Out takes of The Return

Hey guys,

Now here's the out takes of our opening sequence. As you can clearly tell, we had fun during filming and we will definitly miss the whole experience.

The Finishing Touches Of The Opening Thriller- FINAL EDIT

Wow, all the hard work and stress is coming to an end, and now its time for everyone to have completed their opening sequence, do any last minute edit in order to post them up on the blog as the FINAL EDIT. Sounds simple enough but no it was the complete opposite as everyone was in panic and rush just to get everything sorted (exactly what my group was trying to do). The whole of the media department was chaotic and loud.

As today was our last 3 hour media lesson before the deadline Annabelle advised me and the group that its best if we completed everything including the titles + effects during this time and preferably workshop because we all know tomorrow is going to be even more packed and you may not even find a Mac available. So technically today seemed like a deadline for us, which built the pressure even more but I guess it wasn't as bad and was benificial for us. 

Playing about and testing different fonts.

 

Our ideas about how the titles should look like and how they should appear on screen kept changing, thats why it felt even more longer to choose the best one. I think my group had that feeling (at some point) when we felt like giving up. Myself, Hanifah and Max took turns in positioning the fonts, adding the shadows and other effects as it was quite long and tiring just to have your eyes focused on the screen especially when some features are tiny. So there was alot of sliding the mouse across the table to each other.

(This was all happening in the morning session, so the fact we were tired didnt help much either).

Choosing the effect for the opening 'dream' 

Again we looked at the various effects listed and played around for abit to test out which one would look or not. Their was many points you had to consider when choosing the effect for instance, whether it would work well with the whole outline and atmosphere or if its completley not with what your trying to show. The important bit was to make sure its visible so its easy for the audience to understand and comprihend.

 No idea what Max is doing sorry and Hanifah looks slightly bored! :)

Thankfully we had the media teachers and technicians nearby so if we wernt sure about an idea we could ask them to help.










Dan (the teacher shown) told us in the nicest way possible (i guess) that the font we just worked on and installed from the website 'dafont' looked slightly odd and didnt work aswell with the 'thriller atmosphere'. Instead it looked more towards the animation category. Although we did agree with him because we kept saying to ourselves something doesnt work well but could not figure out what it was. Therefore thank you Dan! 

Me and Max decided to do the font straight on Adobe Premier which was definetley a much simpler and straight forward programme to use. We decided to go for a more neutral font to avoid any complications and hassle like the previous fonts we used, so we decided to use Century Gofic.

Final Edit - The Return

Here is it guys!!!!

Analysis - Rough Cut of The Return

After a lot of rushing, in order to get the filming done, we finally managed to film what we needed. Today, we finished our rough cut. This DOES NOT reflect the final look of our opening sequence. It only contains the raw shots that we will use in editing. Therefore, you may notice that the sound isn't that great and you may found that the editing could be improved.

All the files we have to go through...

Hanifah is working on the titles (already?! Yes.) and trying to find an appropriate font.

When we arrived in the edit sweep, we saw that everyone kinf of started editing their opening sequence already, which made us panicking because we only just finished filming and we didn't do any editing yet. Once we had our hard drive and our memory cards, we tried to organise ourselves and to try and see which shot we will be using or not. This took us a long time to do because the shots from our two previous practices were on the memory cards, and it wasn't sorted out correctly so we couldn't directly know which files were the one to use. After a lot of laughter (we will keep the shots for an outtake!), we finally got ourselves organised and we made a start on our rough cut.

Rough Cut - Opening Sequence of The Return

 

While I was doing the rough cut, I had an instant of panick: WIll our opening title meet the timing imposed? ( more or less 2 minutes)

Luckily, it is a bit more than two minutes which means that it is perfect, considering we have to make some cuts and include the titles.

I think that our film is quite promissing and it made us all happy to finally see our film, coming together.

Rough Cut - Analysis to do

Okay guys, take the video and make a new post with your analysis :)

Behind The Scene Pictures Of 'The Return'

Please leave a comment if you wish..

Not all the shots were as serious as they look. We had a great laugh.

I Think I managed to capture really good shots, so it would be good to look back at our 1st day filming.

Applying the makeup to create the 'bruise'

Simple use of eyeshadow, blusher and a touch of wipes to smothen the edges. We wanted it to look realistic.

I dont know what you think, but I really think this looks real and PAINFULL!!

Filming of "The Return" - Day 1

We are currently busy filming our opening sequence, "The Return". But here are some pics, behind the scenes...

Me, setting up the tripod...

Sharming, having a laugh with my phone's camera!

Hey Hanifah!

Serious please... ACTION!

The character is on her computer, talking to her friends on Facebook. The actor... is actually doing the same thing!

Sharmin, with the camera :)

It's time for a make-up session... (making of bruise)

The Animatic Of Our Thriller..

Today; 03.03.11 we finally set of to create the first stage of our thriller, which was the animatic. So instead of having a normal thursday media lesson, we asked Annabelle if it was alright to skip the lesson and create our animatic. She said it was fine!
So we set off straight to my house after we asked her. We didn't need any equipment from the technician because we had our own camera's.

As soon as we reached my house, we headed straight to my room (main location) and started!
We reviewed through our plan/idea and just got into action really.
Well not into action, but the pose for the camera !

                         The idea was to get a couple of different shots of the same pose, so when it comes to picking the really good/clear ones, we would have a range of pictures and angels to choose from.

( now thinking about it, wasnt the best idea we came up with because we ended up having loads of shots and plus we forgot to delete our previous work from the memory cards! So we had to go through all of them, which took quite a while )

Our storyline changed approximatley 3 times, therefore some pictures( not all )have to be replaced with different shots of our final opening.

We decided with this storyline, it would be difficult to create a sudden black out and get all the lightling correct. Thats why we thought we would change it to something much simpler and straightforward.

We took turns in taking pictures and using the camera.

These pictures are not in order of our thriller!!

Therefore it might look slightly confusing..

Now its time for us to start our actual filming !! Due to certain circumstances we were not able to start filming during the half term holiday, unlike some other groups. So we thought we might be a little bit behind, which we were indeed but managed to catch up eventually when we met up during lunch breaks and weekends.

I can't wait to start. the excitement is building. I hope everything goes well and according to plan. 

Animatic of our thriller

Creative Film Making !

Today I oraganised my media folder (Finallyyyy). I sepreated all my work into 3 main categories;
Music, Tv Drama & Thriller Coursework. So anyway as I was going through my papers, I came acorss one of my handouts Annabelle gave. It was called 'Creative Film Making'. I thought I might aswell read it, seen as its just sitting in my folder and besides we are in the process of making a thriller opening, so maybe this might be usefull to read. 
Turns out i was Right ! It was.

There was so much explicit details, that I thought I already knew about. Also the person who wrote this, seem as if their talking directly to you and giving you advice. Thats why I didnt feel as if Im just reading a boring old article.. 
Im definetley going to dicuss what Ive learnt from reading this to my group, as I really think it would help us acheive the best goal in our opening. Here is what the sheet looks like; 

 

 

The Structure Of Thriller Openings

In film openings there are 3 basic structures;

* A narrative opening with titles running through

* A discrete title sequence

* Titles over a blank screen,followed by the narrative opening

A narrative opening with the titles running through, is when we are taken straight into the film. Maybe start of with an establishing shot and slowly into the characters, while the opening titles are showing ontop of the image/s. A great example is;

                                          

A discrete title sequence is when the titles of the film are seperet from the narrative voice. In contrast to 'Panic room' for instance. An example would be;

seven

 I find this type of opening,very effective. Especially 'seven' becuase its portraying images in a quick flikr, then to a blank screen with titles. This keeps the focus on the titles aswell as the images. 

Title over blank screen,followed by the narrative..

Well its pretty much explained in the title. And the good thing about an opening like this, is that your focused more on the music/sound becuase u dont have no images or scenario's to engage on. Therefore it makes the music/sound significant to the opening.  

 

 

Intro To LiveType..

In this lesson we were introduced to Live Type. We learned each stages as the technician explained and showed us. He demonstrated all different types of fonts and the adjustments you can do to it; like Change colour, size, overlap one letter over another, what position you want it to appear and much more. It was an engaging lesson to participate in and I simply couldn’t wait till I had the chance to try-it-out myself.

Before being introduced to live type, we were completing the edit of our ‘Gummy bear animatic, in action’ (I think),so Bernard told us to add Titles and sound as appose to what we just learned. I really enjoyed using live type because there were many various features and fonts to use. So you could make the title/credit specific to what you want. This is a great advantage to have when it comes to the real thriller.

Planning our Pitch

The whole idea of the Pitch is to know what your thriller is going to be about and to be able to present it to everyone clearly but not in too much detail .. so it doesn't give away the whole film. 

*The task was to put all the information we have into one creative slideshow!*

As my group already planned the main ideas of our thriller opening in the previous 3 hour lesson, we actually covered most of the points above. Therefore all we done was decided who's going to cover each point and complete a slide on them in our own time. And when we get together, we'll look through them all and put them together and organise it. 

The points im going to cover are;

1) The Title Of Our Movie

2) Planned Location & Location Shots (As its my house)

3) Preliminary Ideas About Sound

Now, although I created my slides abit last minute and emailed it to Max late, we managed to put them together. But just be certain of it and make any changes if needed, me and Max decided to go libary the next morning before lesson! 

(turns out we were allowed to stay in the libary until after break)

Here Im Working On Our Pitch, Setting Up A SlideShow On Powerpoint!

 

 you can see Bernard giving his 'ususal' lectures at the front. !

 

Planning our ACTUAL thriller

In today's lesson we had 3 hours to plan our Thriller Openings. 

Yes, i know what your thinking.. Thats sooo much time to plan a 2minute opening. 

But trust me, 3 hours did not seem enough. There are a lot of things you have to consider and share with the group. 

Here are a list of things we had to think of:

* The Idea Of Our Opening

* The Title- font, size, layout/position

* Mise en Scene

* The sound

* Camera shot-types and angels

So here we started of with the idea..

And as you can see, our plan just kept growing..

Now, At This Point We Covered Most Areas; The Idea,Title,Setting,Mise en Scene

the final production of our plan !

We asked Annabel to photocopy it for,so we each have a copy.. But it never came out exactly how we pictured. Single A4 Sheets,Black&White. 

So It Wasnt As Pretty Like This One.

During this time, we had planned out almost everything we need to know about our film. There shouldn't be no confusion the next time we review it. 

Our Gummy Bear Animatic In Action

Please leave a comment if you wish.. 

Gummy bear animatic in action 2/2

1 week ago, in Bernard's lesson we were set the task to create the actual production of our gummy bear animatic we did the previous lesson. It was quite simple and fast to be honest, because we had everything planned out, we knew exactly what was going to happen.

Again, this was a great experience as it gives us more knowledge and understanding of filming and editing. Which builds our confidence and skills for the real thriller !!

What the film is about ?

Sharmin, the main character walks into the room questioning why Hanifah is not ready yet. She then notices how Hanifah is still 'sleeping'. After calling her name several times, theres no answer. A cup drops out of Hanifah's hand and as Sharmin bends down to see what she had drank. She is astonished by what she smells.
Sharmin then runs to the water fountain and runs back with a cup full of water, senselessley she chucks the whole cup of water on her face! There is yet NO sign of movement from Hanifah.
Slowly Sharmin drops down on her knees and cries upon Hanifah's hand.

Below is the final video edited with sounds and credit..  Hope u enjoy it !

Leave a comment if u wish..