Improvements

We looked at the feedback we'd eben given and tried to work out what we could improve on without having to re-film and restructure chunks. Most of the major improvements could be done by editing. We planned to sort out the title sequence and sound bridge as our priority and hopefully re-film the screen shots on another screen that wouldn't flicker.

When it came to actually sitting down to edit we found we didn't need to re-shoot the screen as we could instead insert clips of pasty events flowing backwards which looked suprisingly effective when put together with close-ups on Allison's face.

We wanted more feedback before we committed ourselves to a final cut so we went to the other class as they would be watching it the first time and we needed a fresh look at our film. The feedback we got was pretty much all positive with some very minor adjustments mostly to do with sound which i made that evening. The final cut was ready.

Feedback from first Viewing

After the first viewing we seem to be ahead of most people with a complete rough cut, sound included, but there are still lots of amendments to be made. Some of the major points were:

· Narrative issues and confusion through minimal dialogue
· Confusion over identity of Heather
· Why doesn’t Allison pick the papers up if they are so important?
· Screen flickers during the final scene
· Relevance of photograph unclear
· Radio sound bridge short and unclear
· Title slide amateurish and slow
· Volume issues

Although I intend to amend most of these problems I don’t see what I can do about narrative issues, there is reasoning behind Allison leaving the files and the age difference between Allison and Heather but it’s hard to see how we can explain this without shooting the entire film. We only have two minutes after all.
I am keen however to fix sound and editing issues something I believe I should be able to do quite easily. I also plan to film a couple of additional shots of the screen sans flickering and try a different photograph hopefully with a younger Katie in it.

Editing

You could say editing was left to the last minute. Due to the high quality formatting of my camera and the low quality PC computer I have to edit on uploading and exporting takes a lot of patience. The only way to do it is the spend hours tediously converting files to those of a lower quality.

After a couple of tedious days of converting I was ready to start editing but even then it was put off by James’ availability. Eventually we sat down and edited on Thursday evening, we quickly established a very rough cut which I perfected over several hours that followed including adding music, titles, transitions and the like.

I was happy with what we eventually came up with but there are still a few rough areas, in particular the amateurish title ‘Lab Rats’ which will need a lot more work and we will need to talk about the sound.

Second Day of Filming

Although filming the second scene had been originally scheduled for the Friday it had to be postponed to the Tuesday. Once we had the camera set up and rolling however filming went smoothly and we got plenty of good shots.

We had originally intended for the second scene to be set in the morning but due to the lighting conditions we changed it to evening and kept our shots lit by artificial light alone. It gave the film a warmer feel which although we didn’t plan for worked surprisingly well. We even managed a focus shift in the shot where Allison puts down her mug and discovers the disc labelled ‘human testing.

The hardest shot to film was where Allison drops her mug of coffee in surprise and it shatters. This was difficult because the only mug we had permission to smash was actually pretty sturdy and it took two goes to get it to break with a lot of mopping up cold coffee in-between. Fortunately I thought to put Clingfilm over the camera lense before we shot this because everything got splattered with cold coffee. The coffee was cold obviously for safety reasons.

Sound

We would have to mute the original sound from the first scene which meant we’d have to re-record Allison’s breathing separately along with the voice-overs. For the best possible quality of sound we borrowed a microphone which we tested several time before we started recording.

First we captured breathing, this is harder than it sounds because it was hard for Katie to breath naturally under pressure. She proved quite useless at it so myself and James recorded our own versions which we’d try later in editing and use whatever sounded most convincing.

Then we wrote out the voice-over that would be required in the second scene. At this point we would need Katie’s voice to merge into James’ as he would be doing the voice for Daniel Carroll, who was no longer Chinese. We recorded both twice.

Finally we recorded a couple of telephone noises to be put over the final black out, again we would decide in the edit which sounded best.

Re-Scheduling

Due to issues with the Friday shoot which prevented James from being able to attend we have decided to re-schedule shooting the second scene to Tuesday afternoon. It isn’t ideal because of lighting but my kitchen will be available then as will all the props and script and the like.

We can also do any pick-ups for the first scene Tuesday morning at the Priory where the ground will be flatter.

First Day of Production

Thursday 19th November went almost as planned. We all turned up on time at Wareside, found an appropriate field and set to work filming our opening shots, after that things started to drift away from how we might have dared to hope.

Our first location for the chase we had hoped to use the tricycle to get some smooth tracking shots of Courtney running but the ground was so rough this proved impossible. We tried different stretches of ground to try somewhere a bit flatter but every time the shots came out shaky and Courtney rarely even appeared in them. To make up for this I had to get lots of excess still shots and even now I will have to review what we have and decide if we need to re-shoot any of it.

Our second location proved more fruitful. We found an excellent tree for Courtney to hide behind but again we had issues with the sticky muddy ground that prevented Courtney from smoothly sliding behind the tree. Katie, who played Courtney, could scarcely even run down the bank and behind the tree. We had to get lots of quick shots and hope we could edit them together into something vaguely decent. On the plus side the sun was angled in such a way we took the opportunity to get some excellent backlit shots where Katie was practically in silhouette.

Still to do though is the entire second scene including a slow-motion shot of a coffee cup falling and pick-ups on this scene.

Production Plan

Our initial production plan:

Animatic

Due to some issues with saving and exporting the Animatic we only have an incomplete version to show you, which cuts out for reasons we can’t seem to comprehend at just the 1:14 mark. Our original Animatic was much closer to two minutes and ended with a blackout.



• Most people seem unsure as to why Daniel Yang has to be Chinese, this is something we wanted to keep a mystery to reveal later on but it seems to be causing unnecessary confusion. We have resolved this by re-naming him Daniel Carroll, he will be voiced by James. We have also re-named Courtney Allison.
• Catches audiences attention by not handing them all the information at once.
• Plenty of shots of an appropriate length.

Film Opening Case Study

Since our film is supposed to be a missing-person thriller I looked for a film like ours and came up with 'Don't Say a Word':

Don't Say a Word- Analysing Film Openings

View more presentations from guestb6e9e7.

Charectoristics of a Film Opening

Before you can make a film opening you have to be familiar with them and what their characteristics are. Here’s a spider diagram I made examining them in a fair amount of detail.

Plot, Genre and Audience

Genre:
Our decided genre is thriller since that seems to fit our plot best and holds it’s own basic rules in it’s openings which we hope will guide us into successfully creating ours.

Film openings- clues to genre:
· Music
· Mise-en-scene (particularly costume, props and setting)
· Colour
· Choice of Actors


Final Plot Outline:
After the mysterious disappearance of her adopted father, a Chinese scientist named Daniel Yang, Courtney resolves to search for her father alone ignoring the advice of her peers. She soon finds evidence that Daniel has found a fatal flaw in the medical company’s new miracle drug after they pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds into it. Courtney knows her father hasn’t just gone missing he’s been kidnapped and she has to find him before it’s too late.

Film openings- clues to narrative:
· Introduction of Characters
· Dialogue
· Voice over/Narration
· Captions
· Props

Target Audience:
We aim for a teenage and adult audience possibly more female orientated through the choice of protagonist. One of the primary issues in the film is- Can a teenage girl plausibly track down and save her father? It certainly isn’t for children or families.

Film openings- clues to target audience:
· Colour
· Age of Characters
· Simplicity of Narrative
· Choice of Actors

A Basic Concept

Before we could start anything so advanced as story boards we needed a basic film concept we could work with and it needed to outline the whole film so that we would have the background infomation we needed for a successfull opening.

I already knew I'd be working with James Hoye who I have worked with before on numerous occasions and like to think I have a good working relationship with. So we both went away and came up with a film concept.

My Film Concept:

Friends for Life- A comedy drama. Martin is a twelve year old boy with a keen mind for science and sums but useless in any social context. Forcing himself to be content with his own solitude, Martin invents an imaginary friend, Peggy, to keep him company through his parents divorce. But Martinis one of the dullest boys in existance and everyone gets bored of trying to hold a conversation with him, even Peggy finds him insufferable and leaves him to find a more playfull friend leaving Martin to try and make friends instead with a goldfish. Peggy later persuades her new friend to kill the goldfish if Martin doesn't engage in a vulgar game of 'do-this-or-i-won't-be-your-friend-any-more,-or-in-other-words-I'll-kill-your-goldfish.'

James' Film Concept:

Lab Rats- Daniel Yang is a chinese scientist. When he does not return home from work one day his adopted english daughter Courtney sets out to trace his whereabouts. She goes on a journey of self discovery and witnesses horrors not known to mankind. Set in a rural town in Hertfordshire, the plot takes an even more unlikely twist.

Even though James' idea was more vague we both agreed it had more potential when figureing out an opening so we have decided to go with that and we're working on the finer details as we go to create a better summary.

Preliminary Exorcise

Preliminary Exorcise

Written Evaluation:

Before we could even begin to think about the main project of a film opening we had to demonstrate we had the essential skills. This meant basic shot framing, match on action and shot reverse shot so a lot depended on our camerawork and editing abilities, sound and mise en scene taking a back seat.

In filming it would be safe to say that camera work is a pretty essential element and I like too think we gave it the attention it deserved. Sure enough the shots were steady in focus, or close enough. Most of the shots were also well framed with exception of perhaps the close ups during the shot reverse shot sequence. Charlotte, our first character, could do with a little more looking room whilst Sarah, our second character, moved forward in her chair thus cutting off the top of her head towards the end of her lines. These however were minor errors, had we noticed them we would have re-shot them at the time but we didn’t and I think we made the best of it in editing. Certainly I would say from height of the camera we got the eye-line match about right, and kept to the 180 degree rule, it was something I paid particular attention to during our shot reverse shot sequence. I don’t think I would change any shots other than the framing on the close-ups, I would however add in one which establishes the relationship of the two characters within the room just after Charlotte’s entrance.

Then we come to the equally important and time consuming process of editing, in this case I think we worked quite efficiently. I would say our match on action does as required, it took several tries not to get a delay on the door opening from the other side but eventually I think I had it cut correctly and without any jump cuts. The shot reverse shot sequence works appropriately for me, I deliberately only shot it from two angles so that we wouldn’t be tempted to cut between different angles in the edit causing confusion rather than keeping it simple and effective. The pacing I’m less sure about, our sequence is actually under the time limit and with more time that could have been changed in the edit by giving the characters a little more breathing room as it were between lines. All in all we kept it simple and effective and I like to think we achieved invisible editing, I wouldn’t change much if I were to edit this again if anything I would maybe leave a bit more pause after a couple of the characters lines.

That leaves sound and mise en scene which took less major roles in this case. The sound is probably the weak point in our final cut but the dialogue is audible and the background sound is limited so it isn’t a disaster by any means. As for mise en scene it did at one point nearly cause continuity error when a friend who came to watch wrote on the white board half way through shooting but James thought to point it out, we rubbed it off and it does not appear in our final piece.

All in all I think the finished product does as was required of it and I’m happy with it. In terms of teamwork myself and James worked surprisingly well together and I will be happy to be working with him on the main project. Our contributions weren’t completely even, I did much more of the editing for example but in the filming certainly they evened out and James put in an equal amount into the planning and if it weren’t for him we wouldn’t have had any actors which for a group of two would have rendered this task impossible.