Rough Cut and Feedback

Rough Cut from Jemma Goulds on Vimeo.

Feedback -

- 'i liked it but i think you should add a shot of Leanne following Toni to make sure the storyline is clear'
- 'good, intense soundtrack'
- 'your titles need to appear slower so they are readable'
- 'wicked'

-'very good but you need to make the storyline more obvious'

- 'the soundtrack should drop in time with Leanne when shes having her breakdown'

'maybe the happy shots of Toni should be in colour'

- 'some shots are very blurry and shakey'

Changes ; -

By getting the feedback we knew we had to make the plot clearer. We then went out of school and filmed a shot of Leanne following Toni. We used various camera shots. Including, over the shoulder and Match on action. We thought this shot would display Toni’s cluelessness to Leannes habits, which would allow our audience to establish character behavior and personality.

As we wanted to previously but didn’t know how it would effect the film, we went ahead and changed to whole colour of the last frame. We used a red tint filter, from Adobe After Effects. This scene was very important as, it is were the audience experience Leannes breakdown, We wanted to keep the theme of red, as it connotes , danger as well as love. We also believed this made the whole frame look mysterious and more effective as it played as a sort of insight to her mind.

As our titles had sped up for some reason in our Audience testing, we learnt how to slow them down so they were legible. We kept the effect as we thought it heightened the atmosphere and represented our genre well. We added the final touch of the polaroid’s that I had been editing and trying out. These entered in the titles and showed images of Leanne and Toni, which we hoped allowed the audience to identify the relationship between the character and who they were.

We adapted and edited the soundtrack so that it flowed better and it ended up having a much better impact on the film. Although the audience had commented on the blurry effect we, personally agreed that it added something to the film and was and effect worth keeping. It may of shown the characters mindset as blurry and confused. It was a brilliant mistake that led to there being more mystery and anonymity on the screen.

We finally added the voice over once performing many tryouts with us each. The sentence in itself, wraps up the whole film and also reveals the reasoning behind the behavior of the character in previous shots. We thought this was very engaging and compliments the content and effects of the last frame.

Meeting 11

We needed to produce a rough cut in order for us to test our film with a live audince. As we had already been editing and working on the film, we produced a good rough cut. Their were some problems with our film that we knew we had to change and improve. We produced this rough cut to an audience and got some very good feedback. This feedback helped us decide what we should change to make our film look more professional.

From getting the feedback, i then filmed new shots of Anisha and Riham to put into the film. we found that these shots in particular would allow our plot to seem more interesting and understandable.

Edit/ Effect Possibilities

Within our title shots we wanted to incorporate an effect that would highlight certain aspects of the films. I came up with the idea that we should incorporate Polaroid frames or memobelia relating to girls in some of the blacked out title frames.

The Polaroid's we all though would be a great relation to much of the action within the screen, as our main protagonist was obsessed with her friend and continued to take pictures of her. i believed this would tie in with the ending shot. When Leanne turns crazy a starts ripping to shreds the images she had previously taken on Toni.

We began thinking of ways we could incorporate this cleverly, and as we had been using Adobe After Effects quite often we felt the animation process that we had used for the Production logo would be great however we didn't know if it would work very well.

I had found an image that became a great inspiration for us, as it was very clever as well as creepy. we knew we could not create something as creative as it as we did not have the time, nor the expertise. However we begun to work on parts of it just to see how and if we could incorporate even a part of it, or just the idea into our opening sequence.

-The original Image

From this original image we took our images, i had taken and put them into space we thought appropriate. To create a neat edge in our images which i placed into areas, we put a soft edge blur on the edges. however in certain areas you could still see the image underneath, which i knew ,we didn't want at all. I came to the realisation that this would not work as I would have to construct an image from scratch and have the right software to achieve this. All was not lost. when i had shown the image to the group, we gained a lot of inspiration and came up with another effect idea.

- An image which i implemented in the montage.

- The Montage try out.

From creating this montage we collectively thought of how to input a polaroid image cleverly into our title sequence. I then found a blank template and decided the same way in which imported images in before it could be done again. This time it would work effectively as there would be no image behind. Another positive was that our images we had taken would be able to be seen clearly and largely.

- The blank Polaroid frame

- The Final Polaroid Tester.

In completing the tester i knew we had a great effect, my only problem was that what if this effect would overwhelm the screen and take away from the simpleness of our title frames. Another problem would be if it took away from the screen and may of looked very tacky and the audience then wouldn't concentrate on the titles and credits at all. These were constraints of using this particular effect. Once showing it and talking to the groups we decided that we had a lot to already amend and from getting our rough cut feedback we had things to change and input already. Once we had made the amendments of reshooting certain parts and adding in extra shots, we referred back to the credits. Each of us liked this effect and we saw that using the Adobe suite we could adapt it to suit us. So we used the effect, placed various images onto it concerning which frame it was and also used it to introduce the credit titles. Overall it ended up being a great idea

The Programmes We used

Adobe Photoshop: This software was used to produce our production logo as it had tools such as sharpen, the pen tool, colour correction and effects, such as – cartooniszation and Gaussian Blur. These all helped us to help change and adapt the picture to our suiting.

Adobe Premier Pro: This software was used to import our entire film with the soundtrack and our title sequence. It contained various effects which we used for our transitions between each frames. It allowed us to cut and repeat shots easily and fade them into each other and allowed us to edit when needed.

Adobe Aftereffects: This software was used to create the animation for our text sequence and our animated logo. We found the effects needed to create the atmosphere we needed ‘evaporate’, ‘word flash’ rotation etc.

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Facebook: This popular communication site, was used very frequently when we weren’t together at school we communicated.

Google: We did our research, which allowed me personally to find and anylyse music that helped us with our soundtrack and also gave us information on films of our genre.

Itunes: This programe was used to import and export music when it came to our soundtrack. I also used iTunes once I had converted and music files and mad them smaller , so they could be accessed on my blog.

Blogger: This webpage was used to import all our coursework on to, and import images and links etc.

mediaconverter - is the website I used to convert and import music into and also films, to a format that Blogger could recognise and support.

The Final Cherry on the cake - The voice over

The final scene in our film had to be perfect. For this scene we wanted to incorporate a voice over, simply to end the film with the main characters voice our audiences heads. We had no dialogue in our film at all just sound so this had to be good.

At first we used a digital recorder, we found this very difficult as had had no training on this piece of equipment. As wasn’t as easy as we had hoped we decided to just use a video recorder, as we were familiar with it. I had told Anisha and Riham the One line that we should use, as I thought it was very captivating and simple. Each of us attempted to get the right voice and in to character to perform the dialogue, and in the end after many tried we decided to use Anisha’s voice. It didn’t really matter who’s voice we used as there was no dialogue anyway.

‘I never thought I could love, but I can’t help it anymore.’

The voice over was to be placed at the climax of the film a crucial moment, which we hoped would stay in our viewers minds. The sudden outbreak of Leanne in the Red filtered bathroom, soon after she ripped of all the images of her beloved from the lipstick tainted mirror. At this moment she stares at her reflection, and then the voice over takes over.

We believed this would be a cliffhanger and just grab our audience, but also leave them with the feeling of anxiety to what happens next. This voice over was important, for us to reveal our characters state of mind to the audience, so they ultimately would feel apart of the film and sympathy towards her.

It was a taxing process trying to import and link the voice over to the film, but in the end we found a way.

For the voiceover to be the only audio in our film, we had to unlink all the frames and then delete only the audio from all our filming. Reason for unlinkin the frames and deleting the audio was for the soundtrack to then replace the audio, so that it could play in it’s entirety, without being interrupted by left sound.

For the voiceover, as we recorded it on a video recorded we had to unlink the files and delete the filming as we only wanted the audio, we did all this on Adobe Premier Pro.

Font Experimentation .

When we had finally came up with a name for our film, we needed to find appropriate font/typography for the titles. Individually we went out and researched into typography already used in films. I found it was used very effectively in in music videos’ which was interesting. I decided to use the popular site http://www.cooltext.com/, which our teacher had referred us, but found the texts were very over the top. I tested different styles and colours and effects, but nothing really stood out to me. I wanted to incorporate the ‘Red’ theme we had slightly going on into our text so the best fonts I used I decided to incorporate that as the colour. A few of them were effective but none really appealed to me and I didn’t feel they represented our film well.

- The Best of the Tests i did.

-The Video's I came across.

When we came together as a group we shared what we had researched and decided we really didn’t need to use any of these font’s. Thankfully we found great font’s on Adobe After Effects, and later found the font we liked. It was simple but effective and importantly did not overwhelm the screen. We again incorporated the ‘Red’ Theme as we felt it was a great representation of our key themes, Love and Danger. We changed the font size and imported it into our Title shots.

After playing with the effects on the Adobe software, we looked at how font appeared in other films and started thinking about how our typography would appear. This was important as this would be a direct indication of our film genre, as we had seen on other films. We searched through all the effects on the programme, and finally found two effects we though worked best called, ‘evaporate’ and ‘word flash’. We included them both and merged them into becoming one effect. This was a great effect, that established our genre really well, we thought. It created just the right creepy, mysterious atmosphere we needed.

- Meeting 9&10

Meeting 9 -

We decided on a name for our film finally. " A Twisted Obsession". We came to this conclusion whilst brainstorming names between each other by doing research and finally just considering the key themes and aspects of our film. We though this title was great as it clearly describes our film simply! As we had done research on production logo's already and scouted for name that hadn't been used , we finally came up with 'RAGE Ent' - which is our production name. it is a collaboration of each of our initials , we found that it wasn't being already used surprisingly and though it was great.

Meeting 10 -

As we were pressing for time, we decided that we didn't have the time to produce our own soundtrack, plus learning how to use the specific software would have taken ages. Anisha had found a website that had free copyrighted soundtracks, so we could use one. We each had been looking at different soundtracks that may fit our film, and i had done some research into existing Thriller soundtracks so i had an idea what we should use and how it should feel. Anisha came across a brilliant one that complimented our film, the content and the genre.

We also though it would be brilliant if we used a voiceover at the end, just to enhance the overall effect, and so begun recording one.