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.
Friday, 6 June 2014
Tuesday, 3 June 2014
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.
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.
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.
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| 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.
Monday, 2 June 2014
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.
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.
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| 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.
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