Film Opening - Final Edit

L3 OPENING SEQUENCE - GROUP 1 - FINAL VIDEO from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

This is the final edit for my film opening, which I am quite pleased with. However If I had more time I would have done more with my titles, for example adding the same effects on the main title as the other titles so they don't just fade in and fade out. Although I think I did well in keeping it simple and abstract which was my plan to begin with.

EVALUATION - Activity one

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (i.e. of film openings)

Here is a 9 frame grid for my film opening 'Something Wicked'.



The nine frame grid shows shots I feel best repersents what I was trying to achieve.

Frame 1
This is the first shot that appears on screen (excluding the production logos). It is the establishing shot which sets the scene and builds up the atmosphere, as the audience may be wondering where the location is and what relevance it has.

Frame 2
Frame 2 is shot through a green house window, and shows leg shots of a girl walking along the garden path. I particularly like this shot as its unusual and makes it look like the girl is being watched.

Frame 3

This shot is a close up of the shed door, I think the rusty pad lock adds to the effect of the film opening and creates an uncertainty of what might be inside. It also has a contrast of the colours used in the rest of the opening, as later shots become darker.

Frame 4

This frame shows where the Main title comes in. I used decorative/eroded/old styled font called Kingjola, from dafont.com. This is a common font type to have in supernatural thrillers, as I found out whilst planning and looking at exsisting film openings such as Rosemary's baby,where such font is used. In Final Cut Express I added effects to the main title which included, Gaussian Blur, Earthquake and Directional which makes it shake about on the screen, which I feel really adds to the atmosphere.

Frame 5

A tracking shot is used here, moving from left to right showing close up of props.

Frame 6

I used this frame as it is a good example of the font style used and it also shows how we gave credit to the composer of our soundtrack (which was in the terms of use). The font is called Kingjola and can be found on dafont.com. However in Photoshop I edited it a bit to fit more with what I wanted it to look like.

Frame 7

This shot has been included in the grid as its the shot where 'action' comes in. The 'action' is hand shots of hands rummaging around and finding the significant item - the book.

Frame 8

This shot shows the significant item being found, which is important to the rest of the plot in the film.

Frame 9

This is the very last shot in the sequence. It is also the last title that appears in the opening which reads 'Directed by ...' this title along with 'Produced by ...' (seen in frame 7) come in last as they are the more important titles in an opening. Directors such as Tim Burton also places these two titles last in their film openings.

EVALUATION - Activity two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My film opening has no introduction to characters as such and only hand and legs shots are shown of the main character. This was a choice made to keep the opening atmospheric and to maintain the tension build up of who this character is and what importance they have to the film.
However I would compare this character to Mercedes, the little girl from the film Cronos (Del Toro, 1993)



The reason I would compare the character in my opening to Mercedes is because she co-finds the significant item in Cronos and is affected by the events that happen because of the item later in the film. For example, she see's her Grandad become youthful yet crave the need for human blood.
This is simiular to the character in my film opening as the character in Something Wicked finds the significant item and the events that take place because of it affect her as well as others.

EVALUATION - Activity three

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Here is our Film Opening sequence with myself and Angelica talking about film production and the influences we had for the project. For example a possible funder for our film opening could have been from the BBC Microwave project, or film 4.

EVALUATION - Activity four

Who would be the audience for your media product?

This is Jessie James.


Jessie James is a stereotypical target audience for our film opening.

Jessie is a 24 year old female living in a flat near the city center.
She wears casual jeans and t-shirts and studies Media at Uni.
In her spare time she socializes with friends down the pub and spends her money on rent, food, CD's and DVD's.
Her favourite film is Pulp Fiction and she peferes to watch films on the big screen at the cinema with her friends.
Her favourite tv programmes are Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-runs (They both have a supernatural feel) also Friends and Scrubs - typicial american comedy.
She also has a pet cat and likes to listen to indie music whilst on social networks such as twitter.



The images in the picture show Jessie James in the middle of the page with icons of her favourite things and things that represent her around the edge.

EVALUATION - Activity five

How did you attract/address your audience?

Here is a screen grab from Youtube, where I have been making annotations to my Film Opening.



This is the Video with annotations. The annotations relate to my target audience and how they would react or enjoy particular parts of the opening.

EVALUATION - Activity six

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This picture represents myself and Angelica using the equipment we needed for this project.
You can click on the image for a larger size, which is easier to read.



This picture shows all the programs and websites we used during this project, again you can view the image in a larger size by clicking on the picture.

EVALUATION - Activity seven

Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

As there is no dialogue in my film opening, the rules Match on Match Action, Shot/Reverse Shot and The 180 Degree rule do not apply. However one thing I did use from the Perliminary task was to introduce the character before hand. e.g. in the Perlimary task you see the charcter before they open the door so that the audience has already been introduced to the character and are not confussed by the second shot of someones hand opening a door.



The same thing applies in our film opening when you see leg shots of somebody walking towards the shed, this is so that later on in the opening the audience isn't confussed by the random hands rummaging around props inside of the shed.

Script for Voice Over Commentary

Angelica: Hello I'm Angelica

Christina: and I'm Christina, we produced and directed the opening to ‘Something Wicked’

Angelica: The production logo’s at the beginning of the video represent the funding and creation of this film. Long Road sixth form college was the funder and distributor of the film donating around £40,000 for us to work with. Underwater Cow and Jellycar productions were the producer companies we used.

Christina: Other possible funding for our film could have come from the BBC microwave project. The microwave project is for London-based companies to produce ten micro-budget feature films over a three year period. Another funder or distributor in mind was film-four.

Angelica: The titles in the film opening appear in order so that the more important titles come in last. ‘Something Wicked’ appears when the soundtrack becomes more sinister which is effective because it highlights the importance of the title.

Christina: Two film openings that reflect supernatural conventions that we had looked at are Rosemary’s baby and To Kill a Mockingbird. These films influenced us in different ways, in particular the style of font used and the soundtracks.

Angelica: Rosemary’s Baby was produced by William Castle productions and was distributed by Paramount Pictures, however To Kill a Mockingbird was produced by Brentwood productions and distributed by Universal Pictures. This shows how there is a variety of producers and distributors in the thriller genre.

Christina: The certificate we advise the film to be set as is a 15. This is because of the supernatural thriller aspects of the film, which would not be suitable for young people.

Certificate

I went on the SBBFC to look at certificates for films.

This talks about what makes a film a certain certificate.

Under the category '15' it states:

What sort of issues might I find in a ‘15’ film, DVD or video game?

‘15’ works are stronger than '12' or ‘12A’ rated works and could include any of the following:

• strong violence
• frequent strong language (eg 'f***').
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour
• drug taking

Occasionally there may be uses of the strongest terms (eg 'c***'), although continued aggressive use will not normally be passed at ‘15’. For more detailed information on the ‘15’ category click here to read the BBFC guidelines

What about horror works?

At’15’ there can be strong threat and menace (as long as it is not sadistic or sexualised), although the strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable.

I think this relates to my film opening and I would therefore give it the certificate 15.

Changes to Rough Cut

The changes I made to my rough cut today included:

Adding titles.
I added the rest of my film opening titles into the sequence, adding a fade effect on them so they fade in and out to flow with the rest of the film.

Moving the main title.
I moved the main title further along the timeline, so that when the strings come in on the soundtrack the main title appears. This change was made so that the main title has a more dramatic feel to grab the attention of the audience.

Re-touches.
I did a few re-touches on some clips to make fades smoother, and less jumpy in the sequence.

Rough nine grid frame

For my opening evaluation.

Finished Film Opening

Today I finished editing my film opening on final Cut Express

It was mainly just making finishing touches such as, making the cuts between clips fade right and adjusting the titles around the sequence.

There was only one problem that occurred today, which concerned the titles.

As I had moved the main title further along the timeline, there was less time to have the other titles appear.

I over came this by getting rid of one of the cast names title at the beginning of the sequence and adding the 'Directed by' title at the end of the sequence.

Comic Book Opening

In Tuesdays lesson, Angelica began to create her images for her comic book effect opening.
She had taken photo's of her main character she wanted to introduce in the opening and began to edit them on Photoshop. There was a problem that occured during this stage as the background contained lots of different colour shades etc so it was time consuming getting rid of everything in the background. I had suggested to Angelica to take the photos on a plain background before hand but she said she didnt have anywhere suitable.
After this we opened the photo on Comic Life and began to edit the photo further by adding comic effects and adjusting them until happy.
Angelica then took screen grabs from my footage to edit in the same way. Looking back on this I think it would have been better to take the still frame itself for picture quality rather then the screen grab.

Here is the edited background and character from comic life


We then looked at templates for the comic page, and found one we liked

I particualy like this template as Angelica could put

the edited establishing/background photo in the middle and then character photos around the outside, which I think would look effective.

Also she could then edit it in a way that requires movement e.g. zoom in on the background image then move up or down to the character photos and then zoom out, in Final Cut Express, to make it more interesting.

Creative Risk

Angelica and I took a creative risk for this project by creating two different film openings together. One being an abstract live action opening and the other a comic book effect opening.

The main reason we decided to do this is because we both had different ideas of how we wanted our opening to look, and this way we both get want we want.

The risk of doing this is that we might not have enough time to complete both versions, as were sharing a Mac to edit on. The verison we began on was the abstract live action one as the comic book effect opening relies on the footage from the first one. This opening is complete and we are now focussing our attention on the comic book.

At this stage I feel like it is working, therefore making this a good risk.

The benefit of this creative risk is that we will get two different openings out of the same film idea, which will show of our skills and we were able to use a program called Comic Life, which we may not have been able to use otherwise.

All in all I think this was a good risk to make, and i'd take it again.

Editing update

I have pretty much finished editing and shall be able to submit the final Film Opening video for Friday's deadline.
All that needs to be done is position the titles in my sequence, as they've already been made, it shouldn't take long to do.
As I don't want the titles to be too focal I have decided I am going to place them in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Now Angelica and myself can focus on the Comic Book Opening.

Back at college - Titles continued

Using the Kingjola font from dafont.com I created the rest of the titles. I opened them in Final Cut Express and used the Title safe mode to ensure I didnt position the titles too far on the side. The title safe mode is the inner 80 percent of the screen. It is used to prevent text in a video from being hidden by the edge of a TV set.

Here is a screengrab of the title safe mode on, on final cut, along with the title 'Original Music by Lucas Paakh'. Lucas Paakh is the creater of the music we are using in our film opening projects, and the terms of use for the music was to give credit to the composer.



The font used for the name (Luca Paakh) is calld Kingjola (the same font as the production names and main title) and can be found on dafont.com. My plan was to use this font for the names and use a less decroative font for the job title. The job title font is called Kaku Gothic Pro which is a built in font from Final Cut Express and I think it works well with Kingjola.
These are the two fonts I shall be using for the rest of my titles.

Titles

Over half term I began to create the rest of the titles so that when I go back to college, myself and Angelica can focus on her comic book effect opening.

I created them the same way I did before half term for the film title and production names, using Photoshop. I plan to email them to myself so I can open them at college.

I decided that the titles looked better when the name was in the Kingjola font (the same font used for the film title and production names in the rough cut) with the job title in a basic font like Arial.

For example, when both texts are in the same font, the name doesn't stand out









Whereas when the job title is in the basic font, the name stands out more








In final cut I shall experiment with using the same effects as I did on the other titles in the rough cut or I may keep them still and over the footage rather then on a black background.

Crooks and Bones

L3 - GROUP 4 (Elliott, Matt & Rob) Film Opening Rough Cut from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Feedback for Elliott, Max and Rob's Crooks and Bones film opening

I particularly liked the fish eye lens in the car, it worked really well however I wasn't too keen on it being used in the house, I just don't think it was necessary.
There was also a lot of nicely framed shots, like the shot of Elliott in bed with the lit cigarette in focus which looks effective.














The camera movement used also works well and there is a variety of different shots.

After they work a bit more on editing and add titles and a soundtrack, I think it should really come together and look like a proper film opening.