • The titles at the beginning and end make the final product look very professional.
  • The fade to white at the end cleary indicates to the audience that the film is about to begin.

Final Titles

We originally wanted to track our titles onto surfaces using Adobe After Effects (as below), so that it appeared the titles were layered onto surfaces, but found it was difficult for a number of reasons:


  • There weren't enough shots that were long enough to have a title in it, and we didn't want to have the same title in consective shots.

  • There weren't enough suitable tracking points in many of the shots, and many of the shots are handheld so the shot moves too irregularly to track effectively.

  • The process is very time consuming, and we didn't have that much time.
After much discussion we finally ended up putting our titles before and after the sequence itself. This was for many reasons. Firstly we felt that it allowed suspense to build up before the sequence started itself. The opening sequence now cuts from titles straight into fast paced action which is very effective in delivering a shock to the audience.


 Secondly we didnt want to take away from the quality of the sequence itself. When placing titles in the sequence we felt it distracted the viewer away frrom the suspense of the sequence itself.


We were influenced to have these titles at the begining and end from many films such as The Bourne Supremacy which is a very similar genre to ours and then also a Monty Python film which although different in genre uses the titles very successfully.




Shooting schedule

Here is a copy of our shooting shedule used to plan all shooting dates and times.

Shot Lists/Logs:

Before each shoot we devised a shot list of all the shots that we planned to film. We then used these lists as logs on the shoot, recording the timecodes for each shot and adding extra shos which we hadn't planned. This is just one of our 4 sheets.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Errors in our sequence: EDITED BY HUGH



Here are all the continuity errors that we have noticed in our sequenced, most of which were noticed well after the shoot. We are all very disappointed to have not noticed them earlier as we were unable to mask them effectively in editing.

After editing the final sequence, Hugh re-edited the sequence on a new timeline on the edit suite, slowing down each error. It was uploaded to youtube and annotated, pointing out these errors (and topped off with an appropriate soundtrack).

Friday, March 19, 2010

Behind the Scenes: EDITED BY TOM A

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Group Reflections

We are all very happy with our finished sequence, and are very pleased to have finished the production side of this project. We set out to create a sequence that was completely different to all the horror openings that had been made before, and are satisfied that we have done this successfully.

  • We love the pace and excitement of the opening part of the sequence
  • We also like the the tension created in the latter part of the sequence, especially when Hugh enters the house
  • The music gave us a lot of stress during editing, but we think the the final soundtrack works very effectively with the images and titles








  • We also like the narrative of our sequence
  • We like the way we have framed the shots, and the way that we have edited it to make a continuous sequence
  • We like the acting, and are especially surprised with Hugh's ability to drop seemlessly into character, delivering an convincing and believable performance throughout
  • We are pleased that the titles work effectively, and dont take anything away from our sequence, dispite us not being able to track the titles properly.
However...
  • There are many, many continuity errors in our sequence, such as doors being open/closed when they shouldnt be, things disappearing from rooms, mist disappearing from windows, etc.
  • We were disappointted that we were unable to track titles onto surfaces, but this was not possible in the time given
  • We dont like Hughs costume, but we made the decision to leave it unchanged from the test shoot so that we did not have to reshoot all of our sequence in difficult weather conditions

Summary of Audience Feedback

Group 2 Questionnaire

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The Screening:

To get some feedback from other students in the school, we held a screening in the media department at lunchtime on wednesday 17th march 2010. 

After receiving an applause when the first viewing of the film ended, we handed out questionaire which we had prepared beforehand, and asked the audience to fill them in whilst we screened the film again.
The screening was a great success with around 20 questionaires fully filled in. People seemed to really enjoy the screening of our opening sequence.

Storyboard of our opening sequence:

Here are pictures of the storyboards we created for our opening sequence before our first shoot. (This is a very late post as I lost my USB wire which linked my phone to my computer, so was unable to upload pictures.)





Final Cut

Friday, March 12, 2010

Fonts


After looking through many different fonts on the website "http://www.dafont.com", we have decided on a certain font named seebreeze. We were looking for a plain simple font that wouldnt look too amateur. We felt this font fit perfectly so it was downloaded.

We'd also like to wish Tom A a happy birthday today!

Monday, March 8, 2010

Titles - Names and order

We have drawn up a rough draft of all the names we will be using in our sequence as the opening credits and the order they will appear.
They will go as follows:

Focus Entertainment,
AX Productions,
Infinite Pictures
Matteo Bragoli,
Hugh Donnelly,
Directed by Tomas Poffley,
Produced by Thomas Aston,
Director of Photography Frank Imura,
Music by Thomas Aston,
Executive producer Hugh Donnelly

Friday, March 5, 2010

Facebook Message

We have a facebook message so that we can communicate when we do not see each other at school eg. at half term or at weekends. This allows us to tell each member of the group any ideas or suggestions that we may have, and we can discuss them easily.

Main shoot: 28/02/2010

This shoot was not as successful as hoped. As feared the weather stopped us from filming most the shots we would have hoped for. For this reason we were only able to re-shoot the fight scene and a couple of others. Overall however everything neccessary was shot and we should be able to enter the final stages of editing with this new footage.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Titles - Order

We weren't really sure about the order that the titles come in. 

In the Watchmen opening sequence, this the order. We plan to loosely copy the order, but we will not include some of them. The video could not be embedded, but here is the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=573XmVOdD2Q

  • Distributors
  • Local distributors
  • Producer
  • Director
  • Watchmen
  • All the actors
  • Casting
  • Visual effects
  • Costume
  • Music
  • Co-producer
  • Editor
  • Production designer
  • Director of photography
  • Executive producers
  • The novel, marvel comics etc
  • Screenplay
  • The director again

Sunday, February 28, 2010

MUSIC RESEARCH:

Below I have embeded two different videos:


-The first is by composer Sean Callery, whom I admire for his work on the US drama 24. This track, from the 24 soundtrack, is a briliant and inspiring example of a suspense filled idea.


-The second is a track from the hit video game COD Modern Warfare 2Hans Zimmer, the composer of this particular work, is one of my favourite composers/sound designers, having produced the music for films ranging from Madagascar to The Dark Night. This extract (skip to 2:20-2:45) is a great example of fast paced action music. I really like its focus on percussive timbres and the electronic/techno-style soundscape created.   



(Skip to 2:20-2:45)

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Teacher Feedback: BLK

The overall feedback given to our rough cut was that most of it could and should be used for our actual film. This was agreed as bad weather conditions expected over the weekend would make any footaged gained impossible to match (e.g. if it was raining, then suddenly it was snowing!). It was agreed that filming the whole sequence again in the rain would not be worth the effort just to fix the minor problem of slightly imperfect footwear on our 'bad guy', as the sequence we have created out of our test footage works really well one the whole.

So, as a result it was decided that if we get good weather, we will try to film the shots of our 'bad guy' outside with the car in better costume.
We will also film, if weather allows, the shot of 'Matt' coming through the door, but this time, closing it.

We will also film, if weather allows, the shot of the 'Bad Guy' breaking into the house, trying there to improve the action - maybe he kicks the door?

We will film, regardless of weather (as it's inside) the final scene of our sequence (the fight) to acheive better matches on action and maybe make it a bit longer.

Rough Cut

Monday, February 22, 2010

Rough Cut - Group Feedback

Here is what we as a group believe we need to change for saturday:

  • Different costume - Tom P will order a balaclava tonight, and Hugh will be wearing black cargo pants and black boots
  • We will experiment with focus pulls over the banister shots in order to have variety in what shots to use
  • In one of the final shots (the slow pan over to Matt's eyes), we will use a range of different focuses in order to achieve a more thrilling effect with the mirror
  • We will try to achieve better match on action in the fight scene at the end by making the fight more similar each time it is shot
  • In order to make the bad guy look more convincing we will have him looking around less when he is on the street
  • We will make sure Matt closes the door as he enters the house to try and give the effect of trying to keep people out of the house

Teacher Feedback: DYM

I must point out that the lack of posts for the past week and a bit is almost completely down to Hugh being on holiday. But we have completed our rough cut, and here is the feedback:

  • The beginning of the sequence needs to be slowed down
  • The kidnapper looks around too much - needs to be more subtle
  • All the stairwell shots work well
  • Matt shouldnt leave the door open when he enters the house
  • Pull focus on the bannisters?
  • Try different focuses for the wolfman shot

Friday, February 12, 2010

Editing

We have just about finished editing our rough cut sequence.

We are really pleased with how its turned out. We will probably upload the video as soon as we're back from half term.

Have a good holiday people!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Test Shoot Photos


Saturday, February 6, 2010

This is a chase scene from the film 'District B13'



This is very cimilar to the style we are trying to achieve with our film. The use of certain shots we may attempt to mimic. The fast paced editing is also a big factor in what we are hoping to get into our test shoot. 

The colour scheme of the urban environment is directly related our film because the setting of ours will be similar. From this I can see that even in a dirty looking environment an epic chase scene can still be created.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Prop Prep:

The gun we are using is a toy gun owned by our lead actor Matteo Bragoli. The gun orginally was red at the top, so Tom P, Matteo and I took a trip to the art department to have a go at painting the gun a nice black.

 
We used black acrylic paint.

We used a hair-dryer to speed up the paint drying, and the whole process took us 40 minutes. The end result looks rather good!

I would like to thank the art department on behalf of our group for their co-operation.