Final post

So after 8 months of documenting my journey of constructing my final piece of coursework the end is here!

This blog is now closed. 

Evaluation - question seven!

So this is my last evaluation post and it is my response to question 7.

Evaluation - question six!

This is my response to evaluation question 6.

Evaluation - question five!

This is my response to question five - how did you attract your audience?

Evaluation - question four!

Here is my fourth question response- Who is your audience?

Evaluation - Question three!

Below you will find my response to question four - Who might distribute your media project and why?

Evaluation - Question two!

My response to question two- How does your media project represent particular social groups?

Evaluation - question one!

So here is my response to question one: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?

Media showcase!

This horribly terrifying screenshot of Keeley in action is the picture we have chosen to use as the face of our movie. The picture will be used on posters to invite people to the showcase and as it will be the only thing people will see and we hope for it to be a creepy visual as an insight to what our opening is all about. 

Woman in Black racked in 134 complaints over wrong certification!

After researching a little deeper I came across a little case-study centred around our number one inspiration - The Woman In Black.
Personally I was shocked to find the bbfc had rated the woman in black a 12A, especially after I had witnessed the movie myself. Evidently 134 other people had a similar reaction! The bbfc was required to increase the rating up to a 15 and review its 'horror rules'

This is a clear consequence of grading a film the wrong certification, which shows its's extremely important to accurately label a film and not just based it on the 'criteria' that the film itself would meet, but also the short-term and long-term affect it will have on the audience allowed to watch the material.

Here's the link to the article, but I've screen-shotted an extract for quick readers.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/13/bbfc-rewrite-horror-rules-woman-black-complaint-gore-sexualisation

Ceritificate 18?

The group had previously discussed what certificate we would grant appropriate, we all had agreed the decision would most likely be between a 12/12A or a 15, we felt that our movie would't live up to the over excessive 'gore' that most 18s acquire.

A popular 18 horror film is 'The nightmare on elm street.' Both the 1984 and the 2014 version. The direct use of blood, guts and expletives suggest a clear division to our movie opening. (I mean even the picture makes me want to hurl.)

So what one?

During our brainstorming session we immediately ruled out the rating U and PG as our content would be extremely inappropriate for those younger audiences. So we were left to choose between 12/12A, 15 or an 18.

12/12A

Many movies are rated 12 and 12A's, one being my all time favourite 'The Others,' however movies that hold this rating are often limited to the sinister absence they can empower.

15

Films with a higher rating of a 15 are able to express 'strong threat and 'horror' more directly. Many of our film inspirations obtain a certificate of 15 for example 'Annabelle' and 'The Woman in Black' These movies all hold the blood curdling atmosphere we feel the content of our film would have held (if we had continued to make it) 

Certificate for our film.

So now our group must decide on our movies age certificate!

We've done a little research on the British Board of Film classification website in order to accurately label our movie.

Many of our inspirations are rated as a 15 but there are many varieties in different films.

Evaluation; dun dun dunnnnnnnnn

So now the film is completed and uploaded, it is time for the evaluation! 

The group is currently browsing through previous evaluations to inspire us and just building a platform to how we must answer them. 

Here are our the questions we must answer. 

Beggars Hollow - Final

So voila! Below is our final draft of Beggars Hollow ( Yes, we all finally agreed on a name)
We made very minor adjustments since the fifth draft.
After it was showed to Ms Foster she told us to adjust the font sizes of the title as she felt the title was too similar to the credits.

Also to just fad in and adjust some of our sound, for instance we decided to fade out the drone audio during the opening title montage as the cut to silence didn't hold a significant impact, as well as this it was necessary to cut down the swing shot of Keeley from behind in order to match up perfectly with the audio, this avoided any disruption to the perfect match ups later on it the film.

Lastly we have cut 'ripple productions' as Ms Foster noticed it was extremely similar to our 'river in reverse' shown just a few seconds later. The group discussed and agreed that the one production company would do, which saved us finding a second!
So now our production company just reads 'Ludio Studios.'

5th (and hopefully the last) draft.

We were advised not to include our previous production company 'Bonnie Productions' with the shot of Bonnie the dog due to the implications it caused to some viewers as they were confused by the use of the same doll,dog and actress.

So as a replacement we included footage of some ripples that we thought would look cool in reverse that we ended up never using as we used the river in reverse instead. Added onto the shot was 'Ripple productions' with the same transition as the previous production title. Additionally we included a little jingle to lighten the mood, from Epidemic.com we downloaded 'Water ripples' which was an upbeat melody with the collocation of flowing water, as well as some bubble gurgles for the sound effect.

Sound finished.

We finally finished with the sound; After hours upon hours of misery and frustration we persevered and  finalised it! Despite originally wanted a beat to play on every jump cut, we struggled with the 'flickering' scenes as every shot is only 0.1s, meaning it was virtually impossible to find a high pitched beat only 0.1s or less. Instead we just duplicated a couple sections of the tissues soundtrack which we found intense and frightening and layered them on making the volume 500% creating an extremely harrowing atmosphere.  

The mac froze :(

Above shows the crescendo which we cropped and edited using adobe audition (shown below), this allowed us to find the PERFECT crescendo to use! The crescendo we used cuts out leaving an eerie after tune which we let drone out to utter silence. We felt that harnessing the sound of silence would add to the uncomfortable tone we wanted.

Shown below is a screenshot of the jump shots with the integrated sound. As you can see the 'loud' layers are positioned right on the scene jump. We felt doing this would increase its professional look (and because Ms Foster advised us to) however despite it being the cause of bald patches I'm really pleased with the outcome of it and the impact it has on the audience.

CREDITS!?

Shown below are our final credits. We have included title names such as 'edited by' and 'sound by,' we found it was look more professional and sophisticated. We also finalised the title..FINALLY.
Originally I found the apostrophe in 'Beggar's Hollow' unappealing, however our teacher mentioned to us how its acceptable to not include punctuation such as the station 'Kings Cross St Pancras.'
We decided that we should have the title on two separate lines, thus contrasting the light and the dark on the horizon line.
 We managed to overcome the situation where my name was in a white font due to the colours in the scene, by moving the position of the text to the top left where there is high-key lighting.
Personally my favourite frame is Kelly's one, being positioned on the grass it gives the impression that the text is 'standing up.'

Sinister turn around.

So after playing around with some unused footage the group came across a scene consisting of Keeley standing right in front of the tree. Before turning around she was staring back at us waiting for instructions. Using the mouse i was able to see the scene in reverse; aka Keeley frighteningly turning around.

After falling in love with that shot we replaced the original shot that we used and set it to play in reverse. However after showing it to others we found it wasn't as noticeable as we wanted it to be, so we split the clip and freeze-framed the scene of her looking to the side so now it plays for around 0.8s to add emphasis to the action. (This is seen in the last photo.)
As well as this we included an extremely sinister crescendo that we cropped from our original audio 'tissues' on adobe audition.

Sound and Footage integration

So now we are working towards making our screeches and sharp beat changes match up with the change of scenes.

After a quick match up during lesson, Kelly then carried on after school using the sound wave feature on iMovie which helps see exactly when the build up of music is going to occur, however now we must focus on altering our clips to match the audio; additionally Kelly and I are going to attempt to duplicate some of the sharp sounds and layer them in to every scene change.

Stolen from Ms Fosters twitter the short clip below does not only empower women(!!!) but it also uses it's sound to guide the footage. (Though it seems.) Abruptly swishing through different scenes every time the beat of the music differs and changes. I would very much like to make our video turn out so well considering the integration  of the audio and the footage.

(Constructive) Criticism.

After showing Ms Foster our fourth draft it is evident we still have a lot more to work on, here is what she critiqued:

Firstly she spoke about having the Production Companies appearing first then fading them to black instead of having them integrated in with our opening credits.

Secondly were our credits positioning. She mentioned that the arrangements took away from the (incredible) shots used in our montage. Also regarding the credits was the text, she felt that instead of including just our names we should include things such as 'Edited by' and 'Directed by' which we initially wanted to avoid because of what everyone provided to the making of the film.

Lastly she commented on how well the scene changes would look if we matched them to the intense build ups and screeches of our non diegetic audio.
Overall the feedback was good and required editing rather than filming, however our time is limited and with less than a week to go you will find me and Kelly in the media room slaving over the Mac.

Inspiration for PC.

There are some Production companies that are recognised globally; whether it by their audio, the visuals or even the films they are commonly attached to. 
The majority of Production Companies use animation or moving camera angles, however we obviously do not have the budget of Pixar to animate a jumping lamp, nor do we have the time and skills to do it ourselves- so to avoid being extremely cheesy we just went with a clip from our footage. 
Production Companies such as Metro Goldwyn Mayer use a still shot of their text ( Lets ignore the fact they included a live lion) much like something we would want to achieve. 

Reasons for our Production Company choices.

Initially as a group we had concluded we would have a very simple production sequence as we thought it counted in our 2 minute frame, however after finding out this was not the case I quickly threw a some together as a couple samples and the group ended up loving them both! So we ended up using two!

We already had known about calling one 'Ludio Studios' as we had planned our title to be 'Marionette' which in latin is.. dun dun dun 'Ludio.' (Also we thought they flowed well together as a name.) It occurred to me that having grey text on a black screen would cause the audience to feel uncomfortable as it is commonly white text seen on a black dropdown and visa versa as well as having our text on the right side rather than having it centred)

Our second clip was disregarded footage that was deleted in order to fit in with the time frame. Despite this however I knew that as a group that the clip was adored dearly and I thought why not just reuse it as a production company? Originally the text read 'Sniff Productions' however due to us keeping in the dialogue of Bella calling out Bonnie's name, Kelly suggested we call it 'Bonnie Production' which worked extremely well.-As well as giving bonnie the credit she needs!

Production Company font types.

This was not necessarily deliberated over excessively, We didn't want the font to all be the same, or in fact similar but we felt that simple fonts would do the trick.

For 'Bonnie Productions' i used the transition 'pull focus' which initially unfocused the clip whilst text is displayed, (it is portrayed in the picture.^) 

May the fourth (Draft) be with you.

We are officially at the last steps of editing! With just a few tweaks left to adjust I'm really proud of what we have produced as a group.
(The title isn't 'Bellas Nose-Ring by the way- that was just something we added in whilst we still deliberate an actual one)

Our Production Companies.

After school I played around with some production companies.  I decided to add in our precious deleted 'dog sniffing the doll' scene, i thought it was too good to waste and thought it fitted in perfectly as a production company.
 Here is our elected production company reel:

FONTS

So after sampling every single font style available on iMovie we narrowed it down to just these five font styles. We felt all of them could represent our movie in the way we wanted, it was just the decision whether we wanted our font to stand out over excessively or to be just subtle and plain.

So after much deliberation we decided on.....

'ADOBE SONG STD'

(The large screenshot)

Interesting name, yes, but we found it's perfectly plainness fitted in to the opening credits wonderfully, additionally we loved its 'long' and 'thin' feature as it reinforces the whole 'creepy' and 'eerie' ambience. 

THIRD draft.

Our third draft which includes our near finished sound and opted font for our credits.

Vlog!?

Initially i wanted to talk about our sound but i waffled on about our titles and production company as well.

'Vlog' regarding sound

This vlog/video diary captures what we did during our afternoon of editing.
 Despite not making an appearance in the vlog (I couldn't fit) I thought it described well what the group was attempting to do concerning our audio.

Clip deduction

Hurrah! we have finally been able to cut down our footage to 2:11. However, we have had to cut ALL our forest footage. (cry)
So now it fades to black after Bella walks into shot.
At this moment in time the group have been altering the pitch and tempo on the software
 adobe audition.

Quick snap whilst waiting for sound to adjust (as it takes 8 minutes)

Sound Reminiscent

Despite our sound being attached it's evident many more hours will be spend matching the changes of  the beats to the changes of scenes, regardless of this however we cannot fully finish editing the sound until our clip is shortened down even more so as it will only distort the sound we have already edited.
At the moment the clip reaches around 2:50; it had Kelly and I head in hands figuring out which shots to shorten/ cut out.

The only risks we run is if we shorten certain clips such as the opening title montage and the close up of Keeley too short we may completely ruin the impact it has for the audience.
Not forgetting we still are yet to organise our production company. (However I believe we plan on keeping it simple text due to the restrictions we have concerning time)

Notwithstanding all this, I think good progress has been made regarding editing considering how fast approaching our deadline is.

Opening movie: SECOND DRAFT

Our second drafting!
This draft contains the sound we wish to use.

Sound progress

So today after school Kelly and I dedicated our daily editing session on our sound! We've chosen a sound called 'night terrors' from a site named 'epidemic' which streams un-copyrighted music ready to snatch and use!
We found the tune mimicked the upbeat tempo in the women in black's theme tune (Tea for three plus one) perfectly, making it a suitable fit for our opening.

Opening movie: DRAFT

So here's our first draft, it's not 100% there but we're close!

What we still have to do:

This post is going to summarise what jobs we still have yet to do!

Despite our video being near enough completed, we still have the scrutinising problem of our video reaching 3:27 minutes in total, meaning we still have a heck of a lot of reductions to make, but we just can't seem to delete scenes. We have a disadvantage as the majority of our shots are meant to be long paced to add to the suspense and impact, meaning we can't reduce them down, so our only choice is to cut some shots out completely:(

Our second problem is sound, originally we planned to feature a creepy lullaby tune, (much like tea for three and one) yet all of the melodies we've come across are either way too cheesy, or copyrighted. 

Lastly is our title, beforehand we had originally agreed on 'marionette,' however over time we felt it didn't feel as a suitable or sophisticated name, and the last straw was when me and kelly saw what it looked like actually on our opening credits; extremely shabby. Me and Kelly thought it might be useful to check out the history of our location and near roads etc. Thats when Kelly came across the road running alongside the park; Beggars Hallow. We're not 100% on this new name and it definitely needs to be a topic discussed along with the pervious two. 

Inspiration: Hollow

Added to my list of inspirations is the horrifying 'Hollow,' released to the UK in 2013. It casts a sinister cloud over its viewers. I mean even the trailer leaves me feeling uncomfortable and uneasy. It uses the unsettling mise-en scene of the macabre tree stood on its own to generate fear; much like the tree we have on our location.

Evidence from our filming adventure: Part 2.

Voila! our evidence for the second day of filming.

THE time lapse

As well as reshooting our still shots we were also going to attempt to record a time lapse of the clouds to use in the montage for our opening credits. Much like the time lapse used in The Haunting of Radcliffe house, we were aiming to capture movement of clouds through branches and above the treetops, however the weather didn't agree with us as the movement of cloud was sparse and didn't give us the time lapse we wanted.
Whilst strolling past a fast flowing river, we decided it might work filming the river flow over some large rocks. (which formed a mini waterfall - kind of) From this we brainstormed ideas and thought doing a time lapse of the river flowing would compensate for the cloud time lapse, and it wasn't till we were editing and playing around we found that doing the river flowing in reverse actually worked like a treat! It also reminded us of a opening clip we saw in class of the movie 'Remember me' as it used the same reverse technique to reverse the tide coming in, this created a creepy yet eerie ambience.



(For some reason the youtube clip is extremely blurry)

The 'flicker'

I mentioned previously in a blog about creating a 'flickering' effect whilst Keeley walks towards the forest to compensate for the time lapse. I managed to extract this clip from our project and upload it onto my blog!

Stills

Here are the still shots we've decided to use for our opening credits. (We've also bugsied who's name goes on what shot)