Title tweaking

Considering that I was off today, the lads told me what was up and what needed to be fixed (as well as Mr Earl pointing out a few things). Not really big tasks and didn't take very long at all. Though I'm not sure of the 'filming by' part because I didn't actually didn't know what to do with it - so I'll have to talk to the boys about that part (which is primarly why I'm uploading this immediately so I can get some feedback).
At the moment I'm ill, and possibly won't be in tomorrow. This however is not a major problem as we are almost finished and we have yet to think of our commentary, filming of and analysis for presentation.

Tweaking and Extras Film

Because we had so much footage, and progressional stages within the opening that radically changed how it looked and set tone, I had to make a comparsion, a set list of priority changes and some snippets of when we were direacting shots and motive. Most of this other sample stuff came from our huge master shot which is over 30 minutes long, all together in this film I think we had at least over an hour of footage and possibly two hours as other samples where taken from a 20 min section.

Firstly, the comparsion is just to show what we've doen mostly with cinematic changes, making the area darker and replacing a few shots (this is shown in the first 'key changes' section)

Not only this but we also address that we now have titles and that by leghten of comparsion have slowed down the flash backs to replicate a 'day dream' phase as is what we felt needed for the referal back to the plot of the film.

This is nothing serious for looking at the footage we did, and espically when we're talking about stuff this is just an example, but now that I think we're finished, we need to go back and find places that we talked about shots, representation and possibly but these over the actual film itself as well as individual interviews and commentary - so we have a selection of things to work from.

And this is the current film - now, really, I don't think there's anything we could pick at. I've attempted to level out the audio, though I've also had in mind that with different legthens comes different volumes, so I used a basis of volume control to attempt to level it out (through i think this is as close as I can get it now).

Orginally, the starring titles didn't bother me until watching several films and thinking, this isn't correct, lets do it properly. So I did. The thign was, I didn't want to mess up the timeline of the film, the exact frames its at fits the soundtrack perfectly, so then I decided to copy the orginal, use crop, speed it up to around 180% / 160% and shave a few micro seconds off a few clips and managed to get it to fit! Orginally, the panic hit me as there really isn't anywhere else we could have put these.

Then the title at the end = it's so much more effective and ties up contigunity of our opening. I think this is as good as we're going to get it, unless Barry or Reece notice anymistakes.

Final tuning

I think we're almost there. Today we had a go at rearranging the titles, editing some of the trancisions and attempted to buffer out the sound a little bit more than we already had; though due to our working enviroment at school (which is extreamly loud) sometimes we can barely tell a difference. Litterly, we're just nit picking here to make sure everything as is near perfect as we can get it. Over some course of the weekend, I will attempt to sync all of the diologue up so that they all match with my Monster Beats (which couples sound in high defintion which will be far more distingusable to that of normal headphones) which in itself can be problemmatic. As I expressed in an earlier blog, we had a few issues with the soundtrack where we had to legthen it by nearly an extra minute and a bit - whilst we've tweaked with that we've also lowered the sound volume. The great, great thing about Adobe Elements 4 is that you can tweak things to (personally I believe) a finer detail than that of Premier Pro, on the timeline the yellow bar allows us to control brightness and on volume sound, moving the decabells up and down it either gives a positive count (which is extreamly loud and low quality) or a negative one (which is quiter and works better for our project). Because that is a vuage estmiate throughout sometimes, in the effects widget I can go to effects on the clip and select sound, typing in the frequency I want it to play our the decibles I want it at - I believe at the moment I have lowered it to -27D due to the loud climatic build in the soundtrack. The clips themselves are all on a -16D sound to buffer out a little bit of the fuzzy noise pick up; however due to range and legthen of shots this is proving a hard and pretty tedious task. In reality, it just needs some fine tweaking.

Title: basically we're going to change it. I never noticed until it was pointed out to us that we had a completely different font from the credits to the title, and never really linked to thought the different styles used. We're going to do to the title what we did to the credits, a simple negative left to right liner wipe, that is basically a little more unique fade (baring in mind we couldn't have anything flashy due to our genre). This will be done in Adobe after effects CS3 and unlike the orginal zoom and grow one, will litteraly take 3 minutes (not including render time).

Insitutions and logo. I was nearly in panic this morning as I forgot to get the sound for the Warner Bro's opening and the sound effect for our DynamiteKitty logo, so I got up early and went and downloaded them and fixed them on in tutor this morning with Reece and Barry;this just meant that we were further prepared four our lesson today also, and had ticked something important off the list. For our dynamiteKitty logo, we had a panther roar which I tweaked a little so it wasn't so abrupt as the orginal file was and fitted it just after the full image appeared from the trace and sketch annimation I created.

Overall, it's just fine tunning from here for the video itself, but in reality we have yet to consider making of and commentary, but its a good thing we've pretty much got representation sorted out - espically as we've considered it all along.

I will probably upload our current video some point over the weekend to show the tweaks we have made. I will also probably make a video that will run both our current and first draft to show changes that we have made, to compare and contrast why and what we have done also.

Film Update

We're nearly finished, all thats left is to relinge some of the audio in the piece so that it balances out, fix a few shots and also fix a few transistions - and possibly lower the volume of the soundtrack.
Last tuesday we hit a little snag and we had to lengthen the soundtrack by editing it in adobe sound booth to then fix it again in adobe elements 4 because we had a skip.

Since our critiquismof our draft, we have changed a few things, most importantly being the decrease in speed in the flashbacks (apart from where Reece attacks Barry) and changed the titles so that they are now intertitles - normally appearing between the flash back and intergation scenes -.
What we need to fix now is sound on the distrubter and logo and then I think we're done.

After we finish - which could be very soon - we'll have to work on the commentry for our film

This weekend I think I'll post some of the clips of our 'making of' where we explain what we're doing whilst we were making the film, before making it into an overall film. Not only this but we'll begin working on our analysis for our film presentation; a good thing we've been thinking of repersentation all along.

I think this is sorta of intresting to look at from an Inception making of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSBqXtOco5g&feature=related

Titles / Additons to squence

Considering that our rough cut had no titles, idents or logos of the sorts, we knew exactly what we were going to do, yet hadn't go around to creating them. We already made the logo (DynamiteKittystudios panther) and decided that we would choose Warner Brothers (in reference to other thrillers such as the dark knight) and were positive that we would have black and white, simple titles - Sword Fish (name), Casino Royal etc. ''Though, really, why have titles?'' we thought at the same time, considering that The Dark Knight particularly lacked anything but the connotation of the symbol of the films content.
Though, we though that titles would work best, but we didn't want to just 'fade in' and 'fade out' the normal way - we basicaly did that just with a side wipe from Adobe After Effects. These are just trails and yet have to be decided if we are going o use them, what we may still need and if we need to make them shoter/longer; thus we are due for a group discussion.

Fisrstly, we didn't like the spinning annimation that I made for our logo so I did something a little more individual and unique:

Orginally, I was trying to do something else, but due to several mistakes and a whole lot of confusion I instead created this - which I like a considerable ammount more than what I was trying to do and the spinning logo. It's 'artys' and unique - black and white also. Though, I think in the alternitive 'master rough' (the most recent edition of the film) that I had made it several seconds longer, also: but this establishes the idea. This was created through several points of layering (black layer, object layer and two copy layers with different effects for the transdendent fade between the draw, fill and glow).

Secondly, since we were mostly done with the titles, I thought I'd have a crack on peicing it altogther to get a jist of what it would look like - idents, logo and credits in all (I even placed music as it is yet decided whether we want music or silence; however I don't think it works):

We created these ones in school together by using composed linar wipes that we had to tweak so it would wipe left to right and out again, basically like the revealing method; simple yet effective as its hardly ever seen. Personally, I feel these titles are too long and need shorthning, however we need to decide what we are doing on a group decision so in the mean time this is the rough.

Finally, I decided to piece it all together as though it was the rough cut orginally (well, if it had included idents, logo, credits and titles) - of course none of the corrections have been made in this version (this is the orginal rough cut, however work is under way):

We all had a discussion abotu the title at the end particularly, we decided we wanted it at the end to conclude or ''sum up'' what happens in our opening squence due to the transistions, the point of this may become confusing to the viewer as the ammount of jumps and cuts that are happening in this squence are in delicate order - we have to be careful with what order we establish, also as I feel sometimes we've wondered into a stylized edit of a trailer (however for now I believe we're safe). I think it's rather effective also how the music ends on the title, rather fitting to be exact, and I decided to but a cross transistion on, though I might just have a fade into the growing title. Whilst we were commented to possibly consider making it shorter so that it can be read, we all feel personally this speed is 'okay' yet is still to be decided. The fade at the end of the squence basically ties up all the lose ends, summerising the opening squence in its enterity - also leaving transistion as though the film was to continue.
Here you can see that I have left the titles as they were, also. This is because the piecing of the rough cuts, idents, logo, titles were all squenced on my main home PC (I didn't use my laptop, which we have been working from as it ran out of charge and I just wanted an enital look for what we were doing). These titles are not defiant - the whole space it takes up isn't nessicary, yet personally I think it works well in this style (Inception for example, had over a 1 min opening titles?) and I believe that if we were to do a hollow overlay with the text on the orginal film, it would divert away from the film itself and the opening - what we have learnt is black and white and individaul, keeping it seperate.

Personally, I think we're nearly there - we need to make a few tweaks (which we've already started e.g. the clipped end of the shot where Reece hits Barry and the crop posistion of it) but we still have to do it. If we all agree on the titles, then that's sorted - we need to consider music, for these also, if we are even going to use any; I think it would be worth another trip to secession studios to see if we can find any fitting music - yet I ponder upon the question of transisction between that soundtrack and that of the films? Either way, we'll have to have a talk as a group.

Rough Cut

This is our first rough cut of 'DECIPHER'. At the moment particularly, the most important problem of this rough cut is that we don't yet have any titles (yet we've already been working with that to get it sorted).
To pick out a few problems first, the pan at the beginning is sloppy, sort of lazy really and doesn't quiet angle right, we'll fix this by using a different shot with that scene rather than cutting to it as Reece is already speaking as it is panning (its great that we have so much footage that we have several angles of shots to choose from).
Secondly, the shot were Reece goes to knock out Barry is obviously too fake, so we're going to cut it out further.
Also, one of the shots we had to crop because you could see our bags, hasn't been posisoned back into frame, leaving a black line across the shot - this is simple to fix.

I think all that is left to do is review the shots we're using, and look at our tranistion methods again, as sometimes they seem a little... weird. Other than that, we need to review opening credits, title and the film itself fully to decide what we want to do.

Also, we know for sure that we need at least one voice over as I've added that note in on a title so that it was absolutely impossible that we would forget.

Samples of other music we might use

Because we haven't ulitmately decided what music we're going to fully use yet, we decided that it was also best to look at the other types of music that I did not include in the samples as we may come to work it in later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ-JDeaKaBU&feature=plcp&context=C33f650aUDOEgsToPDskKMKsMkn9_HqPqFAvRqye46

This one particularly, the beginning and where the chords grow in tempo, I feel as though this would fit in sort of well during the flashbacks, then again due to its 'up beat' tone I feel as though it simply wouldn't work either, creating the wrong tone and atompshere for the piece - though it is still considerable and most defiantly worth playing around with the soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3OrYjkhBDs&feature=plcp&context=C3b98b0bUDOEgsToPDskKizISaSK-LZltQHSRu6p6y

Again talking about flashbacks, I feel the first few seconds of the beginning would have worked perfectly, but then the music burts into lyrics, a faster tempo and grows in dynamic sound also, which is unsuitable for any of this film - yet those first few seconds are so simple for the piece that it would have worked. Otherwise, it creates the wrong atmopshere, it doesn't fit our genre and therefore there is really no point in trying to use it; but it was one of our variables on the table, however. However around 1:44 the dynamic sound lacks for a little while, yet at the present one of our flash-back squences is 30 seconds long - the film time simply out runs that of the sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5hdJ3Z4pDY&feature=plcp&context=C337d554UDOEgsToPDskJXvLJUQ9oLSQ9XAJblPpfn

Orignally Reece suggested this piece for the flashbacks, which I would agree with as it has that dramatic, puzzling tone of it - yet I still feel it doesn't fit within our thriller correctly for us to use it, its just simply too somber and only too shortly picks up in dynamics. For the opening, the tense 'who killed her!' twist we have going on, just wouldn't fit the seriousness of the situation.


Considering all of this, I think from the samples I did yesterday, the third that I produced (saved as ''copy 3'') is the best simply because it is shaped well with the film and produces the correct tone and atmosphere that is needed within the thriller genre, but also the dramatic situation in the piece. The thing is, also with this type of music is that they are mostly, in ways, tralier music - yet we can work around that if we lay the clip out correctly.
Either way, we're still deciding, and at the current time it looks as if our flash-backs are just only going to be silent and not have voice overs, with reducing the decoble output whilst editing, we remove the fuzz, what could be done later is when I render it in HD, that I could go back to the orginal file and take the sound only from the HD save, insert it back in and increase the decebel output - which I have tried. We thought that it would harm the quality of the sound, but suprisengly it made it better. If that doesn't work however or we feel as though we want to go down another path with that, we have two options:
1. Record all of the voices and include voice overs
2. Use sound system software to remove the fuzz and make it clearier.

Sound Expermintation

We've now hit the half way mark through team viewer, reaching one minute, so we've been messing around with the soundtrack. Here's some samples:

There's a few things that I'm unsure of in this one. Firstly the transistion between the present and flashback, we have used a soft glow yet I'm not too keen on it and thinking about other ways in which we can do that. On the flashback also, we have a sound effect, yet I think it is extremely unneeded as we have a soundtrack (the other examples don't have a soundtrack). I think there's a few things to go over with still as some of the shots are a bit funny such as the man - you can see the drapes and the quick cut away shot I feel its just too quick, but we'll review it later.

Sample 2:

I don't actually thing the soundtrack has worked on this one - will have to ressample tomorrow, but you can basically get a guage of the sound as we've removed a lot of the fuzzyness.

Sample 3:

(This one has worked) Personally I prefer this one far much more than the others, I feel its the right tone and dramatic sense within it, in this one we removed the flashback transistion as it was just to me, far too obvious and extremely clesay, I love the build up in this one particularly during the flashbacks - though I think we have to be careful as this has that type of trailer soundtrack that people normally anticipate - our film will have to be extremely delicate.

Sample 4:

Whilst I like the opening to the soundtrack for the present, I aboslutely loathe the rest of the soundtrack on the flashback personally, it just feels too amuteristic, over dramatic - however we could cut away to another soundtrack.

We'll have a dicussion about it tomorrow and decide what soundtrack we're doing and how we are goign to transcend between flashbacks.

Problem

Okay, so it's mostly my fault that I wasn't in yesterday or today, but I'm going to skype Barry at least in half an hour and use team viewer to do some editing (a software that allows you to control someone elses computer) so that we can get some editing done, as well as tomorrow as I'll bring the stuff in.

At the moment, I feel there's a bit of tension within the group and with Reece being off yesterday we had a problem of not having the log list of the shots and where they are in the clips, which is considerably huge as we need to find the clips fast so we can get some work done - we have so much footage we could spend over an hour easily assessing what we are doing (however I did ask him to copy it / scan it a week ago for us or at least put it on the script for reference).

We have another poblem of getting organized as we need to start sellecting our music from secessionstudios, yet the lads keep forgetting to facebook me what we're using and I don't want to go and decide straight away as I feel it isn't fair and as we are a group we should be working as a group.

Editing Shots

We didn't think the quality of our shots were brilliant, mostly because of us shooting in low lighing, so I used contrast and brightness effects in adobe elements 4 to mess around with the image to see what kind of style we could get out of it - ulimately we made it darker and the colour that was there mroe definitive, as for example:

BEFORE

AFTER

(as you can see from changing this shot, very little is now shown of Reece and darkness is greatly deep and compares against the lighting from the side, glowing unlike the other - doing this also removed some of the grain)

BEFORE

AFTER

This is only a test and I'm not yet adding it to the video as I need a point of control on the darkness and brightness used, if I were to do it individually at the first stage, I can't work out the volumes that are used; when it's finished I'll link it all as one video and mess around with the contrast settings to get the quality and style that we want.

I think in a way, we're taking a gamble as some of the films we looked at were stark - but in another sense we're adding a stylized and more quality into the shot, I think it could work, ulitmately we're making it dark and most of the films we anlysed were dark for the thrillers.



Update

We haven't quiet started editing yet, but we've been recorrding the voice overs. We're still reviewing clips (we have a lot of footage, some of it lasting half an hour...) to see what parts we need to use and in what order to aid us in editing. By Friday, however, we should have at least started the first interogation scene and have a vuage 'rough cut' by next friday.

The good thing about us working on our laptop, also, it means that me, Barry and Reece can get together during the half term week coming up soon, and continue editing.