This final preview of all 3 of my products show how they all link with each other. I have explained analytically in each post the reasons for why I have chosen to follow the styles for each product. This post will show as a result how the 3 products come together.
Overall, these products all link because of their ties with the codes and conventions of the action/adventure genre I have been closely following throughout this entire year. The colours, fonts, layouts and presentation of each product lends themselves to be all linked with the chosen genre Alex and I have been working on extremely hard on for throughout this course.
It has been almost a year since I first began researching and planning the short film as part of our coursework productions. After several months of writing, filming and editing the short film alongside with Alex as well as receiving plenty of audience feedback to help improve the film, we are now both very pleased to be unveiling the final version of our short film "Paradox". For this final version, I added in the finishing touches to the film which were previously missing such as the smoke effects, the additional sound effects of the car escape and adjustment of the sound levels in the footage.
Alex and I are very pleased with the new outcome of this short film including the rest of the actors involved with this production and we are all very excited to be unveiling this to our final audiences.
Prior to me making the the media magazine cover, I stated that I wanted to follow the typical styles and formats from classic double page spread reviews in media magazines. An aspect of these magazines which I really liked was how much detail and information the reviews gave to their audiences allowing to fully deconstruct the successes of the films as well as their weaknesses. In some of the double page spread, there were also some pops ups in bright colours of striking patterns to help inform the reader about a topic relating to the film. With these ideas in my head, I eventually went ahead to make my very own double page spread using the examples of previous media magazines I have liked reading.
Below is my final media magazine product I have made for my short film. It features a full detailed review of the short film as well as a brief summary explaining the narrative. I have placed in a large text format the title of the film to inform the audience the film review which they will be reading, pop ups at the bottom left and top right informing the audience topics relating to the short film, page numbers, website links, and even a screen grab from the short film itself. I have also included a predicted interest curve which highlights the likelihood of audiences enjoying to watch the short film, but to also entice new viewers to potentially watch it too.
Overall, the layout of my double page spread is very presentable, presentable and fits very well with the expectations of a typical double page spread.
Below is a speedart video of the double page spread being made right the way through to the very end.
After working for nearly 3 months on my short film poster, I am now satisfied with the finished outcome of this ancillary task. Looking back at my previous post about my short film poster, I stated that I really liked how the two characters have the gun drawn in the middle of their faces to create the "paradox" effect. This effect which I intended to use was also a real positive noted by the audience as the expressions on the actors faces are really strong and well defined.
Receiving my feedback on my poster, the main points which were made where to consider where the text was going to go. Eventually, I came up with the idea of increasing the size of the photograph taken but also only include Morgan's face in the poster with his face being cropped to the side. This allowed more room for me to place the text in whilst keeping the minimalistic poster style in tact. Using Morgan's face in the poster was a decision I made purely on the basis that his photograph was a lot easier to edit and to add more contrast in then Luke's photograph, but also since Morgan is the main protagonist for this short film.
When I took a 2nd look at the film posters I had initially researched, I noticed how they included the film credits and reviews for this short film in too. Whilst adding the extra details in, I also played around with adding release dates for this production as well as the distribution company and links to websites. I chose to use the "Bebas" font for my text since this font fitted best with the genre of our short film. Overall I am very pleased with the final outcome of my short film poster and I truly believe that this poster is as good as it could possibly get.
Below is a speedart video of the poster being made right the way through to the very end.
A key part of my research when creating my ancillary tasks was to research the format of "house style". This is a style guide that sets standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication. The style guide provides consistency in style and formatting of a document. Many publications use style guides to demonstrate the preferred layout and formatting of a published page. They often are extremely detailed in specifying, for example, which fonts and colours to use. Such guides allow a large design team to produce visually consistent work for the organisation.
I intend on following the house style format for my media magazine as this will allow my audience to read through the magazine as they have been brought up to read a magazine and signs due to their social upbringing in the 21st century.
One of the key aspects that make up the character of "Crimson" in our short film is his ability to use unsupported flight to travel between different locations without being detected to easily by the everyday person. His fantastical abilities were inspirations we drew from after looking at the way the "Death Eaters" in the Harry Potter series fly through unsupported flight as smoke particles through the air. For our antagonist villain helper, Alex and I wanted to replicate this effect as much as we could to the method used by the Death Eaters. In order to make this effect, I had to use modelling and animating software packages such as Autodesk Maya to create the smoke itself before importing it all into Sony Vegas.
Whilst I have some experience using Autodesk Maya with similar projects in the past, it was an incredible challenge to even be able to create this effect from scratch. The results of this effect so far look great and will hopefully work well when imported into the footage for our short film.
The video clip below shows an exemplar render I made in Maya based on the screenshots in the slideshow.
Alex and I have been thoroughly organising our filming equipment and gear ready for the final scenes of this short film, the car escape. The footage for our short film so far looks fantastic and is really beginning to look like a genuine film for the big screen according to the audience feedback we have received. We are really excited to show the final cut of our short film to our audiences at our School Oscars Ceremony, however we firstly need to make sure we film the car escape scene before we have finished the completion of our film.
As the stunt driver for our car escape scene, Alex and I have been in contact with a friend of Alex called Oliver who as far we know is a very good driver and is comfortable of driving his vehicle up to high speeds. For the car escape, we expect him to arrive at the location at around 12:00 to give me and Alex plenty of time to film the last bits of footage of Luke running after Morgan before the car escape scene begins. We plan to use a variety of close up shots, GoPro shots and even Drone shots of the car escaping from the interrogation into the distance. As the filming for this scene is relatively quick, we will not require the actors to put in as much effort as previous film dates where we were up in East Hill for around 3-4 hours. I am planning to bring tomorrow the DSLR camera, the GoPro and the sound equipment, but leave behind the tripod as we will not be shooting any still shots for the car escape.
Having made a rough draft of my short film poster, Alex and I had the opportunity to display our initial designs for our posters to our secondary audience in order to gain additional feedback to help improve the pieces. Prior to showing my draft to my secondary audience, I knew that there were plenty of improvements required before I presented my final display of my short film poster. For example, I needed to add the film titles and text credits into the poster which deliver the key information to the audience about the details of the film. In addition, the photograph of Luke and Morgan is currently very flat and I therefore wish to increase the contrast of these photos to make the poster more aesthetically pleasing and rememberable.
The fact is, I am having a lot of trouble organising where to position the text since the photograph is taking up a large proportion of the poster layout, so I will therefore have to adjust these around later once I have received the feedback from my secondary audience.
Whilst showing our short film poster to the rest of the secondary audience members, I also took a look around the display areas for the other previous examples of successful film posters from previous years as well as the current poster ideas other students have currently designed.
As we went around the room, we wrote on a piece of paper underneath each film poster the pros and cons which would hopefully motivate the creators to improve on these posters whenever they get the opportunity to.
After several minutes of assessing other people's work, I eventually received some helpful feedback from the other audience members. The screenshot below shows the information sheet that displayed the pros and cons of my current film poster. The feedback in general showed that the audience liked the idea of the characters holding the gun to their faces to show the "paradox" between the two characters. They were also very critical about the colouring of the photo since the saturation levels on the print were very high although this problem was mostly an issue coming from the printer and the printing quality of the poster.
In addition, I thought that it would be useful to record some feedback from an audience member about my current poster design to upload onto my blog to prove how excited they were to see the final outcome of the piece.
Based on the feedback received by my secondary audience, I now have to continue working on the suggested improvements made for my film poster and eventually upload to my blog the final version of my film poster alongside continuing to work through finishing the rest of the short film too.
Despite having created all of these characters for my film, I thought that it would be appropriate for me to create a quick Prezi presentation explaining Vladimir Propp's character types theory since different characters in any media product have a specific role to play according to Propp's theory. Not all of the character types are attributed in many feature films such as Lassie and Big Fish which don't have any villain characters at all throughout the film. It is more common for short films to be missing out on some of the character types listed by Propp's due to the shortness of these films and so therefore lack enough screen time for them to fully develop their story properly, hence why they all called "short films".
During the editing stages of the footage, there have been multiple occasions when I have to re-create some sound effects for actors' clothes rubbing against other objects, the sounds of footsteps and even the punching sounds during the fight scene later on in the short film. Luckily, I was able to find many of the sound effects on YouTube or the internet in general. However, for sounds such as footsteps and clothing movements, I had to attempt to re-create these sound effects in a recording booth. Using the RODE Microphone we have been using so far in our short film, I used this to help record some more enhanced sounds and make our short film's sound levels more consistent.
The screenshot below is the sound effects folder which I have stored in my hard drive. These are currently all of the sound effects which we have been using in this short film so far.
The video clip below shows Alex and I in the recording booth dubbing over the clothing movement sound effects for when our antagonist villain helper "Crimson" approaches Jack in the short film. I watched the clip back on Alex's laptop whilst mimicking the sound effects using a cloth jacket and a leather belt.
Using these sound effects will hopefully increase the richness of the sound quality to our short film and make certain scenes more believable with the additions of HD sound effects.
After photographing our actors during a photo shoot, I immediately went ahead and experimented with making a draft of my film poster using the photographs I had taken from the shoot. My initial ideas before I began to make the poster was to follow a minimalist style since these posters which follow this format are generally very aesthetically pleasing in my opinion and there is often a limited margin for error when making these posters, since the background is mostly blank and there isn't as much editing required to the photographs to fit with the surroundings. The poster to "Lincoln" is one which I particularly admire for its simplicity but powerful outlook on the promotion of the film. The way that Daniel Day-Lewis is holding the pose looking down in despair is also an immediate signifier to the audience as to what the film would be about.
These photographs below are the shots which I took during the photo shoot when I wanted to follow the style of the "Lincoln" poster.
Using these photographs which were the best shots from the whole photo shoot in my opinion, I went onto Photoshop to begin playing around with the ideas from the "Lincoln" poster of an actors dramatic face. I had an idea of merging Morgan and Luke's faces together to create a paradox effect since that is the title and overarching theme of our film. The two faces will immediately create easy connotations for our audiences to pick up about the genre and messages of our short film.
In addition, I decided to completely desaturate the photographs making them into black and white as well as bumping up the contrast levels to increase the dramatic look in the actors faces. The draft result is overall stunning and I am so far very pleased with the outcome.
In order to further improve on my design, I need to gain some audience feedback about my poster so that the final product looks professional and presentable to the audience. My first initial critique would be to consider where I would add the text to my poster as the photograph so far is taking up the entire space of the poster.
The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honoured the best films of 2016, and took place on February 26 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Holywood, Los Angeles, California, at 5:30 pm, PST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United Kingdom by Sky Cinema Oscars and NOW TV, was produced by Michael De Luca and Jenifer Tod and directed by Glenn Weiss. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel hosted the ceremony for the first time.
Table of results
Moonlight won three awards, including Best Picture, and La La Land won the most awards of the ceremony with six after receiving a record-typing 14 nominations. In a unprecedented event for the history of the Oscars, La La Land was incorrectly announced as the Best Picture, before Moonlight was clarified to be the winner.
Moonlight Mix Up at the Oscars
Moonlight became the first film with an all-black cast and the first LGBT film to win Best Picture. Hacksaw Ridge and Manchester by the Sea won two awards each. Winners with one award include Arrival, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Fences, The Jungle Book, O.J,: Made in America, Piper, The Salesman, Sing, Suicide Squad, The White Helmets, and Zootopia.
I was very pleased overall to see that Moonlight had won Best Picture and Zootopia winning Best Animated Feature at this years Academy Awards since they were both overall my two favourite films from 2016. Hacksaw Ridge was also another feature which I really enjoyed watching which won Sound Mixing. Despite there not being an Action/Adventure films that won an Oscar for this years Academy Awards, and that this genre is what our short film fits with, I was still really pleased to see that these films had won the Oscars they deserved in their nominated categories.
Prior to filming the car escape scene with Oliver, Alex and I thought it was necessary to capture some practice footage of the Alex's car driving along the road as this will hopefully replicate what we intend to do on the final shooting day on 19th March. We went up to East Hill to record in the locations which we thought would be best to film some practice footage to help build ideas for how we might film this scene on the day. Below are a couple of clips that showcase the shots we made using the GoPro action camera and DSLR.
From these clips, it was obvious the DSLR shots were too shaky in comparison to the footage captured on the GoPro and would not be the camera we would use to film with when we create the car escape scene on the 19th March. We would, however, need to adjust the settings on the GoPro to remove the wide lens effect and change it to either a linear or even a narrow shot.
During a lunch hour, the Media Studies students all gathered together to showcase the current state of our short films whilst we continue to edit the rest of our existing footage in post-production. It has also been a while since we have received constructive feedback from our audiences about our work, so it's important to therefore show to them the progress we have made since the last screening of our production.
As of right now, our short film still needs a lot of working on since we still need to film the car escape scene coming up in early March. So far we have managed to film the city scene and parts of the interrogation and escape scene, however on our last filming day we hope to complete all of the missing shots we needed and the car escape too before we can finally say we have completed this short film. Before we presented our current draft to the rest of our secondary audience, the audience members also showed off the current stages they were at with their short films/music videos.
The audiences overall were very pleased with the progress of our short film and are now really excited to see the final outcome of this piece. As always, they gave Alex and I some encouraging pointers on how we could improve the footage which we have before the final version we present to the rest of our audience. The table below shows the summary of comments we received from our audience members.
With the next filming date slowly approaching, we will continue to work on the suggested improvements as soon as possible before we finish the short film before the hand in date in May.
Alongside the short film which Alex and I are editing for, we are also planning out our time efficiently to produce the two ancillary tasks we are required to do for our coursework productions. When we both come to make the poster for our short film, we would both like to use really high quality photos of our main actors in the posters to help attract the audiences attention more to hopefully watch our short film. Most Action/Adventure posters for films like James Bond, Batman, Star Wars, Harry Potter etc. use really high quality photographs of their actors or main subject matter anyway and we wish to replicate this convention for our film poster. I have already researched previously some styles and layouts which I quite like from existing posters.
On the 17th February, Alex and I invited Luke and Morgan to come to our Photography Photo Shoot at school with their costumes on so we could take photographs of them for our poster. We set up a green screen and photography lights for the photo shoot inside the photography dark room.
During the photo shoot, we both took it in turns to take our own photographs of Luke and Morgan standing in different poses based on some popular action poses we both found on several action/adventure posters which we had researched and analysed. We wanted to also photograph Alex in his costume too simply for experiments.
We also photographed a variety of camera shots of our actors too including low angle, high angle and even close up shots of the actors faces. The variety of camera shot would then increase our ideas in post-production to help generate poster that follows the typical conventions of an action/adventure film poster. The slideshow below is a compilation of photographs of the shots we took during the photo shoot.
Some photographs were more successful than others, however these will all be help begin building our ideas further for designing our film posters when we come to edit the photographs in Photoshop (which will be our primary photo editing software we will use). So far, the photograph of Morgan staring at the camera with the gun placed alongside half of his face is my favourite camera shot of the whole sample since the facial expressions and details in his eyes are really emotional and captivating to the eye.
I look forward to begin experimenting with the photos we have now taken from our photo shoot.
Since the research I made for examples of media magazines and film posters, I decided to start analysing an example of media magazine and film poster to see how these two ancillaries fit with the genre of their films.
The first example below is a double page spread of a magazine article I am hoping to take inspiration from for my media magazine. The layout overall of this double page spread is very good and is giving plenty of information to the reader about a personal review of the film by a trusted author, There are also small subtitles under each of the pictures to describe the pictures or even quote what the scenes from these films are hinting to the audience. My personal complaint about this magazine spread however is the lack of pictures and bright colours which make the spread more appealing at first glimpse to the reader.
The next example is a film poster which I also like very much. Despite this poster not being in the minimalist style that I would like my poster to be, I still am a big fan of the use of CGI graphics to mix into this poster which immediately attracts the audience for the themes of this film and what genre it belongs to. I really like the extra details of the film blurb at the bottom which credits the actors involved with the production and the credits for the directors and producers too.
Having analysed examples of ancillaries which I like and have ideas to take inspiration from, I now need to begin creating my two ancillaries starting with the poster.
On the 10th February, we were up at East Hill car park with the rest of the cast members re-shooting the shots we had missing from the previous film day back in January. Alex and I had to make sure that the actors were dressed as close as possible to how they were dressed back in January as this could create confusion for our audiences and also make the quality of the scenes fairly inconstant. By the time I had arrived home to edit today's footage in post production, I had noticed that there were occasionally some shots which drastically didn't match with the January footage and I therefore have to make to edit the scenes to make it less obvious to our audiences. A few mistakes I found included actors jackets being zipped up or open, which was not the same in comparison to January footage as well as some camera angles being slightly different to each other and therefore do not match.
A comparison video below shows some of these differences I had noticed.
The final film day will be the car escape scene and will require Luke for the scene where he turns his head around as the car quickly approaches him. We will be using Oliver Hounsell's VW Golf for the escape scene.
Since the last film day back in January, Alex and I are preparing ourselves for the re shoot day for the interrogation scene as there were several shots which we had forgotten to shoot or shots which we would like to re-shoot since we both believe that we could drastically improve these potential areas. Examples of shots we need to reshoot include the shot reverse shots of Morgan and Alex staring at each other when they are both not talking, shots of Morgan and Luke staring at each other and the shots of Alex approaching Morgan in a more sinister fashion. These shots are ones which we have followed from our storyboard however we will also attempt to experiment with other shots if we so wished to.
We have informed the cast as we have always been doing about the costumes and times which we will be meeting them and hopefully we should finish the day quicker than the last re-shoot day. As we will be filming on a school day, our actors have to have permission from their tutors and teachers to be able to skip their classes in order to commit to the re-shoot day. I will be bringing the filming equipment and additional costumes and Alex will bring the props necessary for the day.
In terms of the weather, it is expected to be pretty similar to the weather which we had in January, so this will hopefully not affect the footage which we have so far.
This Prezi I have created shows the first hand research I have conducted on my digipacks which is required in order for me to complete my ancillary tasks as part of my coursework productions. I have briefly shown in the Prezi's some examples of film posters and magazine articles which really appeal to me and that I hope to take inspiration from when I come to make my ancillary tasks.
After completing some of the required footage from Day 3, I quickly put together a new edit of the short film over the weekend to help Alex and I visualise better the next few film shots needed as we wait for the next film day. In this draft, I have included the new shots from the city scene we filmed back in December as well as the recent footage of the interrogation scene. On Day 4, Alex and I hope to revisit some of the camera shots we forgot to edit in as well as redoing the running through the woods scene since this was a little bit scrappy in our opinion.
On the 22nd January, Alex, I and the rest of the film spent the afternoon up at East Hill car park to film the first cut of the interrogation and running scenes for the short film. We all assembled at around 11:15 and began straight away to film the interrogation scene with Luke, Morgan and Alex (with Harry appearing briefly when the fight breaks out in the scene) and eventually the running chase scene with Luke and Morgan after our deadline of 15:00 to give us enough time to setup for the running chase scene.
The film day itself had its highs and lows. Firstly, a low point of the day was the lack of quality footage we had obtained for the necessary scenes that we had planned to film. Despite the organisation we had made prior to film day, there were still a few camera shots which we had forgotten to shoot because of time pressure. We therefore will have to wait until the next film date to film the missing footage which we need to construct the scenes we intend to include in our short film. Another low point of the day was when we were on set. The cold weather which had an effect on our actors as Luke and Morgan, who were already wearing fairly thin materials for their costumes, were beginning to get really cold as the temperatures began to drop. As a result, the quality of their acting when on camera began to decrease as the cold temperature began to affect their overall performances. We therefore spent a lot of time trying to perfect each shot instead of recording all of the footage we needed in the whole day so that we can begin editing with what we've got. On the plus side however, there were plenty of funny moments which helped us to lighten the mood of the day despite the cold weather. One thing which surprised Alex and I the most was how much fun our actors had during the day since they were thrilled in the early stages to be able to take part in this short film production. They were all so enthusiastic when on camera and were really trying their best, despite occasionally letting out a laugh or two when they incorrectly said a line or someone was doing something silly.
Although we didn't completely finish the interrogation scene as we had hoped, we at least managed to film the forest chase scene which we were very pleased about the outcome for. We were able to accomplish this camera shot by driving alongside our actors Morgan and Luke at the same speed as they were running. The two video test shots below show this technique we experimented with.
Overall, the 3rd film day was a success in many areas but also had its flaws as I had already explained. Alex and I are looking forward to begin editing our new footage from these new scenes and look forward to seeing the rest of the cast back on the next film day for re-shoots (10th February). Unfortunately, Harry is going to be unfit to act as of next week as he will be having an operation on his left ankle. Which was just as well that we were able to film the bits where he arrives to the interrogation by car but also being involved in the fight scene.
The day was probably was one of the most enjoyable times the actors have had so far as they are all great friends with each other and Alex and I and they were all really happy to see each other whilst arriving and performing on set, which meant that in the end we all had a really great time nonetheless and look forward to see each other again at our school Oscars in April!
For the past week prior to our next film day on 22nd January, Alex and I have been organising our filming equipment and props in preparation for our 3rd day of filming up at East Hill car park with the rest of the remaining actors for our short film. Tomorrow, we plan to film the footage for the interrogation scene at the car park as well as the running chase scenes where Luke and Morgan are running after each other in the woods. Alex and I are ticking off on our checklist the equipment we are planning on taking for tomorrow as well as reminding our actors through the group chat on Facebook all of the costumes they will be wearing for tomorrow.
Rough Updated Checklist
We are planning on meeting the rest of our cast members together at around 11:00 and aim to finish at around 16:30 as most of the cast members have other commitments to be working towards aside from the filming. We are therefore hoping to shoot the interrogation scene up until 15:00 and complete the running through the woods scene by around 16:20.
As I did with the previous two filming dates, I will be bringing to the set the same filming equipment as before as well as in addition the Tripod for any still shots which we will be shooting. I will also be bringing some of the costumes worn for Crimson (Alex) and Jack Morgan (Morgan Taverner) as they do not have any of the required costumes they require for the short film. Furthermore, Alex will also be bringing all of the props which he has stored away safely for us to use on set for tomorrow. Props such as the smoke grenades and the stunt guns need to be handled with caution during the day to prevent any injuries happening when on set.
Since we will be filming on a Sunday, we expect it could potentially get very busy by mid afternoon, so we have to make sure that we place signs all across the outside areas of the car park to remind any public members that we are filming and do not wish to be disturbed. Moreover, the weather forecast is expected to be both sunny spells which is the perfect conditions we want for the short film since the grey weather will promote the portrayal of our film in the style of a typical British Action/Adventure genre film.
Since the filming the cityscape scene in Exeter and looking ahead for the next filming dates, Alex and I thought it would be appropriate to update our current risk assessment for the Day 3 and Day 4 schedules as we are intending on using more dangerous equipment on set and performing more risky stunts. This risk applies to the fight scenes and the car escape scenes.
In the analog world, "colour timing" was a lengthy photo-chemical process that took place in a photo laboratory. Now colour processing is done digitally; the colour profiles of images and footage can be utterly transformed with just a few clicks of a mouse.
There are two main types of colour manipulation, and their names are often (mistakenly) used interchangeably. Colour correction and colour grading are similar in the process, but different in how and when they are used.
Colour Correction
Colour Correction is a singular process that involves making adjustments to an image to "correct" any deviations from its standard appearance.
These corrections include:
Exposure
White Balance
ISO Noise
Contrast
Colour Correction can be used to cover mistakes made with camera settings as well as to pull more information from flat-profiles. I should colour correct my footage whenever possible, as it creates cohesion between shots.
Colour Grading
Colour Grading is a multi-process that can change the visual tone of an entire film. Once the footage is corrected, it can work to change the thematic and aesthetics. Grading is used more as a brush to paint a picture with purpose. These include:
Colour Grading is considered a more "high-end" process than colour correction and it's not used quite as often for most videos. If we are looking to create more detailed colour profiles, I need to be prepared for more labour intensive editing and longer rendering times.
This video below shows the differences between colour graded footage and colour corrected footage.
Whilst Alex and I mostly have the correct filming equipment for this short film, there are going to be some occasions when we will need to improvise our filming equipment since there are certain scenes which will require filming techniques which are not possible to be filmed without the help of additional equipment. Examples of scenes in our short film which will require specialist methods include the scene where the characters are running through the woods, the underside shot of the car and the ending aerial shot.
Alex and I took our time off school one day to go up to the filming locations to test out potential options for filming these scenes which we may have. For the chase scene, we originally going to hire a dolly cam to track our actors whilst they are running past the trees. The solution to how we overcame this issue was by Alex driving in his car at the same speed as the actors running and me sitting in the passengers seat filming at the same time. The photographs below show the planning we have made so far for this shot.
The actors would be standing the opposite side of the line of trees whilst we drive alongside the actors
In terms of the underside shot, we figured out to attach my GoPro Hero 5 Black in the middle of the road whilst being supported with a couple of sturdy items to prevent the camera from falling forward as the car drives above it at a high velocity. For the sake of the photograph, we used sellotape as this was all we could find to demonstrate the method we are thinking of using!
In addition, for the aerial shot, we improvised our equipment so much to make this shot as close to a genuine aerial shot as possible. We originally thought that it would be preferable to rent out a filming drone to record this last scene, but after looking at our over spent budget for this film so far, we realised that we will need to think of a new method for this ending shot. The solution I managed to come up with would be to strap the GoPro on the boom pole of the RODE Microphone. The long extension of the pole would be high enough for the GoPro to simulate an aerial drone shot, whilst the image stabilization technology of the camera would help stabilise the footage more which will match the stable aerial shot normally achieved on a very expensive drone camera.
Alex and I wish to adhere to the conventions of the impressive cinematography shots made for the Action/Adventure films we have researched (James Bond, Batman etc.). These shots will hopefully make our audience more interested in our short film and will hopefully be asking questions about in the future about how we exactly pulled off these shots.
Alex and I have now come up with several different design ideas for Crimson's costume. Some ideas we created have been saved and others have been altered slightly to fit more with the character. After several drafts and design tests, we have both now completed a final design which we are both extremely proud of.
The design of the clothing has been changed for a black coat and hooded sheath which matches the colour of his gas mask. The coat design was also implemented since we wanted to cover up most of the characters body and make the assumption up that he his hiding the non organic limbs he has. The colour of the dark coat now reflects the characters role as a villain in the narrative and makes his presence more sinister when on set. The black colours were chosen since the iconic villains we had researched from Star Wars wore all black clothing and in our opinion scarier than other villains we found such as Bane who had a costume similar to what a marine soldier would wear.
Even though the render above is of a concept we both had for the final design, we were very fortunate to find costumes which match very closely with the concept design we came up with. The photograph below shows the model wearing the costume.
Alex and I are very excited to be bringing the character to life when we begin filming on set after thorough planning for this costume design.
During the Christmas Holidays, Alex and I met at his house to begin organising the props we will be introducing in the interrogation scene and car escape scene which we have organised with the rest of the class to be in February and March. For these scenes, we are intending on using smoke grenades and realistic looking BB guns which are unloaded. Prior to the film days, we have clearly informed our cast members as well as putting this warning on our new risk assessment that we will be using dangerous props that may cause significant harm to others if they are not used correctly. If any damage was caused to any members of the public, anyone else on set or even the environment around us, we would be the ones held responsible for any damage that is caused; so we have to be very careful!
In order for our short film to be following the prop conventions of an action/adventure film, we intend on using BB guns which have been spray painted black to remove the orange paint on these guns. The orange paint by UK law is there to visually distinguish the differences between a prop gun and a real firearm. Carrying firearms as we know is complete illegal and the fact that we chose to spray paint a BB gun black increases the risk of public pedestrians confusing our prop guns with real firearms. In order to prevent this risk, we will be paneling on small sign posts on set with warning signs that there are prop guns on set being used. Despite this being an over exaggeration on informing the public about our film props, Alex and I thought it was best to inform any oncoming pedestrians first what is happening rather than running the risk of being accused of carrying illegal weapons.
This sign post is a similar notice we will place alongside the sign post we have previously used which notifies audience members that there is filming in progress. We will reword the use of firearms to make this less obvious to them that we are carrying illegal weapons.
With this in mind, we were also thinking of the same thing with the smoke grenades we will be using since these could become hazardous for the people on set and off set. Such risks include:
Choking
Fire hazards
Blindness
Irritation Burn
We will be very careful when using these smoke grenades and to only use these at the appropriate time.
Aside from the risks we both discussed, we were working very hard in his workshop on making the props we needed for the next approaching film dates. The images below show me making the prop guns and adjusting the mask for our character Crimson.
