Research on films for inspiration

After showcasing our film to our class we got some feeback that we should focus more on developing Dan's character to make him come across more mysterious. Therefore we bought in a variety of different films with the same genre to gain inspiration. We mainly selected gangster type films such as Bullet Boy, American Gangster. These all mainly began the same as ours with a voice over introducing the main character and giving the auidence an idea of what the films about. While watching them we all made notes on the type of voice that was portrayed on the voice over, and how we could include this in our opening to make Dan's character more convincing.

Summary

This has been the first day where we all looked back at our work as a group. We are amazed at what we have accomplished in such a short period of time.
Words can't describe how proud we all are of our film.


We've all agreed that its been the most stressful time of our lives, as the deadlines were hard to keep too because editing was so time consuming. Daniel and Luke literally stayed up all night to get it finished. 


Now its over there's an immense weight off all our shoulders. 
We would like to take it up next year, as its also been really fun.


Thanks and goodbye,
Group Y

Printing

We've just printed our final draft of The Delivery Boy to HD video.

Our other drafts the quality hasn't been that great, so we were nervous about how it would turn out.
Luke had stayed round editing with me so we could get the video done, and it we hadn't slept at all. At 7.30 in the morning the print had finished. It had only taken 45 mins to write to HD, which compared to the other "Bad quality" versions was very fast. So naturally we thought it had gone wrong.

To back up our conclusion, we looked at the file size before we played the clip, and it was only 1 gig.
We'd been doing media for over 30 hours by the time we clicked play, and i've never been more awake in my life.
The quality is insane!
Me and Luke were literally screaming at the computer screen, which only happens on very, very rare occasions.

Media Project Complete

Last Edit

We all went to the studio, re-recorded the voiceover, recorded the music onto the track, and made loads of cuts.
The hardest task was levelling the audio throughout the whole piece. It took a long time before we got a comfortable mix. Studio quality headphones were the best thing to use for this, as you can hear every sound, and with that we probably overdone it with the audio levelling.

We'll check the project again soon after some reflection time, but other than that I think its ready to print.

The Delivery Boy

This is out final product.

We listened to what our test audiance had to say, and we re-recorded the voiceover, added music, and cut many shots out.
Now we're happy with it.

Media Blog: Evaluation

Media Evaluation: This is the evaluation we created with the 7 questions set on the year 12 practical blog.

We had some initial problems with rehearsing, as we had a lot to remember to say, and we had to try and structure it.

Me and Luke (re)Recording the Voiceover

We hooked up the microphone to a duel channel headphone amplifier. This allowed both me and luke to hear what i sounded like on the recording, while i was recording it.

This ended up being a long and painful process, as getting the timings right was very difficult. We didn't want to edit into time too much, because we wanted to emulate natural speech. 

The microphone was recording the paper rustling as i was holding it and reading it. We spent a few minuets making a double clipboard to hold the three sheets in place. It was harder than it sounds.

Luke held the narrative so i could read, and also checked the audio whilst trying to keep the timings. 

It took a couple of hours to record and edit into the track, but we were all please with the result. 

Opening Credits

We've decided to call our film production "Phantom Productions" as Daniel was electrocuted by a "Fantom" powered microphone in the studio on the first day of the edit. It has a nice personal feel and a backstory, so we decided we'd name it that.

After we reviewed the 8 feedback sheets we had managed to get filled in, we realised that there was no easy way of comparing them. The IMDB has a score out of 10, which makes it easy to rate the film as a whole, thus we created a system. We added up the scores for each section, and divided that number by how many numbers there were to get the average, for example, 9+10+8+8+10+8+9+7 = 69. and there were 8 numbers so we divide by 8, so 69 divided by 8 = 8.625, then we rounded to 1 decimal point which was 8.6, thus giving us the average score. (each average score is out of a highest possible 10)

We were very pleased with the average score of 8.9 for camera work, as we honestly did put a lot of effort into trying out lots of different camera angles, and experimented quite a bit to see if we could get any prodigy shots from trying things that were to be quite honest, long shots. (not the actual shot type long shot by the way!)

We were shocked with the average score of 7.4, it was much higher than expected! We realised that the sound in the clip wasn't edited to perfection, and we knew it needed a lot of work so we were pleased about that. Also, we were extremely pleased with the 8.6 average score for editing, seeing as it was only a rough copy and not even finished, so we were ecstatic with that result.

We then made an average score for the whole film opening by averaging the scores for each individual section. (8.6+7.4+8.9+7.9+8+8.1 = 48.9, divide by how many numbers = 6, 48.9 divided by 6 = 8.15, then round to one decimal place which is 8.2. Meaning our overall film rating for our draft is 8.2, which we personally thought was absolutely brilliant.

Class feedback

The good point was they felt the narrative was good as they understand it, and that the commentary and camera work was good. This helped us know we was on the right track and our film all made sense.

The good points was that overall the person seemed to enjoy it this gave us a confidence boost to know that others enjoyed our work.

The good points are that the narrative is good and the sound, although they said more sound is needed. This helps us know that we need to focus working on our sound.

The good points was that they wanted to know what happens next which shows they found it interesting. They also commented that the blood used on Dan's face was really realistic so it was good that the makeup looked believable otherwise It wouldn't of came across serious. 

The good points was that the story line is interesting although they contradicted themselves and rated a 5 based on if they would watch it again. They commented that we needed more backing sound so from this we realised we definitely need to work on the music. They also said that the shot with Georgia in the boot needs to be longer so we are going to edit that and try make it longer.

The good points is that they said theres a wider range of camera angles so we know that what we filmed came across good. They also said there was a good twist in storyline which is what we intended to do so it boosted our confidence to know our plan worked.

The good points made was that our camera work was rated at amazing which we was all really pleased about to know our work came across good. They when asked if they would watch it again they rated it at a 10 which showed our film was interesting. Although they commented that our camera jumped in some parts so we know we have to evaluate some shots and edit the jumpy parts.

The good points was that they rated our film a 9 for sound, camera work, control of narrative, characters and if they would watch it again., this was all positive feedback. Overall the person seemed to really enjoy the film which we was all pleased at.  Although they gave us some helpful criticism and said Dan messes up some words at the mirror which so we are going to re-do this in order for it to sound perfect.

Opening Credits; Ident

This is our opening sequence. The group decided to take it from my horror still images. We added effects and created audio using garageband.

Pictures

Daniel practising for the backing track

Daniel and Alice hard at work on the group blog

Luke hard at work

Georgia Hard at work

Luke working on the writing side of the group blog

Daniel's sticky note approach to research

Alice in the studio

Editing face

Luke caught off guard in the studio

Working on our Idea

Shooting Schedule

Our shooting schedule. We planned it for sunday as it was the only day that the industrial estate would be free of cars and lorries parked up either side, which would of spoilt the shot. We started at 10am and finished by 5pm. We managed to film everything we wanted more than once, so that we could eliminate any continuity errors.

Plan for the opening sequence

Our legitimate planning for our opening sequence

First Group Meeting

This is our first meeting in which we gave each other roles. We figured that it would help us in drawing the storyboards if we could see the actors faces and knew their mannerisms. The 'Plan of opening sequence' is where all the storyboards derived from.

Film Research

Georgia's Research

Luke's Research

Daniels Research; (specifically focusing on narrative and music)

Alice's Research

Mrs Thrasher was kind enough to lend us many films with voice overs, specifically gangster films; as we had a meeting where we decided we'd like to combine a "Gangster styled" piece with a shock horror. 

We Individually looked through various films, and collaborated out ideas in a meeting. We decided that we definitely needed some music played over the background, and that music should be something that originates from major cities of America, which is where a stereotypical gangster would exist. We decided to tribute the  stereotypical american gangster with a jazzy/blues track which played in the background. However we also decided that this is as far as we would go in stepping into a stereotype. Therefore the accents are our own accents, and we don't try to imitate a particular style. We instead invent our own.  As I play blues guitar, and know various forms of jazz on piano, i quickly wrote a track ready to be recorded for our film. We also revised the voice over idea and wrote a script.

Edit

Yesterday, we all went to Daniel's studio to edit and review our roughly finished film opening. After the showcase we now knew what to cut from our film so continued to edit based on our feedback from miss and our class. We were instructed to change the length of the film as we were told it 'dragged on' and made it less interesting. In the 4-5 hours we spent in the studio we managed to cut down a reasonable amount, and now we have become happy with the length, as it flows smoother, and gets to the point.

One thing we hadn't included in the film was a production name and logo, however yesterday we spent a long time creating one. We decided to call our production name 'Phantom productions'. We all decided to call it this because this was the power source Daniel was electrocuted by was Fantom powered, and as a group we thought it was a nice little pun and something which we thought that was fitting for the film. The word phantom also means a ghostly figure and relates to out genre of it being a horror.

Another thing we needed to change was a few transitions and to create a music soundtrack, and yesterday we were able to do both. In Daniel's studio we used the piano and a music software program to create a jazzy riff, which we were able to make fit well with the film.

We will be going to the studio as a group one day this week to make our final changes to the film, and make sure everything is converted and ready to hand in.