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.

Audience

Now I have surveyed the cross sections I was targeting I can now identify who would be the "principle" target audience.
My target audience is the 20 - 50s. I know this is a big age range but it definitely could appeal to a more mature audience. The people that 'Doctor Death' would appeal to are those who would like to watch a film several times over and who like a films that make them think an which reveal more as they repeat viewing.  They also like the plot to take its time to develop with a more complex storyline. My target audience would be from the socio-economic groups of C2 and above.
My target audience would most probably want to buy the DVD instead of downloading illegally unlike a lower age target audience might.

I will address the needs and desires of my audience by producing a film that has attention to detail and a complex storyline. I will add in details early on which get answered later on in the film which will keep them engaged for the duration of the film. Details such as "why does the doctor use his medicine on himself?" and "why are there lots of signatures written on that paper?"

Costume

For the costume of the Doctor It needed to be 100% authentic, because otherwise it would ruin the film. When I first thought about costume I looked into some old pictures which I have also uploaded earlier on the blog. It shows that  men of the time wore mainly tweed suits and waistcoats. So I had a look around several charity shops trying to find anything similar but I was unsuccessful. So I looked in the yellow pages for a costume hire outlet. I avoided the fancy dress shops in the centre of town because I have already had past experience with there limited clothes and high prices for my last film.
 But I found one a couple miles out of town. I made an appointment and went to see what they had for offer. It was a small warehouse in a back garden, It had over 8000 thousand of costumes to choose from! Luckily the lady that owned it narrowed it down to three. Here are the pictures of my Dad (who is going to play the part of Doctor death) in costume.     

I decided to go for the last costume on the end. The one that had a waist coat, this was one of the main deciding factor, also because it was tweed and looked the part. The first one was not right because of the shorts. The second one almost convinced me but did not have a waist coat so I went for the last one.

The poor lady who gets killed in my story will just wear a long black skirt that comes to the ankles and a black throw. In her hair she will wear a black thing with a feather in it.

Location Scouting

When choosing the location for my Film I started to think of previous Films that have roughly the same time period as to mine. Sweeney Todd (Tim Burton 2007) was set in the mid 1800's and mine is set the early 1900's I know there is about 50 years difference and fashion definitely changed in that time but I decided to watch the film and focus on the location.
In this picture you can see a slanted roof with a big window. Also the walls have old wallpaper with a basic pattern of vertical lines with two different shades/colours.


So when thinking of locations of where to film. I thought of my grandma's house. It is an old house, the room I want to film in has a slanted roof and it has plain white walls. So it was practically a blank canvas.
But once I looked into how much It might cost me to make or buy the wall paper I decided I needed a cheaper alternative. Also I decided the room was too small for what I wanted it to be, a Doctors office.



After disregarding this location it took me a while to find another, but it was literally around the corner from the first house I had thought of. It was my Dad's friend's house, I remembered the old wall paper in there so I asked if I could film in his house. He agreed and this was the location I stuck with. It turned out to be even better than I first thought, because all the items inside were 100% authentic. There was an old fashioned fireplace and the original curtains were still in place. I was given a lot of freedom, the owner let me move stuff from all around the house into this room where I filmed. As you can see there is a big bed in the middle of the room. I was allowed to take it out and rearrange any furniture I wanted. This turned out to be the perfect location.