Today is the last day before the easter holidays which will last two weeks. It is daunting to know that after the holidays we will have only two weeks to finish our coursework completely, so today Daniel and I really wanted to crack on with things. We have finished our poster, the film has been completed all except for the sound effects and monologue which means that all is left is to do the magazine cover. We will be finishing the sound editing of the film at a later date when we have the equipment we need, i.e. a microphone.
We encountered a problem with creating the background that we wanted, however, as we had no internet to help us. We definitely want the background to have a mysterious, smokey effect, but this cannot be achieved without having use of the internet for help, advice, and effects that can be downloaded. We tried many times to use the tools provided by photoshop, but nothing worked for us. We can't do anything else to the magazine cover until the background has been done as that is the first layer, so we had run into a deadend with this issue. We decided that we would instead find the image of Scott that we wanted to use and cut it out ready for when we could do the magazine cover. After cutting it out with the magnetic tool, we used the smugde brush tool to airbrush Scott's face of any blemishs, as would happen to an image being used for a real magazine. After we had done this, we didn't have much else to do.
We passed the time productively by experimenting with different music whilst watching our film, to see if there was anything better than what we already had. After much deliberation, we decided to stick with our original ideas.
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Preparing for Evalution - 22/03/12
In today's lesson our teacher gave us all a sheet of paper with four questions on it. These questions, when answered, will be our evalution for our coursework. We were told to begin writing up drafts of answers for these questions so that we can later blog our full evaluation. These questions are:
1. In what ways dos your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The questions will require a lot of thought and detail in order for my evalution to be addressed fully. We were also given a sheet with a checklist to help us to organise what we have and have not done. The checklist was split into different categories: planning, main product, ancillary texts and evaluation. Each of these categories has a checklist below it. For planning, the checklist consists of: initial ideas, initial research into similiar products, focus group findings, storyboards, drafts and powerpoint slideshow. I can tick all of these except for focus group findings. Main product has only one item on the list, obviously, and that is the fully edited video. I cannot yet tick this. Under ancillary texts is: poster, website, magazine cover and radio advertisement. Only two of these apply to us and that's poster and magazine cover. We can tick of poster, but have not yet completed the magazine cover. We cannot tick off anything from under the evaluation category, as this is audience feedback which we can only get after the video is completed and premiered, and the answers to the four questions I mentioned above. I haven't started these questions yet.
The majority of the checklist has been ticked off, so I am well on my way to completeing my A2 Media coursework.
1. In what ways dos your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
The questions will require a lot of thought and detail in order for my evalution to be addressed fully. We were also given a sheet with a checklist to help us to organise what we have and have not done. The checklist was split into different categories: planning, main product, ancillary texts and evaluation. Each of these categories has a checklist below it. For planning, the checklist consists of: initial ideas, initial research into similiar products, focus group findings, storyboards, drafts and powerpoint slideshow. I can tick all of these except for focus group findings. Main product has only one item on the list, obviously, and that is the fully edited video. I cannot yet tick this. Under ancillary texts is: poster, website, magazine cover and radio advertisement. Only two of these apply to us and that's poster and magazine cover. We can tick of poster, but have not yet completed the magazine cover. We cannot tick off anything from under the evaluation category, as this is audience feedback which we can only get after the video is completed and premiered, and the answers to the four questions I mentioned above. I haven't started these questions yet.
The majority of the checklist has been ticked off, so I am well on my way to completeing my A2 Media coursework.
Thursday, 15 March 2012
Feedback - 15/03/12
In today's lesson we decided to get some feedback on our product so far, as we had practically finished editing the trailer, aside from the monologue and sound effects, and our poster was complete. We set up the trailer, turned the volume up and let our fellow classmates and teacher watch it, asking for honest opinions and constructive critisism so that we may be able to apply any advise they had to offer.
After the screening, we recieved very positive feedback as a response, with comments such as "palpable tension", "very good lighting" and "brillantly shot". There was no critisism for our trailer, which we were very pleased about. A few were particular amazed by our title screen, where the words "Black Magic" melt away like blood. Now all we have to do is record a voice over for the monologue and add in the sound effects of footsteps and a muffled cry; after this, our film trailer should be completed and we can then concentrate on the magazine cover.
We have been working on the film poster throughout the lessons where we were unable to edit. Fortunetly during today's lesson we were able to finish the development of said poster. It has a black background, with half of our villains face made up in words and the other half fading to black to give a 'floating head' effect. "Black Magic" is in large text below this image in dark red, and the actors names are above this in white. Below the title is the smallprint, in white, the font of which took us ten minutes to find and perfect - we wanted to look as professional as possible, and all the smallprint on film posters is the same font, no matter what the genre. We then added "DM Productions" logo and the age certificate of "15 (some scenes of graphic violence)" at the very bottom, with "coming soon" in red also at the bottom. We asked for feedback, as well as suggestions for what the tagline should be. We already had "a hell of a show" in mind, but we wanted to know what our peers thought.
We were given two suggestions; for our tagline to be "it's going to be one hell of a show" or simply just "one hell of a show". In the end, we went for the former, and put it in red at the very top of the film poster, above the image of the villains face. It was also suggested by one person that we have a different image of the villain, where he has his top hat on and is pulling it down at an angle, but as no one else thought that our original image looked bad, we decided to ignore this advice. We want to keep our poster simple, just like our trailer and magazine will be, and so there may be such a thing as too much if we change the image to the one suggested.
After the screening, we recieved very positive feedback as a response, with comments such as "palpable tension", "very good lighting" and "brillantly shot". There was no critisism for our trailer, which we were very pleased about. A few were particular amazed by our title screen, where the words "Black Magic" melt away like blood. Now all we have to do is record a voice over for the monologue and add in the sound effects of footsteps and a muffled cry; after this, our film trailer should be completed and we can then concentrate on the magazine cover.
We have been working on the film poster throughout the lessons where we were unable to edit. Fortunetly during today's lesson we were able to finish the development of said poster. It has a black background, with half of our villains face made up in words and the other half fading to black to give a 'floating head' effect. "Black Magic" is in large text below this image in dark red, and the actors names are above this in white. Below the title is the smallprint, in white, the font of which took us ten minutes to find and perfect - we wanted to look as professional as possible, and all the smallprint on film posters is the same font, no matter what the genre. We then added "DM Productions" logo and the age certificate of "15 (some scenes of graphic violence)" at the very bottom, with "coming soon" in red also at the bottom. We asked for feedback, as well as suggestions for what the tagline should be. We already had "a hell of a show" in mind, but we wanted to know what our peers thought.
We were given two suggestions; for our tagline to be "it's going to be one hell of a show" or simply just "one hell of a show". In the end, we went for the former, and put it in red at the very top of the film poster, above the image of the villains face. It was also suggested by one person that we have a different image of the villain, where he has his top hat on and is pulling it down at an angle, but as no one else thought that our original image looked bad, we decided to ignore this advice. We want to keep our poster simple, just like our trailer and magazine will be, and so there may be such a thing as too much if we change the image to the one suggested.
Saturday, 10 March 2012
Reshoot - 10/03/12
Due to the problems with lighting that I mentioned in my last blog, we had to refilm the 'walking' scene with the villain. We decided that rather than filming in the same location and attempting to block out the light, we should think up a new location and luckily we found one - the drama hall within school. With the curtains pulled across, the main lights off and a spotlight focussed on our villain, it looked very atmospheric and the curtains added to the 'magician' feel. This new performance stage feel that the drama hall gave us meant that we were able to experiement with new ideas such as filming our villain flipping a coin in a menacing manner or walking through the closed cutains like a ghost. Of course, these ideas would be tested later on in editing.
Again, the lighting wasn't perfect. The spotlight was too bright and we weren't able to darken the area any further without the camera being unable to pick up any footage. Daniel and I will fix this in editing using lighting effects. Now, with all our filming completed, we have a very small checklist to consider:
Again, the lighting wasn't perfect. The spotlight was too bright and we weren't able to darken the area any further without the camera being unable to pick up any footage. Daniel and I will fix this in editing using lighting effects. Now, with all our filming completed, we have a very small checklist to consider:
- Record the monologue
- Add sound effects
- Edit everything together
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Major Editing - 04/03/12
Over the weekend we decided to start on some of the major parts of editing on the footage we had filmed so far. We had to do this out of school hours as Daniel wanted to change the editing program that we were using - previously we had been using Adobe Premier Elements on his laptop but now we are using Adobe Premier Pro, which isn't on his laptop, and so the editing of the film cannot be done within school. His reasons for this change were that Premier Pro gives a wider range of options and effects for video and that this software as well as the laptop itself was struggling to render the footage; our main problem with this was the lag.
We created title screens for our trailer first, which are "Black Magic" and "Coming Soon". We used Adobe After Effects for this to get a professional look - Daniel had previous experience with this program and so he found it easy to use, whereas I needed some coaching. Using the help of a tutorial we had found on the internet, we were able to complete our title screens quickly. For the title screen "Black Magic", the effect is that the words are made of blood that drips down the screen - this was done using stock videos of 'blood' dripping which we then masked over our words. We repeated the blood effect for the "Coming Soon" title screen, only this image was static and so no blood dripped. We made sure to use the traditional horror colours, red, white and black for these title screens as they create the correct ambience and follows the codes and conventions of real horror trailers.
Next, we created a title screen for the production company, something which features at the beginning of all trailers no matter the genre. We made up our production company, calling it DM Productions and used the internet once again to help create the title screen. We wanted the logo to appear misty and ghostly which was easy to create with the internets help, and then we added our title screens to Premier Pro ready for editing together with the filming.
Now we put all of our footage and title screens in the correct places in chronological order to get a sense of where we were going with the trailer; unfortunately, we still didn't have the 'walking' scene, so we were unable to actually editing everything together. Daniel had prevously created a 'luma key' preset which he added to the clips to give them a better look, making them darker and more focussed This effect is what we had wanted all along from the beginning of production, as it is conventional of horror trailers to look that way.
We created title screens for our trailer first, which are "Black Magic" and "Coming Soon". We used Adobe After Effects for this to get a professional look - Daniel had previous experience with this program and so he found it easy to use, whereas I needed some coaching. Using the help of a tutorial we had found on the internet, we were able to complete our title screens quickly. For the title screen "Black Magic", the effect is that the words are made of blood that drips down the screen - this was done using stock videos of 'blood' dripping which we then masked over our words. We repeated the blood effect for the "Coming Soon" title screen, only this image was static and so no blood dripped. We made sure to use the traditional horror colours, red, white and black for these title screens as they create the correct ambience and follows the codes and conventions of real horror trailers.
Next, we created a title screen for the production company, something which features at the beginning of all trailers no matter the genre. We made up our production company, calling it DM Productions and used the internet once again to help create the title screen. We wanted the logo to appear misty and ghostly which was easy to create with the internets help, and then we added our title screens to Premier Pro ready for editing together with the filming.
Now we put all of our footage and title screens in the correct places in chronological order to get a sense of where we were going with the trailer; unfortunately, we still didn't have the 'walking' scene, so we were unable to actually editing everything together. Daniel had prevously created a 'luma key' preset which he added to the clips to give them a better look, making them darker and more focussed This effect is what we had wanted all along from the beginning of production, as it is conventional of horror trailers to look that way.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
Lighting Issue - 01/03/12
During today's lesson whilst sorting through our clips we realised that the filming that we had done last week (the villain walking down a corridor) was not good enough for our film and that we needed to reshoot. This, of course, meant that we hadn't finished filming yet. The issue with these clips were that it was too light when we had filmed, and when we went into the 'editing' options, then to 'lighting', we couldn't quite get the look we needed to create the tension we had hoped for in the trailer. It was either too light, or so dark that we couldn't see our villain. After many attempts to recover these scenes, we had to come to the conclusion that reshooting had to happen.
Because of the lighting issue with the corridor we will be using, we decided that we could use black card/paper or bin liners to block out any natural light from the skylights that had ruined our shooting last week.
Yet again we were unable to edit much together so we decided to start using photoshop to put our magazine cover together. We have images that we took last week of our villain. So whilst Danny went on the internet to try to find information on lighting effects, I cut the image out using the Cut tool and put it onto a blank background. Danny came back in, with an idea for the poster, where the villain is the only image rather than having the victim in the background and we would try to use the effect of words making up the image of the villain. Our teacher said that the only way that would work would be if there was some sort of monologue over the top of our trailer. We thought about this, and set to work creating this monologue. In order for the monologue to work we would have to change the background music from "Running up that Hill" by Placebo to something else. We chose a sound clip of eerie music to replace this song. It would be a lot easier but we still have to email the record company who created it for the copyright permission.
Because of the lighting issue with the corridor we will be using, we decided that we could use black card/paper or bin liners to block out any natural light from the skylights that had ruined our shooting last week.
Yet again we were unable to edit much together so we decided to start using photoshop to put our magazine cover together. We have images that we took last week of our villain. So whilst Danny went on the internet to try to find information on lighting effects, I cut the image out using the Cut tool and put it onto a blank background. Danny came back in, with an idea for the poster, where the villain is the only image rather than having the victim in the background and we would try to use the effect of words making up the image of the villain. Our teacher said that the only way that would work would be if there was some sort of monologue over the top of our trailer. We thought about this, and set to work creating this monologue. In order for the monologue to work we would have to change the background music from "Running up that Hill" by Placebo to something else. We chose a sound clip of eerie music to replace this song. It would be a lot easier but we still have to email the record company who created it for the copyright permission.
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