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.

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

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.

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.

Filming: Day 1

Today I started filming for my final production. My actress got to mine at about 5.15 and we had a thirty minute brief about the character, the script, the camera movements and I answered questions that she had. She had brought with her some interesting clothes that she thought could represent the character of Lia rather well and when she put on all the attire, she looked a lot like the original Lia that I had thought of. She brought with her a black poofy skirt with lots of netting, green leg-warmers and a dark green vest top. I added some blue accessories and black Converse so that I was able to stick to the original colour scheme and keep all the connotations of those colours. When it came to hair, I thought that something a little immature might suit the character and so my mum styled my actress' hair into bunches and I then tied silver ribbons around each bunch into a bow. For Lia's make-up, I decided to have dark blue eyeshadow with black glitter liner on the top lid and black eyeliner on the lower lid. I then extended the line from the lower lid across on of my actress' cheeks so that it expanded into a pattern which I then highlighted with more glitter eyeliner. Overall, she looked pretty weird, and very much a social outcast.

My set looked like a proper bedroom although there were a few problems with where to put everything that I didn't want in shot.

Lighting was another problem. Because it needed to be dark, to then get the lighting right so that it didn't look obvious was very difficult. If it was too dark, the footage was grainy and if it was too light, it didn't look like night time. In the end though, and with the help of my brother, we got the level of light pretty much perfect. Every detail is still visible and yet it is obviously night time. When it came to the flashing lights from outside, my brother (crazily if you ask me) volunteered to go out onto the balcony off the room, into the cold and dark with a powerful torch and shine it into the bedroom. He discovered that using a newspaper to cover and uncover the light beam looked more realistic than turning the torch on and off. Flashing the torch by turning it on and off looked a bit amateurish and the newspaper added a bit of fading and a professional touch to the light. I noticed that when the light shone into the set, it looked like a searchlight. At first, I thought that the light should be more dispersed but then I thought of the connotations of the searchlight image. The outsiders are looking for Lia, waiting to take her away. She's wanted by them. So in the end, I left it as more of a searchlight.

Filming went pretty well. I got a good performance from my brother with the lights and my actress as Lia along with a few outtakes that I can laugh at later. I had to do most shots more than once as I wanted it just right and I could tell that after a while, everyone was getting a little bored of me being so pernickety. However, I managed to get most of the shots done and only have a few more shots and my titles to do. I think that I may need to lengthen the footage a little with some cutaway shots and establishing shots so I will do them another time.

All in all, a good days work I think.

Revised set

Because I changed the location of the set for my production from my bedroom to my parents' bedroom, I drew out a new set plan to see how my props will work in this location. A drawing of my new set plan is shown below:

I've certainly got enough room to film but my only concerns are about how it will all look in the dark. I'm due to start filming in a few hours so hopefully all will go to plan. I have moved the furniture around and am now beginning to put in my props.

My parents' bedroom before:

My parents' bedroom after (unfortunately, the dents in the carpet where the bed used to be are quite prominant so I may have to adapt my camera shots so that they are not seen):

And this is the balcony that I'm using to my full advantage to shine bright lights through into the set so that they are at a level or slightly higher height to the set and so it should look more realistic.

I've not got long now until it gets dark so I need to put in my last few props and wait for my actress to arrive. I am also going to try out a few camera movements before she gets here so hopefully it won't take as long to shoot as I will know exactly what kind of shots I am after.

I should have a post about how filming went posted within the next few days so hopefully, I won't have to report about any disasters.

Pictures from filming

Here I am showcasing a few of the pictures from filming. Left you can see Tricia in costume. Granted, the picture isn't very clear but you can see that I managed to stick with the original colour scheme that I wanted (black skirt, green top & blue accessories). I put her hair in bunches to convey Lia's immaturity and used silver ribbon to give an extra childish touch.

To the right you can see the make-up that I decided on. I managed to use my original idea of drawing a strange pattern on the side of her face to show Lia's 'unusualness'. For this I used black eyeliner and a touch of glitter eyeliner so that it glimmered in the light coming from outside.

To the left is a shot of the set with 'Lia' sat at her desk writing her letter. On the board in front of her you can see the newspaper articles that I made to show Lia's interests and commitment to her hobby.

Creating Newspaper Articles

For my film opening, I need to have lots of newspaper articles about aliens and alien-related stories to show Lia's obsession with the extra-terrestrial life forms that could be outside our atmosphere. Because i couldn't find any real newspapers with stories about aliens, I turned to the Internet for stories. I found lots by just looking on Google and found a surprising amount on the BBC website. I printed off several articles that I found onto grey and yellow grainy paper which I found lying around (i thought it would look more authentic than plain white paper) but it looked far too clean cut to be from a newspaper. I ripped around the edges of each article and screwed them up but they still didn't look very realistic. For some reason, I thought that screwing up an article and chewing it would make it look a little more like a newspaper. It tasted disgusting but it actually worked! The paper looks a little more like newspaper paper and the text is a bit smudged like it is in a normal newspaper. This unfortunately meant that I had to chew all of my articles to make them look more authentic. It wasn't pleasant... I've now left them on the windowsill so hopefully the sun will fade them a bit to make them look like Lia has been displaying them for a long time and has therefore been an unusual being for quite a few years.

Lia: Character biography

Name: Lia Hurton (In Italian, the name Lia is considered to mean ‘uncertain’ which is perfect for the character of Lia in my film. Because of its meaning and the unusual way in which it is spelt [usually you see ‘Leah’], it gives my character individuality and a sense of uniqueness.)

Age: 18

Hometown: A small village in rural England. (It had to be set in a rural village as I need somewhere where there aren’t a lot of houses so that when I film, the flashing lights won’t disturb anybody. It is set in England, purely because my actress, Tricia, is English and I don’t think that putting on an accent is a good idea as is would probably not flow like a real accent.)

Personality: Lia is an unusual girl with unusual interests. She doesn’t conform to the norm of teenage girls in the sense that they go out, enjoy shopping, getting dressed up and hanging out with their friends. Lia is a loner, alone in her own world. She tends to be in her room studying, but not for school. She has a passion for the worlds beyond ours and is fascinated with the thought of extra-terrestrial life forms roaming the universe. She longs to be away from society and be free to explore her passion, a passion which worries everyone who knows her. It envelopes her life, much to the dismay of her mother who longs for Lia to be normal. Lia is a quiet individual but focused on what she wants and believes in. However, she is also a loving being and longs to find somewhere where she feels that she belongs.

Clothing:  Like her personality, Lia’s clothing style is also unique and unusual, some may say weird. She has no sense of fashion and that is clear in her choice of clothing. She mixes and matches random colours that often don’t go; but that reflects her quirky personality. Her look is quirky and laid-back, a style that doesn’t take a lot of effort to achieve. However, I think that there should be an element to the costume that shows that she tries to be like every other girl her age and that she tries to be fashionable.

Below are a few photos of a type of outfit that I think Lia (if she were a real person) would wear.

This is a random mash of clothing from my mum and my wardrobes. I think that it shows a laid-back personality of the character wearing it (in this case, Lia) and I also thought that the colours reflect her state of mind quite well. According to http://crystal-cure.com/color.html, the colours black (for her skirt), blue (for her top), green (for her jumper) and yellow (for her tights) mean the following things:

Black is a concealing colour and is misunderstood. It is said that in times of fear, black contains the energy of the unknown. It is also mysterious, providing a sense of potential and possibility. You dress in black if you want to become inconspicuous. Blue is a calming colour and is the colour of truth and moderation. Blue gives a feeling of distance and therefore, the energy of the colour blue allows us to look beyond and increase our perspective outward.

 Green symbolizes self-respect and well-being. It is a healing colour. Green contains the energies of nature, growth and desire to expand or increase. However, the colour green is often linked to jealously. Yellow symbolizes wisdom and brings clarity and awareness. It provides relief from panic, nervousness and exhaustion. I therefore think that these colours in the costume reflect Lia rather well as a character. It subtly lets the audience know almost everything about her character but you, as a viewer, would really have to think deeply about it. I think that this outift for Lia also shows how she is laid-back (with the jumper and t-shirt) as it is a bit frumpy. Yet the skirt with the embroidered hem shows that she tries to make an effort to be girly.

'Soul Beneath' Set Plan

Below you will see how I visualise the set of the opening few minutes of 'Soul Beneath'. It shows the bedroom of the protagonist, Lia, which will be the location for most, if not all, of the opening few minutes. I have shown the layout of the set with how I think the lighting effect will work and in red are where I think I could have various camera shots. Because Lia is an unusual girl and this film would be unusual also (in the sense that it doesn't conform to the mainstream mould), I want to experiment with camera shots and have some that you won't typically see in a mainstream movie. Also, I think that I need a lot of different camera shots that I can cut up during editing so that one shot is not too long and monotonous.

After drawing this plan, I took some photos of the kind of set that I was after. I took the photos of my room and while I don't have the right props yet, all the main things were in the right place as shown on my plan. The main thing that has to be with my set is that the window needs to be behind the desk so that the flashing lights come from behind Lia's head. My room would be ideal to film in but because it is on the first floor instead of the ground floor, it would be very difficult to do the lighting unless someone brave was willing to stand outside, in the dark, on a ladder, turning a very bright torch on and off for a while. I may be able to use my living room if I can rearrange it to look like a bedroom as that is on the ground floor but it would take a lot of work to move out the TV and sofas and bring in a bed and a desk. Also, my living room has a woodburner in it which would probably give away that the location isn't really a bedroom.

Basic layout of set

View from the window



A view showing the window behind the desk



'Soul Beneath' Storyboard

This is the first storyboard for my film opening. I’m only showing the main eight frames though I am sure that when it comes to shooting I will add various different frames so that there are not lots of long frames which could make the opening seem boring and monotonous. Also, after drawing the story board, I thought that it would be quite interesting to have some cutaway shots to subtly highlight important props or characters in the film. Maybe I could have a brief shot where the audience see Lia’s mum but I’m not sure yet as I don’t want to give too much away in the opening.Also, i apologise for the terrible drawings.