Monday, 29 April 2013

Social Media Feedback




I have used other social media websites to receive more feedback from a wider audience. I used Twitter and  to share my video with my followers and see what they had to say. Here are some screen grabs from twitter. I opened this to my 145 followers around half an hour ago. I have got two responses at the moment. 

This is what I tweeted:
 Here are some feedback from TWITTER AND FACEBOOK



























I found social networking an excellent way of targeting an audience to display feedback. It is much easier than word of mouth where one can only target one person. On social media sites, you can target a large audience and is also easy to record comments in an organised and controlled fashion. Twitter is also public to the world so anyone can see it. Facebook has over 1 Billion users and counting. The new "shared" icon on facebook has compromised with twitter's "retweeting" and now videos can be seen more easily. Alas, I only got one share but it is a great way to get feedback no matter what time it is.





Saturday, 27 April 2013

Editing Report


EDITING REPORT

Once filming was complete, it was time for editing. I imported the footage from my micro sd HD card and this went directly in to Adobe Premiere to edit. I learnt from my teacher the importance of rendering footage. We then saved the footage on an external hardrive and labeled it so we knew which was which. Initially, I didn’t  “Render” but my teacher told me the importance of rendering. Rendering helped us make all the layers of footage into one layer (called a Frame) and make those flash one after the other. Streaming in HD, which I was doing for my opening two minutes, needed more time for rendering.

Once the footage was uploaded, I started to label my clips and add them to the “timeline” before we started my rough edit. A rough edit is all the shots put together witout any music or any sound effects or titles. This gave me a rough building block of what I had to do and I advanced from there. It also gave me time to watch each clip and evaluate which was the best.

After our rough edit was complete I started to add titles. As it was only Angus and I who contributed to the creation of the film, I had to make up fake names just so it would be conventional of an opening two minutes. After the titles were made and the font chosen, we made the fine edit. The fine edit pays greater attention to the film, and cuts are made cleaner and invisible editing is more advanced. Next was the sound edit, this was when I chose the music from a website called the FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE. I also chose Foley effects from freesound.org and then uploaded it to YouTube.

My problems I had with editing was dealing with a shaky cam. Luckily I came across this effect called Warp Stabilizer, which transformed this problem. It worked a treat in keeping the shots less shaky. I found this problem to take greater effect when I am filming Angus walking while I am walking backwards. The shot looks more like a tracking shot. Here is where you can find warp stabilizer in Adobe Premiere:


















Here is a screen shot of my editing suite in Adobe Premiere. In this shot, I am working on the dialogue and the cut where I switch angels in the same room to make this shot more 
interesting. 



FONTS

-The choosing of the fonts was a fairly lengthy part of the process. Fonts are a vital part of an opening as they tell the viewer what type of films they are watching. We got introduced to various websites including





















Despite spending many hours looking through these fonts, I still could not find a font conventional of my art house fantasy film. I did however come across some fonts in the editing software I was using. As art is a major motif in my film, I wanted a fairly creative looking font. I came across a font called NANUM BRUSHSTROKE. This I believe fitted my film perfectly. It is fairly unique as well so it is more enticing for the viewer. Here is a screen shot of the font. 


 As you can see, it is quite playful and it looks like someone has done the font by using a paint brush.  I came across this font in the DEFAULT fonts in Adobe Premiere, the editing software I am using. 

Freesound.org

In danger of my film looking like a montage, I decided to put in some foley effects at the last moment. This enhances the film and makes it more naturalistic. It can also be controlled in Adobe after effects so the voice over can be heard and it doesn't go over the music. I used the website FREESOUND.ORG 
Here is a screen shot from the website.


















My main reason for foley effects was to get the hustle and bustle of London. I managed to achieve this by simply typing in :Traffic Jam:. About twenty different recorded traffic jams came up. I also want to give the effect of going into a busy space indoors.(in my case a gallery) In doing this in the end, even though it cuts to black, it still gives the illusion of my character walking in to the National Gallery. I also used footsteps. This again makes my opening two minutes more believable and help achieve continuity. 
I am currently at the Voice Over stage. I have found the quality of sound with the inbuilt microphone in my macbook pro not to be so good. The memo application my iPhone however  records outstanding quality. Voice over is vital for my film as it needs to have some sort of narrative otherwise my opening two minutes is in danger of looking like a montage. I have transfered the voice memos to my laptop and I will transfer them to adobe premiere for editing.


The good thing about this preloaded application is that it tells you if I am speaking too loudly. This will stop the quality from sounding too muffled.
I am in the EDITING stage at the moment. I am having trouble moving the titles in a certain position. In an ideal world, I would like them to be at the top right, so it does not cover the face. I am limited in the software i am using which is iMovie 12.

At the moment, I am using COREBEL which is conventional of an ART HOUSE film.

This is a screen shot of the editing suite with the corbel font featured.












As I am at very early stages of the process, iMovie will not be the software I will be using. I am still getting to grips with a new software called Adobe Premiere. With this, I will have more freedom with the editing of the sound and better looking titles

Friday, 26 April 2013

Filming Report

Filming Report



Over all, I filmed over two days. The first on the 1st of December, the second on the 4th of January. I found my greatest struggle was dealing with the winter light. We started filming at 11 oclock in a West-End gallery and by 1 o'clock, it started getting dark. We found that we had to rush filming just to deal with light. This meant that we had to rush the exterior shots. Our exterior shots were the easiest however when we were filming the bench with Churchill on it, the greatest struggle we had was dealing with the mass of people. On average, we only had about five seconds to do a clean shot. If we went over, tourists would get in the way or sit on the bench. It would be impolite to get them to move! Here is a screen shot of the shot I am talking about: - We only managed to get a clean shot of about five seconds before tourists got in the way-




 On our second day of filming, we hoped to film in the national gallery. Sadly the National Gallery managers rejected our  demand to film within the gallery. We did however manage to get the entrance in to the National Gallery up the three flights of steps, even though we had to negotiate with gallery managers. Our hardest shot was the 360 pan. I wanted to get a steady cam effect however we did not have the resources. Luckily warp stabiliser on adobe premiere helped us with this effect. Here is a screen shot.

Our major problem we had was camera life. I was filming on a Panasonic Camera TM700. We only had five hours of filming time, and if we stopped and started recording. The battery life would be a lot less then five hours.  This was the camera I was using:

Finally, our last shots were random shots of paintings, we did these hand held with a jolty movement to give the impression that these paintings were animated. I found these shots very effective. I used a west end gallery to do this. This is seen in the beginning of my opening sequence. 


Saturday, 13 April 2013

Mood Board

Mood Board

A mood board is an image that contains lots of different photographs to create a collage effect to make someone visually understand our production aims and the plot. Mood boards are not just used for film. They can be used for food brands, or fashion products. They may include costumes, props, location, or general Mis en scene.

Here is a mood board taken from google images:
















This is a James Bond mood board. It includes all things that one associates with James Bond. These include Gadgets, Cars, Guns etc.

Here is my mood board. Things that feature in my film are art works, frames, and key sites in London e.g Trafalgar Square.