Thursday, 19 April 2012
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Monday, 12 March 2012
Evaluation plans
For our evaluation, we are going to do all the questions as a team as there are only two of us, meaning there is little point dividing up the questions.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
To answer this question, we are planning to take screen shots of a conversation on Facebook about the representation of groups in our film. This relates directly to the question as it is a social networking site and form of social media, while it also reflects the main group that was represented in our film – young people, who are also the demographic due to the genre of horror, Western and comedy combined.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We will film ourselves writing the answer on various pieces of paper and then speed the video up. We can also draw pictures to make the answers we give more visual and engaging, which will help us to get across our answers.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
For this question we will film ourselves presenting our answer (maybe a fake audience using sound effects to relate to the question). This will allows us to clearly give our answer and explanation using the planning stages of our project and who it was originally intended for.
How did you attract / address your audience?
We will create posters with an explanation of methods used in the making of our film opening to attract the attention of a teenage audience, especially in relation to the genres we chose to work with. We will then film ourselves stapling the posters to walls in various places, to reflect the engagement of the audience in the question.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We will make a Prezi presentation online explaining our answer. Prezi is an example of one of the kinds of social media that we used in making and developing our film opening, making this answer like some sort of Prezi based Inception. Prezinception, if you will. I won’t.
Looking back at your Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
To answer this question, we are planning to take screen shots of a conversation on Facebook about the representation of groups in our film. This relates directly to the question as it is a social networking site and form of social media, while it also reflects the main group that was represented in our film – young people, who are also the demographic due to the genre of horror, Western and comedy combined.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We will film ourselves writing the answer on various pieces of paper and then speed the video up. We can also draw pictures to make the answers we give more visual and engaging, which will help us to get across our answers.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
For this question we will film ourselves presenting our answer (maybe a fake audience using sound effects to relate to the question). This will allows us to clearly give our answer and explanation using the planning stages of our project and who it was originally intended for.
How did you attract / address your audience?
We will create posters with an explanation of methods used in the making of our film opening to attract the attention of a teenage audience, especially in relation to the genres we chose to work with. We will then film ourselves stapling the posters to walls in various places, to reflect the engagement of the audience in the question.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We will make a Prezi presentation online explaining our answer. Prezi is an example of one of the kinds of social media that we used in making and developing our film opening, making this answer like some sort of Prezi based Inception. Prezinception, if you will. I won’t.
Looking back at your Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Similarly to the genre convention question, we explain our answer in a voice over of a video. However, instead of film clips we will edit together clips of our preliminary task and our actual film opening so we can clearly display which areas we improved on and how the preliminary task helped us to develop our skills and ideas.
Sunday, 11 March 2012
New draft of film opening
This is the new draft of our film opening, combining old footage and new footage as influenced by our stop motion practice.
More filming and editing
Though it was not ideal filming and editing so close to the deadline, on Friday 2nd March we gathered at the house of one of our new actors to film the new half of our storyline that we planned to incorporate into the old footage saved from Youtube, as her younger brother had agreed to be a part in the film.
After setting up the Lego, including a small house and the tiny posters we had made for the previous stop motion experiments to enhance the mise-en-scene, we finished filming successfully.
On Sunday 4th March we edited the footage. This was difficult to do, as we had to download the first draft from Youtube and integrate it with the new footage, meaning we had to mute the original audio track as it was split up to fit in new footage and audio. This involved recreating the soundtrack we had made out of a mixture of music from scores of other films, dialogue from our film opening and sound effects (both downloaded from the internet and created by us).
The stop motion experimentation had definitely been useful in helping us to film the Lego Bro plays with in an interesting way. We tried to film the stop motion material in a similar way to how we would film the same events in live action, in a cinematic manner, a method which we transferred to the new filming. The Lego mise-en-scene we previously created for the stop motion was also useful, especially due to the limited time we were working with.
After setting up the Lego, including a small house and the tiny posters we had made for the previous stop motion experiments to enhance the mise-en-scene, we finished filming successfully.
On Sunday 4th March we edited the footage. This was difficult to do, as we had to download the first draft from Youtube and integrate it with the new footage, meaning we had to mute the original audio track as it was split up to fit in new footage and audio. This involved recreating the soundtrack we had made out of a mixture of music from scores of other films, dialogue from our film opening and sound effects (both downloaded from the internet and created by us).
The stop motion experimentation had definitely been useful in helping us to film the Lego Bro plays with in an interesting way. We tried to film the stop motion material in a similar way to how we would film the same events in live action, in a cinematic manner, a method which we transferred to the new filming. The Lego mise-en-scene we previously created for the stop motion was also useful, especially due to the limited time we were working with.
New storyboard
For the new version of our film opening, we created a new storyboard. We developed it from the storyboard used for our first opening but also incorporated the new aspects of the story (the boy's game of Lego reflecting the original story).
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Another update
We have decided not to continue with the Lego stop motion idea. Instead, we will return to live action filming but incorporate a child playing with Lego to foreshadow the films eventual outcome. We chose to abandon the stopmotion technique because the result was not of the quality we had hoped for and it was taking a long time to complete.
However, we liked the idea of incorporating an aspect of childlike media into our film opening as it can be juxtaposed greatly with the horror and zombie theme. From this we developed our idea of playing out the original story with Lego, to a child's game of Lego reflecting the 'reality' of the live action elements of our first draft.
We are trying to find a child to play the part, and we plan to film on Friday 2nd and edit on Sunday 4th.
However, we liked the idea of incorporating an aspect of childlike media into our film opening as it can be juxtaposed greatly with the horror and zombie theme. From this we developed our idea of playing out the original story with Lego, to a child's game of Lego reflecting the 'reality' of the live action elements of our first draft.
We are trying to find a child to play the part, and we plan to film on Friday 2nd and edit on Sunday 4th.
Update on filming stop motion
On Thursday 23rd February we began filming our stop motion opening using Lego. We filmed for around 3 hours after constructing a set out of Lego, which included building a Lego house to replace the pole in the original film and making zombie warning posters on the computer to add to the mise-en-scene (approximately 11mm by 8 mm). We also set up professional lighting softboxes and a green screen behind the set so we could include more mise-en-scene, relating to Western films.
After choosing the best Lego figures available of zombies and cowboys, we began to film using the original storyboard and taking around 600 frames in total for the session. We used a variety of shot angles and camera movement in combination with the stop motion technique, as we had done in our live action first draft.
This technique is not ideal, as it is very time consuming and we may not finish it by the deadline.
After choosing the best Lego figures available of zombies and cowboys, we began to film using the original storyboard and taking around 600 frames in total for the session. We used a variety of shot angles and camera movement in combination with the stop motion technique, as we had done in our live action first draft.
This technique is not ideal, as it is very time consuming and we may not finish it by the deadline.
Thursday, 23 February 2012
Looking for Lego
After researching Lego we decided to try to find some suitable lego figures to use. We looked in Boswells as it has a nice lego department, but there was only starwars and other models that weren't helpful for our project.
We have decided to ask Rosie's sister (who lives within walking distance of an official lego shop) to look for some cowboy and/or zombie lego. If she can't find any for us we will construct our own using our own lego collections.
We have decided to ask Rosie's sister (who lives within walking distance of an official lego shop) to look for some cowboy and/or zombie lego. If she can't find any for us we will construct our own using our own lego collections.
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Lego research
We need to use our research on the genres of horror and Westerns and the planning for our original film opening and apply it to our animation. Our original research relates to the mise-en-scene of our new project:
There are Lego settings of deserts which would be appropriate for our film opening. However, we will probably use a green screen to make the mise-en-scene more impacting and realistic.
There are a variety of Lego figures that are available, including zombie and cowboy versions which are appropriate for the characters from our original film opening. The different features of the figures will allow us to distinctly display each character e.g. the difference between the Little Guy and the Hero.
Animation research
Before starting the new film opening, we researched into the most effective methods of animating. We chose to use Lego as it is the simplest way to animate, rather than making our own models.
There are many tutorials on Lego animation online:
There are many tutorials on Lego animation online:
There are also internet guides from Wikihow on stop motion:
Get objects and figures to use in your movie. Some good choices include clay, wire, Legos or similar building block figures. Be imaginative in the types of objects and figures that might work for your movie. For amateurs, it's best to use a toy rather than making a figure, as it is easier to animate.
Set up the figures (characters) in a particular position and within the "set."
Place your camera in front of the "set" that you are going to take photos of. Make sure that it can view the entire frame. It is very important to support the camera or place it so that it is sitting steadily and cannot shake as you take the photos. Otherwise, the end result will appear chaotic and lack continuity.
Set up a good source of lighting. It might be a lamp or a flashlight. If your light is flickering, you need to shut off other sources of light like blinds or curtains.
Take a single photo of the figure in the selected position.
Begin the movement sequence. Move the figure bit by bit, in very small movements each time. It may be the entire body if the figure is walking, or it may just be an arm, head or leg. If you are moving only one body part and you find that the figure is tilting or threatening to fall over, make use of poster tack under the feet or other area touching part of the set.
Repeat the movement sequence until your action step is completed, or your camera's memory is full.
Save the pictures on to your computer in an easy to remember place.
Use your movie-making software as instructed (or see two popular software methods below). There are a few key steps regardless of what movie-making software you use.
Import the pictures into the desired program. Make sure the pictures are at a very small duration so they flow fast. If you are disappointed by the speed at which your program can animate, try exporting the project as a video file (before adding audio), then importing it again and using a speed effect on it such as double speed (these effects only work on video clips).
Then, if the resulting speed is sufficient, you may add your audio. Add titles and credits if you would like. You can also add effects or transitions, if desired. Make sure you like the end result of your stop motion animation. Keep going if you need to complete more actions to create a story.
Save the video. If you plan on having multiple stop motion segments, save each segment as a separate movie. Once the entire group of segments is completed, you can import all the segments into the final movie. This will make it will look much better and it will be easier to finalize.
Correspondence about technical issues & animation
To Mr. Wroe:
Hi,
Because the hard-drive with all of our work on it broke we no longer have our original footage, first or second draft. We did download the 1st draft from Youtube, but it's gonna be really difficult to edit. So we're considering re-making the whole thing. We wondered if it would be ok for us to do it in stop-motion animation instead?
We probably wouldn't have enough time to re-film it in live-action because of mocks and difficulty getting people and what not, so we were thinking it may be alot easier to make a stop-motion using lego men. We have the resources for good mise-en-scene (we can actually use a desert now cause of chroma key and such) and we have good lighting and equipment so it wouldn't look shoddy. It would be much easier to re-make quicker, also we could easily cover all areas in the mark scheme. (Mise-en-scene, angles, shot distances, typography, etc.)
Would it be ok for us to do that instead? Are there any disadvantages?
Thanks
Rosie and Clara
From Mr. Wroe:
Dear Both,
Sorry to hear about the hard drive - blog about it! Copy your messages to the blogs to document what you're doing.
Have you tried a specialist computer place to retrieve the material? Computer Assistance on Oxford Road (very top of Cowley Road) are very good.
As regards the animation, fine in principle. Good that you're paying attention to the Mark Scheme. My advice to you would be to add research into lego animation on to your blogs - best to deal in rushes of 100 or so images at a time for example to avoid computers crashing. Also, I would be inclined to look at some examples from Art of the Title.com - particularly the work of Saul Bass, and pay a lot of attention to the typography and in animating that. Many films don't have actual footage for the titles, they use elaborate typography and transitions and title boards with the music over instead.
Good luck with it all and I hope that you can recover your original material after all.
Mr Wroe
Hi,
Because the hard-drive with all of our work on it broke we no longer have our original footage, first or second draft. We did download the 1st draft from Youtube, but it's gonna be really difficult to edit. So we're considering re-making the whole thing. We wondered if it would be ok for us to do it in stop-motion animation instead?
We probably wouldn't have enough time to re-film it in live-action because of mocks and difficulty getting people and what not, so we were thinking it may be alot easier to make a stop-motion using lego men. We have the resources for good mise-en-scene (we can actually use a desert now cause of chroma key and such) and we have good lighting and equipment so it wouldn't look shoddy. It would be much easier to re-make quicker, also we could easily cover all areas in the mark scheme. (Mise-en-scene, angles, shot distances, typography, etc.)
Would it be ok for us to do that instead? Are there any disadvantages?
Thanks
Rosie and Clara
From Mr. Wroe:
Dear Both,
Sorry to hear about the hard drive - blog about it! Copy your messages to the blogs to document what you're doing.
Have you tried a specialist computer place to retrieve the material? Computer Assistance on Oxford Road (very top of Cowley Road) are very good.
As regards the animation, fine in principle. Good that you're paying attention to the Mark Scheme. My advice to you would be to add research into lego animation on to your blogs - best to deal in rushes of 100 or so images at a time for example to avoid computers crashing. Also, I would be inclined to look at some examples from Art of the Title.com - particularly the work of Saul Bass, and pay a lot of attention to the typography and in animating that. Many films don't have actual footage for the titles, they use elaborate typography and transitions and title boards with the music over instead.
Good luck with it all and I hope that you can recover your original material after all.
Mr Wroe
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Update on our Predicament
As mentioned in the last post we lost everything. (We no longer have original footage, sound, 1st draft, 2nd draft, etc. Literally everything is gone.)
We downloaded the 1st draft from Youtube t try to re-edit that, but it is going to be very difficult given that it is in a non-editable format. (1 block of video rather than comprised of clips and sound files that we can move and change.)
We are considering re-making our opening in animation form. This would be much easier to re-build quickly and it would be easy to include mise-en-scene, camera movements, etc.
It would be very difficult to get our cast together again partly due to exams and partly due to time pressure, we would have to re-shoot our opening very soon, and that wouldn't be practical for most people. With stop-motion animation the lego men will always be available for us.
Anyway, we can apply the storyboard and script work to the new animation opening, so we would only have to re-make the actual piece.
We downloaded the 1st draft from Youtube t try to re-edit that, but it is going to be very difficult given that it is in a non-editable format. (1 block of video rather than comprised of clips and sound files that we can move and change.)
We are considering re-making our opening in animation form. This would be much easier to re-build quickly and it would be easy to include mise-en-scene, camera movements, etc.
It would be very difficult to get our cast together again partly due to exams and partly due to time pressure, we would have to re-shoot our opening very soon, and that wouldn't be practical for most people. With stop-motion animation the lego men will always be available for us.
Anyway, we can apply the storyboard and script work to the new animation opening, so we would only have to re-make the actual piece.
Technical issues!
The hard drive on which our work for this project was saved has broken.
We re-edited our film opening for the second draft and presentation, as described before, however the only way this could be retrievable would be in a format that can't be edited properly as we already saved it as a project on Power Director.
This will mean that we will have lost the progress from the first draft, including the new sound effects, improvement on editing, new typography etc. (if the first draft is recoverable at all).
We re-edited our film opening for the second draft and presentation, as described before, however the only way this could be retrievable would be in a format that can't be edited properly as we already saved it as a project on Power Director.
This will mean that we will have lost the progress from the first draft, including the new sound effects, improvement on editing, new typography etc. (if the first draft is recoverable at all).
Monday, 30 January 2012
Analysis of previous AS Film Opening
To understand how to improve our own film opening we have looked at some previous film openings made by other students. This will help us to see which areas of our film opening have been misses out or could be better.
This film opening is a based around a very different subject to ours, and is in a different style. It covers many characters and a wider time period, introducing the general situation and group dynamic effectively in a fairly short time span. While ours focuses more on the beginning of the overall narrative arc of the film as a whole (which we did plan out before shooting), the technical side of it has helped us to go about improving our own film opening. They use a quick editing style which gives the clip a fast pace, contrasting with the long, wideshot that concludes the opening. This contrast was very effective in making an impact on the viewer, making them want to continue watching, so from this we decided to add a greater variety of shot lengths and camera movement, as most of the shots in our opening are fairly similar.
The mise-en-scene of their film opening was also striking, giving the audience more details of each character and their situations effectively in a subtle manner. The setting of our film opening was our school, which we chose to reflect the trend in zombie movies of being set in familiar places, adding to the fear of something unnatural invading them - something that features a lot in all types of horror movies. While we did attempt to add to the mise-en-scene by adding zombie warning posters that we created, these were not very clear when we edited together our first draft. Watching this film opening made use decide to get better shots of these posters to add to the atmosphere of the film opening, which will also help to build up the tension before the zombies are actually introduced - this build up in tension also adds to the comic effect when the Little Guy is suddenly knocked out.
The music of the completed film opening that we looked at also made us decide to add more sound, to contribute to the build of tension as well. While they had music running throughout, we had already added suitable Western themed music to our film opening. We had also added sound effects, but we decided to add more to increase the effect of the opening, as it had to immediately engage viewers. So we added a heartbeat and breathing sound effect as well as improved sound effects of the zombie being hit, which we created ourselves as none was available for free on the internet.
This film opening is a based around a very different subject to ours, and is in a different style. It covers many characters and a wider time period, introducing the general situation and group dynamic effectively in a fairly short time span. While ours focuses more on the beginning of the overall narrative arc of the film as a whole (which we did plan out before shooting), the technical side of it has helped us to go about improving our own film opening. They use a quick editing style which gives the clip a fast pace, contrasting with the long, wideshot that concludes the opening. This contrast was very effective in making an impact on the viewer, making them want to continue watching, so from this we decided to add a greater variety of shot lengths and camera movement, as most of the shots in our opening are fairly similar.
The mise-en-scene of their film opening was also striking, giving the audience more details of each character and their situations effectively in a subtle manner. The setting of our film opening was our school, which we chose to reflect the trend in zombie movies of being set in familiar places, adding to the fear of something unnatural invading them - something that features a lot in all types of horror movies. While we did attempt to add to the mise-en-scene by adding zombie warning posters that we created, these were not very clear when we edited together our first draft. Watching this film opening made use decide to get better shots of these posters to add to the atmosphere of the film opening, which will also help to build up the tension before the zombies are actually introduced - this build up in tension also adds to the comic effect when the Little Guy is suddenly knocked out.
The music of the completed film opening that we looked at also made us decide to add more sound, to contribute to the build of tension as well. While they had music running throughout, we had already added suitable Western themed music to our film opening. We had also added sound effects, but we decided to add more to increase the effect of the opening, as it had to immediately engage viewers. So we added a heartbeat and breathing sound effect as well as improved sound effects of the zombie being hit, which we created ourselves as none was available for free on the internet.
Feedback and changes to our film opening
After getting feedback on our film opening from the rest of our class, we made some changes to improve it.
No credits other than the main title board – to include credits of the people involved, as are generally found in the opening of films, we layered text over the video in an editing programme. We chose to only include a few names, as credits are clearest over still shots. The majority of our film opening is of a character running, with unstable camera movement to create the effect of her being chased. Our opening shot after the title board is the steadiest so we put the credits over that. We attempted to stay with the theme of the font used in the title, but we weren’t able to because of problems with the editing programme, so we used a clearer font. We used red lettering to keep with the horror atmosphere that our opening begins with.
General editing – there were some problems with the editing of our opening. We managed to fix the glitch that occurred in the split screen showing the two zombies, as well as tightening some of the transitions between shots by removing some unnecessary moments that stopped the pace being so smooth e.g. the removal of a close up of the zombie before she falls to the ground.
Improvement of sound – it was suggested that we could add more sound to build up the tension when the Little Guy is running before he is knocked out. We thought of certain sound effects that would relate well to the setting and situation and added them in. They included heat beat and breathing sounds, to emphasise the character’s fear, and the sound of the zombie getting knocked out at the end to make it clearer to the audience what had happened. We also made the previous sound effects smoother, making them continuous rather than broken by editing them in Audacity.
Shot of Little Guy – after this character is knocked out by running into a lamppost, there is a shot of her from above panning upwards to display what has happened to her. Though we wanted this shot to be fairly unsteady rather than smooth, to convey confusion and the danger she is in from the zombies, we realised this didn’t translate well. To make this clearer, we used an effect on the editing programme to distort and blur the shot, which more clearly connotes her unconsciousness in a more interesting way than just showing her passed out.
No credits other than the main title board – to include credits of the people involved, as are generally found in the opening of films, we layered text over the video in an editing programme. We chose to only include a few names, as credits are clearest over still shots. The majority of our film opening is of a character running, with unstable camera movement to create the effect of her being chased. Our opening shot after the title board is the steadiest so we put the credits over that. We attempted to stay with the theme of the font used in the title, but we weren’t able to because of problems with the editing programme, so we used a clearer font. We used red lettering to keep with the horror atmosphere that our opening begins with.
General editing – there were some problems with the editing of our opening. We managed to fix the glitch that occurred in the split screen showing the two zombies, as well as tightening some of the transitions between shots by removing some unnecessary moments that stopped the pace being so smooth e.g. the removal of a close up of the zombie before she falls to the ground.
Improvement of sound – it was suggested that we could add more sound to build up the tension when the Little Guy is running before he is knocked out. We thought of certain sound effects that would relate well to the setting and situation and added them in. They included heat beat and breathing sounds, to emphasise the character’s fear, and the sound of the zombie getting knocked out at the end to make it clearer to the audience what had happened. We also made the previous sound effects smoother, making them continuous rather than broken by editing them in Audacity.
Shot of Little Guy – after this character is knocked out by running into a lamppost, there is a shot of her from above panning upwards to display what has happened to her. Though we wanted this shot to be fairly unsteady rather than smooth, to convey confusion and the danger she is in from the zombies, we realised this didn’t translate well. To make this clearer, we used an effect on the editing programme to distort and blur the shot, which more clearly connotes her unconsciousness in a more interesting way than just showing her passed out.
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