Film Brand Research

In the real world, it is very clear that the film is the main product. For the film companies it is the main bread winner that brings the massive revenue (if it is successful) to the company. Posters and other merchandise are simply an advertising means to sell the film. They make sure that the film is seen by people who maybe would not see trailers on the internet for example. All of this makes sure that the media owners will receive more money in a very high finance related industry.

Ancillary Tasks

The film is complete and we are happy, but it isn't over yet! We have been set two ancillary tasks on top of making our short. To begin with, we will be making a poster which will advertise our film, typical to the type you would see hanging up inside a cinema. We will also be making a film review after this in the style of a magazine article like that found in Empire and other big film magazines.

Finished Film (Final Cut)

After all that work, here is the final feature, perfected after taking on board all the advice and feedback given to us by our peers and other who had seen it.

Re-Editing The Rough Cut

Although many things needed to be changed they were not really that taxing and were all handled swiftly with no further hiccups. The very bright kitchen was dimmed using a light exposure filter within Final Cut which, although parts were still overexposed it did not fault the film nearly as much as before. The fact Brian answers the phone twice was also a small change, where i simply sourced the clip again, made it longer and snipped the bit out where he picks up the phone a second time. All of the telephone voices were also edited in order to make them more realistic and remove the bassy effect off Karen's voice at the start of the first phone conversation. This was done by using the clip distortion plug in again and move the drive up and gain down slightly. One or two distracting sound effects were also changed, for example the changing in volume on Brian's car was made one volume throughout as although reality would suggest ti was right, it was distracting in the film. Several transitions were tweaked, for example when the music fades out to see Karen in bed the silence is longer to make the transition smoother, as well as a cross fade being implemented in the last scene rather than a fade to black, then fade back in. The crash sound effect was very over the top and i made this sound much more realistic as instead of glass smashing, i had a small skid, one car bumping. I did however add a suggestive body drop, making things slightly more clearer perhaps?

Evaluating Our Peer Feedback

Peer Feedback

Shown above is the questionnaire handed out to everyone of my peers who watched the film. It instructed that they commented on the film through different categories.

First of all, they must comment if they enjoyed the film and if they would watch it again;

Out of 8 people we asked, all of them (8/8) enjoyed the film and would happily watch it again if it was shown to them.

Next they are asked to answer at which age group (or target audience) they believed that our film was mainly aimed at;

19-25 was the desired figure we had in mind and nearly everybody (7/8) selected this result as the target audience. The only person who did not agree was not too far off though and thought it was for people ages 15-18 due to the love sick girl. Although strictly not incorrect, I only used this as a negative answer due to it not including any people in their early twenties. Both would be spot on in conjunction with each other, however the popular answer stood correct on its own.

They were then required to name their favourite and most disliked parts of the film and why;

As a whole, the favourite part of the film was when Brian pulls up at Karen's and when he leaves after cutting all ties with her. The reason this was such a favourite seemed to be as it was deemed 'professional' in terms of the editing and camera work, many even went as far as to say it looked like a shot from a real film or television program. This made us very happy with our film

Criticisms lay in the least favourite part of the film, which turned out to be the kitchen scene down to the sheer brightness of the scene, although everyone liked it other than that, they claimed it tarnished the rest of the film with this overexposed scene.

Overall, we received a mark of 8.5 out 10 from our peers, not bad for a rough cut! The only thing they would have liked to have seen which was not in the film was to show the scene of her almost getting ran over at the start which we actually have taken into some consideration. Other than this feedback, our teacher who, after collaborating with some other pupils, presented us with this feedback shown below;

Complete Film (Rough Cut)

Personally I am very pleased with the final product. No doubt problems or dislikes may arise with it but it will only ensure we will create a better film overall. The only thing I am unhappy with currently is the over exposure in the kitchen, this may be rectified at a later date though

Editing Our Footage

In order to edit our film, we used the following pieces of software;

- Final Cut Studio: Main editing software, enables us to piece clips together, add transitions and generally make a film

- Soundtrack Pro: Provides music, sound effects and if necessary overdubbing for voices. Provides all the sound for our film.

- Quicktime Player: Plays the film on our Macs.

- Youtube: Enables us to host our films onto the internet and embed them to our blogs.

- Compressor: Used in order to make the massive film files smaller for storage, Youtube and DVD, not to mention the rendering.

Editing our film started by capturing all of the used tapes and placing them in order onto Final Cut (much like in the animatic). All unnecessary bits of film are then removed by cutting then deleting them from the timeline. Fades and transitions are put where required amongst other effects (light filter in our case). When all this is done, credits are then inserted as well as an ident, the general gist of your film is now beginning to become a real piece of media text. This crude film is then imported into Soundtrack Pro. Within this software, sound effects are added such as a phone ringing which was the most common in our film, along with music. How well they fade out is also controlled here. As well as decorating it to sound good, I also used it for one of its more practical uses by removing background noise we did not want and distorting voiced of people you could not see while on the phone. I also kept a copy of this for the animatic due to it changed so so much, it would be simple to use the films soundtrack itself. The finished soundtrack is then exported back to Final Cut where it is all aligned up and finished. After everything is rendered, you may export it as a Quicktime Movie (mov.) file and there it is, the complete film. We also compressed this file to reduce the file size and hosted it on Youtube by uploading it onto Josh's account. This meant that our film was complete and open for the whole world to enjoy if they wish.

Example of Final Cut

Shooting on Location

Diary of filming

Day: 1

26/01/11

Upon arriving on location for the first day, we were grateful the weather was good and enabled shooting to take place. We wanted to start with the first scene simply for an easier time later on in editing. Once settled I was glad we chose the actors we did. They were eager to assist us and made life on set very pleasant. Many laughs were had using the car as reversing up and down the street became a repetitive incident throughout the time spent there, made funny by the ridiculously loud whining noise it emitted. For the last part of the scene, Matt (Brian) kept forgetting lines, which was frustrating but all was forgiven after he got himself sorted.

Day: 2

01/02/11

Spirits were high when we arrived at Jon’s, the weather wasn’t too bad and he conveniently had a free house meaning we would not be disturbed. After removing the dog from the kitchen (not so easy funnily enough) we got underway with scene 2. We had slight interruptions with phone calls but no major hiccups. A different angle was used a one point to capture this scene but was quickly scrapped on set as it looked terrible and did not do the film justice. Bad framing was one of the reasons it was that terrible but I simply did not like it anyway. We got a lot done this day.

Day: 3

05/02/11

The final scene was filmed on this but I was not there! I was skiing at this point but I am informed by Josh that all went swimmingly and it was a simple case of an in and out job.

Day: 4

10/05/11

My first filming day back after skiing and I was very excited to continue. We made a trip to Josh’s house to film part of the conversation in scene 6. I also managed to get the footage of Matt in the car! That was hilarious, climbing through the car trying to get the best angle I could. My safety probably was not a high concern at this point! After an uncomfortable car journey (for myself anyway) we got plenty of shots of Jodie ad decided to compile them all in the scene we had some lighting troubles at one point but a lamp later we were pretty much sorted.

Later that day we made the trip to my house with the crane. After some difficulties fitting it we managed to get a great crane shot… eventually. First we endured 15 minutes of people walking past and badly framed shots due to the fact we could not see a thing, as we didn’t bother with a Tv. The eventual outcome was perfect though and guesswork clearly paid off. We got the small conversation done very quickly then, when Matt returned to his car, I insisted I filmed him with a panning shot, a shot I later saw as brilliance and had to put it in, meaning an additional frame in the storyboard and a changed animatic.

The final location of the day was Jodie’s house to shoot footage of her on the phone for an earlier scene, one of which we had highly neglected until now. After some minor puns of Jodie in bed and some light hearted insults we got cracking and came out with a pretty decent set of shots which, were ok I suppose, but we did have and excellent focus pull on her clock. A busy first day back at the office!

Day: 5

12/05/11

This was only a quick session but we made the journey to Bloxwich to film Matt in bed now as Brian. There was no escaping how awkward it was for three lads filming another in bed but once past it, we felt the footage was good and a new shot of him slamming the phone down was decided. Another change to the animatic and the storyboard was in order.

Day: 6

15/02/11

This could have been filmed a few days beforehand but our lack of time with a camera made it necessary to do it today. We first went to Johns again and filmed Matt in the office on the phone. In order to get a fluid conversation going, we had Jon reply to Matt pretending to be Karen, which distracted us at one point due to how funny the incident was. Once focus in the group was re-established, the scene turned out to be, in my opinion, the best on in regards to the rest of the phone sequences.

After this it was time to gather more footage of Matt on the phone as once looking at the ones I had taken before were very shaky and useless. This incident does not get old and Matt and I had much fun on the way back shooting this again.

Day: 7

17/02/11

With the end of the filming in sight, we made the short journey to Jodie’s to film her one last time in her home for an early phone conversation. This was a quick ordeal and rather boring as we all had other work to continue with, causing everyone to be restless. I was glad to get this scene out of the way.

Day: 8

18/02/11

Sadly our final day of filming had arrived and all that was left was Matt to speak on the phone one last time. Jon did Karen’s part again with some improvisation to keep everyone in good spirits and the whole scene was done in practically two takes! I was almost sad after this as I will probably never have chance to do this again, I have had fun doing it and it’s a shame I don’t have the camera resources else I would definitely make more films

Preparing For Shooting

Here is a post showing what must be considered before filming goes underway.

^ Here we have a crane on a tripod. This will have the camera attached to it as it provides roughly another four metres of length to the arm. It is operated with weights on the back which are pulled down via a handle. The weights stabilise the arm with the camera, resulting in less wobble when moving. It has a pully-mechanism used to rotate the camera if desired and has the option to hook it up to a television to view the shot. We will be using a crane in the scene where Brian arrives at Karen's house, establishing the scene nicely.

^ This is just a tripod used to hold the camera in place. This is the one we will use but an option with wheel may be kept at hand just in case. This one has telescopic legs to provide us with many height perspectives to shoot from and the point at which the camera fixes has an adjustable height mechanism. This will be used in all scenes.

The camera. Vital in our film, this is a Sony HDV camera taking HD film or has the ability to write to a memory card. This is our 'weapon of choice' if you will and has an adjustable focus setting perfect for focus pulls. It also has a huge microphone able to pick up a lot of diegetic sound much better than cameras we used to use.

Now we have discussed what equipment we need, roles on set must be discussed. Originally, I planned on directing as I felt i knew the story better, but instead of creating dictatorship amongst us it became much easier to share the workload. We had a rotation system in order to please everyone, ie. everyone would have a hand in camera work and the little jobs like going over the script with the actors. This had us thinking that filming would be a lot more pleasant and less formal than having strict roles to abide to as it is clear you can't pleas everyone in that way.