The FINAL CUT!

Here is my final cut:

timeline:

You can find a deeper breakdown of my final cut throughout the rest of my blog (especially my conventions evaluation question).

Welcome to this blog! Sources I've used...

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, I'm Leila and in this blog i will go into full detail on everything i did in my AS Media course. You will find in depth research on film openings and the film industry while me and my team created our own film opening. My posts go through all the different steps on how i got to where i am now including knowledge on using different technologies, theories and terms, soundtracks ect.

• https://www.dafont.com/ 

For finding fonts

• https://www.artofthetitle.com/

Finding movie intros (titles)

• https://www.bbfc.co.uk/

Finding age ratings

• https://www.the-numbers.com/

finding how much films made in the box office globally/domestic

CCR Q1 conventions, representations

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Q1a) Conventions

what i will discuss:

• general conventions
• conventions in horror/ what i did

- Illustrated version below -

- For my video on conventions i replicated the format of a wired autocomplete interview like this one -

General conventions vodcast i made at the beginning of the year:

• Ident length of 21 seconds (long compared to Warner Bros but short compared to Universal studios)
• common to have 3 or 4 idents
• largest shareholder studio at the beginning
• white text over black and seriff font are usually used for serious movies
• audio bridge created narrative enigma + exposition
• first shot tells us a lot about genre, characters ect.
• transition to main film is where we learn more about protagonist/hero (Propp)

Idents:

A summery of my idents is that in my team of three we all made one ident which is the conventional amount for a movie, we added an audio bridge to the last ident which is also conventional and we added original music to the rest.

My ident was named FatCat productions with inspiration from Black Cat productions.

Opening shot:

Our opening shot was of an abandoned factory where our scream queen was being held captive, we used a hand of god sequence as we had seen in the classic horror movie Psycho, a hand of god is a good technique as the gradual zoom of the shots creates a feeling that this could be about any one of us as an audience, it also creates exposition on where the first part or all the story is taking place. we also had ideas of having the first shot only be a still ELS of the place where the scream queen was being held we thought a hand of god would build tension even more.

We added an audio bridge of the opening music to our first shots to create some enigma on whats going on before showing our scream queen being ties up in the abandoned factory we were looking at before.

Titles:

Before settling on our official titles we went through a lot of different ideas, click here for more information.

in our final cut we found our font on DaFont.com and we used the font "Crimes Times Six" because the letters had a slashing pattern to the which worked well with the theme. The font only had capital letters so for the titles we used a basic font we found on final cut pro and made the size a lot smaller in comparison to the names.

All of the names were from the movie Final destination because it is a very well known slasher movie (Stuart Hall preferred reading).

• Here are a few examples i screen-shotted from our film opening

Final shot:

Our final scene is of a man walking down a street three years after the murder of our final girl took place and seeing a missing poster for her, we added this to the end to show how our movie would have progressed had we finished it. We don't know who the man is which creates narrative enigma and questions in the audiences minds. We thought it would be good to add a grown man for our secondary audience to relate to because there were no men in the opening.

Partially got our idea for this final shot from the IT remake where one of the ways they provide exposition is through missing people posters.

Sound:

Our sound was made on GarageBand and put onto Soundcloud by one of the members in our team, the inspiration was from the soundtrack of Friday the 13th, Halloween and Psycho. 

Have a subtle melody throughout the soundtrack and then to build up tension it would get louder.

Sound was also a big way in which we communicated with our secondary audience, an example of this is how we added 'Every step you take' by The Police to be playing on the radio. Along with this being a hint to the later events of the film, its also there for an older audience to pick up on, this also lets them identify with the main character because they may have similar music taste (Uses and Gratifications theory, personal identification')

Shot types:

we used an assortment of different shot types in order to create meaning.

The types of shots i used included medium close up, medium shot, extreme long shot (els), two shots, over the shoulder shots, worms eye and establishing shots.

Q1b) Representations 

What i covered in my YouTube style video:

• scream queen
• final girl
• sexuality 
• gender 
• ethnicity
• age

CCR Q2 audiences (engagement), distribution

How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

What i will cover in this post:

• Our primary and secondary audience
• What we did to appeal to each audience
• types of distribution
• how we would distribute our film

Audience engagement:

- Illustrated version below -

- I took my inspiration from videos on TikTok where people will go up. to a person on the street and - interview them:

- I also got some inspiration from the youtube series 'Billy on the Street': -

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 describes how the line between audiences and creator have been blurred due to things such as the creation of social media where audiences can engage and create for each other. Tim O'Reilly first coined the term in 2004, Dan Gillmor described it as the 'former audience' vs 'big media dinosaurs' and David Gauntlett said it was 'the end of audience studies'.

How we would market to our audience

The cornetto trilogy, which was the tree movies directed by Edgar Wright starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost used an excellent marketing strategy which was that on either movie website they made three video games based on each movie so that people could play the games online, sadly the games have been taken down some time in the last couple of years and so i was unable to find it.

Another example of this is when Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson collaborated with ZOA Energy (drink) to promote the new movie Black Adam which he also stars in.

Another example of this is when shows and movies make a collection with a clothing store, such as when Stranger Things collaborated with H&M and sold similar clothes to what the characters wore in the TV show

Our movie could do something like this where we collaborate with different, well known brands to advertise to our audiences.

Our Audience

As mentioned in the video above our primary audience would most likely be 15- 20 year old girls do to the overwhelming representations in that demographic, slightly less would be boys that age.

Our secondary audience would be most likely an older group of men seeing as even older woman could relate to what it was like being a younger girl. 

More on this topic here.

Distribution:

- Illustrated version -

 - for my creative video i did my own take on talk show host Ellen DeGeneres's segment 'Burning -  Questions' where celebrities have to answer questions the host asks them:

My script:

(I used my script quite loosely)

CCR Q3 skills development

How did your skills develop throughout this project?

What i will be discussing in this post:

• How my skills on final cut pro improved
• Difference between my stop-motion, preliminary exercise and my first rough cut

Final cut skills:

Video 1)

• making new event
• importing media
• converting sound from YouTube to mp3
• importing the sound onto final cut pro

Video 2)

• Adding voice overs 

Video 3)

• downloading and adding different fonts to final cut pro

Green Screen

Using green screens was hard to grasp a first but looking at some videos on YouTube really helped me out, here is a summery of the post that you can find here.

1. Take the video you filmed and put it onto final cut

2. Drag and drop it onto the timeline

3. Take the photo that you want to replace the green screen and place it below the filmed video

4. Go to effect and drag 'keyer' onto the green screen video

Pitches

Script

We made three different versions of our script after getting some constructive feedback and can confidently say we ended up with the best we could do with the dialogue being a lot more realistic and the layout being more professional. More information here.

Stop-motion:  

My Prelim:

My first rough cut:

Improvements:

• Deeper understanding of how to edit in general
• Use of sfx and fx
• Used of costumes and makeup
• Using mise-en-scene
• I learnt how to direct in a clearer way
• Using sound

CCR Q4 integrated technologies

How did you integrate technologies, software and hardware in this project?

what I will discuss in this post:

• hardware I used
• software I used 
  

Hardware:

Monopod 

- These are useful if you want to get a clean/not too shaky shot, although there may be some shakiness if your hand is shaking a lot. 

We used this a lot for running scenes and panning shots. 

Tripod 

- The tripod is excellent for still shots where you want there to be no shakiness, it was also quite light so we could pick it up and turn it when we needed a panning shot.

iPhone 8

- For most of the filming we used my iPhone 8 because it was a lot lighter than a regular camera so it was easier to carry around we we had to switch locations and it wasn't as bulky as a camera.

in terms of quality it was very good when we used the 4k mode on the video camera, we could also switch to HD. The only limitations we found was that a phone does not have as much storage as a camera would have so from time to time we had to go back and delete videos to make space for new ones which was not ideal.

Phone adaptor

- Because we used a phone instead of a camera we needed to use a phone adaptor on the tripod and monopod.

Software:

Final cut pro

- Final cut pro is the app we used all year to edit our videos (more information on how to use it here). All media students use this and its very user friendly, in that i only used it for the first time this year and now i feel confident with using it.

Youtube

- YouTube was the sight we used to upload and share all of our rough cuts, vodcasts, tutorials ect. we also used it for inspiration for makeup when filming our rough cuts.

Teams

- Teams was where me and my team would be able to send each other messages about things we needed to get done or if we were having issues with anything that we needed help with.

Blogger

- Our blogger account was the first thing we set up in the year, its where we write down everything we have done or thought of so that its clear and easy to find. There are also links on the side of the page for our sources and sights we regularly need to be checking.

Idents

After looking at multiple films such as Friday the 13th and '71 i deduced that most films have around 3-4 idents although there are exceptions with insidious has on 35 second ident. We decided to also have 3 idents in ours and to include an audio-bridge over the last one to give some early exposition and enigma, this is also seen in Friday the 13th and Oblivion.

We each made one ident our first was my ident, next we had Smokey Productions and then we had hollyhock films made by Morgan which was animated and was the one we covered with an audio bridge

My Ident

Morgans ident

Ambre's ident

(See Ambres post)

BIG 5 example

• 1.      Paramount (20 seconds)
• 2.      Disney ident 2015 (15 seconds)
• 3.      Warner bros (15 seconds)
• 4.      Universal (20-25 seconds)
• 5.      Sony Colombia (35 seconds)

Yesterday 2019 (Working Title)

• Perfect World Pictures – 6 seconds
• Working title – 9 seconds

2 idents

In this film, both idents include an audio bridge with the OST (opening soundtrack).

World’s End (Working Title)

• Universal – 20 seconds
• Working title – 9 seconds
  

Green Screen

Using a green screen

A video we looked at:

This week and last week our group worked on using a green screen for the firs time.
We decided to recreate the scene from Harry Potter where Harry gets an invisibility cloak because in the actual movie production they also use a green screen.

Inspiration:

Our recreation:

How to add a green screen on final cut:

1. Take the video you filmed and put it onto final cut

2. Drag and drop it onto the timeline

3. Take the photo that you want to replace the green screen and place it below the filmed video

4. Go to effect and drag 'keyer' onto the green screen video

What went well:

- Our way of screenshoting the original scene and putting our scene on top worked well

- we got all the angles and shots of the original video

What could have gone better:

- for some reason I was a little transparent so you could see Ron behind me

- The creases in the green screen created some darker spots which were a little visible in the scene

Makeup and Costumes

MAKEUP:

For make up we followed a few fake bruise tutorials from youtube and pictures on google and Pinterest

We put some fake blood in her nose to look like a nosebleed. for the regular makeup we kept it quite light but added some mascara and lipgloss to show her character.

COSTUMES:

OLIVIAs costume consists of a silver dress that we cut up and covered in mud (although maybe not super apparent), and some black heels. This is meant to represent her character as an irresponsible party girl

Here was the original EMMA costume that we used. it consisted of a white shirt and a red plad skirt. the skirt ended up being too small for our actrice so we changed it for a blue plad skirt and we added a white cardigen

Our second shoot:

In our second shoot we used a lot more makeup so that it would show up better on camera because that was an issue we had with our first time filming. we also gave her a lighter blue dress so that the blood and mud we smeared on it would show up better.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          We didn't make many changer to our final girls costume. her clothing was technically different but the same thought went into it (this was just so that the clothing she wore was more comfortable)

We looked at this vide for inspiration for our bruises and cuts

CASTING

 Our Cast:

• Caeli C as EMMA

• Francesca as OLIVIA

For the rough cut we we thought about replacing Francesca with Ambre because Francesca suddenly couldn't make it although in the end she came so we left the casting as is.

Both of our cast members replies to an add Morgan put on his Instagram story, we checked if they had any acting experience either in film or theatre and both did which was important to us.

CHARACTERS:

Caeli portrays our scream queen, a feminine actress who's main role in a movie is to have a notable death. 

Francesca portrays our final girl/ killer, she seems like an innocent or slightly nerdy girl who isn't into partying or any devious behaviours, although she is reviled to be the antagonist of the movie and is quite evil.

Titles -ideas and inspiration

OUR TITLE SCENE

IDEA

For our title scene we decided to have our final girl character be carving a pumpkin but we don't see what she's carving, then at the end of our opening when our scream queen is being stabbed to death the camera pans to the pumpkin from the beginning being sprayed with blood  and it has the word 'CARVED' carved into it (our title).

FONTS

For fonts we wanted to go relatively simple so that 'CARVED' is as legible as possible.

Our inspiration was the night of the living dead title font because its quite an iconic horror movie as well as being legible:

We also considered going with a more gothic font such as cherry falls: 

Our original title:

Our original title, although our vision and likes by the majority or the audience was not as legible as we would have liked so we intend to change it.

Title names:

(Morgans work)

Regarding titles, we firstly looked at our company names (Fatcat, Smokey and Hollyhock) and added them before anything, with "in association with", "a [...] production" etc. Then we looked at several movie openings to see the key roles that are most often shown in movie opening titles. These included some basics such as "Directed by [...]" and "Featuring", to some less often seen "Executive producer" or even "visual effects supervisor". We then came up with a first list of names that we can use for these roles, but we chose rather random names, and after some feedback from our peers, we decided that some of the names were too obviously not related to indie horror films, so instead we looked at a specific example. We ended up choosing the opening title sequence of "Final Destination 4", a body horror film. We took the names from the opening sequence and added one of the roles to each of them

Weekly vodcasts

WEEK 1

Content:

- Shot types + transition to stop motion

- stop motion + editing

- Final cut

- conventions
- film equipment + editing
- individual pitches
- group pitches
- group pitches feedback and changes
- re pitches and ident

WEEK 2

Content:

- sample scene one (forest and kitchen scene)

- rough script

- blogged about industrie from Guardian article 

next week:

- second sample scene

WEEK 3

Content:

- Looking for cast through add on instagram

- Starting audience survey

- Audience blogging 

next week:

- Make screen play

- Getting props

WEEK 4

Content:

- Make screenplay and feedback

- Terms and theories advent calendar

next week:

- film rough cut

SHOOT 2 preparation and reflection

                                       Shoot 2 preparation

Props:

• Halloween candy
• Bowl
• Candles 
• Halloween decorations 
• Makeup 
• Duct tape 
• Kettle 

Clothes:

Scream Queen:

• Dress (new and different colour so the dirt and blood will show)
• Jewellery 
• Heals 
• Makeup (eye shadow, fake skin, fake blood, face paint)
• Hair down

Final Girl:

• Glasses
• School uniform 
• Skirt 
• White shirt
  
  
• Smart shoes

LOCATION: 

• My (Leila's) house

EQUIPMENT: 

• Phone
• Monopod
• Tripod

CAST:

• Caeli Colgan as EMMA
• Francesca Pisante as OLIVIA

Date:

• This shoot will be on February 1st

Sample scenes

SAMPLE SCENE 1

Our script:

We ended up being pretty loose with the script and using it as more of a reference.

We started off by shooting the kitchen scene which we filmed in the common room kitchen. we got some candy from the vending machine and put it on a plate we found to simulate a halloween candy bowl.  we took multiple shots from different angles so we had a lot of footage to work with. 

After filming the kitchen scene we went out to the woods near the school to film the outdoor scene. We also took multiple shots of Ambre running from being tied up to the tree.

we then cross cut the two scenes as a way to create tension for the viewers in final cut.

We had a few challenges during shooting, one was that we wanted to tie Ambre up with real rope so we went around the school to ask the art and P.E. teachers but there ended up not being any around so we used tape instead.

Feedback:

- In the real scene switch the rope from the tape so it looks harder to get out of (verisimilitude).

- Running needs to look more desperate, maybe speed it up?

- Use Gimble cam for running?

- Could replace candy with a Halloween cake

SAMPLE SCENE 2

for our second sample scene we filmed in the common room kitchen again for continuity even though the actual opening will not be filmed at school.

Peer Feedback: