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.

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!

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!

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:

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!

Vlog: Title fonts

Here is a quick vlog me and Tayla did about the choice of our title fonts, we will upload the ones which we have selected!

Update vlog: voiceover and background music

Here is a vlog we did today whilst editing, giving a brief update on the sound in our opening (my big head is in the way throughout, sorry).
Rhianne put together a track on garageband, looping it so it lasted for two minutes, however we have come to realize that for some parts of the opening, the sound does not fit with the visuals.
We are trying to find a way to make the track fit and distort the sound when our titles appear, much like in the trailer for Se7en (1995) which can be found here.
We are still yet to record our voiceover, but we have found two people who are willing to do it, with voices which we think will work nicely.

Update vlog

Here is a quick vlog which we did whilst editing, briefly explaining our progress on creating sound for our two minute opening, and how we might film the final scene.

Group vlog: editing and ideas for sound

Here is a group vlog which we did in our lesson - we have been considering possible changes to the sound in our opening, and we have discussed the possibility of replacing our dialogue with a voice over.

First editing day vlog!

We have just started editing the footage for our two minute opening, and while we were up in the media room we decided to do a quick vlog:


So far, we're finding editing pretty hard and we have realized that it is an extremely slow process. Nevertheless, we're still having a laugh looking at a few of the clips!
We have almost finished sorting out which shots we would like to use, and we are following our storyboard very closely to establish the order of our shots.
We are still unsure whether we need to re-film anything, and we still have one more location to film in - so far, it is going quite well...