Wednesday 25 March 2015

Evaluation Part 8

Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To The Full Product?

Over all I feel that I have learnt a lot of different skills since the begining of this project. I have learnt how to use FinalCut Pro to a good level, I now can edit the look of clips such as the colour and not just their length. I needed to learn this after a camera on the second time shooting hued all the footage orange after the contrast was too high. I had to colour correct this footage to match with the existing footage, this was successful as I cannot tell a difference between the colour of the clips in the final draft. I also learnt how to edit sound on FinalCut Pro, this enabled my group and I to play around with the soundtrack and sound at the end of the clips. We wanted the music to fade out leaving the protagonists footsteps, however after doing our teacher suggested having the song end loud and suddenly, we decided on this for the final version. 

I believe that the planing and production stage went well because Emily and I came up with an idea that we were both excited about. This made it easy when it came to creating the finer details on the film because we were both on the same page. 

There were some difficulties workiing in a group, however we managed to move past them. We had trouble with commutation at the begining of the project and further on when we had different ideas. Julia made her own version of the title sequence seperate from the one we made as a group which wasn't made clear to me or Emily. However we showed both versions to class and combined the positive feedback from both to amend our final title sequence. 



Evaluation Part 7 -What key decisions did you make about technology during pre-production/ production/ post production in light of technology and skills

Evaluation Part 6 - How Did You Attract / Address Your Audience?

How Did You Attract / Address Your Audience? 

I feel that as a group we have reached our target audience, we done this through elements of the title sequence. Such as elements as the mise-en-scene and soundtrack, also parts of the narrative. These appealed to our target audience (15-30) as within the mise-en-scene there are props which females of our target audience would own so they could relate to them. These were things such as expensive perfume bottles, watches and bags. Although some of the target audience members will own these items some will also aspire to own them. The opening shot is of the DKNY and PRADA bags which attracts these audience members. The sheer amount of money in the sequence attracts both the male and females in the target audience group, this is because the average person aspires to be rich/well off. 
 





I thought that the soundtrack we picked would appeal to our target audience, this was because it sounds like a current song. Many of the positives on the feedback sheets were about how the song fitted the genre and of the title sequence in general. This shows how we were right to think that the song "Street Cred" would appeal to our audience. 
Over all I feel that the majority of people enjoyed our sequence as we got mostly the same positive feedback. That the narrative is clear and the macro and micro elements work together. 

 




I think the title sequence could be improved if we re shot the end scenes of us on the street with a different camera. This is because other cameras have settings where you can lighten the exposure as you film. We did lighten the shots in FinalCut Pro but they could have looked better if they were filmed differently. 

Something I thought went well was the close ups of the actresses faces through out, this is because it shows their response to having the money in their possession. 
 





Evaluation Part 5

http://youtu.be/UfA640vXQSQ

My spoken evaluation for part 5.

Evaluation Part 4

http://youtu.be/1Dd_8ZSg5OU

A link to my spoken evaluation of part 4.

Tuesday 24 March 2015

Evaluation Part 3 (What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product and Why?)

Evaluation Part 2 - Who would be the audience for your product



Evaluation of 'Dope and Diamonds' title sequence (part 1)

I was working to the brief of creating a title sequence for a film of my groups creation. In my group there is myself, Emily and Julia. We came up with two initial film ideas, one would be based around the after events of a party and the other on a group of girls who become very successful drug dealers. We decided to go with the second idea as we wanted the other ideas sequence to be the party, which would have been extremely hard to film. Our title sequence sets up for the rest of the film by straight away introducing the four lead protagonists. The sequence shows them being joyful as they get ready to stealthily leave the country with their recently stolen money.This way the audience can perceive what the girls are like and how they interact with each other before the main feature starts. The title sequence sets up enigmas for the audience to ponder, such as where the money came from and why are the girls are dressed like they are and why are they going to Las Vegas in the middle of the night. We chose for our title sequence to show this because the film presents the girls downward spiral as they become more involved in the world of drugs, so it seemed fitting that it should start when they feel at the top of their 'game'. The title of our film I believe sums up the films narrative and the girls struggle, as we envision the girls to be the 'diamonds' and their whole life style to be the 'dope'. The dope and diamonds are binary oppisites in their world but if diamonds are owned by "bad" people they too can become corrupted. The genre of our film is action/drama and the subgenre is teen, the subgenre is teen as the film is like a coming of age for the four protagonists. 

Wednesday 18 March 2015

Title Sequence Final Cut





This is our final edit of our title sequence. It combines features from both of the draft versions which we previewed to the class to gain constructive feedback. 

Friday 13 March 2015

Rough Draft (2)





This is the other draft we showed to the class to get feedback on, the one we made as a group. 

Draft Video (1)





This is the copy that Julia made, it's on of the ones we showed in our class to get feedback on. This is the video we will make the changes to to be the final cut.

Wednesday 11 March 2015

Setting and Locations

These are pictures of the locations we used to shoot our title sequence. They are in my house and road which was convienent for when we had to re shoot. Also for when I had to set the room up and add in the props, it was easy for me to re do each time we filmed.

Editing the Song

Also today we found a new song and added it to our title sequence. Me and both of my group members edited the music and footage sound at the end of the sequence. We wanted the effect of the music fading out and the actresses foot steps getting louder. This came out really well and we are happy with final effect as at this  point we want the title to appear.  

Colour Correction

Today me and group member Emily were editing our footage as the last time we filmed the cameras white balance was off. So we used the 'colour corrector 3-way' effect on FinalCut Pro to correct the warm orange hued footage colder to fit in with the rest of the footage. Today we also inserted the new song we found into our footage. 

Analysis of similar title sequences

Getting Props Together


These are the props we got for our title sequence. We printed off £20,000 worth of fake fifty, twenty and ten pound notes at school. We then ordered four balaclavas off of Amazon for the actresses to wear. These props are what we will use when we film. There are other props such as make up, bags and jewlrey which we already owned.

Music Choice Changes

We decided to pick 'Notorious' for our song choice, however after inserting it to FinalCut Pro we felt it didn't work with our footage. Group member Emily then looked for new music on the AudioNetwork. She found a song called 'Street Cred', its pop/rap with female vocals and lyrics that fit the films narrative really well.
 

Feedback Sheets

These are the first lot of feedback sheets we got our class to fill out. This is when we showed the class the two different drafts. The majority of feedback was the same, they didn't like the lack of titles on the group version but couldn't read the titles on Julias version. One class member also said that in the groups version there was too much 'messing around' , she meant within in the characters that they would be more serious. In the final edit you can see that there is much less of 'messing around'. Overall most of the class were able to guess the genre from our title sequence, which shows we were effective. 

















Final Edit (sound)

Today we played around with sound again. We had to add it again because we changed the clips of footage around to make the sequence flow better, that the sound was making it harder to edit. So we had to do the fading away of the soundtrack again, this time it was it was easier for me to do as I already knew how to use the FinalCut Pro tools. We also changed our idea for the ending, as we wanted the music and footage to fade out at the same time. However after teacher viewed it she suggested to have it end with a 'bang' so it would just cut off.

Final Editing (titles)

Today my group and I did our last bit of editing to our final draft. We used the comments from my classes feedback sheets as well with our ideas to make some final changes. A big thing that came across from the feedback was that the titles on Julias version (1) were too hard to read. So we found a new font to use for the titles. This new font was easier to read and we felt like it fitted the genre more. However this was only for the titles and we kept the main title font the same. 


This is the timeline of the final title sequence, Julia put all the titles on with the new font, which you can see in the purple boxes. 

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Reshooting

Today me and Emily and the other actors re shot our footage that we lost. This time it was harder as it was confusing trying to work out what we needed to re shoot. However we looked through our existing footage and managed to work it out. Also we didn't have all the same props as last time so we had to get the cinematography of the shots right so the audience could only see what we wanted.

Editing

Today me and my group imported and converted our final footage onto the macs. We then started to re arrange and add our footage to our existing footage. It was difficult at first to work as a group as we all had different ideas of how we wanted the final piece to turn out. However we started to work together well and the process of editing was fun as we got to see our work slowly come together.



Thursday 5 March 2015

Font choices

These are the font choices for the title our film. We will print them out and ask for our class to vote on the font that they think is most fitting. The fonts are all from DaFont.com. I like the font second from the top as it is in the style of a slot machine and part of the films plot is the characters going to Las Vegas first to double their money. We have chosen these fonts as they represent the themes in our film, the drugs and the money.

Music choices




These are the final song choices me and my group have come up with. They are all from the site Audio Network which has un copyrighted music on it.

Class Feedback

Today me and my group pre viewed our title sequence to our class, however we had two different versions to show. This was because of a difference of opinions in the group, Julia made a different cut which had the whole title sequence tinted blue, with different shots and the titles on the end. 

 We also showed the class the original groups version, this one had no tint, was longer and had no titles. The feedback was mixed from the class. People liked some parts from the groups version and some from Julias. So as a group we decided that we would put parts from the versions to create a final cut. 

Monday 2 March 2015

Filming

Today me and Emily of our of group filmed the final part of the footage of our sequence. We filmed on location from 9pm to 11:30pm. We filmed inside the bedroom and outside on the street. There was a problem as half way through my own memory card stopped working and we had to switch and use the schools memory card. We hope that there will be no technical problems.

Second draft / editing

Today I started to upload our footage to FinalCut Pro but there was a problem with one of the memory cards meaning some of our footage is lost and will have to be re shot. I put together what we had which is around 1 minute 30 secs altogether. We plan to re shoot on the 6th of March.

Thursday 19 February 2015

Re Pitch Video



This is the second pitch of our film that my group did, this one was shorter as we mainly presented the improved sections of the pitch. 

Re Pitch Slideshare


This is my groups second powerpoint which we improved with help from the feedback sheets and then presented to the class.

Thursday 29 January 2015

Photographs of the actors


These are photographs of the actors my group and I will be using in our film. The first two photographs are of me and my group member Emily, the last two girls are our friends. We used ourselves and our friends as it would be convenient, which came in handy as we needed a re shoot after we lost some of our footage. 

Wednesday 28 January 2015

Filming

Today for the first time we filmed footage for our title sequence. Me and Emily from my group feature in the footage aswell as two of our friends (who are the other actresses). We cleared stuff out of the setting and set up the props and started filming at 9:30pm. It tooks us a while to get used to the camera as it's the first time we had used one like it for filming, also getting correct lighting. This made the process go on longer than expected and we finished filming around 11:20pm. However we didn't get all the footage we needed because of how long it ran over so we will need to film again.

Props we need to get for filming

 
This is the base of the costume for the actresses in our title sequence, however their characters are glamorous so the actresses will also be glammed up. 


This are pictures of props my group and I want to obtain to have in the title sequence. 

Feedback Sheets From Our First Pitch














These feedback sheets helped me and my group make the appropriate changes and additions to improve our film pitch presentation. The most common bit of feedback we received was where are the titles, at this point we hadn't added titles because we had to re film.