Technologies

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

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...

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. 

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.

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).

Behind the Scenes: EDITED BY TOM A

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

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

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!

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

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.

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