Thursday 31st January 2013

Today we continued to edit the title sequence, we needed to put the titles in and further cut up the title sequence. We have nearly finished the title sequence, it could do with a little more editing to make it look smoother, the green screen is also slightly distorted and can be seen reflecting off of the clothes.

Tuesday 29th January 2013

During todays lesson, I placed the music in to the title sequence and continued to edit it. The editing is quite difficult and I am having trouble with the green screen editing. I will continue to edit the title sequence tomorrow, and hopefully have it finished in time for the screening on Thursday.

Thursday 24th January 2013

Today Elle continued to edit the title sequence, whilst I chose the music to use. To do this, I asked a large group of people to listen to 3 tracks that I thought would work well with our title sequence, and tell me what they thought was best taking in to consideration the genre of our film, and an outline of what our title sequence was going to look like. Once I received feedback, I converted the track which the majority thought worked best with our title sequence, and put it on my desktop to be added in to the title sequence later. It will be one of the last things added on to our title sequence, as it doesn't require much editing other than cutting it down to an appropriate length to fit our title sequence.

Music for Title Sequence

From our audience feedback, this track was the one that most people said would fit our genre best, and would correlate with our title sequence the most. We played them 3 tracks, this one, a fast paced chase type music, and a happy music, which I thought could work well as we wanted to add in an aspect of comedy. This could have been achieved through using contrapuntal sound.

This is the music I chose for our title sequence. I chose this music because it has a very dark feel to it, which ties in to our title sequence, as our title sequence is only supposed to be 2 minutes long, we will need to cut a lot of the music out. I also think we should add in sound effects along with the music for dramatic moments during our title sequence.

Options for Music

We asked a large group of people to listen to these 3 tracks, and then choose which one they felt would be best for our title sequence based on the genre and outline of it.

I felt that this would be a good option for the music because it correlates well with the horror genre, and has a dark, eery feel to it, making the audience feel tense and anxious. This one came out as the majority vote, people felt that this was the best option for our title sequence.


This music also has a very eery feel to it, but is fast-paced. I thought this could be good for our title sequence because it would engage the audience, and again, make them feel anxious. The least amount of people chose this one, when asked why, they said they didn't feel that the pace matched our title sequence, as our sequence is slow-paced.
I thought this song would be good to use in our title sequence, especially due to the title and repeated line 'why can't we be friends'. This would be used as contrapuntal sound, and to add a comedic effect to our title sequence, as it's ironic due to the fact that zombies and humans clearly can't be friends. This came in as a close second from feedback received, a lot of people liked the idea of using contrapuntal sound to bring out the comedic aspect of the title sequence.

Green Screen Editing

After placing everything in Final Cut Pro, I will need to edit out the green screen and replace it with things like a laboratory environment. Neither me nor Elle knew how to do this, so I looked it up on Youtube and found this helpful video on how to edit out the green screen.

Audience Profile

Thursday 17th January 2013

Today we filmed the remaining clips we needed to shoot. We used a green screen, as we wanted to make the clip look like a typical news report, and we planned to edit in a picture or video of a zombie in the background. The filming went well, and we created a script for it rather than improvising. After we had filmed this, we went on to film the live broadcasting message scene, again using the green screen as we wanted to add a laboratory in to the background later on.

When we had finished shooting, we continued to edit. We put the clips we had in to the Final Cut Pro document, and began cutting them.

Tuesday 15th January 2013

We began working on editing. We placed everything we already had in to Final Cut Pro and began cutting clips. We still needed to shoot more clips, so we planned to do this during the double lesson on Thursday. We did have trouble with editing, as it didn't allow us to save the work we had done, we were told to leave the Macs on, and that Jack would save it for us later.

CiviliZed/Civil Dead

Originally, we had planned to call our film 'Civil Dead' as it was based around Zombies creating their own civilisation and living like regular humans. After this though, I felt that 'CiviliZed' would be a much more suitable name, it sounded smoother and emphasised the Zombies aspect of the film with the capitalised 'Z'. After putting it forward to my group, we all decided that CiviliZed was a better and more suitable name for the film.

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was born on May 8th, 1920, in the Bronx, New York. After graduating from James Monroe High School, he bagan studying part-time at the Art Students League in Manhattan until attending night classes at Brooklyn College. He began his time in Hollywood during the 1940's, he made his breakthrough when Otto Preminger asked him to design the poster for his film Carmen Jones in 1954, Preminger was so impressed with his work, he asked him to create the title sequence for it too. Bass took this as an opportunity to change the way title sequences were used and how much of an impact they would have on the audience.


Bass would often use a single image to symbolise the movie. He used this because it became instantly recognisable and was immediately tied to the film, it showed the audience the main focus of the film in a single image.  After this he created the title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, he created this using an extreme close-up of a woman's face and then her eye before making it spin in to a spiral and then filling the screen with what looked like blood. His title sequences were so simple, yet so effective. Along with Preminger and Hitchcock, he worked with many other famous filmmakers such as Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, who helped him during his 40 years of success.

Deciding on the Font

The font used in a Title Sequence is very important, it is used to give the viewer an initial idea of what genre the film is, and what it's about. For example, gothic fonts with blood dripping from the letters would imply that the film is based around horror and gore.

As our film is a horror film, we needed to find a font that was suitable to the genre. The font we chose is used because it gives the audience a sense of fear, and allows them to gain an idea of what to expect from the film. It looks very liquidized, almost like blood, and we later edited the font in Photoshop to put the emphasis on the 'Z' in 'CiviliZed' to bring out the zombies aspect of the film. 

Order of Titles

Typography

Usual order of titles:

-       Name of Studio

-       Name of production company

-       Producer name

-       Starring (Starting with the ‘main’ actors)

-       Featuring (Featured actors)

-       Casting director

-       Music composer

-       Production designer

-       Editor

-       Director of photography

-       Producer

-       Writers

-       Director

After we had established the order in which the titles appear on the screen, we decided it would be easier for us to overlay the titles rather than integrate them in to the scene.

Continuity Sequence

Continuity Sequence

For this task we were asked to create a short continuity sequence ensuring we didn’t break the 180-degree rule, and including a shot reverse shot, continuity shot and a match shot.

The idea that we came up with was a short sequence involving two girls who hadn’t seen each other for a long time, and they were having a casual catch up. We created a storyboard for this scene and followed it as best as we could. It wasn’t very difficult to follow the storyboard as we made the scene correlate with the storyboard as best as we could. Unfortunately, on some of the clips the volume is quite low, and it is very difficult to recognise when someone is speaking, and what they are saying.

To improve on this, if we were to do this task again, I would’ve asked the actors to speak louder and make their speech clearer and more audible. Also, another thing that could be improved upon would be the positioning of actors between scenes, in a few shots the actors appear in one position, then when it cuts to the next one, they appear to be in a different position which appears unprofessional and makes the scene look a bit rough.

What I learnt: I learnt how to change the levels of sound on Final Cut Pro, this was important as I needed to make the actors more audible. I also learnt about the 180-degree rule, this is important during filming because if you break it, the scene doesn’t look smooth and the actor doesn’t appear to be looking at the other actor.

Thursday 10th January 2013

In the double lesson today, Leanne decided to split up our group. I thought this was a good idea as the group clearly wasn't co-operating very well. Fex was told to work on her own, whilst me and Elle were told to continue working together. The clips we already had were allowed to be used, and we were allowed to continue filming together but we were required to edit it differently and publish it as two separate title sequences. After this, me and Elle decided we would do our own filming, as we didn't like Fex's ideas.

Plan - Friday 11th January

Friday 11^th January

We plan to have the coursework finished by the Friday. We should have everything filmed, edited and ready to show. We need to overlay the titles on to the title sequence once we have filmed the first scene of the film with the zombie.

Plan - Friday 18th January 2013

Friday 18^th January

Deadline for everything to be finished and ready for screening, after that we will receive feedback and be given a bit more time to edit anything that could be improved.

Plan - Wednesday 9th January 2013

Wednesday 9^th January
On Wednesday, I plan to edit what we have, which should be everything. Editing everything together and putting the titles over the top of the scenes, after that the coursework should be finished and ready for screening.

Plan - Tuesday 8th January 2013

Tuesday 8^th January

On Tuesday we planned to film the interview scene. For this part of the title sequence we required someone older, so we plan to use a teacher to film the interview. After we have filmed this scene, we will place everything we have in to Final Cut Pro and begin editing whilst filming for the first part of the actual film, a POV scene of a zombie doing normal every day things.

Monday 7th January 2013

On the first day back, we were told that the deadline for the coursework was at the end of the week. The Macs had crashed, so we were all required to log on with the username Medai1 and the password apples, we were then required to make a folder for the work we done in that lesson, which would then be put on to our own user areas. In this lesson I made a plan for the course of the week on what my group needed to do to make sure we met the deadline and had everything ready for screening.