Evaluation Questions!

Evaluation Questions on Prezi

Question 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at my preliminary task I can clearly see how much I have improved, in creativity, filming and editing. During the process from my preliminary task to my finish two minute film opening product I have grown in confidence with experimenting with different angled shots, I've learnt how to angle the camera and work with the camera when I haven't had appropriate equipment, e.g. not having a big enough tripod to get high angle shots I would resolve this by placing the tripod on a highest point possible whether I used books or shelves to balance the camera. I have also grown in confidence with editing, I have learnt a lot about editing and I have become more self sufficient in learning things by myself which is something I wasn't comfortable with doing my preliminary task because I was anxious about ruining the film or doing something wrong but by the process of trail and error I have grown in confidence and understanding about the different technologies that are available to me when editing. 

I have also become more aware of the difficulties you can face when recording, how something you imagine and plan can't always be realistic. I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted in my film but when taking into consideration deadlines, technologies I had at my disposer and equipment some ideas had to scaled down to fit into realistic terms, however I attempted to make my film as creative as possible which is something that wasn't done with my preliminary task as I just stuck to simple shots where as in my film I was more confident and creative. I also learnt more about different technologies, for example, I learnt how the camera we used worked and how different lights and settings can effect the out come of the shot which is something I didn't take into consideration when doing my preliminary task. I also learnt about copyright protection on images and sounds on the internet, and how to spot whether images and sounds had copyright protection on them and whether or not I could use them in my film. In my preliminary task I stuck to the movie maker sounds effects and image effects but as I grew in editing confidence I took to the internet and learnt how to find, download, and convert images and sounds to insert into my movie, along with this I learnt how to duck sound on clips, editing lighting and colour, split clips and trim clips. 

Two Minute Film Opening - Obscure

Editing day four. 22/3/2012.

Today we added subtitles, production company names and horror themed background music to our film opening. 


Splitting clips
Split clip- Highlight clip press E which will send the clip to the project, run cursor over where you would like to split the clip and the press Shift-Apple-S all at the same time. Our now split clip has been flipped around as it gives the character a weird distorted look, her limbs also look out of proportion. Replaying our edited clip always gives us new things to change, such as the hospital scene with my character when we played the scene with the volume we noticed some background noise that need to be taken out. To do this we simply just dub the sound( Mute the clip).


Production companies
Unfortunately we could not use the titles we had previously designed for our production companies as they were taken from dafont.com, it wasn't achievable to edit the titles fully in fireworks to be able to put the titles onto the scenes we wished them too this was because when we imported them onto fireworks there was a lot of white background and we could not change the title enough so it would fit clearly onto our scenes. So, because of the trouble we had with the design of our production company titles we used the fonts that were on movie maker, we opened the clip we wanted the productions companies to be on and picked the colour red for our font as red has connotations of blood, gore, and it is an original horror colour, we also chose the font signpainter-house script, we chose this font because it was the closest font that we could find that had a creepy effect to it. 

Subtitles
When our film opening began there was sound trouble and this made it difficult to hear the characters dialogue so to solve this problem we added subtitles to the scenes where hearing the dialogue was difficult, this also helped reinforce our home video theme because in the paranormal activity trilogy they also used subtitles for scenes where the dialogue was impaired, this is because in a realist terms if our film was real and it was being played back to an audience you would not be able to get the murderers/victims in the film to re-record their voices to make it clear. 

In Sarah's hospital scene where she is being watched through a security camera we wanted to give the effect that what was happening in the scene and what she was doing in the scene was over a long period of time, that it was just sped up in production (also mimicking famous physiological horrors such as The Ring and My Switchblade Romance). We achieved this by adding titles to the scenes, making the font small '1', we made the font American Typewriter because this was the closet font we could find that was neutral and readable just like a security camera timer would be. I added different times to each scenes, spread them out, and sped up the time each time clip was on during that scene, this created the effect that time was passing very quickly and the character Sarah was staring at the security camera for many hours, this added a creepy vibe to this scene reinforcing our horror genre. 

Sound effects

At the end of the victims torture scene the camera cuts dead, we later thought about adding a scream to leave the scene at a cliffhanger, as we could not get our male victim to come in and record a scream to add into the end of the scene we googled male scream effects and found a free download site called soundfxnow, unfortunately we could not find an appropriate scream for our scene so I went onto youtube and searched 'male horror screams' and found a youtube link that was had group of screams, there was a good array of screams so I went online and founded a youtube to mp3 converter and downloaded the sound effects. I added the screams to the desired clip and trimmed the clip down by clicking the clip trimming and finding/clipping the best scream we could find for our scene, the scream was then place exactly where it was desired just before and during a fade to black effect and then static was ended at the end of the scene along with a static sound effect.

Music

To further reinforce our horror genre we added horror themed music to the first scenes of our film up until the film title, we did this because it added a creepy effect and gave more of an edge especially as the first scenes highlight mental illness. We attempted to create music on garage band but we could not find suitable instruments and effects to use so we went onto youtube and found free music converted it and imported it into our scenes. Unfortunately the music clip would not shorten manually and it would not trim which created the problem of the music running onto scenes that it shouldn't so to solve this I went onto the clips the music shouldn't be on and ducked the background sound which was the music. 

Editing day three. 19/3/2012.

Today we began editing the footage we recorded on recording day two. This was the scene that was shot at my home. After the title 'obscure' we added a fade to black effect so it would fade into the film. As we had recorded long clips of footage in different rooms in the house we wanted to split the clips into smaller sections so we could use the clips sparingly and quickly. As we didn't know how to split clips we experimented and discovered how, to split clips you highlight the whole line footage and press E to send the footage to the editing section of imovie, once there you run your mouse along the clip up until the part of the footage you want to split then press shift, apple, S, and the clip will split.


While watching our footage we realised that some shots were too long was we converted the whole video and then sped the clips up, we did this instead of cutting them down because we liked the clips as a whole we just wanted them to run quicker and smoother.
After we edited all our footage and put it together we realised there was a shot between Natalie as Sarah hitting our victim over the head were it jumped this was because while recording we could not run the whole scene on one continually shot because it was to long and mistakes kept happening so we cut the scene into two parts and this lead to the footage jumping in editing. As there was nothing we could do about the jump to smooth it out we added static inbetween the two shots to give the effect that the camera malfunctioned for a moment and then carried on recording, this not only resolved our footage problem but also gave a realistic effect to our footage as this is highly likely to happen when amateur recording. 


Other than speeding up our clips we did not over edit our footage like we did with the hospital scenes where we changed the lighting, colour, and added a rasta  effect to the shots. However there was one clip we flipped which was Jodie's scene on the stairs where she was dead body, we flipped the shot because this made her arms look more distorted and broken. 

Recording day two 17/3/2012

Today we began recording the opening scene of the film at my house. Before we began filming we made the props and decorated my house, we recorded a video of me and Natalie making the fake blood we also took photo's of our end product. We gathered our weapons which were knives and saws and then covered them in the fake blood, we also covered my doorways in plastic by taping them up with blue industrial tape, we then cut slits in the plastic and took photo's of them, we also dipped our hands in blood and made hand prints on the plastic and splattered blood. 

Tapping the plastic sheets to the door ways and on the cieling of the stairs. 

This is the end product of what our doorways looked like when they had the bloody hand prints and the slits in them. Although you can see the blue tape here in the shots we did not use the camera high enough so these tapes could be seen. 


While prepping for shooting we had some inspiration about some shots we could incorporate into our film opening, so before we began filming we discussed and planned these new ideas. Taking from the paranormal activity film concept we decided we would shoot separate scenes around the house as if the characters Kate and Sarah had hid camera's around their home, these scenes will then be placed in and out of our planned opening scene to show different aspects of what's going on in our 'horror home' this would also reinforce our 'through the eyes of the killer theme'. 


After we had re-planned and organised shots we began shooting the previous scripted opening, we had trouble shooting this scene as we began filming in the day and while we got perfect lighting inside the house opening the front door and allowing natural light into the scene it create automatic exposure, we would try to fix this during editing. 
As we wanted this 'hidden camera' affect running throughout our film we had to stand up on high surfaces with the camera on the tripod holding the tripod up in the air to give the impression the camera's were hidden around the house, however we struggled to do these shots as shaking accured and we had to re-take the shots until the shaking was minimised and we got the best possible shots we could. 

Problems while recording

While recording we realised that there was an automatic stabilisation setting on our camera which we did not know how to resolve so unfortunately the camera looks as if it is shaking/moving around when it is on a tripod or another flat service.