Evaluation - Bonus Features

Evaluation.

Cutting Room Floor.
(Without Commentary) 



Lighting Set ups.
(Without Commentary)



Prop Design.
(Without Commentary)

Old Student Work Review.

Walking Backwards 
The opening to this thriller has an excellent use of camera movement and I particularly like the tracking shots.
The cinematography is really well executed, the red lighting remains constant through out and works really well. The Mise-En-Scene is a very high quality and Is something I would like to incorporate in my film. I am not keen on the dialogue in the film.



Regret? 
Some really creative shots such as the Ariel/Birds eye view, I like these and I would defiantly want to use some creative shots in my film. Several interesting camera angles and a good location. The music is interesting and well timed to the shots.
The car scene at the start is far too long and the narrative lacks depth.




Entrapment
Music timing and sound effects are really well done but the rest of the film is pretty poor. The titles are badly made, narrative lacks depth and all camera techniques are basic. The only thing I like in this film is use of music and sound effects. The flash back sequence is reasonably good.

Music and Foley

Music.


This part of the film is the only part I cannot take all the credit for, I doubted my music capability so I made a deal with my old music teacher, she agreed to play and help compose the music in exchange of me playing bass in the school production. A small price to pay for a great sound track. I first of all showed Mrs.Hollocks my inspiration for the sound track which was Stanley Kubrick's: Eyes wide shut.
 The music I wanted to pinch some Ideas from was Musica Ricercata, II (Mesto, Rigido E Cerimoniale).
This is the recurring sound motif in Eyes Wide Shut, I love its simplistic two notes and how easily they send shivers down your spine. I defiantly wanted  something similar, so I briefed Mrs.Hollocks to make me a soundtrack which was mainly grand piano, with a lot of sustain to let the notes ring off to give spine tingle effect. I defiantly wanted it to be minor because it needed to be chilling from the start. I also specifically said that I wanted something to happen musically each time a title came up. In no longer than half an hour Mrs.Hollocks had recorded most of the film's sound track, it was exactly how I wanted it but the only complaint was that it had too many notes in some areas. Seeing it was recorded in garageband using a midi keyboard it did not take long to fix. Once the soundtrack was completed I adjusted the volumes to make it perfect. 


FOLEY.


For sound effects I tried doing some Foley work for a tester. The first one I did was scratching a paper clip on paper to create the sound of a fountain pen writing on paper. When I added it to the clip it lacked something and I got various opinions from people in class and they all agreed it sounded better without the re-recorded sound. 

The Final Cut!

Here it is! the Final Cut!

Titles - Livetype

When designing my titles I had inspiration from Kubrick's, Eyes Wide Shut. I Wanted the music and titles to work together. So when making them I wanted them to be plain and with no effects. I made the titles white so that they stood out on top of the sepia's dark blacks and muted golds. The font I used is  very similar to Time New Roman but every letter is a capital and the first letter in each word is bigger. I used this font because it was fitting to the time. Also because the story is based on true events which were made public by the newspapers at the time and the font is very close to tabloid style fonts.

I used Livetype and imported the titles into Final Cut. All the names which are shown in the titles are anagrams of my name with the exception to Claire Hollocks and Hans Dougal because Claire actually did play the music and Hans Dougal is an anagram of my Dad's name because he did not want his name to appear in the film.

Story Baords

Cinematography + Editing Tests

Cinematography.

Seeing my film was set in 1912 I wanted it to look old and Cinematography played a major part in that. At first I did some test shots but then added a yellow tinge so it was not as obvious as Sepia but still had an old camera look about it. This did not produce the best outcome so I tried Imovie and Final Cut's sepia effects.  

Imovie created a rather annoying old film effect which did not have many setting I could tweak. It purposely lowed the quality of the image and put in over exaggerated lines and hairs. This gave a very cheesy effect and If I wanted a poor quality image I would not have filmed it in HD. 

Final Cut was perfect for what I wanted (colour and filter wise.) It gave me the option to tweak any effects with out having a cheesy look.
After playing around with the effects I created the sepia image I wanted, I did this by:

Fiddling with the Gamma : +1.5
the amount of sepia : 56 / 100
Highlight ( dependent on the shot) +2 to +10  
And final cut had a default sepia tint, on this I brightened it up by two white tones.
This gave me the perfect sepia image I was looking for. 

Editing.

I created several different cuts of the film because the original Directors Cut was 4 Mins: 20s and brief said It needed to be 2 minuets. I had several Ideas on how to achieve this. At first I tried speeding it up by 50%, but this just gave a comical effect and the film lost all its authenticity.
Then I looked around some old footage of the time to see what it would have looked like. I found this video:http://www.newsplayer.com/women-do-factory-work-during-first-world-war-video

It shows a big crowd, but what I found interesting from this was that the frame rate seemed to be incredibly low and I wondered if I could cut time by cutting out frames. This turned out to look good in some places but not throughout because at most points if the camera had moved during the shot, when cutting a small selection of frames it seemed to look like a jump cut or a major continuity error. So there is a couple of moments were you may notice this in the film, but most likely not because they are quite subtle.

 I ended up cutting time the "old fashioned way". I cut out as many frames as I could on each end of the shot, and then deleting several shots all together, for example my crane shot. I built a crane for this film, did over 100 takes with it then had to cut the shot out. It was the longest shot and most planned shot in the film, it was around 35 seconds in length.


Long Version: 


Dropping Frames Experiment:

Audience Feedback

I asked several students and members of staff at school to give me feedback on how my first draft was. I had very similar feedback from both students and teachers.

The Good points:
"Mise-en-scene is very well done and looks authentic to the time period"
"Mise-en-scene has come through"
"Excellent prop design"
"Lighting is almost professional!"
"Well kept within time period by putting titles in the actual frame instead of in post production. It really helps support the idea of this being real sepia footage."
"Makes sense"

Places were I need to improve:

"Its too long"
"Needs more effects"
"Cuts need to be faster"
"Need to play around with the sepia effect more to make it more authentic"
"Make it shorter!"

Since my audience feedback I have adapted my film so that the cuts are sharper and that film is no longer 4 Minutes 20, but now it is down to 2 minuets 30. I have all so played around with the effects to give me the best sepia I can possibly get from Final Cut. But since I have cut so much time the titles are no longer in the shot but have been added in during post production. It was not the major factor to the film but it did make it more authentic and I have lost out one of my good points.