Evaluation

movie poster

This is the poster for our film. I think that it works well with what the film is trying to convey and also would stand out to the public. I used the image that was in the title sequence of our opening so that the poster directly links with the film itself.

credit to Alex

Survey

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/76HQV9X

This is the survey I created in order to get feedback from viewer to see what they liked about The Decoy and what they think we should improve on. these  questions will help us when coming to writing the evaluation, as it will determine whether or not we have successfully achieve what we wanted for The Decoy short opening clip.  

2nd Draft - final cut

editing the title sequence

Editing session

In todays editing session me and Alex began to edit the the audio with the footage, I think we found it easier than it should of been, this is because creatively we are very similar and both of us have the same/similar ideas, we both work together to develop each others ideas. We both have experience using premiere pro, so this made the task easier. However sometimes we did get stuck on how to do certain things, therefore we had to ask for help, or do our own research to find how do do these tasks. Overall I think it was very successful because of how well we work together.

 

credit to Jordan

 

Due to not being great at using programmes such as premiere pro, in this particular area I have to take a back seat and watch how Alex and Jordan work it for future references where I can them apply my skills I have learn. however for now I don't know enough about the programme to put too much of an input in however I do give my opinions and advice to how the shot could go and so on.

Final cut

1st Draft

This is our first draft of our thriller "The Decoy". A lot of small things our needed to be changed, we need to change the  audio because of copyright issues, which the Muse song breaches, therefore we need to find some royalty free music to use for our title sequence.

Also we need to add in the titles, and roles of each of us. This will be very simple, I know, what names I want to put, and where I want to put them due to the storyboard, also we have already researched the typography, so we our well prepared for this task.

We also need to edit the title sequence, the colour needs to be changed to make it darker, this is too keep more relevant to our opening, also it will continue the thrilling factor, and it refers back to our espionage sub-genre, I know this because of my research.

video needs to be added


credit to Jordan

teacher feedback

Responding to teacher feedback

After I had put in all of this audio and our rough cut was finished. I asked Mr Michie to watch our video and give some feedback to us on what we could improve. he suggested that we should not have three soundtracks used in a two minute opening and that we should get rid of the Muse soundtrack because it is copyrighted. He also suggested that we should use the running sequence music as the title sequence music to keep that familiarity within the two minute opening. Mr Michie did say however that he did like the theme of our idea and how it played out and said that the editing of our continuity within the sequence was good. He also said that we need a bit more footage at this point because we have not reached the full two minute length of the opening sequence as it only reaches to about one minute and thirty seconds.

To respond to this we will come in the next day to film more footage that we will be able to use to reach the full two minutes. Furthermore,  we will also cut the audio of Muse out and put the running sequence music for the title sequence as we also believe this will make for a more effective two minute opening. Overall, I think we are finally getting to the stage where we will almost be finished.

 

Credit to Alex

 

 

It was helpful for Alex to get advice of Mr Michie due to him knowing what is good and what has been done many times before and so on. As well as this, I do agree with Mr Michie when he said that having three soundtracks in such a short clip would be a bit much because it messes with the audiences predictions in a strange way.

 

Editing sessions

Third editing session 
    

Today I started the third editing session of our final video cut. I mostly spent my time editing the audio for the video as this was incomplete and needed working on. I decided to change the music for the running sequence because I felt that it just did not fit the theme of espionage and also did not fit with how the sequence played out. It was originally the instrumental for ghetto Kyoto which Jordan decided to choose but then we both agreed that this was not going to work. I then spent my time looking at what would fit with what we wanted and then I stumbled across the Kendrick Lamar song Backseat Freestyle (instrumental). This was the perfect sound to use for our video because it had that effect of attracting the audience to watch the film while also having a suspenseful and thrilling side to it. 
After I found this I put it into our video and cut it down so that it fit just with the running sequence and nothing else within the video. I made sure that the opening of the track was repeated until the title popped up and then after this it would cut to the main instrumental with a heavy drum beat to it. After this I realised that we needed to have a background track to the dialogue scene. This is because it would add to the atmosphere of the dialogue and gives an indication that this is a very tense moment for the protagonist. It also establishes that this is a very shady place and the person that the protagonist is talking to is very mysterious. The track that I used was Crush by El Huervo. Along with these soundtracks the Muse music will also be added to the title sequence at the end. Overall this music is vital to the project as it really adds to the detail and atmosphere of the opening sequence.

 

 

credit to Alex

2nd re-shoot

2nd Day of Re-Shooting

On the second day of the re shoots, we shot the establishing shots and we re-done the dialogue scene.As of today we have finished all that needed to be improved on our project since there were many issues with some of the shots.

We re-shot the the dialogue scene because we needed to improve the continuity

 

credit to Jordan

Re-shooting

Today whilst on the re-shoots, our group went to the location, firstly we re done the shots of Alex running outside, these shots went very well, and we hopefully won't have to film this part again. We shot them again because the first one, the panning wasn't smooth enough, and this become more obvious when we started editing.  Also we added in a shot, of Alex jumping over the fence, we done this to give our opening more of a thrilling factor. The shot also gives the audience a better understanding of what is going on, and the scenery, this also went very well, its adds more diversity to our opening two minutes.

We then went inside to film the dialogue, we got half way through the filming, and unfortunately our camera ran out, so we could no longer continue, from this we learnt that we have to put more preparation before filming, and that planning is key.
credit to Jordan

Today's filming

For today filming we had to reshoot certain shots for our short film due to small errors such as Alex's hand is different in one shot when it is suppose to be in the same position as the scene before, as well as this the scenes when he was running were too slow so we had to reshoot them so he ran faster, not only that Alex had to jump higher, which looked much better once we had reshooted it all. However the camera ran out of battery as we were doing the last scene so we will have to continue filming tomorrow.

Filming today

Today we were filming the last few scenes of when Benoit is giving Alex the bag that contains the bomb due to last time Alex's hands positioned differently to the previous shot. However today we struggled abit due to the lighting in the training room appearing too dark so we had to film in a different part of the room in order for the lighting to be effective. 

Production Name!

From the mind map I made on the ideas of production names for our film company, as a group we came to decision to that the one we liked the most was Mercury Productions, so from this I looked on a few websites to see how we would like to present our company name..

Second Continuity edit

video needed

Location

We chose to film our 2 minutes espionage opening sequence in School due to the fact that it is easily assessable and easy for us to use because we know where everything is, where good lighting would be, and having the equipment in school makes it easier as well.


Jump shot outside Chikara  

Outside Chikara Centre

Inside Chikara by Lift

Picture needed


Stairs in Chikara

Doors at the top of stairs

Corridor in Chikara

Training room in Chikara 

Actors - Profiles

Pictures of actors needed

Shot list

Shot list

1) Various establishing shots

2) Title Sequence

3) Tracking shot of Alex running

4) Mid-shot of alex coming through the door

5) Mid-shot of Alex running toward the elevator

6) Close up of Alex pressing the elevator button.

7) Variety of mid-shots of Alex running up the stairs

8) Close up of Alex opening the door.

Jobs

Group members jobs

After evaluating what we were good at, we decided to give each other jobs for the filming process and onwards. We analysed what we were both good at and where we could both help each other in our weak spots. Both of us have a big key role in the filming process.

Me - Director,  Camera, Cinematography and Editor

Alex -Actor, Audio (music), Editor and Writer

 

Shawnean - researcher, story board, animatic

 

Georgie - Research, script writer

Evaluation questions

In the evaluation the following questions must be answered:

• In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

• Who would be the audience for your media product?

• How did you attract/address your audience?

• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Props

Props

For our opening sequence we only have two props;

One is a normal black bag, which will be full, to have the look that it contains a bomb, I choose to use just a plain bag because its very simple and doesn't give a lot away about the character, this keeps the mysterious and thrilling factor to the opening sequence.

The second one is a balaclava for the second character, this is used to create a mysterious and ominous affect, and to make the scene thrilling. For the purpose of the scene it is to hide the identity of the character to make it look like the character is very important and people knowing who he is could be dangerous.

Elevator scene

    

The elevator sequence was on of the hardest to complete, this is because a wide variety of camera angles/shots were needed to portray what was going on in the scene. This was hard whilst filming because we had to make sure that the match on action would be perfect. Our actor had to do things the exact same each time to keep the continuity, this made the filming harder than we thought. 
Our actor had to be running at the same speed to keep the continuity.

 

(credits  to Jordan)

 

It is important to keep the continuity because its what makes the clip look so in sync however on this particular shot, it was hard for Jordan and the actor to get the right shot even a different hand movement can make the clip look uneven and badly filmed.  

Dialogue

Dialogue Scene

    

Whilst filming the dialogue scene the main things were that the accents were executed and the sound was recorded well. Also another thing was the camera shots, and how we were going to portray the scene. Me and Alex found this quite easy as there wasn't a lot that was said, so the main focus was how things were said, and if things needed to change, in case our script didn't come across as well as we visioned it too.

 

(credit to Jordan)

Editing

Editing

Today I started the editing process for our opening sequence, to do to this I used Adobe Premier. Firstly with the paint in the water section, I sped the sequence up and I also used colour correction to make the paint have more of an influence in the video.

Also I have been working towards perfecting the match on action sequence, to make sure it all makes sense and looks correct when all put together, hopefully this will conclude in a continuous sequence.

However whilst I was editing I started to realise that some of the clips weren't perfect, therefore I will have to re shoot them.

 

(credit to Jordan)

 

 

Titles

Here is a selection of typography I have selected, which may become our final one for our project:

-THE DECOY

-THE DECOY

-THE DECOY

-THE DECOY

-THE DECOY

-THE DECOY

-THE DECOY

-THE DECOY

Most of the fonts have been downloaded from www.dafont.com

 

(credit to Jordan)

 

I had used the same website and found similar, if not the same fonts that would look best on our clip, even though they are all very similar,  I personally like either the last one or the second one due to the font being quite substantial.

Title

Title's

This is a list of titles we have considered for our opening:

- The Decoy

- Bomb

- Anonymous

- The Outsider

- Interloper

- stranger


From this list we have decided to choose 'The Decoy' as our title as we believe that it will have the most relevance to our film, and to the espionage sub-genre.

 

(credit to Jordan)

 

After Shawnean researching these titles and their meanings, we came together as a group to discuss which one out the 6 that we liked the most and the one that would fit our film the best which we then came to a decision of 'The Decoy' because we believed that it will have the most relevance to our short clip and to the espionage sub-genre.

Original Story Board

The original story board that me and Shawnean drew was good however as a group we came to a decision that the filming and editing will be too much of a challenge, and although we want our short clip to be as good as it can be, by making unrealistic goals we wouldn't be able to reach we decided to make it more easier for ourselves that way we can enjoy filming etc rather than panicking. As well as this, we wanted to film this in London which was hard as a group to arrange a date in which we can go, as well as this if we filmed one day and it was cloudy and the next it was sunny we would have ran out of time to make arrangements to meet up again when the weathers the same and so on.

Animatic needed

Final Story board