Evaluation

So, after many weeks of filming and hours upon hours of editing, my film was finally finished and it was time to evaluate. I chose to do my evaluation as a video piece as I wanted it to be as creative and interesting as possibly and I'm hoping that my evaluation is just that.

After watching through my evaluation I realised that I have missed out a lot that I wanted to say about the various questions and now being minus a camera, I have written out my extra notes for my answers:

QUESTION 1:

As well as using conventional media products to make my film opening, I think that I have both conformed and challenged the forms and conventions of real media productions.

With my titling, I think that it is unique. I’ve not come across anything like it in my movie watching experience and so I am happy that I have managed to come up with an idea that is quite original and eye-catching. I think that my titling worked well with my film opening and built suspense along with questions in the mind of the viewer. Also, I believe that, with my titling, I have managed to create something that looks quite professional despite the fact that I had an extremely small budget to produce this film opening compared to the professionals.

The low budget meant that I couldn’t afford a lot of the equipment that the professional film makers use to produce their films. Instead of large cranes with lights on and a light and sound team, I had house lamps to create the atmosphere of the opening being at night without having it completely black and, thanks to my brother, I had a studio microphone to record the narration on so the sound was crisp and clear. However, I think that I could have made my film opening look better by shooting in the day and darkening the footage later using After Effects as the end result would have had a lot more detail in the image, but I suppose by not having this level of detail, I have challenged the conventions of real media productions.

The setting, I think conforms to real media products. My film opening is set in the present day and starts by a girl being unhappy with the world in which she lives which is your standard, stereotypical suburbia.  This is similar to a few other sci-fi films such as ‘Super 8’. While the story is set in 1979, the protagonist, Joe, isn’t happy with the course of his life and is bored being stuck in suburbia. The setting of suburbia is common not just in sci-fi films but also in action, rom-coms and pretty much any other genre you can think of. So, in this way, I have conformed to the conventions of the media.

QUESTION 1/2: 
Lia’s costume reflects her personality and, in a way, conforms to the look of being an outcast which is seen in many different genres in many ages of film. Take The Joker from ‘The Dark Knight’ for example. The audience are made aware that he is more of an outcast type of character by the costume and make-up that he wears. He doesn’t have to say anything for the audience to be aware that he is different and Lia is the same. I dressed her so that she was wearing mis-matching colours, her style of clothing was an array of garments from different eras and her make-up showed her creativity and the fact that it wasn’t hidden showed that she didn’t care what people thought of her. The idea of her 'different' costume is similar to those of the characters of the Zeta house girls in 'The House Bunny'. They are all portrayed as geeks and outcasts through their clothing and, like with Lia and The Joker, the audience don't have to see the characters behaving to know that they are different from the norm of their society. So again, I have conformed to the media by conforming to the idea of an outcast’s costume. 

QUESTION 4:
An idea of the kind of person who would watch my movie:

An idea of Dylan

Dylan, 25, is a graduate music student from the University of East Anglia. He now works full time as a shop assistant in a music shop in Anglia Square in Norwich and this job is enough to pay his share of the rent of his flat, food and other necessities and still have a little left over. He lives in a flat in Norwich with his girlfriend Sarah who is training to become a primary school teacher. They met at University and have now been together for four years. Dylan goes to the cinema twice a month, once with his mates and once with Sarah. Him and his mates go to Cinema City more than Odeon as they like to watch more independent films and are not concerned about whether a film is confined to a genre or not. With Sarah, Dylan will usually go to Odeon or Vue as Sarah is a far more mainstream fan though he will sometimes take her to see something less mainstream.

Also, because I thought that my film would be watched predominantly by teenage boys, I asked more teenage boys than anyone else when it came to doing my audience research as I wanted to find out what they like in a film and see if I could cater to their tastes. See my audience research here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHE_3MM1oSs  

QUESTION 5: 

As well as advertising my film opening on the internet after i made it, when I was making the film, I had to think about how it would attract my main audience of teenage boys. From my research (to watch, click above link) I had learnt about how they don't like too much to be given away so I tried my make my film opening intriguing without giving too much away. I think I have succeeded in this by having clues in the opening about what the rest of the film will hold. The flashing lights and the letter about Lia leaving home will hopefully evoke questions in the audience's mind about where she is going. The dramatic and war-like title music will hopefully make the audience think that something poignant will happen later on in the movie. Also, I'm hoping that the titles are a foreshadowing of the action that would occur later on in the film, had I been making the whole film. Another point came up in my audience research that films that make you think are good because they give you a sense of achievement so i incorporated that with the fact that my audience don't like to be told too much about the film opening by trying to evoke lots of questions in the audience about Lia. In the opening, the audience are not fully introduced to her character or the kind of life she leads, all they know is that she somehow doesn't fit in and that she's leaving 'for a better place'. Hopefully I have been successful in my endeavours. 

Soul Beneath Final Cut!

I've finally completed my film opening! Since my rough cut I have added cutaway shots and edited the opening so that the transition between shots is smoother and the story is easier to follow. So, here it is. Soul Beneath:

Soul Beneath Attempt 3

After filming all my cutaway shots and my missing shots, I assembled them together, edited them down and colour corrected the footage to make it look like it was in Lia's bedroom. I also put flares in the titles to try and break them up a bit so they are less monotonous and also reflect the flashing lights in the footage.

Here is Soul Beneath, take 3:

In the film opening, I think that the cutaway shots (news article headlines from 1969) give an indication of the journey that Lia will take but I'm not sure that they really match the rest of my footage.

Time for Improvement/Filming Day 2

After receiving feedback from my classmates, I set about adding a few shots into my film opening so that I could fill in the gaps and also, in adding extra shots, I am able to shorten the lengthy shots of Lia writing and add in cutaway shots which should make the viewer's experience of my film opening less monotonous.

I also needed to film a short shot with Lia as in my rough cut, the footage where Lia gets to the window was not usable so I left it out of my rough cut hoping that it would look ok. In a nutshell, it didn't so i had to reshoot. Unfortunately, my actress was not available to film when I wanted to so I improvised and dressed up as Lia myself. I thought that because I had the costume available to me and the same dark hair as my actress, I could probably pull off a shot from behind of Lia walking to the window. Before I could do that however, I had to make a few changes. My hair is naturally curly and, quite frankly, wild whilst my actress' hair was straight so I had to pull out the straighteners and subject my hair to hot iron plates. Then my mum put my hair in bunches and used the original ribbon used in my first shoot to put bows in my hair. Once I put the costume on, I could just about pass as my actress from behind so I set to work shooting.

Overall, it went pretty well and although I couldn't get the lighting quite dark enough, I should be able to alter this in After Effects.

As for cutaway shots, I spend a good half an hour searching the house for something interesting to shoot that was relevant to my film. I then stumbled across my mum's vintage book collection and found a chronicle of the 20th century. In it were all the headlining article in newspapers throughout the 20th century. Immediately I flicked through to 1969 and found the article about Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. I took a few shots and moved on. I then found old, leather bound dictionaries and experimented with a few shots around the definition of 'alien' but I'm not sure whether these will make the final cut. Also when I was searching around, I was very happy to find an original 1976 Star Trek annual... but that's not really relevant so I'll just save that for myself.

Rough Cut: Audience Feedback

On Friday, we were given the opportunity to showcase our rough cut of our film openings to the rest of the class. Everyone was given a feedback sheet to comment on each person's film opening. I was fairly happy with my rough cut when it was screened but I still knew that I had a lot still to do to get it up to the high level four that I am aiming for for this project.

Out of the ten feedback sheets I received, three marked me as a level three, two people thought I was on the boundary of level three and four and the remaining five marked me as a level four. Overall, the average mark given to me was forty-seven out of sixty which just places me in level four. However, I still need to gain more marks as I want to acheive the best marks I possibly can.

On my feedback sheets there were mainly positive comments. The main element which most people wrote about was the dramatic music for the titles (which many people also gave positive feedback about) and said how it worked really well to build suspense and give you an idea of the kind of film 'Soul Beneath' would turn out to be. Also, many people commented on the character of Lia and how they thought I had presented her well through her costume and make-up.

However, one person did comment on how they thought that my actress was too old for the role even though she is sixteen playing an eighteen year old! Also, a few people pointed out that my titles were a little too fast for them to read so I will take this into consideration and slow them down slightly in my final piece.

Whilst taking on board the comments from my classmates I think that I will venture further than my media class to give feedback on my film. I want people to be as critical as they can so that I can take everything on board and change my film opening for the better!

Playing with the order of shots

Since the last blog post, I have been playing around with the order of my shots to see if I can create a more dynamic film opening. I tried moving the shot where 'Lia' is at the window looking out, to the start of the film opening so that the audience can gather a clearer picture of her character earlier on in the film but this meant that it didn't fade into the titles like it did before. I exported the video with the changed order of shots and showed both the original cut and the changed cut to a few people and it was unanimous that the original cut was better than the cut with the changed order of shots and so, I am going to add a few more shots into the original cut (such as cutaways and a shot of her actually getting to the window) in an effort to try and improve my film opening.

Below is the cut with the changed shot order.

Deciding to change

Although I have received positive feedback from pretty much all of the people I have shown my rough cut to, I still think that I need to change it. At the moment, I think that the opening of my film is a little bit monotonous. It doesn't make as much of an impact that I hoped for and I'm not sure that I like what has been said in the voice over - i.e. I'm not sure if I have given too much away. I think I am going to re-write the script and re-do the voiceover as well as play around with the order of shots to try and create a more interesting and memorable piece of film.

Progress - Colour correction

Since creating my rough cut, I have shown it to a few people who would fit my target audience to get some feedback. At the moment, all feedback has been positive but as I watched the opening more and more, the more things I saw that needed to be changed. For one, I realised that the lighting isn't very continuous in brightness and contrast so I edited most of the clips to try and make all the shots have the same light intensity. Some shots I have had to make darker and when shown next to the original shot, they look worse purely because the edits are darker than the originals but I need the setting to be dark as it is meant to be night time and by making all the shots slightly darker, I have managed to achieve the same kind of light intensity in all the shots.



Before colour correction



After colour correction



Before colour correction

After colour correction

Before colour correction

After colour correction

Before colour correction

After colour correction

The main thing that I wanted to edit was the shot of the close up writing in the middle of the film opening. Originally, I applied a mask to the text in After Effects and made it so everything was blurry apart from the words that Lia is reading in ther voice over at the time. Unfortunately, when I tried to export this experiment, it didn't work and the mask kept blacking out the text totally and it didn't work so I had to come up with another plan. I ended up applying another mask but feathering the picture so that the outside of the shot was dark and the text was light and therefore highlighted.

Writing before edit



Writing after edit



Rough cut complete!

After many hours of filming, editing and creating, I have a rough cut of my film opening completed. I have put together all the decent and usable footage that I had along with the music and voice overs and I now have a film opening which I can show to people to gain feedback. However, because I have not yet obtained permission from the composer of the song for my titles, I will post the film opening on here without the music from the titles as I do not want to be subject to any copyright offences.

At the moment, my rough cut is only just two minutes long and made up of a few longer shots so I think that I am going to have to shoot a few more shots to act as fillers so that I can shorten the longer shots so that it won't be boring or laborious to anybody. Also, I need to have a play around with colour effects on Premiere Pro to see if I can make it look any more realistic.

Ideas for film poster

Because I had finished my rough cut and I had an hour of lesson to fill, I thought that I could create some film posters on Photoshop. Below are my ideas.

Here is the first idea that I had. I thought it was bold and simplistic like my film and also my production companies. Originally, I had the film title in a bigger font but my neighbouring peer, Bill, suggested using a smaller font. I preferred this look as it creates a lot of empty space around the title and because of the contrasting black and white (and the fact that the title is the only thing on the page) you are instinctively drawn to it. Myself and Bill also thought that only having the film title on the poster created intrigue and questions in the viewer that made them want to find out more about the film.

On the right is my second idea. I thought that because the title was going to be the only thing on the page, that it should be bold and interesting. So, I duplicated the white title and changed the colour to a light and strange shade of green. I then layered it over the top of the white title, slightly off centre, so that it creates an image that looks 3D.

 

Left is my third idea. This time, I simply changed the white text to black so that the green text appears as if it has breaks in it, almost reflecting the personality of my protagonist.

The fourth idea is on the right. This idea was thought of by Bill and I think that the use of a purpley-pink looks very effective.

 

Left is my fifth idea. For this idea, I used white text and added a green glow around it which illuminates the title and, I think, makes it stand out from the page even more. Also, the illumination could be a reference to the searchlights that the viewer sees in the film opening.

Editing Stage 3

When editing, I thought that I should have a second ident at the beginning of my film due to the fact that a lot of films are not just produced or distributed by one company. Therefore, I created an indent for a distribution company: One Touch Entertainment. I sketched out a few ideas about what I thought the ident could look like and eventually i decided on the idea of having a simple handprint underneath the title of the film company. Below is a picture of the ident and the ident video.

Overall, editing is going well and I will have something to showcase to my class tomorrow so I can get feedback on what I have done so far. At the moment, I'm a little concerned about the music as I am not sure that it works very well with the film but hopefully my classmates will tell me their opinions about it tomorrow. Also, I think that I need to make the transition from one piece of music to the other smoother  and less obvious.

After the disaster of the though of having to convert every clip of footage, I got it all converted and have re-edited it all together. There are some shots that I think are too long but I need to meet the two minute mark for my film. I think that I will have to film some extra shots to act as fillers so that the audience are not watching one shot for too long.

Editing Stage 2

Disaster has struck and I am having to re-edit my entire film opening. Thanks to someone who used the school camera previous to myself, the settings were not on their default settings and so the footage was in full HD. This doesn't sound like a problem but because my titles are in normal HD (720p) and full HD is too big for a computer screen, I am having to convert all of my footage into 720p individually and re-edit them together. I have a lot of work to do and only a week to do it. It's an understatement to say that I'm a little stressed out right now...

Also, my teacher told me today that we are not allowed to have copyrighted music so my plans to have Cirque du Soleil's 'Battlefield' as the song for my titles may not happen. I will have to look around to try and find alternatives that are hopefully as good as I originally wanted.

Editing Conventions

Continuity editing – events unfold in chronological order (e.g. V for Vendetta)
Cross cutting – where two different scenes are shown one after the other so the audience believe that the scenes are occurring at the same time (e.g. V for Vendetta)
Eye line match – when a frame shows what the subject is looking at (e.g. V for Vendetta)
CONTINUITY EDITING IN 'V FOR VENDETTA'
Flashback – an event that has already occurred in relation to the film (e.g. The Hangover)

Flash-forward – an event that will happen in the future in relation to the film (e.g. Amores Perros)
'AMORES PERROS' OPENING SCENE - FLASHFORWARD
Montage – shots combined to show the passing of time (e.g. Rocky)

Fast paced – lots of small shots cut together to create action, suspense and tension (e.g. Die Hard)

Slow paced – long shots, usually used for dialogues (e.g. Snatch)

Editing

Editing is well underway at the moment and with only a week left until my deadline, I'm going to have to use a few of my frees to add in my final touches. I still need to add the voice over for Lia and the soft music for Lia's footage and generally tighten up the footage.

This is a screenshot of Premiere while i've been editing. You can see that I've cut down a lot of my footage and I have my titles in place too. I was very relived when I got them finished as it took me a while to get them done.

Below you can see a screenshot from my titles. I thought that adding newspaper articles behind the titles would make the credits a bit more interesting and give information about what the film is about. With each credit comes another newspaper article and this, coupled with the dramatic music should hopefully account for some interesting titles.

To-do

- Record Lia's voice over
- Record soft guitar piece for Lia's scenes
- Experiment with lighting effects and other filters on Premiere and After Effects to create the best image for my film
- Additional ident
- Blog progress of editing
- Blog about editing conventions

Music for my film opening

Actors from Kà 

Music is going to be a key component of my film opening and I have planned to have my brother compose some music to run throughout my film opening. I've asked him to come up with a slow and melodic (yet sad) tune for the parts of the opening with footage and something 'in your face' and dramatic for the titles. He has come up with a melodic melody for my footage but is really struggling to compose something for the titles. I am motivating him to try and come up with something but incase he cannot manage to come up with something then I have planned an alternative.

An act from Kà

I've seen many Cirque du Soleil shows and their 2005 show, Kà, was one of my favourites. In it, there is a song called 'Battlefield' composed by René Dupéré that would be perfect for my film opening. It is very 'in your face' and dramatic and conveys the premonition of a war. I have sent an email to the makers of Cirque du Soleil enquiring as to whether I could use the song 'Battlefield' (if I need it). A copy of my email can be seen below:

Dear members of the Cirque du Soleil team,

First of all, I am a huge fan of the Cirque du Soleil productions. I only wish I could be as talented as the acts I’ve seen both live and on the television. I am currently creating a movie opening for my AS level in Media Studies and I would love to use the song ‘Battlefield’ from the show Kà for my opening credits. It is perfect to give away the mood and the premonition of a coming war that I need for my film. Because René Dupéré has composed the song, I am aware that it is not free for use and so I am asking for your and/or his permission to use this song in my film opening. It is for educational purposes only and will not be published in any way.

It would be appreciated if you could respond as quickly as possible as my deadline is in just under three weeks.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.

Thank you for your time,
Evie Calaby,
Norfolk, England


Here is the song 'Battlefield' which I may use for my titles:

George Lucas

George Lucas is my one of my favourite directors and because he is so successful (particularly with the best films ever made - Star Wars) I thought that it would be appropriate to research him...

   George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born 14th May 1944 in Modesto, California) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2011.

   Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks.
   Lucas then transferred to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. USC was one of the earliest universities to have a school devoted to motion picture film. During the years at USC, George Lucas shared a dorm room with Randal Kleiser. Along with classmates such as Walter Murch, Hal Barwood and John Milius, they became a clique of film students known as The Dirty Dozen. He also became very good friends with fellow acclaimed student filmmaker and future Indiana Jones collaborator, Steven Spielberg. Lucas was deeply influenced by the Filmic Expression course taught at the school by filmmaker Lester Novros which concentrated on the non-narrative elements of Film Form like color, light, movement, space, and time. Another huge inspiration was the Serbian montagist (and dean of the USC Film Department) Slavko Vorkapich, a film theoretician comparable in historical importance to Sergei Eisenstein, who moved to Hollywood to make stunning montage sequences for studio features at MGM, RKO, and Paramount. Vorkapich taught the autonomous nature of the cinematic art form, emphasizing the unique dynamic quality of movement and kinetic energy inherent in motion pictures.
   Lucas fell madly in love with pure cinema and quickly became prolific at making 16 mm nonstory noncharacter visual tone poems and cinéma vérité with such titles as Look at Life, Herbie, The Emperor, Anyone Lived in a Pretty (how) Town and Filmmaker. He was passionate and interested in camerawork and editing, defining himself as a filmmaker as opposed to being a director, and he loved making abstract visual films that create emotions purely through cinema.
   After graduating with a bachelor of fine arts in film in 1967, he tried joining the United States Air Force as an officer, but he was immediately turned down because of his numerous speeding tickets. He was later drafted by the Army for military service in Vietnam, but he was exempt from the draft after medical tests showed he had diabetes, the disease that killed his paternal grandfather.
   In 1967, Lucas re-enrolled as a USC graduate student in film production. Working as a teaching instructor for a class of U.S. Navy students who were being taught documentary cinematography, Lucas directed the short film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which won first prize at the 1967–68 National Student Film Festival, and was later adapted into his first full-length feature film, THX 1138. Lucas was awarded a student scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe and work on the making of a film of his choosing. The film he chose was Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who at the time was revered among film school students of the time as a cinema graduate who had "made it" in Hollywood. In 1969, George Lucas was one of the camera operators on the classic Rolling Stones concert film ‘Gimme Shelter’.
   Lucas then created his own company, Lucasfilm, Ltd. and directed ‘American Graffiti’ (1973). His new-found wealth and reputation enabled him to develop a story set in space. Even so, he encountered difficulties getting Star Wars made. It was only because Alan Ladd, Jr. at Fox Studios liked American Graffiti that he forced through a production and distribution deal for the film, which ended up restoring Fox to financial stability after a number of flops.
However, Star Wars quickly became the highest-grossing film of all-time, displaced five years later by Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. During the filming of Star Wars, Lucas waived his up-front fee as director and negotiated to own the licensing rights (for novelizations, T-shirts, toys, etc.)—rights which the studio thought were nearly worthless. This decision earned him hundreds of millions of dollars as he was able to directly profit from all the licensed games, toys, and collectibles created for the franchise. This accumulated capital enabled him to finance the sequel himself.

FILMOGRAPHY:

1971       THX 1138

1973       American Graffiti

1977       Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

1979       More American Graffiti

1980       Kagemusha

1980       Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

1981       Body Heat

1981       Raiders of the Lost Ark

1983       Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

1983       Twice Upon a Time

1984       Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

1985       Latino

1985       Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

1986       Howard the Duck

1986       Labyrinth

1986       Powaqqatsi

1988       Willow

1988       Tucker: The Man and His Dream

1988       The Land Before Time

1989       Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

1991       Hook

1994       Beverly Hills Cop III

1994       Radioland Murders

1999       Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

2002       Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

2005       Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

2008       Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008       Star Wars: The Clone Wars

2012       Red Tails

AWARDS:

Lucas has won 24 awards overall. All of his wins and nominations can be viewed here:

GEORGE LUCAS' AWARDS

TRAILERS:

Star Wars: A New Hope

Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Land Before Time

Beverly Hills Cop III

Science-fiction research

Because I am choosing to make a science-fiction film, I thought that it would be a good idea to do some research into the history of science-fiction...


Science-fiction or ‘sci-fi’ has been around in science literature since the early 10th century, and always had a large role in the media industry. Sci-fi deals with the implausible, and attempts to make it sound plausible via science
Fantasy and Sci-fi are often confused, as they both look at the impossible; the difference is that sci-fi being Science-fiction often has a believable or scientific explanation as to what is happening and why, such as aliens from other planets, whereas fantasy often contains unbelievable and very imaginative (yet fun) concepts of magic & portals to other worlds full of fluffy animals.

The norm of sci-fi contains ideas of either the future of computer technology (flying cars, artificial intelligence, spaceships etc) or aliens. One of the first sci-fi movies as we see them today, with evil aliens etc., is ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ (released 28th September 1951).

‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ was directed by Robert Wise and starred Michael Rennie as Klaatu, Patricia Neal as Helen Benson and Hugh Marlowe as Tom Stevens. The whole movie was filmed from 9th April 1951 until 23rd May 1951 and had a budget of just over US$1 million. The film was moderately successful when released, accruing US$1,850,000 in distributors' domestic (U.S. and Canada) rentals. The IMDB plot summary of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ reads: ‘An alien (Klaatu) with his mighty robot (Gort) land their spacecraft on Cold War-era Earth just after the end of World War II. They bring an important message to the planet that Klaatu wishes to tell to representatives of all nations. However, communication turns out to be difficult, so, after learning something about the natives, Klaatu decides on an alternative approach.’ Below is the trailer for 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'.

Most often a Sci-fi movie will be tied in with other genres, Sci-fi is a lot broader than some other genres as any movie can be made a sci-fi, a comedy, or a horror, or a mystery, could just as easily be set in the future or even the modern day and be called a sci-fi, as they can be called a comedy, horror, or mystery.

Filming Fail

I decided that I needed an establishing shot for my film to give the audience a sense of location and to tell the audience a little bit about Lia's lifestyle and give them an indication of why she doesn't fit in. I thought that a vertical pan down from the starry night sky to 'her bedroom window' would be an appropriate establishing shot as the stars would give a subtle indication of what was to come and the view of Lia's house would show what kind of environment she has been forced to live in. I used a window on the side of my house instead of the window that my brother shone the lights through because I didn't want to reveal the balcony as I think that the audience would immediately click as to how I incorporated the flashing lights into the scene. I shot from a field adjacent to my house to try and get the vertical pan that I was aiming for. It was a beautiful starry night and there were no clouds what so ever. It was perfect and it was freezing. I wrapped up warm and braved the cold only to fail in my endevours. The camera couldn't pick up the stars so what was meant to be the starry night sky was a dark blue grainy mess. I was not happy....

This failure means that I am going to come up with another idea for my establishing shot but itf all else fails, I will just have to start the film with my original idea.

Interviews

I think that it would be a good idea to do some interviews with people of my target audience about my film idea and see whether the film sounds interesting to them and whether they think that would be a success or a complete flop. I will pitch the whole film to them individually and then run through the opening of the film in detail and record their responses.


My first interview is with my brother. He is the younger element of my target audience but I suppose that if my film were to be released in the cinema, a lot of teenage boys would see it with their mates as a social thing. My brother generally has a good taste in film (i.e. not rom-com drivel) so I thought that he would be a good person to ask about 'Soul Beneath'. Here's what he had to say (by the way, I'm not sure why the camera seems wobbly as it was sat still on a tripod for the whole interview and try and ignore the annoying slapping - he's a drummer):

Hopefully I will be doing some more interviews soon and I will post them up as soon as possible.