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
Thursday, 16 February 2012
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.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Monday, 5 December 2011
Film Opening - First Draft
This is the first edit of our film opening. We have edited what we filmed and added sound effects, music and a title card to the original footage. Once we have audience feedback we'll add more to it and make suggested changes to improve it.
We still need to add several more sound effects, to build the tension before the Little Guy runs into the pole. We'll add breathing and heart beat sound effects that we either download from the internet or create ourselves, as we did with the noise as she hit the pole, as a suitable one wasn't available online - most were too over the top comedic. We also have to add opening credits over the film, which we couldn't do on the program that we used to edit - the words weren't clear enough to read. There is also an issue when the split screen appears, so we'll try to fix that when we re-edit the footage.
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