What happened during editing

During editing we did make alot of changes during editing. But what took up alot of time is the titles we were doing but mainly it is more of how the titles entered the screen, for instance dipping to black and where we had to put the titles. The first time we had the people starring in the clip on the woods scene when Chris is running it came in right hand corner and then when Josh was on the screen we put titles there to. Then we put our individual jobs that we did during just a black screen and you hear Josh and Chirs fighting. Then it came up with up a piece of paper on the package just showing "Shadows Present."
Our final piece for our titles we had each individual black screens just once each of our names, and then at the end there was a big title "Shadows Present" just white and the it fades into white and red, then all of a sudden it fogs and goes off the screen.

The music on our first piece was very loud and in your face and a lot of people from our class said they didn't like it as it was like a big film and not the intro to a film. But now it's soft music that goes great with the film and what is on the screen.

What happened during the shoot (interior & exterior)

Exterior
We filmed on Wednesday 5th February in the woods near our college called Alexandra park. We used the storyboard to help us about what we were going to film. Chris and Josh were our actors so whenever they needed to act Chloe and I filmed them and this gave us a chance to follow the storyboard and also give our own opinion of what kind of shot we wanted. But after we filmed it we showed it to Chirs and Josh if they thought it looked right just to make sure. Josh and Chirs also decided to do some extra shots of Josh rolling down a hill while Chris pretend to shoot him but we never included those shots in our clip. Also with our props (the package) we put mud on it to make it looked like it had been through alot of people before it came to Chirs.
Also we added an extra shot of when Chirs drops the package and then there is just a plain shot of the package on the floor then it goes back to Chris. I never liked this shot because when it was just the shot of the package it is straight and in my opinion the package would have been wonky if it had dropped out of Chris's hands. I never said anything as I never that we had filmed that till we got to the edit suit and it was too late to film again in Alexandra Park.

Interior
The week after on 15th February we filmed are next piece in the studio in our college. Again, we used the storyboard to guide our way to what to film. We didn't really add an extra shots in the studio because we didn't have any ideas of what else to film, but what we did film we shot it like about 4 to 5 times over just to make sure we have enough shots for editing. Chloe and I tried giving ideas to Chirs and Josh but they never liked our ideas so we never used them in our film. We used a lot of props in this shot compared to when we in Alexandra Park but that was only trying to emphasis where Chirs was(in a hotel room) so we used things that were in the studio like a fan and notebook etc. Again, most of the time Chloe and I shot this, only because Chris and Josh were in the film, but again we asked for there opinion if they think that it was ok.

Conducting a Questionaire

25 age range as they are the main cinema audience and they are who we would be aiming our noir towards. She also asked people aged 40, 28 and 14 to see if our film would appeal to a wider audience range as well. My job was to analyse the results and below is a table showing what I found out explaining how the information we gained from each question was useful to us.

We will attempt to incorporate our findings when creating our opening sequence to make it more appealing to our target audience of people aged between 15 and 25. The question about black and white films (question 2) will be particularly useful when we are in the editing suit and are choosing to add any effects to our film. Our results show that black and white films aren’t a popular choice and that they would turn off/over the TV if they saw one was on. Our role in creating our title sequence is to get people to stay tuned in and watch on to resolve the enigma(s), but if our audience would choose not to watch it just because it was in black and white, then perhaps we shouldn’t add that effect. Question number 5 also proved interesting with the results as it shows how people can be interested and ‘hooked’ in a film opening even if there isn’t any music to accompany it. We will still use music in our opening piece as we feel it’s the key to creating the right noir atmosphere, though it is useful to know that we won’t be turning away our audience if we chose to have loud sound effects, plain speech or dead silence instead. Although the resuls we gained were useful, there were still some things we could have done to gain even better results. Firstly we could have asked a bigger sample of people to gain more accurate results with defined replies on each question. However, I think the outcome would still contain similar results, and wouldn’t be of any further use to us. Also, we could have more questions requiring a more detailed answer (open questions) to gain more feedback from each person we gave the questionnaire to. But they may not have been as keen to fill it out if they had noticed how detailed it was. Overall, I am pleased with the results we discovered as they’ll be very useful to us in the future

Anamatic for Shadows Present

This is our anamatic the storyboard, sound and the putting together of it was all done by Chris our cinematographer.

The anamatic influced me especially with music because it sounds like a film noir and also it upbeat which makes more interesting.

Storyboard for our film noir opening

This storyboard is the oard we are going to follow for our camerawork for our film noir opening. It was made by Chris(our director) also Chris made an anamatic which we used the storyboard for as well.

Treatment for M-E-S for our film noir opening

I have discussed with my group my M-E-S treatment and they all agreed it was fine so here it is;

Location
Man running in the flashback is going to be set in the back of our college, at a park called ‘Alexandra park’ we choose this place for exterior scene because it has a lot of trees and it would be good if it was sunny as you would be able to see a shadow through the trees for our silhouette man. Also you do not get many outside noises and not many people go down there so it would not be a problem when we have to come to edit to get rid of the diegetic sound. When the man is sitting in the room we have chosen the studio in our college because it’s very dark and a good place to give out shadows and it would be very effective for our venation blind effect.

Costumes
Both times exterior and interior we our going to have our main man who is running to be wearing wrinkled clothes and black clothes and a little stubble on his chin because it shows that this man is in his late teens and he is not experienced in making rational decisions in life.The shadow is just a black figure so it does not require a lot of costume but my plan was that we get the actor who is playing him to dress all in black and not put any light on him to make him more silhouette.

Lighting
When we come to the interior (man in the room) it is going to be darkness and then it has a few seconds of the venation blind effect over his face. When we cut to the flashback then comes back every time we come back to the room it gets lighter. This shows that he figuring something out which is that the silhouette has been watching him all this time.When it is exterior in the park we are going to use natural daylight on the man running but with the shadow we will need some lighting so that we can put a shadow effect on him on the ground so that it appears that the shadow is bigger and more powerful then this man.

Performance
In the beginning when we see the man in the room his facial expressions is relieved to show that he has just gotten away from something and he escaped. But when we go in and out of the flashbacks you see his face getting more anxious and nervous.At the ending when he is in the room you see his face relaxed and clamed then there is a lose up of his eyes which seem scared and nervous like he has released something.

Props
A desk (available at college)
A chair at the desk (available at college)
A angle desk lamp (available at college)
A fan (for the desk, available at college)
A black folder, a pad of paper, a few Biro pens and a mobile phone (to decorate the desk)
2x large brown envelope packages (1 to use and 1 spare)
A drinking glass and water
A fake knife and a fake gun
2x black & white photos of our main character walking, and a paperclip to hold them together
An A5 black notebook with a date in it
A magazine cut-out collage of a nameless address and phone number
A fake ice-cube (or real ice from the college cafe if they have any)
A piece of paper with 'Shadows Present' handwritten in bold onto it
The main character's costume and the shadow man's costume (as described above)

Group Decision on our film noir opening

In order to reach conclusions about our film noir opening, we meet up in our group to discuss ideas and answer any problems. Below are notes on what we discussed during our meetings:
Wednesday 7th January - Emily about locations for our film noir opening. We each took a copy of the first script draft from Josh and mentioned anything else we wanted to be included. We all discussed what shots should be used where in the script and finalised a list of individual pre-production tasks to be getting on with. As editor, I asked about when we wanted the titles to appear and we decided that the main title would go at the end and the personnel titles at the beginning. We also decided who would play each character and decided on Chris to be the main person.
Wednesday 14th January - Chris was finishing the storyboard whilst Emily produced a list of costumes and props we each needed to fetch, and discussed who would get each one. We also looked at what the main character would be wearing in each location (woods and in the dark room). We all went to go and look at our chosen location, Alexandra Park, to take pictures, look at where the main character would be running from and to think about where the camera could be positioned to get the best shots possible.
Thursday 22nd January - Chris scanned the finished draft of the storyboard into the computer to create an animatic. We each prepared something to say to the class in tomorrow's presentation speech (except I was off ill so I did mine at home).
Friday 23rd January - Did our speech to the rest of our media class and showed them our finished animatic. We answered any questions they gave us and considered their comments. One of the things someone mentioned was that it may be too much to film with too little time to show it all. We took this on board and will consider shortening the scrips and including less of our ideas to make it more simple, yet still with the same desired effect.
Wednesday 28th January - We finalised all our pre-production work and Josh asked if there were any issues we found with the script. Emily reminded us of what props and costumes we needed to bring in individually, and I suggested that we used a small glass block (which I have at home) if the college cafe couldn't supply any ice-cubes to us. I also took the questionnaire results away to write up an analysis on them, whilst Chris thought about what we would do in wet weather conditions. We decided that if it was rainy on the day of the shoot, we would have to take the camera kit out during the half term holidays, or film the following week. Or we could use an umbrella to shelter the camera , though this would limit our filming abilities and we doubt the media department would allow it, though the rainy effect would add to the atmosphere of our film! We all went to the colleg libaray during break to search for sound effects CD's that could us in our film. We took out 4 in total with footsteps, outdoor atmosphere noise, indoor atosphere noise and gunshots on each. We would listen to them tomorrow. ONLY 1 WEEK LEFT UNTIL OUR FILMING DAY - WEDNESDAY 4TH!
Thursday 29th January - Today we spilt up as a group as Emily and Josh remained in the media classroom to look over the pre-production work and finish a birds-eyed view map of our Alexandra Park location, whilst Chris and I went into the editing suit to listen to our music choices. We came up with a shortlist of 4 possible music pieces, each from the CD albums that Chris and Josh found at home and brought in. We listened to the sound effect tracks and decided that the gunshots would be useful, but the footsteps didn't sound very realistic so we would try and record our own on the day.