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Evaluation: Question 7

Evaluation: Question 6

Evaluation: Question 5

Evaluation: Question 4

Evaluation: Question 3

Evaluation: Question 2

Evaluation: Question 1

Showcase evening: audience feedback

Here is a summary of our audience feedback from the showcase evening yesterday,
we asked people for feedback in face to face interviews and a total of 89 people answered using the feedback sheets!

Showcase vlog

Here is a quick vlog that we did, featuring Mac 3 (at the back of the hall) after the showcase.

Showcase thumbnail

Here is the screenshot we have chosen to use as a thumbnail for the media showcase posters; the showcase evening is on Monday 16th March - we're really excited!

Codes and conventions

Here are two really useful Slideshare presentations which relate to our chosen genre - psychological thriller. These were particularly useful when planning my evaluation... 

Evaluation questions and marking criteria

Film classification

As we have finished producing our two minute opening, we have done some research into the rating it would be issued, if it was made into a feature length film. Using the BBFC website, we decided on the most appropriate rating for our film.




















Our film would not be a '12A' because...

Our film has quite a dark tone, and it touches upon some unsettling themes including drug abuse, murder/ strong violence.

Though it was not used in our opening, strong language may occur throughout our film, because although our protagonist is professional, the film shows her status declining.

Violent behaviour may be exhibited by our protagonist, as a result of her drug abuse/ side effects.

Inevitably, dangerous behaviour and drug misuse will be exhibited in our film as it ties in with out plot. Although we are not glamorizing or endorsing these behaviours, they would definitely be a persistent theme.

We have decided to rate our film '15'...

BBFC features of a '15' rating.

The drugs featured in our film are more likely to be prescribed, and are therefore less accessible to the audience. Our film does not endorse drug use, and rather, portrays the unappealing side effects.

Some of our film inspiration has also helped us decide what certificate to give our film, as they include similar themes...

Side Effects

Girl, Interrupted

The final product

Here is our the final version of our two minute opening!

Continuity error!

Today, we were putting the final touches on our opening, when we spotted a continuity error!

Plastic container not on the windowsill

☹

We're all really shocked, as we've only noticed this a day before the deadline (thanks to Rhianne's impeccable eye for detail!) The error is very subtle but we didn't want to take the risk of leaving it in there.
We spent ages trying to figure out how to cut the box out of the frame, as the shot of Hannah taking the pills is vital - we played around in iMovie, Photoshop and even Adobe Premiere, but in the end we decided to sacrifice the panning shot beforehand; we then resynchronized the music, adjusted the titles, and put in the final touches.

Fourth film draft

This is what our opening looks like now! We have changed the order of our shots and added in the director's credit.
We now need to finish the titles, making the names and their credits appear together. We are almost done synchronizing the sound.
The date for our extended deadline is on Friday the 27th, and hopefully we'll be done before then!

Director's credit update vlog

Here is the vlog after all the director's credit stress... we are so happy!

Director's credit update

After today's editing session, we finally managed to get our title on the pill bottle!
It was quite a long process, and we used many different types of online photo editing software...

Here is a screenshot of one of the many online photo editors -  fotor.com we were planning to use, however we were unable to crop this properly in iMovie; the title came out too small and we couldn't rotate it. 

We then decided to use photoshop, which allowed us to freely rotate the textbox to the position we desired. We spent ages trying to figure out why the background of the text was not transparent, only to find out we had exported it as JPEG instead of PNG... 

We finally imported this into iMovie as a 'picture in picture' as it now appears on the bottle, yay!

Director's first credit examples

Our establishing shot

The establishing shot of our opening is a pill bottle, which we have decided to add a title into. We wanted the title 'a ____ film' or 'a film by ____' on the bottle, because we think it works well in the shot to introduce the name of our director. Here are some other examples of this being done in films:

The Dead Zone (1983)

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Beetlejuice (1988)

Donnie Brasco (1997)

Hollowman (2000)

Dreamcatcher (2003)

Fight Club (1999)

Se7en (1995)

Various Tarantino films

Extended deadline

After hearing the feedback in our lesson on Wednesday, we decided to take on board the advice and all the constructive criticism we received. This means we still had a lot to finish before today's deadline. Thankfully though, Miss Foster has given us an extended deadline which is on Friday 27th of February. This means we have another week to finish our opening; we don't have a lot to do now so we plan to really knuckle down and use all the opportunities we get to complete our opening!

Third film draft

Here is our third draft! We have added in the voice over with the background music and we have decided on the font for our titles, which we said we would do by today!

However, after hearing the feedback from our class, the A2 media class and Miss Foster, we have decided to take the advice on board, change the order of our shots, and cut a few bits out. We think this new order  might work a bit better, because our film title currently comes in at 1:53 which is really late, and our new order works to have our title come in at around 1:00.We are also trying to get as close to 2 minutes as possible, so cutting a few bits out is probably necessary.

After today we have to change the order of our shots, resynchronize and alter the music, make the name titles bigger, and cut a few bits out. We remain hopeful that this wont take too long!

Here is a picture of some rough notes, detailing what we picked up from our feedback:

Finishing off our background music

We have 3 days left until our deadline, and we're working very tightly to finalize our opening. Today, we managed to finish creating our background music. Here is a picture of the project in audacity:

To match the titles to our sound effects we had to use a split screen as this was done on a laptop, and we had to watch closely, for the duration and timing of each title to match it to our audio:

All we have left to do is correct the font of our titles and add in our voice over, which will hopefully be done in tomorrow's editing session. We also have the whole of Thursday to add the finishing touches to our opening - we aim to be done before our deadline!

Recording our voice over

This morning we recorded our voice over. We used a dictaphone, as our previous attempt to record on the Mac meant our sound was quite muffled. We used our actress, Hannah C's, own voice and this worked really well because she of course knows the character better than anyone else! We asked her to speak in a slow, monotonous tone as she narrates her disarranged lifestyle, which shows her change in personality under the influence of drugs. We also considered the fact that it was a voice over to the film opening, so we chose to keep it fairly simple and not give too much away - we tried to maintain a sense of detachment as the voice upholds the status of our character, who appears professional to others in her working environment.
Here is a picture of the script, with bits and bobs which Miss Foster helped us change:

We are really happy with how our voice over sounds and we have just imported into iMovie - it works quite well on top of the background music.

Extra filming day/ correcting continuity errors

This evening, Mac 5 went back to the surgery to get a shot of Hannah walking out of the surgery door, and to correct our continuity error. We also managed to get a cut of Hannah C's itching hands to Hannah F's itching hands which we hope will show the similarities between our main character and her patient. We were originally going to use this as a match cut, however we think it might be more effective like this as it compliments what is said in our narrative voice over.

Here are stills of the two shots we used to draw parallels between our characters:

Here are some other filming stills:

Production company update

In today's lesson, we finished the two logo's for our production companies. We stuck to our original idea 'wildfire productions' but we also added the company 'static entertainment'. We decided to film a television in school to capture some of the fuzz, on which our first production company will appear:

We decided to use one of the fonts we downloaded online for this title, to play with our viewers' eyes:

For wildfire productions, we chose to use an animated fire background which is uncopyrighted on wikimedia:

We used a font on iMovie (which looks similar to wood) and we are currently trying to figure out how to make it burn:

Second film draft

This is what our film opening looks like after today's editing session! We are happy with the order of the shots, and the way the title of the film looks. However, the track we made does not synchronize with the visuals so that needs to be edited; some of the titles don't appear for long enough; we still need to add in our voice over; we may need more shots for continuity; the production company logo is not finished AND we still need to cut the opening down. We are currently at 2 minutes and 18 seconds.
We feel that we still have quite a bit to do but we're working really hard to get it finished by next Friday, which is slowly creeping up on us...

Title sequence update

In today's lesson, we (roughly) finished doing our title sequence, so we are now able to synchronize the background music to each title. Here is a picture of us selecting our title font in the lesson:

We decided against the original fonts we downloaded for the name titles, because they look quite unprofessional, and although they compliment our film title, they don't seem to fit against the visuals on screen. We did however, select one of the downloadable fonts for our film title, which we really like! This is what it looks like...

Here is a quick vlog we did in our lesson about our progress today:

Composing our sound/ website credits

Mac 5 have decided that to avoid any copyright issues, we will piece together our own background music.

However, for our main background music we have used a track, of which all credits go to "Royalty Free Music from Bensound".

This is the track we used...

http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/deep-blue.

 Here is proof of our rights to use the track.

We also picked a few sound effects from freeSFX.com to layer over the background music for when the titles appear. This website also has uncopyrighted sound effects, free for download so we avoided any issues...

Proof of our rights to use the sound effects.

Here is what it looks like, mid production...

We used audacity - it is a pretty simple software which we have all used before.

Editing update

So far this week, we have been editing our opening and recording our voice over. Here is a picture of our voice (Janel) which was taken while the voice over was being recorded:

At first, we recorded the voice over using iMovie and Garageband, but it sounded as if it was being echoed so we re recorded it on our camera. We are unsure whether we will use this sound though, and we may need to re record it if it doesn't fit correctly.We are also having a dilemma about the background music, which needs to fit the order of our shots - we may still need to get one or two shots for continuity. We are working really close to our deadline, but we hope that with all our free time spent on editing, we will get it done in time!

First film draft!

This is where we are currently at with our film opening. We obviously have a lot to do!
We are unsure about the background music, as it doesn't fit in some places so we are going to try and make it sound more distorted. We also haven't added our voice over in yet.
We haven't completely worked out the order of our shots, and whether some of them are relevant. We thought adding transitions on iMovie when changing locations would work, however we have come to realize that this looks a bit silly, so we might need to shoot some more for the purpose of continuity, or find a way to make our current shots flow more smoothly into one another.
The titles are not yet added in, and we have not chosen the title font yet so we are also going to change that.
We hope to get our sound done by early next week and we also hope to finish the majority of our editing by the end of next week, giving us enough time to make any last minute changes.

Makeup, costume and props!

Here is our main actress, Hannah C, in costume on our final day of filming. We chose to have our character dressed formally, because this is how you might expect a psychiatrist to dress at work.
The outfit consists of very dark colours, to show that our character is shady. We wanted Hannah to wear a skirt, to highlight her femininity as we are challenging the typical conventions of a psychological thriller in which male actors usually appear as the lead role.

We also chose to keep her hair out because it looks less tidy and it falls in front of her face, which gives the audience the impression that she is keeping her face hidden. This emphasizes not only her introverted personality as perceived by the public eye, but also her paranoia and lack of self confidence.
Hannah wore minimal makeup, as we wanted her to appear sophisticated and professional to her patients.



 
We also used a few props...
The prescription we used, which Hannah C administers to Hannah F in the office scene. We used a real prescription from the surgery to make the scene look more realistic.

The large pill bottle was originally shot so our title could go on the bottle, so we covered it with a plain white sticky label however the titles needed to be bigger, and there was a risk of the title text getting lost as the bottle appears to be quite small on screen.

Another important prop was Hannah's glasses, which we used to film one of our favourite POV shots in the opening. We think the glasses were key in highlighting one of the main side effects - 'blurred vision'.