Film Opening - Final Product

Our final film opening with the final changes to contrast and brightness.

Evaluation - Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I was going to do this one as a video, when I say 'Wearing this shirt actually.' I showed the shirt but as sound clip that's pretty pointless

My voice sounds weird

Evaluation - Question 2

Answer to Evaluation:Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation - Question 3

Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 5

Evaluation - Question 6

Evaluation - Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back at our preliminary task piece I now realize how stupidly simple it was, we used very, very simple editing techniques that I took care of at home on Sony Vegas Pro 11, techniques limited to literally cutting down clips and adding in music. I also looped the noise of a cricket for too long and held still frames. for our preliminary task we used side angle shots, we had a big close up on a door handle, wide angle shots and and incredibly shaky panning shot done by putting a camera on my skateboard.

We thought a lot about how to present each of characters through mise en scene and lighting especially but also through the use of editing and sound in our film opening. However during the making of our preliminary task piece we didn't really think about any of that, instead we just focused on the representations of costume, whereas use of lighting was very important for use especially during the villain scenes which needed to be dark with one small, low key, white light source. I feel that body language and facial expression were presented quite well in our film opening as we had to concentrate on making our hero and villain completely opposite in every way. However in our preliminary task body language was not important as all there was, was a small amount of dialogue in which and a small amount of pacing, this was fairly easy to create.

The editing I did for the Preliminary was very basic and i feel I have really stepped up my game when it came to editing the film opening. I feel I've learnt a lot from editing the Film opening because if you compare the editing techniques use from that with the techniques used in the Preliminary task you can see I have matured greatly from that. Previously I used Sony Vegas Pro and edited it all together in a mere hour and a half whereas the editing for the Film opening took weeks to complete. For the Preliminary task all I did was trim shots and put them together. I managed to hold still frames and add in cheesy sound affects both downloaded from youtube. However for the Film opening I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and learnt loads of different techniques.

We relied solely on dialogue to get our plot across to the viewer in our Preliminary piece as there was little other sound and there wasn't much important mise en scene, sound or camera techniques to focus on except for the fact that it is obvious that our main character is a young girl in a classroom and the fact that she is on her own, this is also emphasized by the used of the cricket chirping sound effect as it dramatizes the fact that the plush toy not responding as it is not alive.

I think we have come a long way and have learned a lot and gained a lot of skills from creating our Film opening by using with more advanced editing software and using more editing, mise en scene, sound and camera techniques. 

Editing - Contrast and Brightness Levels

 

 Here you can see how I made changes to the contrast and brightness levels for the seperate clips. All I did was select the clips individually and change the contrast and brightness levels manually with the sliders in effect controls


Film Opening - Pre-Contrast/Brightness Changes

Our final film opening without the final changes to contrast and brightness made as I  decided after this was uploaded that I needed to make final changes to contrast and brightness levels to brighten up some of the more boring scenes.

Editing - Shots

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Planning - Shot Timings

• Opening shot of Matt putting costume away - 4 sec
• Wide angle shot of Matt, action match from previous - 4 sec
• Close up of clock - 10 sec
• Villain with pocket watch - 5 sec
• First shot of Matt with breakfast - 4 sec
• Peter looking at news clippings - 10 sec
• Over the shoulder shot - 8 sec
• Back to Matt eating - 3 sec
• Girlfriend enters - 4 sec
• Matt gets up and goes after her - 3 sec
• Conversation, shot revers shot - 25 sec
• Girlfriend walks out the door - 4 sec
• Matt walks out of the shot - 4 sec

We have had to allow some time remaining as between the shots of the different personalities we intend to add in a edited effect, these will vary in time from 2 - 5 seconds.

Film Opening - Character Names

Ma'at is the Egyptian Goddess of justice and order, so we thought Matt would be suitable for the hero's (secret identity) name as he brings justice and order to the people of his city.

The Egyptian God of chaos and war was a bit more difficult to interpret into an English name. His name is

Apophis, also known as  Apep. After some thought we decided that Peter would be the closest.

The Girlfriend of Matt's name  was never really finalized however it sort of has to be Ashleigh as it is written on the back of the door in the first scene because we used my sister(Ashleigh)'s room for this scene as I don't have a wardrobe, just drawers.

Film Opening - Script

We decided the only Matt and his girlfriend would be speaking our opening. This would emphasize how socially withdrawn Peter is in comparison and make him much less likable. The Dialogue is a simple every day conversation to connote that Matt has no idea of anything being wrong.

               (Girlfriend appears in doorway)

Girlfriend - I'm going now, I'll see you later.

               (Matt gets up to see her off)

Matt - Ooh, wait!

               (Conversation in hall)

Matt - We got plans tonight?

Girlfriend - Yeah we're going to that meal tonight with my parents remember?

Matt - Oh right, yeah, have a nice day.

Girlfriend - Alright, I'll see you later.

Planning - Mind Over Matter

The development of the title began by taking a comment from the facebook comment in which someone suggested Day and Night. Although we liked this title we as a group didn't think it linked in enough with the concept of the film because the idea that he is the villain at night and hero in the day didn't exactly make sense. We quite liked the idea of having the title use two specific words which convey both the personalities. 

One idea we had was Black and White. This to connote the good and the evil in one body, however Imogen thought it linked two closely with the Three Faces of Eve.

An idea Imogen had was Mind and Matter connoting how the two minds are within one physical being. I suggested this to the group who really liked it, then I came up with the idea of Mind Over Matter which  works better as it suggests the abnormality and the bazaar concept of having two people within one. 

Editing - Titles

We decided on production company names simply by looking round the media classroom and picking words from the wall displays. We decided to used a plain background and bold writing as this is commonly done in action films. to make the writing easy to read i made it white on a black background, this was also done because the white represents purity and cleanliness like the hero character whereas the black connotes a darker, meaner side to him; the villain personality.

I found out how to add titles, it's simple, you go in the source window on adobe premiere pro then at the bottom click new item and select title. For the 'LexisFilms Presents' title i made the writing black and gave it a white highlight around the edges. I then had the idea to make the text change colour to being white with white highlights, making the writing appear fully white, I layered one of these titles over the other in the sequence and made the top one; with the black writing, slowly fade out showing the fully white one making it look as though the writing simply changes colour. This worked as the titles were placed in the exact same place on the screen. To fade from one to the other i had to add key frame tabs on to the timeline and drag one down so that it made a diagonal line with the opacity of one of the titles which makes it fade out

The title for Expectation productions was done in the same way, however instead of making the title change colour, it simply faded in from black then  stayed in ad the first scene faded in. It then faded out leaving just the scenes with no titles.

For the other titles in the opening I had to pay attention to the background colour so that all the writing was readable, I did this by using dark titles over the light scenes and vise versa. To show off a little bit I made one of the titles bridge from a dark scene to a light scene and in the same way as the first title made it change colour to adjust to the change in background colour.


I wrote 'Starring Aaron Weir' and 'Imogen Renshaw' but i figured films usually have more than 2 famous actors/actresses in them so we decided i should put in some random names so I decided to add in random names, I added 'Rodney Mullen' and he is my favourite skateboarder as he invented almost every trick skateboarders know today I also add 'Rob Dyrdek' as he too is a very inspirational person for me as he is a pro skater and entrepreneur, he was on my mind as I was watching a programme with him in before school that day.

For the final title, the film title 'Mind Over Matter' I simply made it fade in then fade back out however I took particular care when doing this so that it didn't stay up for too long, just long enough for everyone to read it. It had to fade in and out gradually to make it appear as a passing thought which is funny as we almost forgot to put the film title in, we had a long time where it was just black and you could hear the ticking noise and this was pretty effective but Miss Jarman pointed out it might be an idea to put the title of the film in there.

Film Opening - Music

Kirby and Imogen  searched free music sites for appropriate music to use for both the villian scenes and the hero scenes

They used a website called Jamendo to download both the score for the Hero and the Villain. The Hero's sounds really care free and upbeat, connoting that he assumes nothing is wrong. The song is by someone called Brad Sucks and the song is called "Fixing My Brain", ironic considering the plot of our film.

The score of the villian is very contrasting to this. It is a very ominous and foreboding sound. It makes you feel tense with threatening expectations. Kirby and Imogen also found this on Jamendo. The actual song "Mother Fonker" by Ogg Vorbis. After the first 15 seconds the song becomes more upbeat and the tone changes to being more relaxed. These first few seconds however are perfect for setting the mood of the scenes including the villain personality. 

Whilst editing i decided to find a static sound for the moments of static  in the film opening, for this i simply Googled 'Tv Static noise' and found a site called Soundjay where you can freely download the static noise in different lengths, i used the 5 second static noise for most occasions that the static is used, however there's a time where the static lasts over 5 seconds and looping it made the sound stop and start so for this I downloaded the 20 Second version.