The Case - Evaluation

After finishing my 6 minute short film I am extremely disappointed in the final product, although I think that some of the shots are to a decent standard and the editing is acceptable the overall feel and direction the film went was completely off track due to actor problems, Unfortunatly I had to change my story in the final stages of completing the project, this proved very difficult indeed and involved me trying to think on the spot as to what to do. This really affected my film.

On top of this I had around 60-70 mins of footage on essentially was around a 30-50 second scene this made editing a nightmare but has also proven to learn me a great deal in AV. I find that I am way to analytical on the overal composition and look of a film and this has defintly compromised my film. I should have concentrated more on the actual story and characters than the aesthetic feel of the film, I've learnt that sometimes its absolutely necessary to cut a shot that looks brilliant but does nothing for the film. Getting this balance right is essential, it just turns out that I am way to fussy over the look of things. I have this trouble when creating anything visual such as production documents, dvd menus etc. anything that is out of line or compositionally looks wrong I will spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to get it to look perfect rather than concentrate on the actual work, thus affecting my work. This is something I certainly need to overcome.

Although this project has been the most difficult thing I have ever done, I would say its been a huge learning experience. It's made me realize that I have a passion for filming more than I thought I did, pulling a shot into Premiere and editing it and see it come together is very rewarding and gives you a thirst to do more filming. It's made me want to get a camera out and start filming because I know from this experience I can do alot better. It's certainly something I would like to do in the future, and working with real professional actors would be a great experience, I just didn't feel confident enough to work with professionals earlier in the project, as my camera experience isn't great, this is something I regret and wished I done, I need to believe in myself more!

DVD Authoring

I have created a few basic ideas in Photoshop regarding layout and design to help me for my DVD Authoring. I want the look of it dark and eerie as the film draws on suspense. The text will float around the screen and fade in and out of a gaussian blur, it will feature animated menus for the extra features content.

Problems

Okay just a little catch up, I have done a thorough shotlist for my coming scenes in The Case, but I have a slight actor problem, my current actor is not available till may 5th this in my eyes is cutting it all to short but there's nothing else I can do. For now I will complete the shots that don't require my actor in the scenes, for instance there are a number of opening shots in the film that I can do.

So I'm planning, May 6th - 9th Shoot final scenes of film, 9th - 11th Edit (long weekend, no sleep). I am currently working on an interactive dvd menu in Adobe Flash, pictures will be posted soon.

40 Second Pilot

AVT Seminar: File types and Compression

We were asked to list a number of file types we might use, how we might use that format, and what software we may use to convert the files to other formats, below is what I found:

List of file types I might use:
.avi, .fla, .wav, .ogg, .mp3, .swf, .mpg, .pdf, .psd, .ai, .raw, .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .mov, .mpeg, .qt, .max, .3ds, .txt, .exe, .iso, .udf, .tiff, .wmv, .aiff, .nrg, .abl, .rtf

List of how I might use these files:
Adobe Premiere Pro makes use of a number of different file formats, not just in video but also in images and audio, most of Adobe’s software file extensions from there other software packages can be used in conjunction with Adobe Premiere Pro to gain the highest of quality in your work, such as .psd and .ai from Photoshop and Illustrator.

A small list of file extensions Premiere Pro can use:

.avi
.jpg .jpeg
.ai
.psd
.gif
.flv
.mpg .mpeg
.wmv .wma
.aif
.mp3
.wav
.ac3

List of what I might use to convert these file types:
I searched into google: “converter software” and the list was endless, there’s a variety of freeware tools to use but these offered limited file use and did not convert many different extensions. A decent one I came across is the one below, Blaze Media Pro.

http://www.blazemp.com/ - an extract from there website:

Audio Capabilities:

Audio Editing converter (mp3, wma, wav, ogg), and more.

Video Capabilities:

Batch video converter for .AVI, .MPG, .WMV, .MOV and more.
Convert, AVI, MPG, WMV to Flash.
All in one MPEG software solution, MPEG encoder, decoder, editor and converter.

The use of a converter is important in order to get your work onto different multimedia mediums, such as the web, for instance .FLV and .SWF files would be used for movies/animation on the web, or promotional videos need to be compressed down in quality to be shown on cd/dvd, it is important to use the highest quality setting when creating your work, you cannot convert a file from lower quality to higher quality!

An important thing to take into consideration as Danny noted is the use of codecs, an extract from wiki:

A codec is a device or program capable of performing encoding and decoding on a digital data stream or signal. The word codec may be a combination of any of the following: 'compressor-decompressor', 'coder-decoder', or 'compression/decompression algorithm'.

A particular video may not work because the codecs may not be installed, popular codecs for video include, M-PEG part 1, M-PEG part 2 (higher resolution and bitrate, commonly used for SVCDs and sometimes DVDs.), M-PEG 4 part 2, M-PEG 4 part 10 (the latest, commonly used on the Xbox 360, HD/Blu Ray, iPod, and Playstation Portable.) DivX, Xvid and many more. For instance if a video file such as .avi was compressed using DIVX, you will need the DIVX codec installed in order to view the video.

Audio Problems cont.. Automating Volume

Audio Problems

It appears that at the beginning of our documentary there is music playing in the background of the musuem, we didn't anticipate that the shot gun mic would pick this up as much as we thought.

I was asked to see if there was anyway to lower this sound and keep his voice the same, unfortunatly I wasn't able to do this, I tried using a bandpass filter to filter out certain frequency ranges, using the waves plugins however this affected Tony's voice too, If the background noise was at a higher frequency range or was a very low end sounding drone noise this would of being possibly by simply cutting out the frequencies using a bandpass filter from say 35Hz - 120Hz or 8KHz - 16KHz, however the background noise was quite loud and all over the place.

This has being a valuable learning experience, and something I will defintly learn from. Unfortunatly the only way around this would have being to re-record Tony's voice and then dub it over the top, due to time constraints this was not possible!

Audio Unedited:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/eddqzb

Audio Edited:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/liaayq

If you hear the examples the quality is seriously reduced and gives a filtered noise as expected. I could not think of any other way around this other than to automate the volume level throughout the audio to duck almost like a sidechaining effect everytime Tony speaks, I thought this would take way to long and the quality would most likely be unusable.

Robin Hood Rough Edit...

After completing our footage, over 40mins! we made a rough edit, this process was harder than expected as we had so much footage it was difficult to try and cut it all down to just 3minutes.

Storyboard Ideas

Unfortunatly the USB2.0 cable I had did not fit my DSLR camera so I was unable to bring my storyboards onto the computer, instead I collected a few relevant images and decided to explain what was going on. If I had realizied the cable did not fit I would have scanned the pics earlier in university, instead of having to do this last minute in photoshop!

Documentary Questions...

Before we started filming our documentary we prepared a few questions before we started our interview on Tony.
Can you tell us a little about your upbringing and how you ended up in Nottingham?
Is your plans to be involved in film and acting always in your mind and how do you intend to achieve ambitions outside of the tales?
Did you see yourself becoming Robin Hood or was there some other plan for your life?
Do you prefer the technical side of your job, the acting side or the educational side?
What aspect of your job gives you the most satisfaction?

Working Inside out - Holding Pattern

What is the film about?
In my interpretation of the film I believe the character ‘Bogdan’ is seeking asylum in the UK. I think the character is portrayed as someone who is lonely, broke and trying to make a living in the UK, I think the character could possibly miss his friends and family back in Romania, due to the living room scene and the library scene, However it could be the other way around and he is communicating with people back home telling news of how things are going in the UK.

To me the letter that he tears up represents something that suggests bad news, such as a refusal to work or reside in the UK; however you do not really know. The ending I think is open and he could possibly be returning back to Romania or fleeing from the town he resides in to move to another place within the UK, suggesting that the he must go back to his home country.

Is there any political issue that will impact the film?
I believe that this script politically portrays an asylums identity and how he goes about his day, someone that is trying to make a living in the UK and is anxiously waiting on news giving the feeling of hope throughout the script, there is a lot of sensitivity and negativity regarding the issue of asylum seekers in the UK especially in the press with many believing they are stealing jobs or that UK residents tax money is paying for them to live in the UK.

How do I picture the film?
My image of the film is something that is sad and very lonely, I picture the scenes as been very gritty and realistically looking, with a very subtle soundtrack, I can see this film going from light to dark very quickly, with a lot of monotone colours and long distance camera shots to make the character look smaller and isolated disconnecting him with his environment. I see this film as quite minimal with very few camera shots, except for the dancing scene where I could see that as being quite frantic and adding a bit of light to the film but with a nice undertone of isolation and disconnection with the scene he is in, such as the living room being quite dark and very substandard.

Working Inside Out
To prepare us as a group for the official task
Explore ideas and experiment with the visual vision
To make mistakes as part of the learning process
To help understand the layout of the script
To stimulate my imagination
So jools can have a coffee
To show how scripts can have different interpretations to different people

Interpret text
Create own interpretation
Original work
Bring script to screen
Develop own ideas
Think analytically

Group Roles

My role within the group is the sound of the film, Glyn will be involved with the props, location, equipment and acting, Lee and Hollie will be using the camera & lighting, I think it would be a good idea for all of us to muck in on the editing and directing of the film in order for us to each get our own individual ideas across and onto the screen.