Communication within the group

During the few weeks leading up to the screening I started working down in London so wasn't around in sheffield to help out much with Hannah's sound design. Although I was over 100 miles away I still managed to give Hannah lots of help. We would call and FaceTime to go through ideas and any issues she might be having.by using FaceTime I could watch through scenes with her while listening to what she had done and then we would talk through how it could be improved. If it turnt out that something needed changing i would change it, re export then we would send it over my Dropbox account to one another. We also did this for when hannah needed the sync sounds from the footage. I would export them as a WAV and then add them to drop box for her. I think this was helpful for Hannah as she still managed to get a second opinion on aspects of her work as she was having difficulty getting any feedback from our director.

In regard to the rest of the group there is little to no communication. Not hearing from out producer in regards to how we are getting along, is it ready for the screening, are we on schedule etc. I feel as though it would have been nice to at least hear from the rest of the group about how the film was progressing as it is their film too.

Adding in Titles, Credits and Transcipts

Several times through the editing process we altered the VO script to improve it and on the last final version we focused more on who was on drugs and when the were under the influence as this effects the story. As Rhian was the one that ended up in hospital we had show that not only Luke and Hugh was having a trip, that in fact everyone was effected. Due to reluctancy form our camera operator me and hannah had to film some POV shots of taking drugs as there was not a single shot of a character taking any form of drugs. As we could not get the characters to be in the shots we thought a POV would be the easier way to do this with out hands playing Rhains. I used these shots of her sniffing Coke in amongst shots of her walking in the forest and a POV shot to show the results and the previous events relation to each other. This worked well as was very simple but I think I like it simple. The film in its self is very show and tell at points and isn't complicated so by having these simple sequences it fits in with the overall feel of the piece.

In between each of the scenes we have black screen in which Hannah and I discussed having a transcript style shot on. I spent a while trying to think up ways in which to show the transcript, whether to have it appear as if it was being typed on screen, hand written notes or just a plain text on screen. Ive seen a lot of films and shows use a slow pan across a letter/ text to show the message so I thought I would play around with this idea. I used work to type up the voice over the was said in a specific section and then wrote a longer piece after what the character said, for example when Luke days about going out to see if any one wanted for a coffee. that is all that you hear him say but in the transcript there is much more to read. I thought I would do this as it subtly shows that the character is intact telling the story but instead of hearing everything that is said you just see the actions happening and hear the first part of it. I then just used 3D Warp in MC and key framed the movement across the screen.

When we were filming some pick up shots I got Mike to get some shots of hands looking nervous to place in those black sections as this could be made into B&W so it wasn't obvious that the hands weren't actually the actors hands. I thought that it would be a shame to not use these shots and create some more visual aspects of the interview process so I came up with the idea to overlay the hands under the transcript. I did this by turning down the opacity down on the transcript to 50% and then boosting the contrast of the hand in B&W and this helps the hands appear as part of the paper almost. I really liked this how it turned out as I thought that the hands would stand out and be too much on screen but in fact it works really well in creating the space that the interview was carried out in without actually showing anything.

During the shooting stages I mentioned to Alli about the titles and to think up what she pictured for them in case Mike needs to get any particular shots or if he needs to frame something in a certain way to leave from for the text. Now at the end of Post stage she sill hasn't figured out what she pictured, the only guide she has given was a simple font and in a pale yellow. She did mention about having the titles appear after the car scene which was around 2 minutes into the film. When she mentioned this to me I showed concern as this is such a late stage in the film being that the entire film was only about 9 minutes long. this being so I came up wit the idea that the titles could be between Hugh picking the girls up and arriving to get Luke. This way it does not interrupt anything and just slots in the time that they could be travelling.

Titles

For the credits a friend of a friend sells graphics online so Hannah and I picked one that we liked as he said he'd happily give it to us for free. He sent over the files for it so that all I needed to do was to alter the text to the wanted credits. as there was a lot more font the previously on them I then re arranged them to fit the frame better and then exported them ready to be added to the film.

Link to first idea for credits.

After creating these I went back to the film and decided that I felt they were far to over the top for our film. If our film was to have a lot more action and things happening then maybe it would have worked but instead i made the decision to just use simple text on screen like the title i created in MC. I think this works a lot better as Hannah has brought the sound design in over the credits so by having simple credits its not to distracting.

Last Scene

To end the film Hannah and I came up with the idea of a car crash. Because we cant get anything visually to show the car crash this then meant a lot of pressure on Hannahs sound design. To build up to this we had some B Roll footage of when Mike, Hannah and I went for a Recee up so that Mike could practice filming in a car. Luckily this footage was on a cloudy day so this could be used as footage for the journey home. As all these shots were hand held in the car they were incredibly shacky so meant that most were unusable but I managed to find some more stable shots and used these. As we had to imply that the characters were still under the influence of drugs. The easiest way to do this was by using some previous interior car shots of the characters and inter cut them with these POV shot. I then added effects on the POVs to show that influence that the drugs are having on their vision, I did this in MC as they have an effect called Radial Blurr that works well when altered to create a disoriented feel to it. This was the effect I also used in Rhian POV when she was walking in the forest. As the CU shots of the characters were different lighting to the POV I am planning on spending some time when I grade to make these less bright and dull them down as they were originally filmed on a sunny day.

As there is a long time from these car shots to the credits I suggested to Hannah that if she plays around with the sound and if she feels it it to heavily reliant on sound for too long I can play around with the use of the transcript and add some visual aspects that way. Until she has had a chance to do this I am unsure as to what else I could do without any footage to play around with.

Creating Luke's Trip Sequence

Due to having no help from Alli and when previously asking about this scene she did not know what she pictured for this Luke scene, I decided to carry on with what I thought worked and what I pictured for this scene. From playing around already with these shots i had the basic effects already done in the style of the Bruxelles piece. I just added in some more layers to create a more disoriented feel to it and minimise the sharpness of the split frames. Luckily due to the fact me and Hannah had managed to give the film a story it was less reliant on this scene being the only development in the film and put a lot less pressure on me. I was pleased with this as I didn't want to just have to add loads of effects for the sack of giving the shots more depth and that instead I can focus on the effects having more meanings and create some subtle and less over powering effects.

When piecing this scene together there was several different style of effects (described in previous post) so I thought instead of having them develop as the scene progresses I would mix them up in with one another and create some flashes. I was watching an episode of a show called Heartland and there was a scene in which one of the characters has a nightmare of the night where her and her mum got into a car accident. They used a lot of flashing and quick cuts to create the disoriented feel to it so I thought I could bring this into our film and add in some flashes and short clips. As one of the layered shots was just a simple POV where nothing really happens I decided that on its own its quite boring, so cut this one up and placed it in-between flashes and other more interesting shots. I think this worked well and helps build up to the moment when Luke trips and seeing arms.

Arms during Lukes Trip

To create the shots of the arm behind the trees I used After Effects to layer up the shots and then mask around a specific area. When filming this shot I was present on set so I was sure that no one would touch the camera once filming started other wise it would have created a lot more work for me to overlay sections of the shot if it had moved. It was a fairly simple process to complete, the main issue was with the front tree and the tree slightly to the left. As the area that the front trees arms are over laps where the arms from the trees next to it is I had the then key frame the mask to move with the front arms so that there are still arms on the trees behind. 

After sending this this edit to Hannah she though that it needed to be more scary so I decided to make the arms appear and disappear and only have a few odd ones. With every arm on every tree its slightly comical where as we are trying to create some jeopardy in this sequence. I used the previous After Effects project and just altered the masks and opacity of the layers to create the flashes of arms and to limit the amount on screen at a time. I think this works a lot better and works with the sound that Hannah has created due to the fact that sound if quite minimal but still creates this tense feeling of uncertainty. 

Re-cap Scene

As we had planned a little recap scene in the style of Shaun of the Dead I went through and picked what shots I think would work with the lines being said. When Me and Hannah we talking through about idea for this scene one of us said about crossing out the drugs/ drinks as it shows the difference between what happened and what the police officer thinks happened. In the conversations we thought up the idea of having it styled like a pencil drawing and then having the image literally being rubbed out by a rubber. I found a tutorial Online about how to do this in Photoshop really well so I exported out a freeze-frame of the image that i thought worked and followed the tutorial.

First of all I had to create a second layer on top of the background layer. Add adjust the composition setting to Colour Dodge. You then invert the layer by pressing cmd I. This then leaves the images looking blank. The next stage is to add on an effects called Guassian blur, setting the pixels to around 18 pixels, but dependent on the amount of detail it altered slightly on each image. I then altered the saturation to make the image black and white. The tutorial didn't do this but then I also altered the contrast as some images from the film were very flat, this then created more depth to the image and I think improved it a lot. 

Before altering saturation.

After adjusting contrast

Prior to this project I created a titles that looked like it was being hand writing. i created this with in the style of a stop motion animation with rebelling up a short sequence with a large number of photos. I  started to create this sequence of the shots being rubbed out using this process. I exported the image as a JPEG, then rub out a small section, re export it with a number (for example 001). I continued this process until the area I wanted was rubbed out.

Selection of photos to create rubbing out.

I then imported each of these images into MC. I organised them into a bin and created a sequence to build the clip on. I added each image for the length of 2 frames and once they were all on the timeline they played out the motion of rubbing it out. I repeated this with several freeze frames. I then created a Video Mix-down of each sequence to then be added to the Fine Cut timeline.

When discussing the logics of this scene with Hannah, we talked about the need of it and who's perspective it was. I thinks its not very clear on who exactly perspective the image is. The voice over is of the police offices but then the visuals show the original truth being altered, but I think it wouldn't show the original it would just be the altered images. We decided that instead of having the voiceover Hannah would play around overlaying the interviews and sounds from whats happened building up like a crescendo, almost like the build up of lies that they are telling. I think this would work a lot better then just retelling the audience what they have just been told. I then thought up that instead of having it rubbed out I could have it more like its being cribbed out with a pen and then all the lines and scribbles build up as the sound does until its all just a mess.

Instead of doing this in Photoshop and rebuilding the sequences I thought that this could easily be done in Aftereffects. I imported the freeze-frame in and added a black background to the sequence. I then use a mask tool to subject a specific area and used key frames to map out the path of the "Pen" scribbling out areas of the frame.

Adding keyframes for the "Pen"

Re-Editing to new Structure

Re-editing to the new structure was more of a shuffling process then re-edit as each scene would still be a scene in a sense it just may be swapped out of order and timings in-between changed to allow the voiceover in.

As Allis wasn't present for any of the VO recordings I had to step in an assist Hannah with second opinions on takes and while recording we would bounce ideas of each other about different ways that the lines could be said so that Hannah had a variety to pick form in her edit. Once they were recorded, Hannah went through her recording and sent me over a version of each VO labeled against the corresponding line on the script so that we were both clear as to the order. As Alli was also not present for the re-edit Hannah sat with me and helped work out where best to place them and how long the voice over would overlay the scenes and the timings. I think it was good to have Hannah there to help at this stage as she would be the one adding in the voice over in the sound edit so by getting her input at this stage it would minimise the amount of alterations that would have to do once I hand over the edit.

The first 6 minutes were fairly simple to re organise. I had to add in freeze-frames at the start and then reverse the start to play through again. Hannah decided that she preferred a different song for the split screen driving scene so I had to re organise the timings of the split screen to fit the new tempo of the new song.

To get the exact timings of the song Hannah exported the first couple of minutes out of Protools and sent it over to me to sync the timings of the cuts up to. Once I had done this I re-exported out the edit to hand back over. Somewhere in this process a majority of the shots had become out of sync. After both me and Hannah spent a while trying to figure out where a couple of frames had gone from I decided to reimport the QT that Hannahs sound was synced too and conform this against my timeline to see where exactly it had changed. I did this by overlaying and then using a simply split screen so that they played next to each other. It turned out that there was a couple of shots that had been a couple frames out but due to this process it was easy to figure out where and by how much it was out.  I then re exported it out to Hannah with the newest timings that matched the original QT and this seemed to be in sync.

Giving the Film a Story

The edit was at the stage where it could be handed over to Hannah for the start of the sound design process. I was really unhappy of the film as an overall piece due to its lack of story and progression. As I had tried over and over to get some sort of help from our director to solve these issues, I resorted to getting the edit to a stage where I was happy with the technical aspects. When handing the edit over to Hannah, she really wasn't happy with the lack of narrative so we spent an afternoon brain storming possible alternatives that we could do at this late a stage.

After meeting with Chris and going through a few possible options we decided on a Voice over to add an alternative layer and insentive for the story to progress. He mentioned in conversation about a Police officer and Hannah and I both liked this idea and initially started planning to add this to the film.

I spent the Evening, while Hannah had to go to work, researching police interviews and interrogations for wording and specific protocols that happen. I found some interview transcripts from a murder case and notices how the Police Officer seems to repeat a lot of what the interviewee says and gets them to reconfirm what they have just told him very regularly.

Kip Kinkel's Confession Transcript

Bruce Daniels Police Interview


Visually Hannah thought up the use of a cassette tape to symbolise the recording of the interview and showed me this video (link below) where they uses a film reel. I really like this as is brings your out of the story world into another location without even showing another location, almost putting the audience in a similar situation to the characters being in an unfamiliar location.

The Bureau - Video Game Trailer


When looking through some ideas I came across this video on youtube and I really like the part at 01:15. Throughout this piece they use the style of stop motion to create movement and I really like this part at 01:15 as this could be something similar that we could show in a scene of one of the characters going to the bathroom to take some drugs. This is a simple things to create as we could film with a steady cam and then in post I would create the jumps.

Another idea I thought up was to include a recap scene in which the police officer can go through the events that have been told so far in the style of Shaun on the Dead. I think this will add a slight breathing space in the story for the audience and will help add emphasis on the story that the police officer tells and what actually happens.

After doing this research I started to create a rough version of the Voice over script. I then went through all this with hannah showing her the other clips I found. At this stage we Skype called Alli to get her help with the script as she would be better at writing the characters answer as she was more familiar with they way of speaking from writing the initial script. Here is the a copy of the initial Voiceover Script that Me and Hannah created before going through it with Alli:

Initial Ideas

Play up until “Road Trip”

Freeze frame on Hugh

Police – hold on a Minute, can you say that again and clearer

Wooshh back to beginning

Isa (worried) – Well, Me and Rhian were just out on the balcony. She was having a cig and Hugh just turned up.

Police – He just turned up?

Continues playing normal, Rhian’s lines – What you doing here babe?

Hugh (over his part) – My auntie went away you see so I thought it’d be nice to go away for the weekend.

BLACK SCREEN

Police – Okay… so can you run me through when you picked up Lucas ……… …….?

Hugh – HAHAHA is that his middle name

Police – can you please just answer my question (repeats question).

Hugh – okay well once I had the girls we went straight there …

Starts playing half way through Hughs lines then cuts on Lukes HEEYYY line

Runs through scene till Rhians line “lets go then! Come on!”

Hugh – They didn’t realise Luke was able to come so was like a little surprise form them. They were excited sort of thing.

Police – repeat what Hugh says about the girls happy Lukes there.

Continues to play at Rhians line - I cant believe you invited him

Plays though till end of split screen.

Isa – talks through arriving, - add shots running in door

Luke – says bring loads and contributed

Plays out on Rhians line – Luke? What are you contributing to this trip?

BLACK SCREEN

Police ask about the night

Go through night scene

Isa say about went toilet and could hear Luke snoring but went back to sleep??

Police – okay .. lets go back a bit earlier on in the after noon  ….

Cuts to Luke telling story

Freezeframe as Rhian comes in saying look whats I’ve got.

Police question isa about the Nos?

Hellium

Continues to play out nos sequence

BLACK SCREEN

Police – The next day when you woke up what did you do?

Luke – When I got up everyone else was up outside having breakfast so went out and joined them …

Runs through scene in morning – wagwannn!!!

CUTS TO BLACK SCREEN AT END

 Police – asks about leaving girls

Isa – Explains going off

SHOWS GETTING DRUGS – POV – YOUTUBE

Police – Lets back up a second. Ask why they left?

Isa – Well, we were all just sitting in the kitchen …

Runs through scene

Police – So … says another version causing them to leave. (go shops or something)

Isa – Yeah that what happened.

Hand police sum up what happened so far – shaun of the dead style re cap …. So what happened next? We found remains of LSD in your possession. When did you take it?

Luke – Explains taking it no effects

Shots of in forest tripping

(got burned)

WHAT IS THAT??

Must be fake.

Montage

Planned to have BBQ so went to go find him

Shots of them shouting Luke?!

Here is an updated version once talking through with Alli on Skype to get her view on how the characters would word things:

VOICEOVER SCRIPT

Plays through film up until “Roadtrip”

Freeze frame on Hugh next to car

POLICE – Hold on. Say that again, clearer this time.

WOOSH rewind back to beginning

ISA– Well … Me and Rhian were just on the balcony … She was having Cig and then well Hugh turned up.

POLICE – He just turned up?

Continues scene until Rhian’s Line – What’s going on babe?

Hugh (over his part) – well my auntie had a free house … so I thought I’d take them there to chill out after exams.

BLACKSCREEN

POLICE (Over establishing shots of flats) – Okay … so can you run me through when you picked up a Lucas Gaylon Haywood

HUGH – Snigger. Is that is middle Name ….?

Cuts to WHEYYY

Runs through car scene up until Rhians Line – “Come on, lets go then”

HUGH – They didn’t realise Luke was coming … so … you know it was like a little surprise for them.

POLICE – so they were excited to see him?

Plays out scene, Rhian – I can’t believe you asked him to come.

POLICE – So .. How did you spend your evening at the cottage?

LUKE – Oh … was just a chilled evening … had a few beers/ had a cuppa

Clips of Luke and Isa

POLICE – so going back to that afternoon. did anything unusual happen?

ISA – oh no … not really

Shot Luke telling story

Rhian comes in – freeze frame

POLICE – oh so what was in the balloons?

ISA – Oh no its was just hellium …

POLICE – Right (doesn’t believe)

Carries on with scene

BLACKSCREEN

POLICE – The next day when you woke up what did you do?

LUKE – Went outside to see if anyone wanted a coffee.

Run through morning scene

BLACKSCREEN

POLICE – So where were you at 12 pm

HUGH – well … we were all just sitting in the kitchen …

RUN THROUGH SCENE

POLICE – So … you made pizza and played on the xbox?

HUGH – Yeah that’s right.

POLICE – You left the kitchen, where did you go?

ISA – oh, Rhian had a bath so I just watched TV in my room for a bit.

SHOTS OF COKE

POLICE RECAP –

 Shaun of the dead style - .so what happened next? We found evidence of LSD in your possession. Care to explain?

LUKE – stuttering – ermm well … yeah … no … no it was … erm … it wasn’t even real. I got ripped of. It didn’t even work …

SHOT OF TRIP

HUGH – We wanted a BBQ and he was taking ages so we thought we better go get him.

LOOKING FOR HIM SHOTS

POLICE – So how was the BBQ?

HUGH – Oh it was dark by the time we got back so didn’t bother

SOUND OF WHISPERING IN NIGHT SCENE – Rhian: “Well where did he go?” Hugh: “Fuck knows, how am I supposed to know?” Rhian: “It’s not like we can ask him, he was that off his head he won’t remember.”

SHOT OF ISA GOING IN LUKES ROOM

TIME LAPSE OF SUNRISE

POLICEMAN – And at what time did you leave the cottage?

ISA – About midday…

SHOTS OF CAR DRIVING (CLOUDY DAY) – DIEGETIC RADIO SOUND

CUT TO BLACK

FADE IN TAPE DECK (WITH RADIO CONTINUED AND TAPE CLICKING ADDED)

SOUND OF RADIO FADE OUT AND JUST HAVE CLICKING

HUGH – Sorry… How long’s this gonna take? Visiting time’s nearly over and I need to go see Rhian/my girlfriend…

CUT TO BLACK – TAPE REWINDS

CREDITS ROLL – TRANSCRIPT STYLE (TONAL SOUND PIECE INFLUENCED WITH CAR CRASH)