What have I done today?

Today I have re-recrded the dialogue for my film trailer and added that into my trailer whilst continuing to edit it in premier pro. I also received assessment feedback for both of my ancillary tasks. I have made changes to my film poster but still have to work on my website.

Film Poster with added production logos

Research into Institutional Logos

After receiving assessment feedback for my film poster one of the things mentions was that I could add more conventions which poster use and one of them in particular was to include production company logos at the bottom of my poster. I researched into them and created a pinterest board which the link for is below:

http://www.pinterest.com/jmce123/research-into-independent-film-production-companie/

Assessment feedback for Ancillary tasks

Audience Feedback for first draft

Today I screened the first cut of my film trailer to people within my media class who would fit my target audience. The video still had some amendments that I wanted to do such as re-recording the dialogue in the seen with Kelly. I created an animoto video containing the audience feedback that I have received for the first draft of my trailer.

Some people suggested that I could shorten some of the clips at the beginning of my film trailer which I agree with and will take on board as I was concerned about the length of my trailer. Also some people criticized the pace of the trailer. I agree with these statements to an extent as some of the shots could do with cutting down in length however I believe that the slower shots work with the narative and the intended genre of my trailer. Also my trailer is very character driven so I believe that these shots can be justified. Also someone recommended that I add text into some places to seperate the footage which was something that I was interested in playing around with.

I am not happy with he ending of the trailer as I believe that it gives the plot of the film away so I am considering removing this to keep the audience in the dark and keep them guessing which would also encourage people who were interested to go and see it at the cinema in order to find out what happens.

Trailer first draft

This is the first draft of my trailer.

What have I done today

Today I have begun to edit my trailer. I have imported my footage into Premier Pro and begun to piece it together. I have also added music to the trailer and added the slow-mo shot that I wanted.

Editing footage (black and white and slow-mo)

For my trailer I wanted to create a black and white slow motion shot of Anna, this is how I did it.

1. Import footage into Premier Pro to be edited.

2. Find the shot that you need and drag it into the window, use the start and stop buttons to cut the footage down to just what you want and then drag it onto sequence 1.

 3. Go into the effects panel, in video effects section, image control and then select black and white option to turn the footage black and white. There are other options but I want to have black and white footage for this part.

 4. Right-click on the footage in sequence 1, select speed/duration, and then enter a percentage value which will determine the speed of the footage and how much slowed down the footage is.

What I hope to achieve today

I was able to film the footage for my trailer over the weekend so now my main aim for this session is to edit the footage and make a start on creating my trailer.

Seeking Permission for song use

I have decided that I want to use the song 'nothing and everything' by RED for my film trailer.

This is a screenshot of an email that I will send to the record label in order to try and gain permission to use the song. I have explained the intended use for the song in the email and am waiting to see if I receive any kind of response, if I do I will post it here.

Music Ideas

I am currently trying to come up with some ideas for music for my trailer. I know that I want a piece of music to accompany the trailer. I have a few ideas but before I actually decide and use music in my trailer I will of course try to gain permission in order to use it.

1. Red - Nothing and Everything.


 
I absolutely love this song and think that it could work really well with my trailer as my genre is a dark, kinda psychological drama and I just think that it would be a really good fit. The song is an acoustic version of one of their songs 'fight inside' which is still good but the acoustic version is beautiful.

2. The Used - this fire



3.  Chopin - Nocturne 20 in C minor sharp



I'm not really a big classical music fan however I like this song and think that this could work well in my trailer perhaps.

Inspirational Scene - Spiderman Willem Dafoe 'Mirror Scene'

Despite Spider man being one of my favorite super-heroes it has been a while since I have watched the Sam Raimi films and I'm not embarrassed to say that I screamed in what can only be described as giddy school girl delight when the frankly creepy scene with Willem Dafoe having a two way conversation with himself in a mirror came on as this is very similar to what I envisioned and wanted to try to create for my trailer.

The way that this scene was filmed is very interesting and has helped provide some ideas of how I could film the 'double' in the mirror for my trailer. In the scene, the camera approaches the mirror at an angle so that the camera isn't in shot as Norman Osborn approaches the mirror creepily and talks. Later on the shot changes to a close up of Norman's face as he speaks and switches in between his reflection as the two are having a conversation. As my idea involves the main character's reflection doing something different in the reflection will be tricky to achieve. I could either film the mirror frame and then what I want to be in the mirror and film that way or I could just film Anna talking and then flip the footage in Premier Pro which could prove to be easier.

Equpiment List

I plan to film the footage for my trailer this weekend on Saturday 7th December 2013. Below is a list of equipment that I have and intend to use:

• Camera
• Tripod
• Storyboard
• Script
• Shot list 

Progress Update

After speaking with my cast, they have arranged to help me film on Saturday. I want to be able to get most of my footage on one day of shooting but I have to take into consideration weather conditions or times of day in relation to which shots that I want.

Animated Storyboard

Animated version of my storyboard created using animoto.

Storyboard

As promised here is my storyboard, I can only apologise for the bad drawings and the messy notes but thats just so that I know what I want to do and help me with possible ideas while filming. They are numbered in order but some go in other places, hopefully it won't confuse you.

Shotlist

Character profiles

Amber Elwin (played by Anna Higgins)

The main character of my film, Rebecca suffers from psychological trauma and as a result has adopted another 'personality.' When in danger she blacks out and her ‘other side’ takes over to protect her usually leaving her with no recollection of events. Until one day the other her kills someone and Amber  believes that she’s dangerous and violent. When the guilt begins to eat away at her will she be able to stay in control?

Rebecca Phillips (played by Kelly Harrison)

Amber's best friend but she doesn't know what is going on with Amber.

Contacting Cast/Consent

I used Facebook in order to contact friends to arrange times to be able to help my film my trailer. Social media and texting will make it easier to stay organised and to make sure that my cast will know what to do.

What I plan to do today

Today I want to finalise plans to film with my cast so that I can get the footage for my film trailer. I want to upload my shot list and storyboard to my blog and make contact with my cast to film hopefully at the weekend.

Progress report

In order to improve my second ancillary task (website) I feel that I need to make the homepage more interactive perhaps somehow. Also the reviews and comments I would like to change so that they could better reflect my film. One of the criticisms that I received from the feedback was the lack of colour and even though I have already made changes to introduce more colour such as a background, I still feel like I could expand or improve upon this somehow so that I could become happier with my work.

Ancillary Task 1 - Movie Poster (modified)

After having made changes, some drastic, this is my movie poster. I believe that it works better than it did before and that I am more happier with it.

Ancillary Task 1 improvements that I've done today

After having my poster assessed I have taken on board the suggested areas to improve and made the modifications to hopefully improve it. By changing the font of the tag-line to match the logo I hope that it will sync it together more and also by centralising the tag line also. I have also resized the image and reduced the blurred affect around it as it had caused a kind of outline around the image which obsured the cracked glass effect of the background that I added. Other people didn't notice but I couldn't not notice it so I felt like I had to fix it and now that I have I can see how much better it is so I have shown it here so that you can see as well.

Also the corners seemed to not be fully black and faded so I have fixed that as well.

I still can not get over just how much my poster has changed this session and how much better over all my poster is.

Before:

Now:

Progress Report

Currently I feel happy with my first ancillary task however there could be some things that I could do in order to become happier with it. I feel like I should try to make sure that the image causes more impact so perhaps enlarging it? It has been suggested that perhaps I could cause the cracked glass effect to spread further across the page to create more impact for the image. I need to experiment within photoshop to try to accomplish these things as well as come across any other potential problems that I may not have noticed.

Ancillary Task 2 - 2nd draft of Website Homepage

http://jamesmcevoy22.wix.com/splitlives


The link above will hopefully take you to my website (just homepage.)

Creating the background for my website in Photoshop

1. First thing that I did was to equip the brush tool in order to create a black background.

2. I selected the largest brush and size that I could whilst making sure that the colour was black.

3. Cover the page with the brush so that the entire page is black.

4. Then load the brushes with the crack glass effect into photoshop.

5. Set the colour of the cracks to something other than the colour of the background, I chose white.

6. I used the different brushes until I was happy with the background and the flattened and saved the image to be used for my website.

Aims for this session

I have received fair criticism from my feedback and they are things that I have thought about so I now aim to take the feedback on board to help to improve my ancillary tasks. I will spend the rest of the session improving my tasks and then update them later or create a post detailing the changes that I have made and why.

Second Ancillary Task - Feedback

Just like how I received feedback for my Poster I now have feedback from my website homepage. The most common criticism is to add colour so I now want to improve my homepage and include some more colour on the homepage. If I change the background then that could help to add a bit of colour to my website whilst improving it so I could try that also.

Time Management 1

Currently I have completed my first drafts of my Ancillary tasks. Once I receive feedback then I can make changes to them to help to improve them, I also need to take some photographs of possible shooting locations to update my location recce so this is what I plan to be doing.

Ancillary Task 2 - 1st draft Website Homepage

Movie Website - Flat Plan

Inspirational Texts - The Hobbit Movie Website

The Website for the Hobbit: The desolation of Smaug is very user friendly and basic but well designed in what it does. A website is usually released well before the film and when you first load up the website the trailer opens up in full screen and begins to play, this is good for advertising as you can be certain that people will watch it but it also makes navigating easier as the trailer will probably be what brought people to the website to begin with as well as finding out more information about the film. The background of the homepage is constantly changing and shifts to images of the different character. These images provide more information about the characters but also reward fans or people who are interested in seeing the film for coming to the website but showing them promotional material for the film. The Film's logo is clearly displayed on the homepage as well as the release date in a constant font, size and colour which helps it to stand out against the changing background.

There is a menu bar at the top with links to other pages which the audience would find useful and the website is simplistic and user-friendly by being easy to navigate but due to the features of flash still maintains a professional feel to it. One of the links is to a list of the different world wide release dates so that the information is easy to find and so people know when they can go to see it. There is another bar in the bottom left hand side of the website with links to social networking sites which is becoming more important as technology improves and more people have access to social networking sites and these can be used to advertise your film and generate interest.

Ancillary Task 1 - Movie Poster 2nd Draft (changed font)

Movie Poster title font ideas

I have been experimenting and trying to find a title font to use for my movie poster after receiving the feedback from my movie poster, the font was what a lot of it suggested that I improved so here I am. These are my favourite fonts but I will test them on the actual poster in photoshop to determine which I like the best.

Update: I have decided to use the second font which is called 'Vintage_Cre' and I downloaded it from here: http://www.fonts2u.com/vintage-cre.font

Feedback for movie poster

I have received feedback for my movie poster, I knew that there were things that I either wanted to add or change so receiving feedback also helped me decide on what I will focus on. It has been pointed out that I should change the font of my film title. I completely agree with this as when I was creating this I just selected a font so that it would be ready to hand in for feedback. Now that so many people have pointed it out I want to look for a font that I think will work for my poster and that I really like and will collect some examples. Also another thing that was pointed by someone was that that I should blend the image so that it doesn't look like it was cut out. This is the first time that I have ever used photoshop so for a first attempt I think that i can be forgiven for it but I will now try to blend the image to make it less noticeable however I will not touch the bottom of it. This is because initially I wanted to try to obscure it with some smoke or something but once I had added the text I liked the look of it so I will keep it like that. Also 'coming soon' was spelt wrong which nearly everyone but me has noticed.

Editing an image in Photoshop

This is a tutorial detailing how I manipulated an image in photoshop to make it black and white for my Movie poster.

1. First I opened the image that I wanted to edit in Photoshop.

2. Then I click this symbol at the bottom of the layers panel which will add a new adjustment layer over the image, I clicked black and white but there are others.

3. This new adjustment layer is over the original image so the colour is still there and you can get it back if you want to.

4. You can adjust the colours on this new layer to manipulate the photo to your liking.

5. Once you are finished you can flatten the image and you have a black and white image.