Evaluation 6 and 7

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

7)  Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Trouble with the credits

During the reaction it came to my attention that there was a repeated name in the credits that had to be changed. Unfortunately, the new title kept dropping in quality half way through the typewriter effect, and it would not go away, no matter how many times we started from scratch. Eventually we figured out the problem and managed to change the title so that it did not turn pixelated.

Long shots

One of the problems brought up in the response was that some of the scenes were too long, and became somewhat boring and lowered the tension, so we added in some more reaction shots of Kira looking panicked, which hopefully solved the problem.

Music

This was a point of contention between members of our group, as each of us had a clear vision of the sound that we wanted to use. The beginning was decided before filming, as the music was exactly what we wanted, so that wasn't the problem. The problem was that during the running shots we couldn't find the right music, we knew what we wanted, but we couldn't find one that fit, or decide on which one was the most similar to our vision. We eventually decided, but after it had been added we realized that our choice didn't work in the slightest, and we scrapped the sound. We finally found the right music, which was a mix of tracks, and the opening came together.

Blip in the title

Unfortunately, there is a blip in our title where the font flickers for a second. We have worked extensively trying to correct the problem but we couldn't find any reason why it should be flickering, and therefore couldn't fix the problem.

Recording sound

We folied our sound over the top of our opening, as it was the sound effect of a phone ringing and a busy message which did not record well, as the sound was coming  through the phone, on the initial filming. We also added the voice answering, as it was also coming through the phone, and we needed to get the timing exactly right to match with Kira's reactions, which was easier to do during the editing process.

Title

We decided to have our title 'wipe' from the screen as Kira ran past, and we achieved this through keynote. The editing was extremely fiddly and intricate as Kira did not always run at the same speed, so it didn't look right when the text decreased steadily, but we managed to edit it so it was relatively smooth.    

Typewriter effect

Once we decided to use keynote we suddenly had a wider range of effects to use on our titles. Kira had the idea of the typewriting effect, and we all readily agreed, as it was very fitting for the atmosphere and themes of our film.

Keynote

As I mentioned in my previous post, I used keynote to create the title and the credits. Keynote is the equivalent of powerpoint on apple.

To be able to transfer the text from keynote to iMovie the slide on keynote has to be the right shade of green for green screen.



Then it is merely a matter of adding the text and choice of animation.




















Once this is done, then the title is ready to export. It is exported to Quicktime player so that it will easily import to iMovie.

Once in imovie, select the animation you wish and drag it over the video, and click the green screen option, and your text is now superimposed over your opening.

Typeface choice

We had some trouble choosing the font for our credits. We were originally going to use iMovie to produce our titles, but both the choice of fonts and the choice of where to place the titles was limited, so we moved onto keynote, where the font choice was considerably larger. After looking at all the available fonts we eventually chose 'Lucida sans typewriter' as it fitted the theme of spies and secret agencies that would be much larger in the latter part of the film.

POV shots and Luther

When we were editing our opening, we realised that the girl getting attacked was very out of the blue, so we decided to have a counterpoint by having some shots from the attackers POV, which would hopefully help to build tension. This is an idea that was inspired heavily by an opening of an episode of Luther that we watched and used early in the course for storyboarding practice.

Shots 2 and 3

During editing, we decided to deviate from the storyboard by switching the second and third shot as there was better continuity and it looked a lot smoother.

Intercutting scenes

We decided to intercut two of our scenes. This is to keep the high tension of our opening and to make sure that the pace doesn't drop. These two shots were the same event from two different angles and so intercutting was the best choice to get rid of long clunky shots and make sure the action stays fast paced.

Saturation

We decided to bring down the saturation of our opening to better capture the bleak mood of the film, and the sinister atmosphere of the opening.

Sound 2.0

A lot of our sound is non-diagetic, as we hope that the music will build tension. It starts with calm music, and then a back beat is gradually added to build the suspense.

Sound

Our film has background music, but that background music cannot be copyrighted, so we found a website called 'Epidemic Sound' that provides a wide range of royalty free music.
This is where we got the entirety of the background music for our storyboard animation.