Editing Process-Lighting

A problem that occurred during our editing process is that some of the footage was much darker than the rest of it. This is because we used a DSLR camera for the first part and then a HD DVC handheld camera for the second part. We, instead, used our iphone. We researched on youtube on how to enhance lighting on our videos on adobe premier pro and found a very short useful video.

Here is the video of what we used to help us enhance the lighting on our own videos.

Here are some comparison shots of before and after editing the lighting in our video

Before

After

Sophie and Niyi

Narrations- The research side

Adding on to the previous narrations post, we did a little research on youtube of examples of narrations used in previous films so that we would get an idea of how we would present ours. It was very difficult to find examples of narrations relating to a specific genre such as crime, in our case, therefore we looked at narrations used in all different movie genres and looked at the way they speak so that it relates to the content.

We looked at animated movies that have narrations.

In Ratatouille, the mouse looks very clumsy and his voice in the narration sounds very ‘dorky’ therefore those two descriptions relate to each other quite well and thats what makes the character look more believeable.

In Wreck It Ralph, the narration portrays the sound of a guy speaking which is more believable as it presents a huge animated man. Also, the voice sounds more mature and so it sounds more sensible to use an adult as the voice of an animated character that looks like an adult.

In How to train your dragon, the scene shows a young boy running, and the narration suits the sight of this boy since it sounds like a young boy is speaking. After looking at the way narrations are presented in animated movies, we began to think about what would be said in our own narration.

In Ratatouille, the rat speaks about his life, and we thought that that would be a good idea for the main character of our opening sequence to be doing. We also wanted the main character to speak in slang terms so that he suits his appearance as a ‘gangster’. One slang term that was used was ‘rah’.

Sophie

Narration/ Voice over

In our opening squence, we came up with the idea of including a voice over, throughout the film.  This was due to the fact that, while filming we struggled a lot with the sound quality of the footage. So by introducing a narration over the top would help erase this problem, and also set the scene of the film opening. The narration will have some under lying music to help build/ create our disired atmoshpere. The narration will be broken up across the footage, as oppose to, speaking straight through the footage. we decided this because, we thought that maybe having too much narration over the film, will distract peoples attention away from the actuall footage itself and also get boring and annoying.

The script i used for our opening was as followed:

“This is me 13th july 2007 the day my life turnt around

This years been a bumpy ride, but today was by far the worst day, gunshots, blood, knifes,deaths,all in one

I didnt even think i would make it out alive – i thank god for that.

Always looking down on me, creating my future, im blessed for that.

I panicked, I didn’t know what to do, it wasn’t my fault, there after me now, so i just ran

Do they really think its me, do they really think I’m capable of this, something this bad, something this brutal, rah

My dads looking down on me thinking – “what have you done”, I’ve always wanted to make him proud,

I hope he saw what really happened

People will see what really happend that day The truth will come out and this is my story”.

We came up with this script because we thought that every line, represents a part of our film and helps represent different aspects of our main characters personality.

By Niyi Adeaga

Storyboard and Narrative Structure

The first step to improving our two minute film opening that our group have decided to do is re-create the storyboard in order to prepare ourselves for filming again with the proper DSLR cameras.

Here is the Narrative structure/storyline for our whole film as well as the first 2 minutes of it:

We also began to make a storyboard for the first two minutes of our film opening. This is what the first/original one looked like:

We realised that our storyboard was still not detailed enough therefore we began to draw it out again making it more detailed.

Here is what the new storyboard of the first minute looks like:

Storyboards by Sophie and Amber

Narrative Structure by Sophie

Our new opening storyboard

I have made a new storyboard for our opening, although it is very brief it outlines our storyboard as we got rid of and added more scenes to it. This clip shows the first part of our film which I edited and I will shortly upload a storyboard when Niyi and Sophie have finished editing.

Our last storyboard:

Our newest storyboard:

Our development has been recorded on our blog posts between these two storyboard clips. By Phoebe. M

Movie Opening Credits

In class today we were looking at some examples of movie opening credits and found some good examples of ones that we can incorporate and develop into our own two minute movie opening. An example of movie opening credits that we looked at was from the movie Twilight

As well as the movie opening credits being incorporated very well into the opening, I feel as if other elements of media techniques work together to help create the gloomy atmosphere such as the use of music and the colour of the scenery consisting of mainly dark reds and blacks. The credits show various parts of picturesque landscapes turning to ice, alluding to Bella’s transformation into a vampire.I like how the titles change colour to match the background/scenery such as 0:40 – 0:43 where the title is originally red and then as it moves closer to the clouds it slowly changes to a white colour.  I also like how the panning movement of the scenery gives the impression that the titles are also moving with it.

Another film opening I looked at was from the movie ‘Se7en’

The music creates a gloomy and mysterious atmosphere and titles have been presented in the black parts of the scenery to help the audience establish that the film has very dull and scary elements. Th majority of the movie opening, the titles are presented against a black background after some footage of a person doing certain movements. For example, a title appears against a black screen after he flips the page of a book and the title appears again after he writes something on a piece of paper.

Another movie that we looked out was called ‘The Road Movie’

I like how the titles aren’t completely taking over the screen and are instead used on different corners of the movie so that it allows the audience to establish the different settings/locations the camera shows. The titles also have a blurring transition at the start and the size gradually expands until the blur disappears.  Occasionally, some of the titles are presented against a black screen, as seen in the movie opening ‘Se7en’ and this could of perhaps been done to show clearly to the audience who the main characters/actors are in the movie.

We also looked at was called ‘Spiderman’

The title ‘Spiderman’ has been used against a red background in front of a spiderweb in order to show clearly what the film is based around. As well as the white titles used to represent the different actors, I like the way that, rather than showing real footage of the actors, comic/cartoon drawings of them are used instead which makes the movie opening very interesting. The music incorporated also has adventurous elements to it hinting that the movie is going to be an action movie.

The last movie we looked at was ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

I like this movie opening as the movement of the titles are in sync with the very fast pace of the music which gives the opening more rhythm and flow as well as being very energetic hinting that this will be an action movie.  The titles also move in an interesting way as if the smoke from the bottom left corner of the scene is pushing it so that the titles curve a bit. Other ways of the titles being incorporated into the movie opening is where it gives the impression that it is placed on flat surfaces such as 1:09.

Sophie.C

our final logo/title idea

I took a single photo of each of the characters and edited them using Adobe photoshop on the school computers. I cropped their face out and then deleted the background so you couldnt see the original background. I then gave it an artist effect on powerpoint to look like paintstrokes, this was the closest effect i could get to match the original photo, but as you can see it isnt an exact match. I used Dawn Of The Planets Of The Apes for inspiration for this logo as I liked the way it includeed all of the main characters. As we dont have mnay people in our film there was only going to be 2 main characters, these are Niyi (technical Manager and innocent killer) and Declan (hired drama student – murdered). This then featured simular text to the original logo in DOTPOTA, as it also gives the concrete effect and is placed in the center underneath the faces. I also tried to edit it so that the eyes and full face was also in line just like the original as it gives a more dramatic effect as it seems that the characters are all straring at you. The light in the back of the text in the title was also inspiraton from Transformers the film as that logo also feautures the light, which I thought looked effective and made the title stand out from he faces more, as the title is quit dark.

By Phoebe M

Split Screens

In our final cut which our technical manager is editing on Adobe Premiere Pro, he is spliting the screen into five sections which include him and his friends running away from the sirens. This looks effective as it shows of our editing skills and adds a twist. It is also effective as it shows all of the boys together which looks more dramatic and shows the emotional fear on all of their faces.

We have looked at many ways of slpiting the screen here are a few:

We also looked at films that include a split screen in their opening and found very little, but one was good and this was a film called LICHTGRENZE, I havent personally heard of it but from the title it sounds a German film, but as the split screen was effective we used it as inspiration and made us look at new ways of spliting our opening.

By Phoebe M

Using different shots and angles in our opening

So far we have used many shots such as close-ups, long shots and the editing technique shot reverse shot. Although we have used many, we haven’t used an angle shot. I was thinking we could add a shot at the beginning of the opening of a long shot of the house down the street. This was inspiration from the James Bond movie Casino Royal where there is an establishing shot of the office building. In this new photo of the house I was thinking it could be a dull day with wind blowing, so that we would see the trees swaying and the noise of wind lurcking in the background. It would be a silent shot apart from the diegetic sound of the wind. Although my next idea would be difficult to achieve it would look very effective, this is that the street lights in the house shot could flicker to look and give a more eary effect.

By Phoebe Maloney

Shooting Script

Who we need?

For our opening sequence we needed a number of different people. Firstly we needed Niyi Adeaga, to act as the innocent boy who is wrongly accused of murder, Niyi’s role in the opening sequence was to act scared and worried about the murder and also run away from the scene. We also decided as a group to hire a A-level Drama student to play the role of the victim in our film, this was because we thought it would bring some realism to the film aswell as professionalism. For the film there was some cucial makeup needed, in charge of this we needed Amber to do it. In order to get the best shots possible at the same time, we used both Phoebe and sophie to film suing two different camera at two different angles.

What did we need?

For our opening scene we needed:

1 Knife

Packet of fake blood

Ladder

Bike

Flash light

Selfie stick

Where and when would we film?

We decided to film our opening outside sophie’s house. She had a front garden where we shot the first scene of Declan dead on the floor. also outside her house we shot the running away scene of our opening, her house had the ideal road and lighting to shoot our opening. Because our opening needed to be set at night we decided to film our opening at 17:00pm as we were aware that by then there would be less lighting.

by Niyi