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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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.  

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).

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.

Presentation

Film Opening on Prezi