Chloe and Vicky gave recently practised the dolly shot we will be using in our filming. Here is what Chloe said about it:
‘Last lesson, Vicky and I practiced how to set up the dolly track and how to make the camera move along the track. It is important that we practiced this type of camera movement so that we can film our footage much more efficiently, and so that we can set the dolly and tripod quickly. We will use the dolly when filming the shots of the mother walking.
Vicky then recorded me walking, to replicate the shots we will feature in the opening two minutes. Afterwards, she edited the shots and uploaded them to Vimeo.
In this shot, you can see that there is a part where the camera is really wobbly. This is due to the fact that me and Vicky had not correctly assembled the dolly track, so that when we moved the tripod cart over where the two pieces of track joined, the tripod came out of the holes where it sits.
Then, after looking at the join and realising that we hadn’t pushed the pieces of track together properly, we rectified this problem and the take looked much better:
Now that we can execute this shot properly, we will be able to utilise it by using it to transition from one part of the house to another, rather than just simply cutting from one shot to the next.’
Here is the work Chloe did in producing the second of our 2 idents:
In my research of the opening two minutes of The Machinist, the first two things that are shown on screen were the Paramount Classic ident and the Filmax International logo.
After creating the 1905 Productions ident, we decided that we needed a more simple logo such as the Filmax one. So, considering that I had experience using Motion 5, it was my role to create the second, more simple logo.
We chose to call the distribution company Cosmos Media, as the font that we initially like had links to space. We initially thought of Galaxy Media, but after researching to see if this was an already existing company we noticed that it was already up and running and thus had to change the name. This is where the thought of Cosmos Media, as it is a synonym of galaxy and thus has similar connotations.
After choosing the font and looking at others incase we found a better one, I decided that the font Deep Glow was the best choice.
I then browsed the font actions, which meant that I could drag the chosen action onto the font and it would move in a certain way. I thought that the text tracking out looked the best and fit with the space theme, as it creates the illusion of the writing being infinitely large, which space also is.
However, this looked quite boring so we thought that adding a glow and shadow to the text would make it more interesting.
I did this by clicking the box next to ‘Drop Shadow’ and changing the colour of the shadow. I then increased the distance and angle of the shadow to give this effect.
To make the animation look even more interesting, I thought it would look good to have the shadow move further away from the text as the text tracked outwards. I did this by moving the selector to the end of the timeline and pressing the key frame button. I then dragged the distance up to a hundred. By key framing, it means that the animation can change throughout the clip, rather than it all looking the same all of the way through.
Then, I thought adding music to the logo would enhance it even more, and make it look a bit eerier.
We browsed a free music website called Audio Network, so that we could find a great variety of music which we could easily download. We needed to take a soundtrack from a download website, as the music on popular websites such as Youtube and Vimeo would require us to pay royalties to use the music off there.
I then put corresponding fades onto both the animation and the soundtrack, to give the logo a more subtle finish rather than it cutting off sharply.
I feel as this represents a real production company and am very pleased with the final outcome. We will use this to follow the 1905 productions logo to make our opening two minutes look more authentic to a real, produced film.
“Our first two minutes is comprised of two locations, the first of which is Megan’s house. As this is a private property the only permission we needed to gain was that of Megan’s mother, as she is starring in the opening she was more than happy to oblige.
The second location is the road directly outside Megan’s house. This road is relatively quiet. So despite being a public place we decided we did not need permission from the local council to use this location as we do not intend to vandalise the location or create lots of loud noise.”
Thankfully through using locations that are owned by people we know, we were able to save a large amount of time as we didn’t need to ask if it was okay to film in these areas.
Here is the shooting schedule research and final shooting schedule Chloe has done:
A shooting schedule is created to make the filming of any project much more efficient, as the crew will have a clear, step-by-step list of what to film and in which order. The shooting schedule will also work well with the story boards, to give a clear representation of what is said on the schedule.
I took on the role of making the shooting schedule as I had completed the second ident and was at a loose end as to what to do next.
To help with the creation of our very own shooting schedule, I researched the shooting schedule from a film that had already been produced to understand what a professional schedule looks like:
The schedule is taken from a horror film named I Have Never. As you can see, the shooting schedule is very detailed to make the filming much easier, and so that everyone on set knows where to be and what to do.
Here is the shooting schedule I created:
Although the shooting schedule I created isn’t completely the same as the shooting schedule from I Have Never, I feel that it will be very helpful when it comes to record the opening two minutes of the film.
This is the research Chloe has done into the production the ident. She created the ident and has documented her hard work below.
The letters MCMV and numbers 1905 will fade in and out, intermittently, on top of a hammer and sickle. The 1905 will then move, and the word ‘productions’ will appear next to it.
The reasoning for these letters and numbers is that our initials combined create MCMV which is roman numerals for 1905. It was then brought to our attention that this was the year of the Russian revolution.
Hence the image of the hammer and sickle, as it is a communist symbol which arose during the Russian revolution.
So after drawing out the basic idea for our ident (as shown in the post Ident Planning), I set to work on producing the real thing. I have never used Apple Motion 5 before and had a bit of difficulty trying to figure out how to actually get started. After playing around with the software for a bit to get a feel of it and reading theApple Motion 5 Cookbook by Robert Chelsea, I was ready to get started.
I began by researching a suitable picture of the hammer and sickle on Google Images. I needed a picture which had no background, and luckily this was one of the first results.
The checkered background meant that the red icon could be placed in front of any background without the usual white background from the image. This made it very easy to import into Motion, as I simply copied and pasted it on to the black screen, which created my first layer.
I then chose an appropriate, bold font. I started off with a font style called ‘Chiseled” and typed in the 1905. I then used the curser to drag the writing to the write position and to alter the size. I liked the way that this was done, and both the width and length could be changed which meant that I could make the text fit perfectly into the handle of the hammer. I then copied this writing into another layer and typed in the MCMV. This meant that the font, size, width and position of the writing was exactly the same and thus saved me time as I no longer needed to waste time re-positioning it. However, when editing I realised that the 1905 was slightly longer and more bold that the MCMV which looked really untidy. So I changed the font style of both pieces of text to ‘Old Steel’ and altered the length and width of each, which thankfully was exactly the same for both.
I then began to edit the text so that they flashed in and out with one another. This took a very long time but I finally managed to conquer this task. We had planned for the MCMV to show for about 80 frames before fading out and 1905 fading in, but when I realised that this would equate to about 3 seconds, and considering an ident is only supposed to be a short piece of animation and this was only the start of it, I decided this was far too long. So, I cut down the first fade to 40 frames which I felt was much more feasible. To do this, I moved the selector along the MCMV bar, and then clicked the ‘key frame’ icon. Apple defines ‘key framing’ as “the process of assigning a specific parameter value to an object at a specific point in time”. Thus in doing this, I was able to divide the entire MCMV bar into sections, so that I could edit the text so only the first portion would be affected. After pressing the key frame button, I dragged the opacity of the MCMV down to 0. I then clicked the left arrow 20 times to move upto 60 frames, key framed it, and dragged the opacity back up to 100. I repeated this several times alone the MCMV bar in order to create the illusion of it disappearing and reappearing. To have the 1905 fade in and out at opposing times to the MCMV, I had to start the key framing from the beginning. So, I dragged the cursed to 0 frames on the 1905 bar, pressed the key frame button and dragged the opacity down to zero. I then moved the cursed to 40 frames, key framed it, and set the opacity at 100. I then continued to change the opacity from 100 to 0 every 20 frames, in opposing sections to the MCMV. As you can guess, this was very time consuming and took about 3 lessons, as in some places human error came into action and meant that either both the text’s were at 100 opacity or both at 0 as I had gotten confused as to which one was which. However, I managed to rectify my faults so I could carry on with the rest of the animation. This is how the ident looked at this point in time:
After spending some time trying to work out how to make the writing move position, I decided to seek help and I was shown how to do it. To make the 1905 move, I needed to key frame the part which I wanted to move, and then dragged it into the desired position. After a fair bit of key framing and altering the rotation of the writing, I managed to make the movement look clean and professional.I thought it would be easiest to insert the word ‘productions’ in another text box, and have the 1905 fade out using key framing, and then back in with the productions next to it. However, as you can see in the picture below, the shine effect on the productions faces in a different direction to the 1905, and even after attempting to alter the direction of the shine, the two still looked fairly dissimilar and I wasn’t very happy with it.So, to divert away from this issue, I had the 1905 fade out, but did not fade it back in. Several frames after the writing had faded out, I had the text ‘1905 productions’ fade back in, in the same font, size and position as the 1905 initially was, although it was now more central. It was then brought to my attention, that the R in the Russian alphabet typically faced the other way:
So I changed the direction of the R in ‘productions’ by copying and pasting the R from the Russian alphabet. I did this to enhance the Russian theme of the ident even more greatly.
I now needed to select appropriate music to be played alongside the ident. I wasn’t really sure what kind of music or sound effect to use, but after some input from other people, we decided that a Russian Cossack song would fit appropriately with the theme of the ident. And after listening to several songs on YouTube, this is the song we thought would be most appropriate:
Now came the dilemma as to have the music playing from the very beginning of the ident, or just from when the ‘1905 productions’ faded in. I tried the latter option first, but thought that the rest of the ident was just too quite so we went with the first option, and had the music begin in the very first frame of the ident. Now, after doing this and playing through what I thought was the finished ident, Megan suggested to me that it looked a bit strange, as the fading in and out was not in time with the music. Obviously I was a little disheartened at the fact that I would have to re-do all of the key framing and change all of the opacities, but I felt that it would be totally worth the effort in the end. So, after spending another lesson re-adjusting the opacity and ensuring that the fading in and out was in sync for both the MCMV and the 1905, the ident was almost complete:
Unfortunatley, I forgot to cut down the length of the music to match the ident fading out. Something still seemed wrong, and I decided that if I were to have both the audio and image fade out at the same time, it may look a lot more professional. Here is the final ident:
It is clear that Chloe has produced a very professional and effective ident from the ideas that we came up with. This is definitely something that my group and I were hoping for.
However, the whole revolutionary theme of the ident doesn’t really suit the thriller genre of our opening two minutes, I feel that it offers a sense of empowerment and think that it could actually pass as a genuine production companies ident.
Vicky from our group recently finished the animated storyboards, below is the work she did:
Here are the animated storyboards that I created on “Storyboard That” whilst the drawn storyboards were created and as Chloe developed the ident in motion. This took me about 4 lessons to create;
This is the draft picture of the drawn storyboards that I used to create these animated storyboards;
What I found most challenging about this software was the pure lack of props that was available, for example, a kettle and so I had to design one myself using the shapes given. Another problem that hindered my work was the fact that one of the storyboards had to be from a birds-eye-view prospective and so I have to improvise with the only angle that would slightly represent birds-eye-view, which was frontal positioning of the girl and the tea pot I designed is so the camera is looking at it from straight above. I also had to use arrows in a couple of the storyboards so it is clear what direction the camera will be moving in, for example, with the through the wall shot, the arrows show which side of the wall the camera will move to. Also, for the burnt marks on the young girls arms, they were difficult to portray and so I had to again use the shapes provided and colour it into a shade that is most likely to replicate a new burn.
Also, these animated storyboards may differ with the drawn storyboards that Maddy and Megan produced as some shots were not applicable for this system, for example, the shot of the woman holding the cup of tea could not be identical to the drawn ones as she should actually be holding a tea pot but I could not create that using the shapes provided and so used a cup of tea already designed from the prop section of the website.
Also, due to the animations not being still image, the hands of the characters are very cartoony and unrealistic but this is a minor issue as they still give a basic idea of what is to be expected in a camera shot. I also found it difficult to blur certain objects as for the focus pull shot, the picture frame needed to be out of focus and doing that was difficult as there were not many effective settings to doing so, so I had to live with the one called “blur” that replicated an out of focus shot the best.
Overall, I think the animated storyboards went really well and thanks to the Storyboard Start it was doable and effective, even though in some situations I was limited with options. I hope that the animated storyboards will be found useful on the day of filming and are of a similar sequence to the drawn storyboards, as some had to be altered due to feasibility issues.
The girl in our film opening has to look young so Maddy has practised possible hair styles for Vicky to have to resemble a young girl. From the possible idea that are shown in the video, we have decided to use the curled bunches as they make her look much younger and more innocent with the blue dress she will wear.
When the girls bounds are taken off she will have bruises on her wrists where the rope has been tied so tightly for a long time. Maddy has practised the make up in this video. We will apply this to Vickys wrists on the day off filming. I think the bruise make up looks very realistic and be very effective in our film opening.
Recently I practised the focus pull we are using when the woman puts her keys on the table in the kitchen and the focus pulls from the keys to a picture of the girl when she was younger. However in this practise, I didn’t have the picture so used a Christmas decoration to pull the focus to. I also edited the footage of the focus pull, the editing process was very simple and I feel the end video is quite effective and I think it will work very well in our video. Below is the final video of the focus pull practice:
I thought it would be easiest to insert the word ‘productions’ in another text box, and have the 1905 fade out using key framing, and then back in with the productions next to it. However, as you can see in the picture below, the shine effect on the productions faces in a different direction to the 1905, and even after attempting to alter the direction of the shine, the two still looked fairly dissimilar and I wasn’t very happy with it.
So, to divert away from this issue, I had the 1905 fade out, but did not fade it back in. Several frames after the writing had faded out, I had the text ‘1905 productions’ fade back in, in the same font, size and position as the 1905 initially was, although it was now more central. It was then brought to my attention, that the R in the Russian alphabet typically faced the other way:
Megan Jackson's AS Media Studies Blog 