This is our finished film fully complete!
Friday, 6 April 2012
Thursday, 5 April 2012
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Critical Evaluation
1) In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2)How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
When creating our main production ,our original ideas revolved around implications of cloning ,and the idea of a scientist/business man 'playing god'.
On a technical level however the film primarily centered around the confrontation between the clone and his creator and if/how, we could create this. Retrospectively the ideas that we wanted to convey to the audience ,were easily picked up after watching the film , and the technical difficulties that we thought we might have before hand were not significant.
The combination of the main product and ancillary texts is extremely important in the overall promotion of our film ,and getting its theme Cloning across to the audience.
With duplicate being a science fiction film, I started research into science fiction posters, and Radio trailers even before we had completed the first draft of the film, believing that it was necessary to start research into the two advertising products as early as possible, to find similarities between our idea and other science fiction ideas .
During the Research stage I found out that different posters, corresponded to the genre that they were advertising . Poster for genres such as action films and romance films ,had a number of similar convection's that distinguished them apart from each other. This can also be said about the posters for science fiction films. I analysed a number of different posters which included “The Expendables” (action genre) and “Taken” (Thriller). I then also analysed a number of different posters crucially from a selection of science fiction films, that helped develop a poster based around our own idea of Cloning.
One of the posters that i analysed seen below:
A link to my poster research and analysis can be found here.
http://bca2media2012group9.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/poster-research_30.html
My findings from the poster research ,allowed for me to have better basis and understanding of what would be needed for my individual poster ,and for the final group poster. The poster that I created had many different convection's that had their basis in the style of the film ,but also gained ideas from the posters that I had analysed.
My individual poster:
For example, I thought it was necessary to place the title for the film at the foot of the poster as most of the poster that I had seen had placed the title here, the same was true of the other text that went with the poster ,eg. the name of actors/cast and other information such as production company etc.
At the top of the poster I placed the names of key actors and a title saying ‘Presents’ this was also in line with the posters that I had researched
I also placed images of the main characters in the poster ,but tried not to give away too much of the plot. Placing characters in the poster was difficult ,as Joseph played both the clone and his creator , and thus images had to be used that identified the individual characters. Placing both the clone and the creator in the poster was important as it symbolises a link to our original ideas, and to the film.Here is the final poster:
The radio trailer was tackled in much the same fashion as the poster. Early research was made into different examples of radio trailers for films, two examples that I found for the science fiction genre where the radio trailers for Alien and Star Wars.
Both of these gave a basis to our ideas on how the radio trailer should be set out. Both examples of radio trailers included a voice over, music and key details about the film (such as the release date). The radio trailer for Star Wars also included extracts from the fi, which was an idea that we recreated in out own production.Here is a link to my radio trailer research.
http://bca2media2012group9.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/radio-trailer-research_29.html
When creating our radio trailer we included many of the convection's stated above. We wanted to make sure however that we did not give too much away to the audience about the plot of the film ,especially important when considering that we took a number of sound bites directly from the film. The moments between the sound bites where filled in with narration from myself to give important information to the audience ,but also to give a general idea what the film is about. I feel that this was a success and that we enticed the audience without giving them the whole plot. The radio trailer, much like the poster, had to included some part of the message of the film. This was seen in the narrated parts of the trailer, where we talked about the power to create human beings, a further reference to the idea of 'playing god' and the limits of that power.
This is the Final Radio Trailer:
3)What have you learned from your audience feedback?
This is a link the a presentation on the Audience feedback:
http://prezi.com/mflxdvbie8hp/what-have-you-learned-from-your-audience-feedback/
4)How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
From the very early stages in its construction, new technologies were used in the creative media portfolio.
Research
During the initial planning and research stages of the production, new technologies helped research into similar products mainly similar films. New media technologies also helped with the research into genre that had been chosen for the film "Science Fiction".
Link to sci-fi research
Research into similar films: Blade Runner
This genre was unusual for an A2 production, and so it was necessary to research fully into what we were creating to make sure that we followed the convection of the science fiction genre correctly.
One aspect that we found while searching on the internet (specifically using Google) was the number of similar films to our own, many examples of which different members of the group had viewed and consequentially gained inspiration from. The ability to access a wide range of information through the Internet, gave the group inspiration, and many ideas on different aspects that the film could potentially contain.
Many parts of films found on YouTube, provided guidance into the different shot types that could be used, filters and effects, music and shot sequences, as well as many more examples.
An example of this is the film that i analysed from youtube Portal no Escape. It is from the science fiction genre and thus shares many convections with our own film.
Analysis of short film
Another example of this is the scene from the film "Commando" (1985) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the sequence that was found on you tube, gave the general idea for the scene shown early in the production when alpha 7 hears the order of his termination from Charles Preston.
The overall feel of the film was also influenced by a number of different productions specifically" The Island" (2004) and "Blade Runner" (1984).
Films that inspired parts of scenes in our film
Blogger allowed us to link all our work together from the research stages, the planning stages, the production, and evaluation. This medium allowed the group to share ideas, and to track each other’s progress. Viewing work that other members of the group had found, allowed us to collectively change aspects of the film. Link to Our Blog
The internet not only helped by finding examples of films, but also with research into similar posters, similar radio trailers, and BBFC guidelines. Although YouTube was the main research vehicle, the IMDB (Internet Movie Database) also provided valuable sources of information on film making.
Many of these resources would not have been accessible 10 years ago, and thus it would have been impossible to quickly access adequate research for the film.
Google maps was also a useful tool for finding suitable location sets for each day of filming. Many members of the group did not know where we would be filming, and as such needed directions to the site.Directions to the site were print screened and posted on the blog,extras were given directions to sites by E Mail.
I also personally had a hand in creating a questionnaire, this allowed us to ask a number of questions of subjects fitting the target audience group. On different aspects of what we wanted to film ,and to elicit their views and responses.
The results were then put into a spread sheet, and shown on bar charts and pie charts. These results were then print screened and posted onto the blog.
A link to the analysis of the results is found here
We also set up an interview with college students asking them a number of questions on what they thought of the film idea. This was then edited by Final Cut Express on the Apple Macintosh Computers. Their response can be seen below.
Planning
In this production the overall planning was much better than the planning of my AS production ,which was much more last minute. For the AS production our team came up with an idea and then went out to film. Consequently our first attempt at filming did not turn out as expected, and thus we needed to go back to the drawing board, and start planning how we were going to film the scene we had set out. We engaged a larger cast and rewrote but were seriously running out of time because of time wasted on initial mistakes.
However the work of this group and the Production of the A2 creative media portfolio, has been markedly different.
As soon as we began the creation of this production, planning was underway.
One of the first things done during the planning stages, was the creation of the film treatment. This gave a basic outline of how we would progress to create each part of the project, with a general Synopsis of the idea for the film, the audience and duration. Each group member created a film treatment, this was then put on blogger.
My Film treatment
Construction and Production stages
In the construction stages many new media technologies were used the most crucial of which was Final Cut Express.
This New Technology had a dramatic effect on the direction of the production and many of the challenging scenes would have been impossible to create without the use of final cut express.
One of the most important scenes that proved to be the basis that the film was created around, was the confrontation scene at the end of the production, between Preston and Alpha 7.
What we did in final cut express can be seen below.
Here as shown we filmed Joseph twice at different parts of the shot while the camera was kept still. The two shots where then dragged together using garbage matte.
The colour correction tool was also used to change the difference in colour between both shots as the image above shows.
The results of this are seen below.
However it was not just final cut express that was critical in the production of these sequences but also the technology we used on set when filming them.
The most obvious one of these is the Sony HDV 1000 camera and the tripod, without which we would have been unable to film many of the shots ,and sequences that made our film so unique.
Most of the film sound was recorded with a Boom Mic. The
boom microphone may have been critical to the production, as it proved invaluable with its ability to pick
up clear sound, and provided much better quality sound recording than the microphone provided with the camera.The pole that the microphone was attached too also provided the ability to pick up conversation from a reasonable distance away from the actors, and out of camera shot.
Narration was also needed in sections of the film, most notably the opening sequence and cafe sequence. To do this Joseph's voice was recorded on the zoom recorder and then imported into final cut express, where they were added to film clips.
Ancillary to the main film ,we also created 7 confidential films. These documented our progress by filming us filming, and creating Duplicate. This helped the group by allowing us to keep a record of what we had done at each stage of the production ,and also cut out the need for a written diary documenting the progress we made at each stage. We filmed the confidential on a small Panasonic HDC-HS80 ,and then edited it using final cut express in the same vein as the main production. Cutting out the sections that we didn't need.
Editing executed using final cut express allowed us to add many effects to the production edit scenes, and cut out the areas that we didn't require. It also allowed us the use of key framing, motion, crops, effects, mattes.
We put a blue tint over most of the film using colour correction, to change the overall atmosphere of the production. We believe that this gives an overall greater science fiction feel. The Tint made the film appear more metallic and futuristic giving a cold and detached feel.
Final Cut express was also helpful in editing the audio on the film. On many of the scenes there was too much general background and traffic noise final cut helped to eradicated this.
Final cut express and the zoom recorder was also used for the construction of the radio trailer this was to bring out the best quality sound possible. We also used snippets of sound from the films audio and edited this in final cut this allowed us to create a radio trailer similar to the ones that we had researched.
I also created an individual poster ,from which ideas were then added to the final poster. Adobe Photoshop Elements was used to create this. This provided tools such as lasso and crop,also effects to change the the contrast of the pictures.
The Gradient tool that was used for the back ground to the poster I created, can be seen below.
Individual and Final poster seen below:
Feedback and evaluation
During the feedback and evaluation stages of the production we used a number of different technologies.Some that had been used in the Initial research and planning stages of the production, and some that we had not used before. When we uploaded the film to youtube, we sought the opinions of people that viewed the film. They provided feedback ,we then also uploaded the film to Facebook and asked the same questions.
There responses are seen here:
2)How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
When creating our main production ,our original ideas revolved around implications of cloning ,and the idea of a scientist/business man 'playing god'.
On a technical level however the film primarily centered around the confrontation between the clone and his creator and if/how, we could create this. Retrospectively the ideas that we wanted to convey to the audience ,were easily picked up after watching the film , and the technical difficulties that we thought we might have before hand were not significant.
The combination of the main product and ancillary texts is extremely important in the overall promotion of our film ,and getting its theme Cloning across to the audience.
With duplicate being a science fiction film, I started research into science fiction posters, and Radio trailers even before we had completed the first draft of the film, believing that it was necessary to start research into the two advertising products as early as possible, to find similarities between our idea and other science fiction ideas .
During the Research stage I found out that different posters, corresponded to the genre that they were advertising . Poster for genres such as action films and romance films ,had a number of similar convection's that distinguished them apart from each other. This can also be said about the posters for science fiction films. I analysed a number of different posters which included “The Expendables” (action genre) and “Taken” (Thriller). I then also analysed a number of different posters crucially from a selection of science fiction films, that helped develop a poster based around our own idea of Cloning.
One of the posters that i analysed seen below:
A link to my poster research and analysis can be found here.
http://bca2media2012group9.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/poster-research_30.html
My findings from the poster research ,allowed for me to have better basis and understanding of what would be needed for my individual poster ,and for the final group poster. The poster that I created had many different convection's that had their basis in the style of the film ,but also gained ideas from the posters that I had analysed.
My individual poster:
For example, I thought it was necessary to place the title for the film at the foot of the poster as most of the poster that I had seen had placed the title here, the same was true of the other text that went with the poster ,eg. the name of actors/cast and other information such as production company etc.
At the top of the poster I placed the names of key actors and a title saying ‘Presents’ this was also in line with the posters that I had researched
I also placed images of the main characters in the poster ,but tried not to give away too much of the plot. Placing characters in the poster was difficult ,as Joseph played both the clone and his creator , and thus images had to be used that identified the individual characters. Placing both the clone and the creator in the poster was important as it symbolises a link to our original ideas, and to the film.Here is the final poster:
The radio trailer was tackled in much the same fashion as the poster. Early research was made into different examples of radio trailers for films, two examples that I found for the science fiction genre where the radio trailers for Alien and Star Wars.
Both of these gave a basis to our ideas on how the radio trailer should be set out. Both examples of radio trailers included a voice over, music and key details about the film (such as the release date). The radio trailer for Star Wars also included extracts from the fi, which was an idea that we recreated in out own production.Here is a link to my radio trailer research.
http://bca2media2012group9.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/radio-trailer-research_29.html
When creating our radio trailer we included many of the convection's stated above. We wanted to make sure however that we did not give too much away to the audience about the plot of the film ,especially important when considering that we took a number of sound bites directly from the film. The moments between the sound bites where filled in with narration from myself to give important information to the audience ,but also to give a general idea what the film is about. I feel that this was a success and that we enticed the audience without giving them the whole plot. The radio trailer, much like the poster, had to included some part of the message of the film. This was seen in the narrated parts of the trailer, where we talked about the power to create human beings, a further reference to the idea of 'playing god' and the limits of that power.
This is the Final Radio Trailer:
3)What have you learned from your audience feedback?
This is a link the a presentation on the Audience feedback:
http://prezi.com/mflxdvbie8hp/what-have-you-learned-from-your-audience-feedback/
4)How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
From the very early stages in its construction, new technologies were used in the creative media portfolio.
During the initial planning and research stages of the production, new technologies helped research into similar products mainly similar films. New media technologies also helped with the research into genre that had been chosen for the film "Science Fiction".
Link to sci-fi research
Research into similar films: Blade Runner
This genre was unusual for an A2 production, and so it was necessary to research fully into what we were creating to make sure that we followed the convection of the science fiction genre correctly.
One aspect that we found while searching on the internet (specifically using Google) was the number of similar films to our own, many examples of which different members of the group had viewed and consequentially gained inspiration from. The ability to access a wide range of information through the Internet, gave the group inspiration, and many ideas on different aspects that the film could potentially contain.
Many parts of films found on YouTube, provided guidance into the different shot types that could be used, filters and effects, music and shot sequences, as well as many more examples.
An example of this is the film that i analysed from youtube Portal no Escape. It is from the science fiction genre and thus shares many convections with our own film.
Analysis of short film
Another example of this is the scene from the film "Commando" (1985) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, the sequence that was found on you tube, gave the general idea for the scene shown early in the production when alpha 7 hears the order of his termination from Charles Preston.
The overall feel of the film was also influenced by a number of different productions specifically" The Island" (2004) and "Blade Runner" (1984).
Films that inspired parts of scenes in our film
Blogger allowed us to link all our work together from the research stages, the planning stages, the production, and evaluation. This medium allowed the group to share ideas, and to track each other’s progress. Viewing work that other members of the group had found, allowed us to collectively change aspects of the film. Link to Our Blog
The internet not only helped by finding examples of films, but also with research into similar posters, similar radio trailers, and BBFC guidelines. Although YouTube was the main research vehicle, the IMDB (Internet Movie Database) also provided valuable sources of information on film making.
Many of these resources would not have been accessible 10 years ago, and thus it would have been impossible to quickly access adequate research for the film.
Google maps was also a useful tool for finding suitable location sets for each day of filming. Many members of the group did not know where we would be filming, and as such needed directions to the site.Directions to the site were print screened and posted on the blog,extras were given directions to sites by E Mail.
I also personally had a hand in creating a questionnaire, this allowed us to ask a number of questions of subjects fitting the target audience group. On different aspects of what we wanted to film ,and to elicit their views and responses.
The results were then put into a spread sheet, and shown on bar charts and pie charts. These results were then print screened and posted onto the blog.
A link to the analysis of the results is found here
We also set up an interview with college students asking them a number of questions on what they thought of the film idea. This was then edited by Final Cut Express on the Apple Macintosh Computers. Their response can be seen below.
Planning
In this production the overall planning was much better than the planning of my AS production ,which was much more last minute. For the AS production our team came up with an idea and then went out to film. Consequently our first attempt at filming did not turn out as expected, and thus we needed to go back to the drawing board, and start planning how we were going to film the scene we had set out. We engaged a larger cast and rewrote but were seriously running out of time because of time wasted on initial mistakes.
However the work of this group and the Production of the A2 creative media portfolio, has been markedly different.
As soon as we began the creation of this production, planning was underway.
One of the first things done during the planning stages, was the creation of the film treatment. This gave a basic outline of how we would progress to create each part of the project, with a general Synopsis of the idea for the film, the audience and duration. Each group member created a film treatment, this was then put on blogger.
My Film treatment
Construction and Production stages
In the construction stages many new media technologies were used the most crucial of which was Final Cut Express.
This New Technology had a dramatic effect on the direction of the production and many of the challenging scenes would have been impossible to create without the use of final cut express.
One of the most important scenes that proved to be the basis that the film was created around, was the confrontation scene at the end of the production, between Preston and Alpha 7.
What we did in final cut express can be seen below.
The colour correction tool was also used to change the difference in colour between both shots as the image above shows.
The results of this are seen below.
However it was not just final cut express that was critical in the production of these sequences but also the technology we used on set when filming them.
The most obvious one of these is the Sony HDV 1000 camera and the tripod, without which we would have been unable to film many of the shots ,and sequences that made our film so unique.
Narration was also needed in sections of the film, most notably the opening sequence and cafe sequence. To do this Joseph's voice was recorded on the zoom recorder and then imported into final cut express, where they were added to film clips.Ancillary to the main film ,we also created 7 confidential films. These documented our progress by filming us filming, and creating Duplicate. This helped the group by allowing us to keep a record of what we had done at each stage of the production ,and also cut out the need for a written diary documenting the progress we made at each stage. We filmed the confidential on a small Panasonic HDC-HS80 ,and then edited it using final cut express in the same vein as the main production. Cutting out the sections that we didn't need.
Editing executed using final cut express allowed us to add many effects to the production edit scenes, and cut out the areas that we didn't require. It also allowed us the use of key framing, motion, crops, effects, mattes.
We put a blue tint over most of the film using colour correction, to change the overall atmosphere of the production. We believe that this gives an overall greater science fiction feel. The Tint made the film appear more metallic and futuristic giving a cold and detached feel.
Final Cut express was also helpful in editing the audio on the film. On many of the scenes there was too much general background and traffic noise final cut helped to eradicated this.
Final cut express and the zoom recorder was also used for the construction of the radio trailer this was to bring out the best quality sound possible. We also used snippets of sound from the films audio and edited this in final cut this allowed us to create a radio trailer similar to the ones that we had researched.
I also created an individual poster ,from which ideas were then added to the final poster. Adobe Photoshop Elements was used to create this. This provided tools such as lasso and crop,also effects to change the the contrast of the pictures.
The Gradient tool that was used for the back ground to the poster I created, can be seen below.
Individual and Final poster seen below:
During the feedback and evaluation stages of the production we used a number of different technologies.Some that had been used in the Initial research and planning stages of the production, and some that we had not used before. When we uploaded the film to youtube, we sought the opinions of people that viewed the film. They provided feedback ,we then also uploaded the film to Facebook and asked the same questions.
There responses are seen here:
Tuesday, 3 April 2012
Critical Evaluation
1) In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2)How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
Prezi (presentation software) answering question 2.3) What did you learn from your audience feedback?
We chose to create a science fiction film, mainly but not exclusively appealing to a male audience (yahoo article) based on the fact that our film is more action and adventure.
Our film is limited by film censorship, it has been given a rough classification grade by us, we classified it as a 12a, this prevents anyone under 12 from viewing the film unless accompanied by an Adult. This has limited our demographic however our film should be appealing to those who regularly watch science fiction.We have conducted audience research in the Barnsley area
This has given us a good idea of what people think about our initial production ideas, we could have improved this by asking people from outside barnsley, this would give us a bigger and more accurate demographic, of our county or even nationally.
We conducted a questionnaire: questionnaire analysis
We also asked filmed some interviews:
Our results showed a large number of people liked science fiction films, and many of those would watch a film if we were to make it.
We always planned to show our film in a non linear order, showing alpha 7 'on his way' to confront Charles Preston his creator in the beginning, having a flash back to reveal the lead up to this point and finally going back to the present where he confronts him.
Narrative research
Our original idea was to have Alpha 7 narrate his past through the use of flash backs 'on his journey' so we would have a flashback, then back to him running, then a flash back, then back to him running. This created confusion for the audience so rather than try to make the flash backs more clear we decided to rearrange the order into the following: the opening scene (the present), one huge flash back and finally back to the climax of the film.
We initially put out a first draft of our film and got a graphic designer to look at it, using her advice we changed the way the titels looked.
We later put the 2 main title ideas up on Facebook and asked for audience feedback on which one people thought looked better:
finally after we had finished creating our film we distributed it to our audience through the medium of youtube and face book.
The feedback we got from our final finished product from our audience was that we had done a good job. we have completed our brief and our target audience (in this case our family and friends) thoroughly enjoyed the film, as you can see from the feedback.
This leads the the conclusion that it is likely a large demographic would also like the film.
4) How did you use new media technologies in the research, planning, construction and evaluation stages?
It has made our work easy to access from different computers and easy to update.
Research:
The Internet has been our main port of call for research, mainly we have used google, this helped us find research on genre, posters, advertising and BBFC guidelines.
Youtube helped us find useful information on and for radio trailers, evaluation, planning, trick bits of filming and editing.
We used Youtube for other short films we could evaluate and also used Dvds we owned of a similar nature and genre to our film. after watching these we took parts of the films we liked, either edits, filming techniques or part of the plot and replicated it in our own film, we came to the conclusion that if this was used successful in another film it is likely to also work in our film. the basis of the plot was drawn from the plots of the Island and the man in the iron mask, both where the main character has to confront a replica of themselves.
Examples of this are found in earlier work:
films that inspired our own creativity, for our own film.
short review of a film
Genre Research:
for genre research i looked up a definition of what science fiction meant (i already presumed our film was of that genre type as other films i based it on were also science fiction) i then looked at the definitions and found the one which most accurately applied to our film in order to classify it as 'soft science fiction', meaning that it focuses more on the characters rather than the specific scientific detail.
for genre research i looked up a definition of what science fiction meant (i already presumed our film was of that genre type as other films i based it on were also science fiction) i then looked at the definitions and found the one which most accurately applied to our film in order to classify it as 'soft science fiction', meaning that it focuses more on the characters rather than the specific scientific detail.
Classification:
We firstly gave our film the grade 'we' though was appropriate based on content and narrative, (we gave it a 12) we later backed our own opinion up when we found the bbfc would have classified our film as a 12 after we followed their basic guidelines.
We used Microsoft word and excel to create questionnaires and then enter the information into a graph.
as part of our audience research we also used a digital camera to film some students answering a simple questionnaire, we then edited this on final cut. express.
Because we used the Internet and other digital technologies we were able to plan appropriately which allowed us to film a cafe scene with so many extras successfully with hardly any mistakes.
 |
| A still of the cafe scene, from the duplicate. |
We Initially wrote the script using word, but this was more of a basic outline of what we had in mind we later used Celtx (a script-writing program) were we could add in more details such as headers, locations, action, characters, dialogue and directions.
This picture is a little bit blurry but explain how we created the illusion of having 'a clone'.
I created the titles using final cut and word for the documents.
for more information about how i did this see:
(examples of how i edited the title sequence)
The picture above shows how we wire framed one of the documents and cropped out certain words, so that we could infer a large amount of information using the key words in the document rather than getting people to read all of the text., i then gave it a transparent background by changing the opacity, finally i feathered the edges so the document 'blended' into the background a little rather than having clear cut straight edges.
We would not have been able of create the illusion of a clone without digital media technology, We used a HDV 1000 camera and a tripod, to give our entire film good video quality and allowed the camera to be kept still for shots like 'the clone confrontation'.
We checked in the planning stages that this type of editing, having the same actor on screen twice was possible. It was unscripted and was only to see if the type of editing was possible.
practice shot split screen
We realised that handheld shots were not very good and made a film hard to watch and hard to follow, however when doing our film research we noticed very few films ever have 'dead static shots' we noticed there was always some movement even if it was a only slight so we decided to do the same.
we also used a boom mike and a boom pole to get much clearer audio, the microphone itself could be a little as 12 inches from my face, and still off shot, helping to minimise static background sound.
We have recorded all our behind the scenes filming and acting work in 7 confidential episodes they can be found at:
we edited these using final cut and filmed the with a small Panasonic HDC-HS80 .
We also used a zoom recorder it helped us record clear sound for voice overs in our film and for our radio trailer. We recorded these sound files in a quiet room, and later imported them into final cut where we were able to use them in our production.
The audio from out film was all edited on final cut, we didn't add many effects to it other than fades and increasing the volume.
We planned to use 'kitchen noise from our cafe scene however the rather than adding to the scene it only made a annoying sizzle in the background, if we were to do it again we would add the kitchen sound in separately we used a hum remover as a compromise and to edit out this sound.
As a special effect we gave our entire film a slight blue tinge effect using colour corrector, it was not that we had incorrectly done the white balance on the camera. we decided to use a blue tinge because it gave the film a blue metallic look, something associated with science fiction films it helped to reinforce the genre and also made the film look more 'film like' rather than a home made brightly coloured film/video.
between these two photos you can see a clear difference one looks more 'film like' the colour saturation has been reduced and it has a science fiction blue metallic tinge to it created using colour corrector this has been used throughout the film . Also the reflection from the window is more visible in the second photo where as in the first is had been made harder to spot, ideally we should re-do this shot and ensure the shadow is gone this was edited on final cut.
We created a poster to advertise our film, the initial design and layout of my ideas were drawn up on word and then later the final version of the poster was created on photoshop elements, it gave us better features, and allowed more ideas to be incorporated more easily.
(and viral marketing if finished)
(and viral marketing if finished)
after we had finished our film we sent a copy off to a fiend of mine who is a graphic designer for her input and we also exported it to youtube and on Facebook for others to have their say about the film:
Graphic designers email response:
"Hi Joe
After watching your video, I have some constructive feedback to give it a little bit of extra colour and theming running through.
1. There seemed to be a lack of 'colour' in the film. It's emphasis seemed to be black and white but this wasn't continual throughout the film - just random pieces of stills to black and white. However the main thing people would remember about the film would be the association with the blood at the end - only the viewer would recognise that the blood determines which person is the duplicate and which one is the real thing - this would mean that red could be the 3rd primary colour.
2. Don't mix up the titles with different placement effects - pick one and stick to it - I would say the one with the name on top and the mirrored version underneath as this is the main one you should use - it just makes more sense to keep the same 'theme' all the way through.
3. Add a bit of red to the titles - keep that red theme going throughout - it will make that final scene mean more and stand out."
After her input we changed the orientation of the titles and i added in the extra colour to the main titles, after i had created 2 designs for adding in the red to the title, i then put them both on Facebook and asked people to vote on which one was better:
when we counted up who has voted for which title idea the vote was 2 for the first idea and 10 for the second.
Conclusion:
The use of digital media technologies allowed us to gather together a conglomerate of software on the mac's we used in media to successfully and professionally create, plan, advertise and evaluate our film and our ancillary texts. From this evaluation we can clearly see in what stages we could have furthered or improved the speed, quality and effectiveness of our work.
Construction:
We used the editing software final cut to successfully manage to replicate my character (alpha 7 & Charles Preston)we did this by filming my characters in two separate stages i stood at one side of a screen and acted then moved to the other side and acted, we were then able to edit it so my characters were on the same screen at the same time.
Planning:
We learnt about the importance of planning last year, we did not plan our shot types properly and ended up with continuity and we did not plan out any schedule so we had to go and re-film and entire scene. we aimed to avoid that this year.
This year we planned ahead, we checked the bbc weather forecast to check it was not raining so we could film. We also drew a map using word and google maps to direct people to the filming locations. we also used phone and social networking sites to contact the people who volunteered to be extras in our film and arrange a time and a day to film.
directions to bethel community centre
We found that research and planning through the use of Media technologies were key in order for our Film to be successful.
All of our research, planning construction and evaluation has been carried through the medium of blogger.
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