Thursday, 3 November 2011

Mark Scheme, Construction - Using titles appropriately / Use of sound with images/editing.

Sound is an important aspect of modern day film, another video made by my group member indicates how music and editing can change the feel of a short clip and even the whole genre.



Daniel was in charge of typography in our project and he found various fonts that could be used for our titles, another thing to consider with titles is where they are placed within the scene. By examining other clips of film openings similar to our three pitches I examined The Nightmare on Elm street opening for the Supernatural/Beast pitch. The youtube video has been disabled for embedding by request but the link is here. This is particularly good for analysing titles as almost all of the oppening uses titles in a unique way. Without going into too many details the film is about a murderer who kills his victims in their dreams by stabbing them. A fairly plain font is used in the foreground of the scene however over a dark backgrond the same thing is scratched into the background in a lighter colour. These are often anchored with a scratching sound and sometimes carry on into another clip, showing short clips of children playing and elm street. If you watch the film then you realise that these are clips of the main characters who are being hunted by this murderer's childhood. These clips are sometimes photos or sign's which are scratched up so the typography does really well to link itself with the film. Focusing on where the credits are placed in the film the director has decided to split the clips and credits into two seperate scenes, as opposed to placing the credits on top of the clips he has seperated the two.

Mark Scheme, Construction - Holding shot steady / Appropriate material for task.

Over the next few posts we have been set the task of planning how we will achieve the highest possible marks for various aspects of the mark scheme. One of the sections of construction is how we will keep camera shots steady. Although this is a fairly simple task when using still shots as a tripod can help achieve this, when using a tripod the shot is steady. However when walking or filming a moving shot holding the camera steady is a lot harder, obviously attempts can be made to keep the camera as steady as possible, however without expensive equipment the recording will always have some shakyness.
Example of a stedicam.

A member of our group is considering purchasing a stedicam however as the equipment is expensive we needed to examine alternative methods of keeping the camera steady, many editing programs include an option to "stablilise" the footage, for an example of what this looks like Eric recorded a video with an example of unstabilised and stabilised footage.





We need to make sure that we keep all material appropriate for the task, the task is a film opening for one of three possible pitches. I have looked at many film openings and analysed several by doing this I can hope to get a wider range of knowledge of film openings and this will help me decide whether a certain shot would fit into a film opening or whether it is more suited to later on in a film. Another important way we can keep the material appropriate and relevant is by storyboarding, this can help us plan ahead and make sure that all material links together appropriately.

Monday, 31 October 2011

Shop.



The short film above was a piece I made, we were instructed to focus on editing and particularly in what order we placed our scenes. I chose to edit it in a chronological order, stating with walking up the street followed by picking up items and then paying for them. I used the same Point of View camera angle throughout the film because I think this was the most effective way to portray the task. I decided to use the lively music because it juxtaposes the mundane task of going to the shop and this was done as an attempt to make the film seem more interesting. I synced the music with the film so that it speeds up as I reach for the first item. I chose to refrain from using any special effects as I think that it would look out of place, I did use some colour correction and also stabilised the footage, however it still remained very shaky. This could have added a more realistic feel to the film but I think that it may have been too shaky for this to come across as a realistic point of view.