Editing Journal - Main Task

Hannah, Amaal, Siarah and I filmed the first parts of our footage for our film opening " WHAT lIES BEHIND" on the 22nd of January 2017, and then we filmed again on the 5th of February to film the rest as we didn't manage to get all done in one day. We  began the editing process the following Friday. 

 

lesson 1

Firstly, we spent our time familiarising ourselves with Adobe Premiere Pro  and what features we used in our preliminary task that we thought would help us now in our main task. Then we began by inserting our SD card into the IMac and then we started to  download and import all of our footage and start watching it, by doing  this we were able to choose the clips that we felt that were best for what we were trying to achieve within the editing process. We created a folder to keep all of our footage and saved drafts in. After we had imported all our footage we opened Adobe Premier Pro and created a new file.

Once we finished selecting the footage we began adding all the clips in the order we felt that would look best onto the Adobe Premiere Pro timeline. This allowed us to see a guideline of what it would look like. We then saved this copy with the title 'what lies behind'.

 

Lesson 2

During our second lesson of editing we first opened up our file that we had been working on in the previous lesson and began to edit our clips together. We started by going from the beginning of the timeline. we cropped each shot to the right length of time that we needed  trimming bits from the start and end of each clip. We did this all the way along our timeline, experimenting with different lengths of shots and starting shots from different time frames. We then rendered the footage in and out. We then saved our file as 'what lies behind 2' so that when we came back to our work we knew which was our latest copy of the file.

 

lesson 3

In our third lesson of editing we opened up our 'what lies behind 2' file and carried on with where we had left off in the previous lesson. Most of our time this lesson was spent adding transitions to majority of the shots. We tested out a few different options for transitions. We went for dip to black on POV shots and a cut. Dip to black transition was the most used  within our production mainly because it builds up tension. This is very effective and is used in a lot of horror films as it builds a aspect of surprise and it is unexpected to the audience. Once we had completed and applied all the transitions to the shots we began to search for the background music for our opening. We found a range of different sound tracks that we liked and we played them all alongside our footage to see which fitted best. We decided to use ' Insidious scary violin background music'. Finally, we imported the soundtrack we thought best fitted our footage to Adobe Premier Pro and from there we dragged it onto the timeline, underneath the footage. We then trimmed the sound track to fit the length of our footage and we added fade in and fade out transitions to allow the music to build up. This created more tension to our opening. We then saved our file as 'what lies behind 3'.   

 

Lesson 4

In our fourth lesson, we had our first check-in with our teacher who gave us constructive feedback on what we needed to do next in order to improve. This involved us showing our most up to date footage to our teacher and receiving feedback on the positives and on how to improve our opening. The first part of feedback we were given was to improve the lighting of a few of our shots because the  lighting was too dark and the clothes of the actors weren't clearly seen because of this. The second piece of feedback we were given was to consider putting our credits onto one of our main shots as we had our credits on a black screen which made the ending of our opening basic so we decided to place our credits and title on one of our key shots. A positive piece of feedback we were given was that our choice of music was good and fitted well with the piece

lesson 5

In our fifth lesson we added titles and credits. We placed them over the top of the footage and tried out different fonts and colours to see which fitted our opening the most. Together we decided on San serif for the credits and for the title. We chose to make our writing black with a white outline. This was because of the colouring of the footage. We added transitions to our credits and title. We then saved our file as '' what lies behind 4".

 

 

Lesson 6

 In our sixth lesson we decided to add effects to our piece. We decided to adjust the lighting in a few of our shots. After receiving feedback from our focus group that the majority of the shots were too bright we decided to add effects to these to make them darker. To do this we tried many different present effects. This allowed us to make the clip darker and create a more convincing eerie setting.  We then saved our file as 'what lies behind 6'.
 

Lesson 7

In lesson seven we asked our teacher to watch our improved production and give us some feedback to help us improve our opening. The feedback we were given was that some of the shots in our footage were not well placed. During this lesson we also played around with the speed of some of our shots. We then saved the file as 'what lies behind 7.'

 Lesson 8
In our final lesson of editing we watched our opening from start to finish, to  ensure we were happy with it. Next we rendered our opening. We did this by going to sequence at the top left of the screen and going down to Render In to Out. We then exported our final piece ready for our teacher to upload to YouTube for examination. We did this by clicking File > Export > Media this brought us to the export setting menu. Next, we went to format and selected H.264. Then, we clicked present and scroll down to YouTube. Finally, we clicked Export and waited for the file to export.











 

Filming Journal - Main Task

In this blog post I will be explaining the process we underwent and the problems we encountered and how we solved them during filming.

The Day

Our chosen day of filming was Sunday January 22th.

We arrived at Furze Platt train station at 4:00 pm, we chose this time as we wanted it to be starting to get dark to add a more realistic effect to our shots.
Then we went through the plans of the day with our actresses to ensure that they understood what they were acquired to do.
Our first shots were taken at the train station. 

We managed to get all the shots we needed from our first location which was the train station. The first shot we took was too blurry as we had not focussed the camera properly so we adjusted the camera lens and tried again.


                                              (Sunday 5th February 2017)

The next stage of our filming was at the park. We arrived at the park at 3:00 pm because we wanted it to start getting dark so it could add an effect to the shots and the atmosphere. Due to filming in January it meant that it was winter so it was very cold and dark. However, the weather was a good contribution to the genre of our film opening which was horror. Our first shot that was taken was the establishing shot of the park, we had to re take the shot a few times because we did not want to include any public members into the shot. Another reason we had to re take the shot was because we took it hand held at first but it did not look as professional so we did it again using a tripod.  
Our next shot that was needed was having the two girls walk through the park with the man in black behind them. However, due to the lighting it was difficult to see the man in black stood behind the tree. We did not realize this till we started to move our footage on to the iMac. Therefore, we had to come back at an earlier time and re take the shots that had bad lighting. The actors were well prepared and followed instructions clearly.

Friday 3rd February 2017
On this day we went back to punt hill park to retake the shots that had bad lighting. It did not take long as we knew which shots we needed.

Font and Title Research - Main Task

In this blog post I will be researching the conventions of horror fonts and how they are effective in portraying the horror genre.  

What is a font?

A font is a set of printable or displayable text characters in a specific style and size.The type design for a set of fonts is the typeface and variations of this design form the typeface family .  For example, Helvetica is a typeface family, Helvetica italic is a typeface, and Helvetica italic is a font.

Why are fonts important? -