Finished Artefact

After a few more alterations to our film opening, this is the final product we achieved. The film opening stars Blake Kenneally-Forrester and it is called ‘The Requited’:

Rough Cut Feedback #2

We showed our film for a second time to the rest of the class and the teachers. Taking into consideration and completing the tasks we were assigned to do, we decided to get more feedback on our new and improved version.

The feedback we received on this new version of our film was:

• In the final shot of the film, the soundtrack appears to be very quiet. After re-watching the opening, I completely agree. To resolve this, I will make the music louder and also make sure it is consistent throughout.
• Another piece of feedback we got was to sort out the in and out fading of the establishing shots at the start of the opening. Our teacher suggested that we should have the fades on for longer; this is something we will work on in the next lesson.
• The final piece of feedback was to make sure the 180′ rule is perfect and applied correctly in our film opening. Some shots need to be edited so the characters do not look like they are walking in different directions and standing in different positions than they were before.

After this feedback was received, I then asked our teacher if anything else needed to be done after these improvements were made. He then said that the film would be finished after these were applied so, we are looking to finish the film opening by the end of this week.

Looking for a Soundtrack

Today we looked for the much needed soundtrack to put into our film opening. After watching films like ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Psycho’, it is clear to see that a fitting soundtrack has a big effect on the atmosphere which is being created. Not only that but, it helps fit the conventions of the genre the film opening is in. Our film portrays different feelings, such as: grief, sadness, anger, tension and suspense. We didn’t want a soundtrack which was too “overpowering” since we wanted the diegetic sound of the outside to also be hearable. What we had in mind was a solo and sombre piano so, we looked at different websites to find the music we were looking for.

The website we went on was ‘freemusicarchive.org’ which is a free music website where the music isn’t copyrighted.

There are filters on this website which are really helpful in finding what we needed to put into our film opening. After a while, we found the music we were looking for:

This piece fits our film opening perfectly so, we decided to go with this one.

Colour Grading

One of the important things we had to do in order to get the effect we want, as well as showing skills, was to colour grade/correct our footage. Like I have said many a times, David Fincher’s ‘Gone Girl’ inspired our film opening: from the sequence to the soundtrack, this film gave us lots of ideas for our film opening. However, the aspect of that film we were inspired by the most was the colour scheme. We set to work on creating a suitable colour palette and scheme for our film. This is how we did it:

1. We began exploring the filters Final Cut Pro had to offer and we found one which we thought was perfect: ‘Cool Tones’. At first, we only applied this to one piece of footage; to see what it looks like. Then, we applied it to the whole opening to see how it looked all together. We were really happy with how it turned how but, we still needed to do some more altering.

2. Like I said, the colour still needed some more altering. At the moment, the footage wasn’t even throughout: when the character moves through the setting and he goes into the sunlight more, the colours will look different to how they did in the previous scene. To make it even, we fiddled with the colour corrector but, specifically focussing on the exposure (this basically helps with the brightness and darkness you are trying to create). After we finished this, our colour correcting was complete and we are really happy with the results.

 

 

 

 

Rough Cut Feedback

Today we showed the rough cut version of our film to the class; we also watched the other class’ work. In this lesson, we received some constructive criticism from the teachers and our classmates. I found this lesson very helpful as it helped us get an idea on what we need to improve on.

• This criticism wasn’t for our rough cut – it was for somebody else’s film opening. However, it was a piece of criticism which needs to be made sure of in our film to. The point was : the film opening needs to have a narrative. A common mistake for many filmmakers is not having an actual flowing story in the openings. Even though I’m definitely sure that we have it, it is always good to check that our opening follows the a narrative flow and structure.
• Moving onto the criticism of our work – the first piece of criticism is to cut down the last shot. This is completely understandable as the last shot is quite long and can become boring for the audience so, this feedback is helpful for us.
• The next piece of criticism is to sort out the sound. Some clips we have in our film opening have no sound attached to them. The first thing we did when we began making the rough cut was to put all the clips together first and then sort out the sound. After cutting down the last shot, we will then work on the diegetic and non-diegetic sound for our opening.
• The next piece of feedback is to perhaps film some more shots of Adam (the man who walks through the gate and spots the main protagonist). Since the shots we have are showing a build up to where Adam sees Blake, we could add more in and place those clips in at the start. For example, a shot at the start could show Adam coming out of his house and just going for a walk. This normal life that Adam has in the film contrasts with the unusual and dark behaviour Blake shows.
• Linking to sound, there could be some sort of non-diegetic soundtrack playing subtly in the background of the video. However, the diegetic sound we have recorded of the birds tweeting and the gravel crunching is quite effective therefore, we wouldn’t have the soundtrack concealing these effects. A good website we were recommended for a soundtrack of some sorts was: audionetwork.lgfl

We will definitely take this feedback into account and make sure we can apply it to our rough cut to make the best possible film opening which creates an atmosphere and overall mood for the audience.