Sunday, 22 February 2015
Friday, 20 February 2015
Thursday, 19 February 2015
Evaluation - Part 1 - Summary of Brief
This piece of work was to create a opening sequence for a British Social Realism film, that had to be two minutes long with boundaries of 10%, so plus or minus 12 seconds. In addition to this we had to make the film follow the ethos of Film 4, this meant that we had to make sure that the film follows certain themes and styles of film that they broadcast. Film 4's ethos is to show film that is representative of reality in a suburban or urban environment. This is why our film was set in the local area since it is fitting to the ethos in terms of settings and locations. Another thing that Film 4 focus on is themes of violence, drugs, depression and sexual behavior and a very negative and downbeat narrative meaning that the film would have very few positive moments.
Finally the last thing that our brief mentioned was that the film opening had to be based on British culture as well as be targeted for a teenage audience and above, so around the ages of 15-24 years.
The title for our film is 'Intifada' which is an Arabic wording meaning terrorism in English, right away it tells you that the film is going to be about the ethnic group of Asian people in the UK. On top of this it sounds as though it is a negative word even if you don't understand what it means, it gives the impression of something sinister in the film and so connotes that the rest of the film is going to be quite dark as well. Based on the English translation of the title it connotes that the film is going to be about racism and discrimination including violence and murder. This connotes further that the film will be based on the Muslim community because one of the stereotypes in the Western world is that this is the group of people which are the terrorists. The titles meet the brief because they were created using LiveType and as well as that the fonts were entirely copyright free.
In the opening sequence we made sure to include different types of editing to convey different meanings to the audience Two examples of this would be the cuts which are very common during the scene when the younger brother runs into and out of his brothers room after reading the messages that are on his phone. This can be denoted in my opening sequence at 1:18 and afterwards.
From this scene we can denote a quick rapid succession of cuts in the video, which connotes a lot of action or emotion is taking place, that something bad has just happened and in this case since it is a British Social Realism film, it is likely it is going to have been to do with crime or violence. A cut also connotes that all the events are happening right after each other and that there is not gap in time between each of the different shots.
Finally my opening sequence follows the different conventions of an opening sequence, for example one convention was the action sequence, which is the same as the shots above but also including the police chase scene, this is where the pace of the opening sequence increases to reflect that sudden change in atmosphere and mood of the film, in this case it is where the audience discovers that the elder brother is taking part in a murder/terrorist attack. This is conventional of almost all opening sequences for example the film 'This Is England' uses this during the action montage of the film, this shows that around the country at the same time there is widespread violence but also during the scene where the Asian families windows has been broken connotes racism in the streets of the UK. This is exactly the same moral that my film tries to put across as well since it involves a fight scene and discrimination, only in my film the roles of ethnicity have been reversed.
In the shots shown above, there is no indication to chronological order in terms of the film unlike in my opening sequence but it still puts across the same feeling of fast paced action and a sequence of events because it is an action montage.
Another example of this would also be the institutional graphics at the start of the opening sequence, in this case it would be the Film 4 logo and the Bulldog Productions logo in my film. The reason that these are both included is because they are the two companies that actually produced the opening sequence for the film. The reason that this is important in a film is because the companies that produce the film will often make a very specific type of film and that makes their content and their company recognisable for producing it as well. You would then expect that company to be good at that genre of film production since it would have focused on that are in particular and so in a British Social Realism film you would expect them to use themes such as violence, drugs, abuse and neglect in their films as well.
Any film could be used for this as they are in almost every single production but the film that I chose the example from was Fish Tank, here we can denote two different institutions from those used in mine but that produce the same kind of content in terms of genre of film and the themes that they explore. We can also see that they have the same structure as the opening sequence to mine, as it is typical for these graphics to actually take up the entire screen unlike the title graphics.
Finally the last thing that our brief mentioned was that the film opening had to be based on British culture as well as be targeted for a teenage audience and above, so around the ages of 15-24 years.
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| Main Title Graphic at 1:12 |
In the opening sequence we made sure to include different types of editing to convey different meanings to the audience Two examples of this would be the cuts which are very common during the scene when the younger brother runs into and out of his brothers room after reading the messages that are on his phone. This can be denoted in my opening sequence at 1:18 and afterwards.
From this scene we can denote a quick rapid succession of cuts in the video, which connotes a lot of action or emotion is taking place, that something bad has just happened and in this case since it is a British Social Realism film, it is likely it is going to have been to do with crime or violence. A cut also connotes that all the events are happening right after each other and that there is not gap in time between each of the different shots.
Finally my opening sequence follows the different conventions of an opening sequence, for example one convention was the action sequence, which is the same as the shots above but also including the police chase scene, this is where the pace of the opening sequence increases to reflect that sudden change in atmosphere and mood of the film, in this case it is where the audience discovers that the elder brother is taking part in a murder/terrorist attack. This is conventional of almost all opening sequences for example the film 'This Is England' uses this during the action montage of the film, this shows that around the country at the same time there is widespread violence but also during the scene where the Asian families windows has been broken connotes racism in the streets of the UK. This is exactly the same moral that my film tries to put across as well since it involves a fight scene and discrimination, only in my film the roles of ethnicity have been reversed.
In the shots shown above, there is no indication to chronological order in terms of the film unlike in my opening sequence but it still puts across the same feeling of fast paced action and a sequence of events because it is an action montage.
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| Institutional graphics to our trailer |
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| Fish Tank Institutional Graphics |
Tuesday, 10 February 2015
Production Log 17 and
This week we were working on the sound of the production as well as the editing. We had very few issues with the sound though, almost all of the clips were fine and had a high quality double channel audio synchronised with the video.
As a result we would just be able to split clips and the audio and just move them into place on the final cut timeline, we would also add some transitions in the audio to fade in the audio clips while another audio clips was playing, this would allow us to seamlessly blend or transition the audio without any noticeable cut and made the sequence seem only more natural. Of course this would be because there was no such things that would ever happen in real life. To further create a universal sense of atmosphere in certain scenes such as the park scene, we would use a wildcat soundtrack which was essentially just an audio track from that location so that we could eliminate any silence as well.
However we did come across some issues as well, for example we had some tracks which would not include audio when imported into the Final Cut timeline even thought the video file associated with the item contained sound. As a result we had to use other atmospheric noise from other clips in the same location and add a few transitions and cuts to remove and dialogue to create this instead. Another issue that we had was that some of the audio clips would only contain the right audio, which was strange since it showed there was both left and right audio and neither channel had been muted, we never managed to fix this in the final production since there wasn't enough time, which would have been another thing that I would change if I had the chance.
As a result we would just be able to split clips and the audio and just move them into place on the final cut timeline, we would also add some transitions in the audio to fade in the audio clips while another audio clips was playing, this would allow us to seamlessly blend or transition the audio without any noticeable cut and made the sequence seem only more natural. Of course this would be because there was no such things that would ever happen in real life. To further create a universal sense of atmosphere in certain scenes such as the park scene, we would use a wildcat soundtrack which was essentially just an audio track from that location so that we could eliminate any silence as well.
However we did come across some issues as well, for example we had some tracks which would not include audio when imported into the Final Cut timeline even thought the video file associated with the item contained sound. As a result we had to use other atmospheric noise from other clips in the same location and add a few transitions and cuts to remove and dialogue to create this instead. Another issue that we had was that some of the audio clips would only contain the right audio, which was strange since it showed there was both left and right audio and neither channel had been muted, we never managed to fix this in the final production since there wasn't enough time, which would have been another thing that I would change if I had the chance.Final Opening Sequence
This is the final version of our opening sequence for the film concept Intifada. This was exported from Final Cut and edited completely in Final Cut and Live Type.
When the opening sequence was uploaded we weren't able to upload the video publicly since it had police officers involved in the production of the film and so would violate the conditions made when recording, as a result the video is unlisted and so can only be seen with the link, which may not be shared publicly.
When the opening sequence was uploaded we weren't able to upload the video publicly since it had police officers involved in the production of the film and so would violate the conditions made when recording, as a result the video is unlisted and so can only be seen with the link, which may not be shared publicly.
Monday, 2 February 2015
Production Log 16
Production Log 16
This week we were working on editing the opening sequence of the film, we were using Final Cut to edit it. We came across some issues when recording today, these being that the footage that we used wasn't all suitable for the film, for example some of the shots were too distant or too many of them were long shots. We also had a few issues where some of the shot's couldn't be added in because we were still waiting for confirmation to record at the police station. However we finally got permission and are now able to record the final few shots next week. 
We also needed to find some music as well since the copyright music holder still hadn't sent an email back to us about being able to use their song, instead I went and found a site that uploaded copyright free music as well as multiple channels on YouTube that also uploaded non-copyright music for people to use. We are going to add this into the film as well.
The feedback that we received for the edit was that it wasn't complete and that we needed to add more to the opening sequence. From this we of course decided to add more work to the edit by including more of the clips in the sequence. From all the feedback I know what changes I am going to make, I need to change lower the contrast in the lighting of the alleyway shots since they were too dark, which we did do and then to resume in editing the opening sequence.
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