Twelfth Draft with GarageBand track...

Here is the twelfth draft of our film opening, probably the penultimate draft, due to a few small issues with the sound that we need to edit. Other than those few issues, this is pretty much the finished product!

We turned the volume of the birds down and made the fades in between sections of sound much smoother but now I think the music is too loud so we will need to turn that down too in order to be able to hear the voiceover clearly. I really love the sound of the birds when it carries on going even after the screen has gone black. We also got rid of the random shots of Charlotte that were at the end of the film opening before. Ending our film with 'Leyla' walking off down the path is much more effective.

Eleventh Draft - Background Music...

This is the latest draft of our film opening which has the background music on it. We decided that the film needed some music behind the voiceover, otherwise there was too much emphasis on the voices and not enough on the visual elements.
This draft sounds very rough because we recorded the track over the moving images on iMovie, rather than actually putting the GarageBand track onto the film permanently. We just did this in order to be able to have a rough draft with just the music on it.
The recording is bad quality (will be much better when we actually use the GarageBand track itself) and the fades in between different parts of the music are not as smooth as we want them to be but we can edit that to make it much better.



I particularly like the bird noises at the end when it fades to black, but for some reason the bird sounds are slightly too loud but we can edit that too.

New part of the script for our voice over...

We had previously written part of a script for our film voice over and we recorded that part with somebody else who was not available for recording the new part of the script which we had written yesterday. Therefore we had to record the whole thing again with different people, so to make it easier for us Charlotte was the police officer and Aimie was 'Mrs. Richardson', our main character's mother.
We recorded it yesterday and began to edit it but cutting out all of the times that anyone said 'Richardson', and putting a distorting effect on that word, in order to create the mysterious/creepy effect that we first discovered on a song called Suzanne by an artist named Plan B.

Here is the second part of the script that we wrote yesterday when we realised that what we originally had was not long enough to fill the majority of the film opening;

(after Mrs. Richardson says: Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.)
Police: Why? What was he like?
Mrs. Richardson: I didn't get to meet him. She never let me.
Police: What about her friends?
Mrs. Richardson: I only really met Sarah Underwood and Stephen Land, but they haven't been to the house in months.
Police: Do you know if she is still in close contact with them?
Mrs. Richardson: No, like I said, she never told me anything like normal daughters should.

We are going to add effects to this voice over and edit it all to fit in perfectly with the moving images on the screen.

'District 9'

Here is the opening of a film called 'District 9' which is possibly one of my favourite films that I have seen recently. Just like our opening, all of the production names, etc. appear at the very start of the film with some sound before any images are shown.

The special effects of this film are incredible too and it is generally a good plot. I would definitely recommend this film.

Tenth Draft...

Here is our tenth draft of our film and this one has a sample of the news report voice over that we recorded and edited (to distort Leyla's last name) on it. We have not put the whole track on yet because we've got to edit the whole track before we put it on the film. The recording is not very good because we recorded it on iMovie from the original recording on GarageBand.

Voice Over Recording...

We recorded part of our voice over today and it went well. We recorded the news report and part of the police interview but we need to add some more to that part of the script. We still have a couple of things to record and then we can edit it all together but we were happy with how it worked so far.

Examples of Sound...

I was listening to my ipod the other day and 'In Regards To Myself' by Underoath came on and the start of the song gave me an idea for something we could do in our film opening.

I thought the clicking sound at the start of the song would be quite a good noise for us to use right at the beginning of our film as the names are appearing on the screen. This way, it would sound like the noise of the policeman recording the interview.

I think this would be an effective way to start our film as the sound could be quite creepy.

Click on the link to see the video In Regards To Myself - Underoath

Seventh Draft of Our Film...

Here is the most recent draft of our film. After doing all our research on opening credits and where the names, etc. should go, we decided to play around with different ways we could place the credits.
We watched the opening credits to Step Brothers and really liked the simple way that the names of the production companies just faded up onto a black screen before any action was shown. We attempted to create something very similar to see how it would look with our film.
We also put all our names at the start which does not work well but we thought we would try it anyway.
I also like this way of doing the credits because it means we can have the voice over playing whilst the names come up which is an effective way of opening a film as we've seen from our research.

(We also added in a couple of extra shots at the end of the opening just to see if they looked good as they are shots of 'Leyla' when she was awake before she went missing. Still not sure if these shots work but I like the idea of them.)

Typography/Credits Analysis of Three Films...

After doing some further research into credits and the order they are put into film openings, I found three film openings that I thought would be significant in relation to our own film opening;

ALPHA DOG: I really like the opening to this film because it shows old childhood footage of some of the characters and lots of different names, etc. appear over the top of these images, then after that, the screen goes black and then an interview with Bruce Willis appears on screen. This is relevant to our film opening because we are using a police interview as our voice over, and it will be helpful to us when we come to record our voice over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk4Nalt3350

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: This opening is also relevant to us because of the use of a voice over and the random shots that set the scene. I like the fact that all the credits are right at the beginning of the opening, so that they do not interfer with the rest of the opening.


TWILIGHT: This film opening is significant because you hear her voice before you see anything and it gives us an idea of what our film opening would sound like with 'Leyla's' voice over the top of the action that is going on. The production company and title come in after the voice over and they appear after the music starts.

Opening Credits Research...

In class yesterday, we watched a selection of film openings in order to see what the most popular order of credit appearance was and to help us decide how we should position the names/title/production company/etc. in our own film opening.

Here are some brief descriptions of the openings we watched;

BABEL: Immediately the audience sees the name of the production companies. Black screen and sound of footsteps comes before the moving image.

DERAILED: Again black screen with sound (someone coughing) before any visuals are shown. Technical name of production company comes first then names and these appear over visuals.

BOURNE IDENTITY: Sound before visuals again. Sets the scene first. Lots of action/fast-paced editing , then a black screen and then the title.

IN BRUGES: Names of people involved and production companies pop up in between still shots that are setting the scene for the film (establishing shots).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilO75OmtUo

LIFE OF DAVID GALE: Title and production company come right at the start before any action is seen. Simple but effective.

THE MEXICAN: Sound before visuals again. Text appears very near the start. The title is in tiny red letters (contrast to the previous names that were in white).

ANGELS AND DEMONS: Title and production company names appear straight away, using the same fading effect on each one.

I think we should move the title of our film to the very start of the film opening so it appears just after the production company name and then our names can be spread throughout the film as they are now. This way, we can have the voice over of the police interview start up before any visuals are shown on the screen and I think this will be very effective.

Sixth Draft...

After watching our fifth draft a few times and getting other people to look at it, we have decided to make the present-day shots of 'Leyla' much slower and change the effect to an iMovie effect called Romantic which makes the shots much lighter, and slightly hazy around the edges. This definately gives us the dream-like effect we were hoping for and the slowed down shots definately make it seem much more like an actual film opening rather than a film trailer which is what it looked like before.

Also, when we were editing we decided that we wanted a black screen right at the start with sound over the top of that, before you even see anything happen on screen. Just as a trial run, we layered some walkie-talkie noises over the top of the very beginning of this draft. I quite like the effect this has, but we will obviously play around with this a lot more when we record our voice over.

We also made the 'Filmed and Edited By' a bit longer as we got told it was not on screen for long enough and the audience would not have been able to read it in enough time.

Script For Voice Over...

Here are some rough ideas of what we could use as a script for our voice overs...

Policeman/woman: This is PC Smith interviewing Mrs.- concerning the disappearance of her daughter Leyla -. Time is 12:43.
(possible questions he/she could ask)

Mrs. -, when was the last time you saw or had contact with your daughter?

What was her mood like?

Did she say or do anything that you consider out of the ordinary?

Is there anyone that you know of that would have a desire to harm your daughter?

etc.

Mrs.-: (possible answers)

She was at home yesterday, we had a cup of tea and lunch together. Just like we always do.

Well she's a typical teenager, how do you think her mood was?!

She was on the phone for a long time, probably to that boyfriend of hers, and she wasn't paying me enough attention. I shouted at her for getting all tarted up in those heels and she stormed out. That was the last time I saw her.

No. Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.

News Report;

Concerns are being raised after the disappearance of a 16 year old girl, Leyla -, who was last seen a week ago in North London. The police have stated that the case is becoming more serious than they initially thought it would be. Mrs.-, Leyla's mother is urging people to come forward if they have any information on the case. All those closest to her are being questioned but so far the police can't seem to find any suspects and no-one seems to know anything about the mysterious disappearance of Leyla -.

Discussion on Voice Overs...

Yesterday, after editing we had a group discussion about what we were going to do about our sound/voice over for our film opening.
We wrote out a spider diagram of all our possible options about who would be talking in the voice over (i.e. police interview and who's talking to them - 'baddie', Leyla's friends/family, Leyla herself? just narration by Leyla? news reports on a missing girl? etc.), people we know who have suitable voices for our voice over, when and where we could record the voice overs and what the script would be.
Eventually we came to the conclusion that we could do a mixture of all these things, so that the sound was just lots of different sound clips put in sequence to emphasize the chaos that is created when somebody goes missing.
Below is an example of the kind of sound clip we want. It is a song by Plan B and can be heard at 2:58-3:24. It is a news reporter reading out news of a girl who was murdered called Suzanne. We all thought the way they had edited the sound clip to blank out certain words was very effective and quite creepy. (The song is extremely graphic and horrific but he definately gets his point across).

Group Discussions...

We decided as a group that we had to change the flashback footage from being completely black and white to being slightly drained of colour, because the completely contrasting effects between the flashbacks and the present were too different and made the film seem very inconsistent. We then changed the flashback parts by adding a different effect on iMovie to them which is called 'Old World' and then manually changing the colour settings to drain some of the colour from the footage to give it a dream like quality.

We tried all the other effects on iMovie but none of them really gave us the dark, atmospheric look we were going for.

We also wanted to make sure the audience would be very clear about which parts of the film were supposed to be the present day (Charlotte waking up) and which parts were supposed to be flashbacks so we thought the best way of doing this would be to use a fade to white before every flashback (where necessary) although, when editing we found it quite difficult to get each fade to white to last for the right amount of time, because iMovie kept automatically changing it so we need to figure out how to fix this eventually.

We also were deliberating about how to fill in a gap between two particular shots at the end of the opening where Charlotte wakes up, and then where she walks away so we experimented with all the different transitions on iMovie and found one which we thought looked the least obvious, where the two shots overlap each other.

Another thing that we discussed as a group was our credits. We wanted to attempt a similar style to that of the 'Se7en' credits because we really liked the creepy way that the writing flickered around the screen. So we tried out different ways of creating this on iMovie and came up with our own interpretation of this by adding in multiple textboxes in quick succession but changing the font size, letter spacing, etc. each time so that when it is played all together it appears as though our names are moving around.



Finally, we got round to talking about the name of our film and somehow we thought of simply calling it 'Pulse' because of the close up shot of Charlotte's hand at the beginning. We still are not sure about this name and whether it is right for our film or not but we have left as that for now and will change it later if we want to.

Voice Overs...

Whilst editing our film we were trying to think about what sort of music we were going to eventually put with our footage and we got given the idea of using a voice over/narration over the footage rather than making a piece of music that wouldn't really fit the images on screen.

I really like this idea because we could have the narrator talking through whats happening on screen so that it confirms what the storyline is to the audience and because quite a lot of films open with a voice over.

When we were having a group discussion about the idea of using a voice over, we had a slightly different idea which was to make the voice over a police interview, so that the audience is more aware of what is going on and the darker connotations of the plot are more obvious to the viewer.

Here are some examples of film openings with voice overs that I found on a website of top ten voice overs;
http://www.film.com/features/story/top-ten-movie-voice-overs/27339682



"The genius of the narration in Election is how most of the characters are saying the exact opposite of what they really think. You listen to them rationalize their immoralities or completely kid themselves into accepting delusion."
said Dre Rivas on his blog.






I really like the idea of using a voice over with some music in the background (we thought perhaps the beep of a hospital machine as we discussed the possibility of calling our film 'Pulse') and I hope we get to use this idea successfully in our film opening.

Sherlock Holmes

Saw the latest version of Sherlock Holmes at the cinema on wednesday and really enjoyed it. I especially liked the technique of slowing some of the action down whilst Holmes' voice over explains step by step what he is doing and then straight after the audience is shown the same action at normal speed. I liked the effect this had on the audience and their understanding of his character. We could possibly use some aspects of this technique whilst editing our film once we have the footage. Here is a clip of the film (the slow motion effect I mentioned starts at 0:31);

Watching 'Se7en'...

In yesterday's lesson we watched the film 'Se7en'. Directed by David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey this thriller definitely gave us the shock of our lives!!

I loved the storyline and thought it was incredibly effective, but only due to the effects the producers used with the camera shots, sound and general mise-en-scene of the film.

(I have already written one post about the opening credits of the film and how much of an impact they have on the audience)

For example, when the first murder is discovered and the two detectives (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) go to investigate the death, the non-diegetic sound adds so much dramatic tension to the scene that without it, the audience would not have been very scared at all.

The lighting in this scene also builds on the dramatic tension as it is very dark in the room and the only light they have is the light from their torches. The way they keep flashing the torches around means that the audience only really gets to see tiny parts of the scene for a very short amounts of time which makes the audience want to see the whole thing, they are waiting in anticipation to see the full horrific image of what has really happened.

Right at the end of this scene one of the detectives lifts up the victim's head to reveal a close up of his face and his white eyes wide open with the torch light shining in his face.

The fact that the audience has not yet been shown the whole picture up until that moment means that it shocks them to be shown such a horrifying image at a moment when they least expect it.

Clever methods such as this are used throughout the film in order to scare the audience and another example of this is when the murderer kills his third victim; sloth. The audience is led to believe that the victim has been dead for a whole year and whilst the viewer is still reeling from the close up shot of a years worth of pictures of the victim on the bed, another close up shot appears of the supposedly dead man's face and he suddenly gasps for air and dust pours out of his mouth.

Our entire class jumped about 10 feet into the air and were still recovering ten minutes later! I couldn't believe how much it made me jump because in thriller/horror films, it is generally quite easy to tell when something out of the ordinary is going to happen because of the build up of scary music but in this scene I had absolutely no idea that was going to happen! This was probably because there was no music behind it, just the detectives talking over what seemed to be a corpse. This proved to be another clever way of catching the audience when they least expect it.

I think the film is very clever and the story line seems quite unique, but I wasn't completely persuaded by the ending. I thought it was very predictable that he would have killed Brad Pitt's wife and it seemed to be a bit of a tame way to end the film when you compare the ending to the graphic images shown nearer the beginning.

On the other hand, I can see how the ending could be more terrifying in some ways, because the audience doesn't get shown any horrific images, it's all implied so your imagination is left to run wild.

In those last few minutes of the film where the two detectives are driving John Doe to the location, I found myself getting really angry with the killers character for the obvious reasons but also because of what he says about why he kills these people. His character completely contradicts himself with his values/morals.

He thinks he's doing the world a favour by killing these people and that he has been called by God to carry out this awful killing spree but by doing so isn't he breaking one of the ten commandments himself?! The smug grin on his face really got to me as well and I felt myself empathize with Brad Pitt's character as he clearly wants to make him realise what a hypocrite he is.

Another interesting point about this car scene is the metal grid that seperates the killer from the detectives. When there is a shot of Brad Pitt or the killer, the grid covers their face. When there is a shot of Morgan Freeman there is no grid over his face. This is to represent the part the two characters play in the seven deadly sins murders and also to show Morgan Freeman's innocence in it all.

When the time came for Brad Pitt to find out his wife had been killed, as an audience member I responded to what was going on by hating the killer even more because he told Brad Pitt about his unborn baby and then went on to enjoy the fact that he had no idea that his wife had been pregnant.

The complete anguish on Brad Pitt's face leaves the audience feeling quite unsatisfied with the fact that he shot the killer, although they know that it had to be done. (Pitt's thoughts are confirmed by the extremely short flash of a picture of his wife just before he shoots).

I loved the effect that Morgan Freeman's voice over right at the end had on the audience too.

The techniques the producers/directors used were clearly very effective if they left me feeling so angry that the murderer only got killed, it didn't seem like justice to me and this is probably the desired effect on the audience that the producers were looking for.

Another significant part of the scene for our group in particular was when the detectives go into the murderer's flat and find his darkroom. We will be refering back to this scene for inspiration for our film opening.

Such a clever film with a great storyline, but I don't think I'll be rushing to watch it again any time soon...I'll wait till the nightmares subside hahaa!!