Managing time and tasks

With the deadline approaching I wanted to organise my work so I could be entirely sure what I have left to complete. Using Trello I have constructed a To Do list which digitally represents what tasks I have left to do, which are currently in progress and what is finished. Those labelled with yellow show me what are the most urgent tasks that I should prioritise. This post is mostly for my own benefit as it well help me finish touching up my blog in these final weeks in order to complete my Unit G325 coursework.

Click image to view in higher-res!

Creating the Titles and Opening Credits

To create the titles we already knew from storyboarding that we wanted the word "Identity" to split into two and horizontally wipe out in sync with the train doors. We wanted a simple, but not too basic, bold and capitalised font. We made it white with black border shadow so that it would stand out against the black and white filter overlay of the clip. We created the titles and the wipe to left and right pathways through Adobe Premiere Pro as the screenshots below show:

Using the titles sub window to create the sideways pathway of each individual text 'IDEN' and 'TITY'. We had to make sure both texts were centrally aligned with eachother as well as being in line with the split of the train doors. We then changed the speed of the transition/pathway in sync with the speed of the opening doors. 

This is where we chose from a range of fonts. As aforementioned, we wanted it to be simple, clear and bold and to appeal to both male and female audiences. 

Here is the clip we produced:

To create the opening credits we used Final Cut Pro and their selection of preset text effects. The screen shots below show the different steps used. We wanted the font to be bold, readable and have an interesting and professional entrance without obstructing the clip too much or distracting the audience from the film in the background. Where we could, we tried our best to position the opening credits at times during camera movement (e.g. the panning scene where Ryan and Alex's names appear) or where Poppy walks past the words. This creates a more dynamic look where it appears the video is interacting with the credits through the use of the transition. It is clever, slick and common convention I really like to see in a film.

Below is a photo and video collage I made using the iPad app VideoCollage. 

• Top left image: shows the timeline and where we added each title entrance.
• Middle left: shows FCP and Titles window
• Bottom left: video to show the actual credits and what they look like. N.B: the video is in colour because we have done the credits before colour correction.
• Top right: using the Transform tool on FCP to align and move titles to where we want them to appear within the frame.
• Bottom right: close up of titles presets available to us, we chose 'continuous' as we felt this looked simple yet slick and went well with our backing soundtrack.

Watch full screen and in HD for maximum quality.

Advertising Identity

Using Photoshop I then decided to interpret my poster as if it was being advertised in everyday public places. By using the perspective tool and stock images of bus stops and train stations, I was able to manipulate my poster to fit. As I am aiming for young males in their 20s, bus and train stations are both very suitable places for the poster to be advertised.

Screenshot to show how I used the Photoshop perspective tool to change the image to fit onto the subway advertisement billboard.

Analysing my poster

The following analysis shows my explanations for the decisions I made when designing and constructing the poster on Photoshop. I used my poster analysis knowledge (previous posts) to help me stick to conventional effective vectors on my poster like credits, actor names and institution logos. 

Ancillary Task - Film Poster for Identity

PLEASE CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO VIEW LARGER AND IN HIGHER QUALITY

I really enjoyed designing this as it challenged me to be abled to wrap and represent the entire narrative and protagonist's personality within one single text.  I created the film poster using Adobe Photoshop and my initial key aims were to make the poster:

• contemporary
• stylish
• bold
• abstract and eye catching 
• coincide significantly with the themes present in our narrative

Target Audience

For my poster I am aiming towards a young male in his mid-20s of the ABC1 demographic. So in order to appeal to my target audience I used Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze theory to use Blake's sexuality to entice male viewers to want to see the film. I picked this photo out of the collection obtained from the photoshoot because I feel the sultry colour of her lipstick has semiotics of love and danger - both two things that a typical femme fatale character in a film noir will portray at some point or another. I also feel her facial expression looks seductive and therefore appealing to a male audience. Further analysis of my poster design is seen at the bottom of this blog post. Next I will show you the steps I took to put together this design:

Poster Plan I designed on Microsoft Publisher. Basic plan to show where I am going to put the main vectors of the poster and a guideline I'll use to follow on Photoshop.

Using watercolour brushes to create the background.

Adding a stock image of crumpled paper and changing the Blend Mode to Overlay

Making the cropped image of Poppy have a watercoloured appearance.

Adjusting the image adjustments e.g. Curves, Levels and Opacity. Also added brushes around the image of Poppy to look more natural with the background. She looks like she is floating in clouds which could be a metaphor for her state of mind.

Adding torn newspaper stock images to represent she is being looked for and that documents are being used to identify her. It shows the film's genre of a detective mystery.

I used Font Space to find the exact font I wanted. I chose a font which I felt would match the imagery so far. The font is capitalised, bold and grungey; all that would appeal to a male audience.

I used the Colour Picker tool to match her lipstick colour to the font colour. I then used layer masks and various brush sets to blend the text into the background to act as a double entendre that the WORD identity is hard to identify and is concealing itself within the poster.

I then found the "Universal Accreditation" font to create the credits. I added our institution logo, associated institutions and brands used in our film e.g. James Blake record label. These were all coloured using the lipstick shade again - to create a sense of cohesion and a house colour theme to the film.

I then added a tag line which is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emmerson. It acts as a decoding device for the audience as it will make them think - forcing them to be more active with the media text. This could be related to Stuart Hall's Encoding and Decoding theory, part 3; 'use' (distribution and consumption) "the decoding/interpreting of a message which requires active recipients. This is a complex process of understanding for the audience.”

Lastly I added some finishing touches like alignment, boldness, opacity and making sure all text was legible.

Close up of the film credits. Conventions used: 
condensed capitalised dvd credit font;
directors and producers listed;
institutions listed;
institution logos included;
film website;
release date in larger, alternative font;
QR code for increased interactivity;
cohesional colour scheme.

Theory - Applying media theories to our film noir and why we chose them

Press bottom left 'restart' button to see the animated interactive text!

The Enigma Code
Roland Barthes' enigma code is a theory that refers to the idea that a text, e.g. a film, uses complex narrative themes to make the audience question something and therefore read into the text with great interest. This could be something like Who is the murderer? Why is the woman seducing the male protagonist? or What is going to happen in the dark warehouse? An enigma code brings tension that builds up in a film to draw the audience in.

Where have we included and utilised this theory in our film Identity?

• The biggest enigma present in our narrative is Who is Mia Bramley and why has she taken all of The Husband's money?
• The false identity, theme of identity theft and an escaped wife exposes many questions the audience will have. For example they will want to know why she has run away, where she is going and what The Husband will do to her when he finds her.
• Lastly, we are going to use a mysterious soundtrack which has eerie sound effects to create a sense of unease for the viewer. The enigma codes are heightened by the tension that the music creates and the shots appear much more dramatic, believable and anticipating for the audience.

James Damico - Noir Narrative theory

"A man whose experience of life has left him sanguine and often bitter meets a not so innocent woman of similar outlook to whom he is sexually and fatally attracted…… an event brings about the sometimes metaphoric, but usually literal destruction of the woman, the man to whom she is attacked, And frequently the protagonist himself." 

Our film follows Damico's model in some ways in that The Husband has fallen in love and married somebody who in reality, he doesn't truly know and is 'cheated' by her. She steals his money, leaving his life to fall apart and thus fate has lead him down a journey of heartbreak, bankruptcy and a life of never knowing. 

THEORIES LEFT TO EXPLAIN AND RELATE TO MY FILM'S NARRATIVE:

Binary Oppositions - Claude Levi-Strauss
How did we portray binary oppositions? Through:
-high key and low key lighting contrasts
-switches between silhouettes, back lighting and normal lighting
-the tense hands of The Husband and the calm hands of the Private Investigator
-the louder, busierr and more chaotic scenes around London compared to the plain, dark, quiet scenes within the studio
-the contrasting appearance of Blake and Mia
-themes of life and death, light and dark, calm and angry, slow and fast paced shots/editing, low angle and high angle shots, blurred to focus in-camera manipulation.

The Male Gaze - Laura Mulvey
Poppy is subject to the male gaze theory particularly through our use of shot types. We often used close ups to fragment her body and accentuate her femininity e.g. her lips, hands, legs or eyes. Her lipstick, sound of her heels and seductive glazed facial expressions all further stress her sexuality and we use this to the advantage that it appeals to a male audience. The audience can gain an emotive connection with the character and thus pushes them past being passive viewer's to more active viewer's with feelings towards a 'fictional' person.

Music editing, trimming and constructing in Final Cut Pro and Audacity

Here you can see how we have divided James Blake's song Don't You Think I Do. This is because we only needed certain parts of the song and we had preferences as to what sounds suited certain clips. For example the opening shots of fast-forwarded London city, the train and the pan shot of Kings X all had subtle, quiet and 'opening' type sounds that eases the viewer gently into the film. At times we repeated sounds, cut parts from the end of the song and re positioned them and we also used the fade tool for a continuity blend between tracks and between tracks to voiceovers. Other editing involved changing the volume of the sound as when overlayed with voiceovers, the dialogue is more important to hear than the music, yet the music continues the mood and atmosphere that we are trying to convey through our noir, mystery genre. This screenshot was taken during the first stages of editing and we still need to fill in various gaps (not all), with sound effects and our own music (later explored in this post).

Here at about 1:45 secs, you can see where we have added a Footsteps foley sound effect. Although we collected our own foley sounds of Poppy's heels, we thought the Final Cut SFX of footsteps sounded better and clearer, especially as the shot we used it on was where she walks through a puddle. These foley sounds add a much more realism to the single shot alone along with the entire film for the audience listening/watching.

During editing we noticed a continuity error whereby Poppy appears in a mid shot in the lift with her head directing to her right, and the clip then cuts to a close up reflection shot of her looking to the left. To correct this continuity error we simply used the Effects tab in FCP, selected the Flipped effect and dragged it over the clip. This worked seamlessly with no problems as there was nothing in the shot (such as text/signs) that would've looked abnormal had it been flipped. 

At 2:25 secs you can see lots of short sounds constructed together. Here we used the FCP foley footsteps sound but cut the clip. In order to make the foley sound correspond with Poppy's footsteps, we needed to place each footstep sound in to the timeline in sync with her walking. This is time consuming and difficult to get accurate however once finished it looked and sounded very effective! You can also see another two foley sounds we used: Traffic City and Crowd Walla Bar. These two sounds simply added quiet background noise to our shots for a more complete, believable atmosphere for the viewer. The audio that was originally on these clips were too noisy and harsh sounding to be used along with the fact that much chatter can be heard between ourselves (my group) discussing shot ideas and directions whilst we filmed. 

This is a Mac application called Audacity which myself and Olivia discovered last year when constructing our music video. Last year we used it to crop one song into two and blend the two sounds together to make the entire music clip shorter to fit our music video. This time however we experimented with the effects on our audio from our video clips of Ryan and Alex to make gospel murmurring sounds which would act as an excellent base for a soundtrack or more sound effects in our film. Our favourite effect was the 'Echo' and is extremely apt for the audio scene where we want to fast forward the clip whilst Alex repeats things like "£11,000" "transaction" and "bank statement" to reinforce the identity theft and fraudulent themes in Identity. We simply export the sounds from Audacity, save as an mp3 file and import into Final Cut Pro

Film Review Analysis

Before embarking onto my second ancillary task of a film review, I looked at various other film reviews in a variety of formats in order to see which one I feel I could do best, suits my film the most and matches my style of writing.

Here is my first film review of The Woman In Black from the Empire magazines official website. 

This was created using Adobe Photoshop as it was easy for me to insert images, text and shapes whilst also being able to zoom into the image to read the review and webpage clearly. I then used an online Aspect Ratio Calculator in order to edit the html to make the photo bigger than Blogger's preset of 'X-Large' as I needed the photo to appear bigger on my blog in order to make my annotations bigger and thus easier to read.

Further poster research and inspiration - visual qualities

Before starting my own poster design, I found a few other posters online that I will use for inspiration. I like how modern these are and the illusional imagery and graphics used really make the viewer's eye intrigued as to what the film holds. I tried to find posters that I felt were relevant with the identity theme and used a portrait headshot similar to the photos of Poppy we took in the studio.

Poster Analysis and Research

Before beginning to create my own poster for the ancillary task, I have done some research of both modern and contemporary posters along with older, traditional posters. I have also combined noir posters with non-noir genre posters to create a balance of research and analysis.

The Hunger Games

Press bottom left 'restart' button to see the animated interactive text!
Created using Kizoa for an interactive and engaging way of presenting my work on my blog. The above shows the different types of posters produced just for one film when it is promoted on a global scale. The house colour schemes of golds and blacks are used throughout, but the titles, composition, tag lines, framing and photos are all different or vary in some way. I think this really shows how audiences are perceived and also how the institution has to adapt its visual design material in order to target and appeal to audiences of all races. 

Analysis created using Adobe Photoshop.
A contemporary poster analysis of a Sci-Fi film

Analysis created using Adobe Photoshop.
A traditional film poster of a film noir.

Music Research

This is a music compilation video constructed by Olivia using Adobe Premier Pro. The three of us sat listening to various tracks and simultaneously recorded ourselves discussing what our first thoughts were. Below is a compilation of the songs/our voiceovers, text description and freeze frames from our original footage.

Final Institution Logo and Logo Animation

This is the screen recording to show exactly what I did to construct the 3D font. A very time consuming task, yet enjoyable and worth producing! I think the light bulbs effectively represent the meaning of 'Allure' that we attract people to watch our film. The theatrical light bulb style also connotes themes of drama, filming, acting and productions. The black background makes the text stand out and the golden colour scheme has semiotics of being high quality; thus relaying the idea that our institution reflects what to expect from our film. 

This is the final 3D Logo I created on Photoshop. We will use this on our individual ancillary tasks as well as any other material on our blogs.

This is the animated gif I created using two Photoshop edited images. We will use this at the start of our film to play as an institution trailer/clip. 

Brick - Extensive Detailed Analysis

I wanted to use a unique and more visually presentable way of showing a detailed analysis. I found a website called Blendspace which suited my published series of video essays perfectly. Watch each video to reveal selected sub-categories that focus in-depth evaluation and supported evidence through voiceovers and cut clips from the neo-noir film Brick. I thoroughly enjoyed analysing this film! Mostly due to the intense thought and clever planning that Rian Johnson has spent from start to finish of his film.

Logo Analysis, Design, Animation and GIFs

Below is a video that I recorded and constructed together using my iPhone and Final Cut Pro. It shows the initial drawn designs of the logo and the reasons behind why we wanted these types of designs. It also analyses the pros and cons of each design to help us reach a final decision. 

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Logo Design 1
I'm really pleased with this design as it looks really slick and professional. The light bulb effectively represents the idea that we are 'alluring' our audience whilst simultaneously catching the viewer's eye from the bright colours. The font is 'Feathergraphy' which I downloaded for free from the font hosting website Font Space and I think this font works well with the graphic style of the filament from the bulb.

Logo Design 1 - cropped.
This is a cropped version of the original in case we decided that the logo needed to be smaller in order to look more effective on our ancillary products.

Logo Design 2 - Grey Blur Background
This font is much more graphical and modern. The colours are neutral and effectively represent the film noir genre. The only down side to this is that it doesn't say our actual institution name therefore would we be that memorable to our viewers? 

Logo Design 2 - White Background
I much prefer the white background, as the logo now looks like a 'button' and is a much more iconic and memorable image. 

 
I created the above GIFs using a website called "textanim". I knew these are too basic to use as our animated logo but it gaves us an idea of some ways of visually presenting text and catching our viewer's eye should we ever promote "Identity" through social media or other internet sites.

Institution Research

Ellie constructed this Prezi for us as we split three tasks between the three of us in order to get our group coursework ahead in time. Ellie did some institution research, Olivia put together music research and I created the institution logo. Researching other institutions helps us to know more about the current production companies out there, increases our knowledge in the film industry and also allows us to decide which is the most suitable to use to co-produce with our own institution Allure Animations. We will use our most favoured institution at the beginning of our film.

Day 3 of filming

) Powerpoint video that we used during filming as a 'Prop'. Alex (The Private Investigator) can easily click the mouse on the laptop to activate the powerpoint slides to insinuate that he is searching through CCTV screens and showing Ryan. 

Fake CCTV Screens I created. Editing the shots using Adobe Photoshop, adding a 'noise' filter to look like low-res cctv footage, added time/date/camera number using text tool and cctv look-alike font. These shots support the idea that Blake is being watched. Screens 3-6 are all high angle shots adding to the submissive point of view that the husband/private investigator are tracking her every move.  

Downloading a similar CCTV screen type font to use.

The powerpoint 'prop' to be used DURING filming for the private investigator to flick through.

New Scenes - The Husband & Private Investigator

Upon watching back the scenes we now have, we begun to worry that our narrative wasn't strong enough and we needed to do something about this. Watch the following video to listen to our discussion: )

Jean Baudrillard - Hyperreality in Media

I found this quote by Jean Baudrillard who is known for the media theory outlining hyperreality. He talks about how celebrity culture is coveted in a hyperreal world and also how video games can be taken to the extreme whereby gamers take violent traits into reality. He further explores this idea that we live in a 'less real' world e.g. in the past we had face to face conversations with a physical human whereas today we experience more intangible things like images, symbols, screens. McLuhan also agrees with this theory that the technological structure of the media is affecting our attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and general everyday life. I feel this quote is apt for our film as our main focal point is the questions of Identity.

Created using Adobe Photoshop CS6

Editing Day One

  Here is a fast-forward screen recording of the three of us working on the beginning of our film. We split our time into thirds so that we all got an equal amount of editing done between us. Types of tools and things we learnt from this session:

• Retiming clips (1) for the opening shot to look busy and present the chaotic London atmosphere and for an interesting opening that engages with the audience whilst establishing the location distinctively. (2) to fast forward camera pan movements for a smoother effect;

• Colour changes that can be made to clips using the Color Adjustment tool;
• Transform/cropping clip for correct framing; 
• Detaching the audio and blending start and end of clips. 

However the biggest thing we learnt was understanding the importance of continuity and how difficult it is to construct shots together whilst keeping a smooth transition from clip to clip. Although we did well during filming to concentrate on continuity, without professional filming equipment it was always going to be very difficult to match shots exactly (for the match on action shots and shot reverse shots). Despite this I feel we have good shots and variety and we will be able to make our narrative flow through the process of 'trial and error' during editing.

Day 2 - Filming Ryan

Today we filmed our 'husband' of Blake Miller in our school photography studio as we felt this would be an ideal place to shoot due to the black backdrop and the barn-door lighting we could use to create shadows, silhouettes and a range of conventional high and low-key lighting. We also wanted to use a small table and confined room to insinuate the idea that Ryan is in a private investigators room. Although the private investigator is not present in the scene (he is an imaginary character), we are going to make Ryan look slightly off-camera and pretend he is demanding a P.I to search for his wife. Here are the shots from today:

Photoshoot of our Protagonist - Preparing for the ancillary task

In addition to our short file, the specification lists that we have to do two ancillary tasks which I have chosen the Poster and the Magazine Film Review. As the three of us in Allure Animations are using the same characters, we decided to do the photoshoot together, taking it in turns to use the camera and instruct our own ideas to the model Poppy. We may share some of the same photos but the editing and design process of the final pieces will be entirely individual. Between us we took 200 photos which are shown in the contact sheet below.

Screenshot of our Facebook group. Communication is key when wanting to get things organised swiftly and effectively - especially when we need lots of props to hand.

Blake Studio Photoshoot
This is an Animoto photo essay I produced to show the scene we photographed in, the props used and how we utilised the photography studio.

Questionnaire Analysis. Evaluating our results

We used a website we found called Padlet which taglines describes itself as 'Paper for the web'. With this we were able to make what is like a large noticeboard. We decided to present our questionnaire analysis with this tool as we had various different materials from different devices that would work best presented together, on an interactive site. Padlet allows you to upload images, videos, text, titles and even has webcam access from the site. We found this really easy to use and is an entirely new way of presenting our work as well as being visually engaging for our readers! You'll also find a video on our padlet wall which summarises and evaluates our results. Attached is a slideshare document of the script we used in the video.

Created with Padlet

 

Script for discussing questionnaire from livgascoine

Using Google documents we were able to receive all our answers from our questionnaire that we had published on social networking sites to retrieve a large pool of audiences and answers to make it fair and reliable. From this we have analysed our data, discussed various opinions from our surveyed people and put together graphs and charts to visually compare question results easily. This will help us make sure our film noir Identity will appeal to our audience and thus potentially be a successful film.

ADD GOOGLE DOCS PRINT SCREEN HERE