The Revenant

Recently myself and a friend went to go see The Revenant. A historic adventure film starring Tom Hardy and Leonardo DiCaprio. We went to watch the film at the ODEON and as we gave our tickets to the man at the ticket desk for him to rip and tell us what screen to go to he said ‘let me guess, you two are just watching this to perv on Tom Hardy?’. Never knew it was so obvious that we were such big fans! But as always Tom Hardy did not disappoint.

In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio is savagely attacked by a bear. This scene is amazing, it looks so realistic. The fur and the claws and everything on the bear are just perfect, its as if you’re watching a real bear attack. Anyway the attack leaves DiCaprio in a bad way to say the least and eventually he is left for dead by his own men. From here he has to fight for his own survival and carry on with the hope of being reunited with Tom Hardy to get revenge for the murder of his son.

I strongly advise going to see this film whether its your kind of film or not, I genuinely only went to see this because I like both Tom Hardy and Leonardo DiCaprio but I was apprehensive as I’m not a big fan of war type films that are set so far in the past. However I was very pleasantly surprised, the acting is amazing and its interesting to follow Dicaprios journey as he does all he can to survive and get the revenge his son deserves.

Adaptation from Final Feedback

We made sure all the diegetic sound was in sync by moving the sound clips we had added and we increased the volume on all the added diegetic sound. There is now continuous volume throughout all the diegetic sound. We also decided to put an effect on the title page at the end making it dark and colder, giving it a much creepier and eerier effect which made it more fitting for our genre. We are all happier with our final film opening and can see that all the hard work has paid off. We are now just glad to have a finished opening so we can start to progress through our 7 evaluation tasks. Here is the final opening 2 minutes to our film Mummy’s Girl:

Final Cut Criticism

We have now shown our improved film opening to the class and received more feedback. This showing was much more successful than the last and everyone agreed that it was an improvement on our Rough Edit. However there was a few things we were given to think about before having a completely finished film opening. We were told that it was difficult to think of criticisms but this is what we received:

1. The diegetic sound of the kettle being turned on might be out of sync. When the video was shown to everyone it was lagging a little so that could be the reason for the sound not being quite in place or the clicking sound is just a little out of sync. Either way we will watch over our film again and check if the sound is correct and if it isn’t, it only takes a few seconds to fix it.
2. The diegetic sound needs to be emphasised more. For example when the mother is making the tea the clanking of the pot could be louder and more obvious. We will improve this by increasing the volume of the diegetic sound and maybe turn the background non-diegetic sound down a little.
3. Make sure the diegetic sound is consistently obvious throughout, especially in the scene where the mother pours the tea and unties her daughter. This is a very similar criticism to the one before so can be improved in a similar way.

As you can see we received fewer criticisms and the feedback we did receive is easy to fix so hopefully we will have a finished film we are all happy with in the very near future. It seems that all the hardwork has paid off and we all look forward to having a finished film opening to be proud of.

Adaptation Made From Criticism

After showing our rough edit, we were given some very helpful feedback that has allowed us to further improve our 2 minute film opening. Below I will explain what improvements we made in connection with my previous criticisms post.

1. Our first criticism was about the mother walking down the hallway and how this was too slow. We tried to put the clip in fast forward but only by a small amount and found that it was very obvious it had an effect on it when watching it back. So we just decided to cut the clip down and make it shorter, we successfully did this and have been told that it is noticeable that she is walking faster in the next shot anymore.
2. We have now added all the diegetic sound, we have used a mixture of sounds recorded from the camera and sounds from the recording device. We have made sure all the dialogue is lip synced and that you can clearly her all the diegetic sound over the non-diegetic. The film is noticeable much better with continuous diegetic sound throughout.
3. We struggled when improving the criticism about the first ident but after trying lots of different things, we found that using the TV scramble transition from Final Cut between the two idents and putting in sound that bridged the gap between the two idents making them flow from one to the other much more nicely was what worked best.
4. We watched our film through without the non-diegetic music box music and definitely preffered it with the music in the background. We also tried it with different music but still found that the original sound was what sounded the best.
5. We finished the title page with the new font and definitely prefer it to the first title with the chalk writing. The new title creates a much creepier and eerie effect and fits with our chosen genre much better.
6. We did eventually record Vicky screaming in the sports hall and imported it onto Final Cut. The new scream is much more effective and nicely creates a sound bridge between the end of the film and the title page as the echo carries on through the fade. The scream definitely make our film much more creepy and really adds to the final scene where the mother scolds her daughter.

I am much happier with how our film looks after making these improvements. It fits our genre better and looks much more professional and well presented. Below is the improved version of our 2 minute film opening:

https://vimeo.com/151511089

Critisms From Rough Edit

We have recently shown the first rough cut of our film to the class to receive constructive criticism. Here the things we were told to focus on when improving our rough cut.

1. We were advised to speed up the dolly shot from over the mothers shoulder as she walks down the hallway. This is because she looks as though she is walking slowly and then in the next shot from inside the kitchen it is clear she is walking at normal pace again. This should be quite easy to achieve as you can easily out an effect on clips on Final Cut to make them faster. However its difficult to make it look like it hasn’t been made faster.
2. We didn’t have time to add all the diegetic sound to our rough cut before we had to show it. so obviously one of the criticisms was that the sound wasn’t consistent throughout. This should be easy to sort out though because we have all the sound available, we just need to add it and make sure it is synced.
3. Another thing we were told to consider was that the first ident is very abrupt and doesn’t really fit with the rest of the film. We as a group totally agreed, although an ident doesn’t have to have any connection with the film we understand that ours doesn’t flow smoothly into the next ident and into the rest of the film. We noticed this ourselves before we showed our first edit but were unsure on how to make it better, so we will all have to get together and think about what we can do.
4. We were told that the childish, creepy music box music makes the what is going to happening in the opening far too obvious from the start. However as a group we do really like this music and think it fits very well and it was only one person who thought it was too obvious so although we will try different music, I don’t think we will make a permanent change.
5. Obviously we were criticised for the title page at the end rough edit but we are already in the process of improving this, we just didn’t get the chance to improve it before our rough edit was submitted.
6. We were also criticised for the scream at the end of our rough edit and were told it would sound better with more of an echo or something to make it sound more eerie. So myself and Vicky have planned to go into our school sports hall, a large empty building, where I will record Vicky’s scream with a natural echo. Hopefully it will work much better than out current scream.

I feel that all of this feedback was very helpful and will greatly improve our film opening once we get back on Final Cut and make the improvements we need. We have discussed the criticisms and are aware of what we must do to improve them, its just as case of getting to work and making the improvements now.

Editing Process

We have all returned back to school with a memory card full of the footage we filmed in the holiday, ready to start the editing process. We imported the footage from the memory card and the sound recordings from the device on to Final Cut. After this, we looked through the clips and discarded the ones that we didn’t need, we also did the same with the sound clips. Once we had the clips we wanted we started to drop them in and got together a rough idea of the sequence of shots.

Once we had a rough outline of the sequence the shots, we started to change the lengths of the shots and stuff to make sure they followed on well, for example we had to make sure we got the match on action as the mother walked through the door just right. The one thing we found most challenging during the editing process was the through the wall shot. Because of how we had filmed it, we had to flip all the shot from after the through the wall shot. We also had difficulty when trying to make a smooth transition between the dolly back from the mother making tea to the through the wall shot, this was difficult as we had to use two different dollys and the dolly from we used in the kitchen was bigger than the table dolly we used to film the through the wall shot so the two shots where filmed from different heights. Therefore after trying many different filler shot and different things we could think of we came to the conclusion that showing the mother putting the lid back on the teapot was the best way to have a smooth transition and stop it looking like there was a big drop between the two dolly shots.

Once we had the film together how we wanted it, we had to add titles and sound. The sound that we recorded outside the house of the mother walking to the door was very muffled due to the wind. So we used the sound from the camera as once it was turned up, it sounded much better than the sound from the recording device. However we had recorded some good sound of the tea being made and the dialogue from the mum. Once we added this sound in and made sure it was synced properly with the footage, we started to look for music would could add to create more of an atmosphere in our film. We found some music we liked on Sound Cloud but were unable to download it as it wasn’t royalty free. However we did find some music that was perfect for the first half of our film opening on Sound Cloud that was royalty free and therefore okay for us to download. We also added music from audio network and some of the sounds that were already on Final Cut.

Once all the music was added and we were happy with how our rough edit was looking, we started to look for fonts we might like for the credits and main title because as a group we were unsure about the first title Chloe made in motion, the one that is at the end of our rough edit. We found a font we liked online called ‘DK Qilin’ and were then able to download it onto Final Cut. We have started making a new title page in this font, in the title, the words ‘Mummy’s Girl’ will appear as if it is being written on a chalk board background. We will then export this to Final Cut and add it the end of our film. However we did not have time to finish this for it to be part of our final edit.

We also added multiple fades throughout our film on the footage and the music as it creates a much nicer and smoother transition between the idents for example. The fades on the music also makes it much easier to move from one track to another as it is less abrupt. Overall I am very pleased with what we have achieved in a week and how our rough cut looks. However we are aware that it is far from perfect and hope that the constructive criticism we receive from showing our rough edit will help us to further improve it.

Here is the rough edit of our film, Mummy’s Girl:

Importing Footage

Here is a screen recording Chloe did for how to import the footage you have filmed onto Final Cut to enable you to start the editing process.

We Bought A Zoo

Recently I watched the film ‘We Bought A Zoo’ directed by Cameron Crowe. The film is based on a true story and the film stars Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson. The film is about a man called Benjamin Mee who struggles to keep his family together after his wife dies. He has two children, a boy who is 14 and girl who is 7. Together the family look for a new house, they find one they like but it has a twist, the house comes with a run down zoo. Something that needs a lot of care and attention and of course a lot of money spending on it. However Benjamin accepts the challenge and buys the house with the zoo. Although this decision causes problems within his family, of course his 7 year old daughter is very excited about it but his son couldn’t be more upset, he is being moved away from his home town where all his friends are to a place where he doesn’t know anyone and where all his dads time is taken up by helping to recover the ruined zoo.

After the rollercoaster of emotion this film take you through, it all ends very happily. The man falls in love again with the head zookeeper, the zoo becomes a success and the young boy makes new friends.

I really enjoyed this film, its not something id usually watch and I think the fact that it is based on true events makes the film even more special. You create a lot of empathy for the characters and feel quite attached to them as you watch them though there journey. I would recommend watching this, it leaves you feeling quite satisfied and tells such a sweet story.

Filming

We set Friday the 18th of December as our day for filming. So on this day, I got up early and put the camera battery on charge and made sure the sound recorder had batteries. Everyone arrived at my house early to allow us to have time to film. First of all, myself and Chloe moved the furniture around so there was room for filming and so that the area Vicky was sitting in was clear, we also moved things to allow room for the dolly. Whilst we did this Vicky got into her costume and Maddy helped her get ready but curling her hair and doing the makeup on her wrists. After Vicky and my mum were ready, we set up the props, such as the tea set and the teddies. We also made sure all curtains and blinds were closed and put the lights on instead, not only did this add to the privacy the mother character would have wanted in her home it also meant that the lighting wouldn’t change throughout the day and that when it got dark we could still film. We managed to get all our filming done in one day as we started early and finished late.

We filmed each shot multiple times and from different positions so that later we will have a selection to chose the best one from, we also recorded al the sounds multiple times. Alongside the shots we filmed on the shooting schedule we printed before the day of filming and used to help us on the day, we recorded ‘filler shots’ such as the fireplace and different ornaments, these will help when it comes to editing because they will help if any shots show inconsistency and although I doubt it will be a problem we can use the filler shots to make sure our final project fills the 2 minutes it needs to fulfil the brief. Overall I feel the filming process went quite well, we followed the plan and rarely had any problems occur. Although we did find it difficult to do the through the wall shot, it was difficult as we had to create a flat smooth surface for the table dolly to run across for the shot to be successful. However we had the idea of using the footstool from my living room and I feel we eventually completed the shot quite well. Another shot we were worried about filming was the tea being poured on Vicky as once her dress was wet and tea stain we wouldn’t be able to repeat the shot. However we managed to film from an angle where you couldn’t see if the dress was wet or not and this meant we could repeat the shot. I feel both the actress we used in our film opening were very professional and took the process very seriously and were very helpful. Within the group we didn’t have specific roles, we all did a bit of everything, we shared the filming, sound recording and all shared the ideas we had which I think made the filming process much easier to achieve. After a successful day of filming, I now look forward to the editing process and hopefully all the hard work will have paid off with our final film.