Editing Research

Today myself and our Head of Editing and After Effects took to the computers in search of ideas for our post-production stage. He explained to me a website he had discovered that provides basic downloads and tutorials of special after effects that he can create using Adobe After Effects which he has downloaded in preparation for post-production. He told me how he had been using it to gain experience and knowledge of the software so that he was more prepared to get stuck into the Post-Production as soon as need be.

The website he showed me was called http://www.videocopilot.net/ - they offer the public a wide range of After FX, Pro Tutorials a Pro Shop and Forum for users to discuss products and offer assistance to any in need. He showed me a section of the site that demonstrates the different types of After Effects and we sifted through the hundreds of effects, picking out a few that we feel have potential in Breaking the 4th Wall. Below is an example of one we picked out.

Now we have discussed different ideas and thoughts on this section of the entire production we feel we are all now in the clear about the different type of Effects we want our final production to include. This is very beneficial as it allows Jordan to practice certain effects that we both picked out and be more prepared to include this into our production when the time comes.

Soundtrack Composer

Jordan has been working hard to try and complete a deal which would see up and coming Youtube sensation Charlie Spring feature within The Breaking the 4th Wall production. Charlie has agreed to compose an official soundtrack for our 2 minute production free of charge and given all rights to the BT4W production team. Charlie has been given his own version of the script and has been given a basic idea of how we want our production to turn out, the effects we wish to achieve and the ways in which we are going to achieve this. We will keep Charlie updated on our progress throughout the course of the Pre-production, Production and Post-Production stages so that he can continue to develop prototypes and ideas for the production.

Charlie has proved he has talent in the past by producing his own versions of famous soundtracks such as that of The Dark Knight Rises. We look forward to working with Charlie and know he won't let us down in the creation of the Soundtrack. He is a valuable assest to the team as he brings a good previous experience and expanse of knowledge within the media industury and will know just the effect we want to pull off. It is important that we manage to nail the soundtrack as it will help us give of an authentic and scary effect. We believe that without a suitable and professional soundtrack we will come out with poor, flimsy and unprofessional production as a whole.

Below I have attached Charlie's most viewed Soundtrack on his Youtube Channel - 

charlliespringmusic

Title Research

Pav Productions
Today Jordan began working on different ideas for our Titles, we are lucky enough to have a keen enthusiast in special/after effects in Jordan Mander. He has spent over 5 hours creating and producing a prototype for our 1st title which is that of the Production company 'PAV Productions'. He used a mix of previous knowledge, experience and tutorials to help him produce these amazing results.


Still shot of the Production Company - PAV Production.

We feel this type of disorentation within the Titles will grip the audience, the mix of this and the bright illuminous colours will grab the audiences attention. Jordan based these titles on the Tron Legacy titles, he felt the style creates an atmospheric feel for the audience, he feels this is the perfect feel for a horror based film.

Below is a full 1080p version of the titles for PAV Productions, this small few seconds clip took alot of time and effort from Jordan and the Title research he put in has helped him to find inspiration from Tron Legacy. We are undecided on whether to use these Titles for our Production Company but will continue to experiment in the run up to Post-Production.



White Studio's
He has also taken his time to produce another section of the Title Sequence, next up for Jordan was 'White Studio's'. Jordan again used a mix of experience, knowledge and online tutorials to create this next Title using Adobe After Effects. He targetted a 'Proffesional, yet simplistic look' in order to 'compete with the top professional film companies'.

Still shot of  Studio Title - White Studios

Jordan feels that he has created something which hits each of these aims in the creation of this title and feels the Titles create a "Clean cut, simplistic and gripping effect for the audience". He specifically like the way the titles zoom out of the globe and give the idea of seeing the bigger picture, he feels this inadvertently links in with our theme of the hidden secrets of the Illuminati.

Below is a full 1080p version of the titles for White Studios, this small few seconds clip took alot of time and effort from Jordan and the Title research he put in has helped him to get a feel for what is truely needed within the professional titles industry. We are undecided on whether to use these Titles for our Studio Company but will continue to experiment in the run up to Post-Production.

Voiceover Research & Prototyping

Today I have spent some time looking at creating a Voiceover, I have got myself a Olympus VN 5500PC Digital Voice Recorder in order for our Voiceover to sound greater. I took to the Script in order to equip myself with the dialogue for the Voiceover. I pressed record and the rest was history, I then uploaded my recorded audio to my PC via the USB slot in the 5500PC.

 I wanted the recording to sound more manly and rogue, so I slotted my recording into Audacity, I then put the pitch of the audio to -13.00. I did this because this will make the Voiceover sound alot more fearsome and roguish, which is exactly what we our looking to achieve. I also added a preliminary soundtrack, I cut it down to suit the Voiceover, and there I had it, the finished prototype. I saved it in the format of WAV and uploaded it to SoundCloud, Below is what I came up with earlier this today:

Voiceover2 by JackWhiteAS

Now that I have completed The Voiceover Research/Prototyping, I feel that I have identified a number of different aspects of creating a Voiceover that separate it from a poor Voiceover, to a great Voiceover. First of all I have noticed that towards the end of the speech the voice goes quiet, this is through natural human error of letting the voice drop towards the end, we will have to identify that on the set of our next shoot and make sure this doesn't happen again. Secondly I noticed that changing the pitch to -13.00 gives that roguish and rough, manly feel that we are trying to achieve. This is good because it makes us more prepared and lets us be assured that we can achieve this. Now that we have established that, it is defiantly something we wish to replicate in the near future. Last of all is the addition of a Soundtrack, when listening to the speech I felt it sounded slightly out of place, it didn't give the feel of a horror. In order to change that I decided to add a preliminary Soundtrack which I downloaded from Youtube. I did this to test what type of Soundtrack gives what type of feel, after trying out various different Soundtracks I came to the conclusion on the one used above. I felt this was right because it helped build tension with the increasing beats and sound. This is the ideal effect because we feel it will really put the audience on edge.

Breaking The 4th Wall | Mise-en-scène | Costume Design

As the planning and research has progressed we have been discussing the different types of mise-en-scène that we will be looking to use in our production. We have considered the types of costume wear and outfits we wish for our actors to wear, we discussed this during the Main Task Brainstorm. We devised a number of ideas that we feel would be suitable in helping us with a number of things. We feel with the types of costume selection we have chosen that we will have a better chance of striking fear into the audience this is explained below, along with pictures of our costume choice, this amongst other bits of mise-en-scène we plan to use:

First of all, the costume selection for the Main Character. 
When selecting this costume we took into consideration a number of different points, we wanted our Main Character, who's role can be found by CLICKING HERE to come across as someone of importance. We wanted them to send fear into the audience, but most importantly make the audience sit up and pay attention to what the character has to say. Knowing this we decided that a suit and tie, accompanied by smart black shoes. We believe this would be the best option as is symbolizes importance to the audience. We wanted a serious look for this role so instead of picking any old colour suit, for example a white one, we decided to go for a simple black and white look which is used for more serious and formal events. We feel that the selection of this outfit will give a huge effect to the final feel of the production.

Next up is the outfit selection for The Secondary Character.

We took great care and went into great detail in the selection of costume for this role. Although we will only be shooting footage of this role for a matter of seconds, we feel it is one of the most vital components to the success of the entire opening. We have decided to invest in a few pieces of clothing and accessories to match, we discussed what would suit this role best and consider the different factors, the main factor being the Illuminati twist of our opening. Taking into account this factor we decided that we wanted to go for something different with the clothing, something a bit strange, we decided to go for a Rugged Hooded Monk Robe effect, we feel this will keep the audience guessing and questioning. When picking this costume we just knew it was the right choice as it sways away from the black robed convention within horror but keeps the mystery.

To go with this we wanted to try something that has been used in big-hit horrors in the past such as Scary Movie, we wanted to try and interlink aspects of other horror films. Our choice being V for Vendetta, we wanted to use the famous mask from this hit film as we feel it's something the audience can relate to as being scary and spelling out fear.

We feel the use of these props has really put us into a better position to perform and be sure that our production will not look poor. We feel the addition of the mask will cancel out any real acting having to be done by the performer which will mean that we won't risk getting poor footage. All in all we our happy with the purchases that we have made and now we must look into furthering our planning and research into this task.

Breaking The 4th Wall - Updated Task Sheet

Now that we have completed the task list we were set during November, we must continue to make good progress towards creating the best production possible. I have gone over all the different aspects that a good film opening should consist of. I have from this, devised my own ticklist of different aspects I wish to cover between now and our propose filming date towards Mid-January.

• Mise-en-scène - The Mise en scène section of my planning and research should include all the different costumes, outfits and accessories to match that I wish to use. It should also include any props that will feature, or take a part in the production of the opening. As a group we have included aspects of this into each discussion and have been considering it as we have move swiftly to this stage. We have come up with a number of ideas, mostly brought upon ourselves in our Main Task Discussion. We have all come to an agreement as to what Mise en scène we wish to include into our production and this will be posted in posts above.
• Title Research - As a group we came together and decided that the best way to get the best results within the editing, effects and titles area of the production was to hand the responsibility over to Jordan. Jordan has previous experience and a large expanse of knowledge within this region and we feel that he is are best bet to getting the production looking professional and clean cut. He has come up with the thought of using a number of different programs and websites to contribute towards his success. He has downloaded Adobe After Effects and is using a specialized site with special effect plug-ins that come with tutorials. We have had spoke as a group and know what type of effect we wish to target but have but no boundaries, we feel Jordan will work best to his own devices. We are all very eager to see what he returns to us with.
• Camera Angles Research -
• Editing Research -
• Voice-over - The Voice-Over plays a huge part in the success of our production, it will help enhance the quality of a speech rather than have it recorded live. It will also help the audience feel as if they know the character better and they can hear his thoughts. We have came up with our speech, we did this when producing the script for our production. As a group we decided that we wanted the voice of our character to sound like the type of look we targeted. That being a roguish, older man with a rough, controversial edge as Jordan put it.I have purchased an Olympus Voice Recorder in order to enhance the sound quality on our voice-over, we will be using audacity to change the pitch of the voice over and too add the soundtrack to it.
• Soundtrack - The soundtrack is what we see as the spine of our production. Without a Soundtrack our production is merely pieces of footage thrown together in a specific order. However, with audio we feel it can allow the production to give off an atmospheric and more professional, authentic and scary effect. We want a soundtrack that gives a mysterious feel, something that helps to build tension and nervousness within the audience. With want the beats of the soundtrack to match the swaps between shots, this will mean that the heavier beats will appear when the shots become quicker which will help make the audience tenser and make nerves rise. We want the Soundtrack to climax as the curtains are drawn, this will let the audience know the importance of this performance the character is about to give, the soundtrack will show how it all comes down to this performance. 

We have set ourselves an initial deadline of completion for this work as, January 10th. This gives us all over Christmas to get researching and then a week together in school. We will use Google+ to host 4-way video calls between one an other. This will help us discuss idea's and continue to make good progress towards success over the festive period. We feel with these additional task's we have set ourselves, that we will be able to put ourselves in the correct position to an easy filming life and editing. We feel this because our knowledge on things such as Titles, Editing and Camera Angles will be greater, thus meaning we can crack on with the production easier and will be able to pull the whole production of to a greater standard. Finally we will be able to get a greater feel for what our production will look like with the preliminary Soundtrack and Voiceover we intend to produce, we will add these's pieces of media over the Animatic I produced earlier this month.

Main Task - Shot List

Now that I've completed the Risk Assessment for our selected location, I thought it be a good idea to move onto producing a Shot List. Mr Henton told us a while back about how to produce a Shot List correctly. Knowing this I headed straight for his blog, I then searched his blog to find a post about 'Creating a shot list'. I used this to assist me in producing my Shot List.

I opened up a new Excel sheet and used Henton's step-by-step instructions to form my Shot List. I added in thing's such as:

.Shot Number - Is what it says on the tin, the number of the shot in question.. Each single shot should be labelled with a shot number, this makes it easier for the director to know which shot is to be shot in which order.
.Scene Number - Scene Number is more specific, for example, if you have Shot 1, 2 and 3 in your first scene then they will all be scene number 1. A scene is when the storyline of the shots our the same and the location stay's the same throughout the footage.

.Shot Type - The type of shot being taken can vary and isn't always just one type. Their are hundreds of different types of shots in filming, for example, establishing shot, panning shot, extreme close up just a few to name. When doing a Shot List you have to include each type of shot being used for each shot. To make it easier and less cluttered, film makers abbreviate the Shot Types. I have done this in a similar fashion. As shown in the caption of the Shot List Below.

.Shot Description - The shot description should include a number of things, but at it's most simple the Shot Description should include a brief overview of what will be filmed. To expand upon this go over what you included in the Shot Type and include positioning and entrance spots/exit spots. 

This is everything I have gone over and attempted to include within my shot list, I feel I have been quite successful in my efforts and believe that it has come out looking quite smart as shown below:

Click On The Image To View It Larger

TL = Time Lapse
S = Still
POV = Point of View
ECU = Extreme Close Up
CU = Close Up
PS = Panning Shot
TS = Tracking Shot
TbS = Track Back Shot

I feel that producing this Shot List has put us in a prime position to move onto the next stages of production. With this list we will find it alot easier to go into the theatre and get the shots we need, it also makes sure we don't forget any pieces of footage that we so desperately require. Now that we have completed the Shot List we are ready to start preparing to film our opening. But first of all we must prepare our Filming Schedule, we are currently (13/12/2011) unable to complete this as the manager of the location we wish to use, has told us to get back to her earlier January regarding a time slot in which we can come and film. This means that in the time between then and now we must continue to plan and improve our ideas for the opening, and when the time comes to produce the Film Schedule we will post it upon our blogs.

Main Task Risk Assessment

I have spent the last couple of hours completing an in-depth Risk Assessment. This is for all of our production that will take place on an unspecified as of yet date in January. This document will help us to ensure and maintain that all of our production remains safe and danger free. I had to consider a number of different aspects when completing this Risk Assessment, things such as occurrence probality, how severe the risk is, this amongst a number of different aspects.

Below is what I produced this evening:

Click The Image To View It Larger

I feel that producing the Risk Assessment has put the group, including the cast at rest and makes the whole production that little bit safer. It means that we don't have to have any worries about the health and safety of the crew when filming at the theatre which will make the whole production run just that little bit more smoothly. Overall we feel we are growing increasingly closer to reaching a point where we are ready to film, we have one final task to complete before we will be able to move onto filming. Last but not least is a filming schedule, we are unable to do this as we don't have a specified date for filming until earlier January.

Secondary Character Casting Candidates

Now that we have discussed ideas of the types of attributes we wish to find within our character for the secondary role in Breaking The 4th, we thought it would be a good idea for us to decide on possible candidates for the role. We all chipped in with possible candidates. We discussed which attributes we knew each proposed actor, and then we came to a final conclusion on two potential candidates based on the specified aspects. Now that we have 2 candidates for the role our next act was to go and hunt each actor down. As both candidates were part of our own group we didn't need to really inform them of the role. Below our the confirmed candidates for the role of the Illuminati Member who is out to stop the exposer:

Secondary Character Role:
Candidate #1- Jordan Mander
When looking to cast for this role we felt Jordan was an immediate candidate for a number of reasons. For starters he is already a man founder and member of this production team, this means he knows the background of the plot inside out. This is important because it was his idea to include the Illuminati, meaning this role is the creation of Jordan himself. We feel this is important because it means he knows exactly what we're looking for in the acting of this. Another aspect that swayed us towards proposing Jordan is his good acting skills, as we discussed before in the casting for the Main Character Role, Jordan has good acting ability after a few years of studying GCSE Drama and achieveing an B last August. He also has it all apperance wise, this is because is tall and of a big build. The one problem with Jordan is that sometime, he struggles to be serious enough for the standard we wish to achieve in this piece of media. Apart from that Jordan has it all for us, he is a very strong candidate.



Candiate #2 - Joseph Cassidy
Jose came to my mind straight away when we were in mid-discussion for this role, some would class him as the full package if they were in my position. Their are a number of different reasons for this, first of all is that he one of the three original members of the group, he's a dedicated worker and contributor to the group. He has seen the original idea grow and knows it inside out. For this reason alone he is a strong candidate as he know exactly what it is that will be needed for this role. A disadvantage of Jose for this role is that he has look hair, meaning it may sweep across the mask, this may not give of the right effect of a suspicious masked criminal, such is the one we intend to give off. But we have to take into consideration Jose's experience when it comes to acting, he spent many years studying drama throughout his education and achieved a good standard grade in August. This is just one of a number of reasons why Jose sprang to mind. Finally we see Jose as a good candidate for this vacancy because he will be willing to help, this is because he is part of the production team, and also he feels very passionately about the success of the production. For all these reasons and more we see Jose as a strong candidate for selection.

Secondary Character Casting Discussion

The last week of term before the Xmas interval is looking to be a busy one for our production team, the show must go on and today was no exception. We immediately got to work and settled down into the usually discussion destination to discuss Casting idea's for the Secondary Character in Breaking The 4th Wall. This is the actor who is part of the Illuminati, he is at the theatre to stop the Main Character from going ahead with exposing what The Illuminati do, and who they are. This is the man who will help set the horror genre for the opening, without his acting, the whole thing becomes very boring and doesn't really fit into the concept of a horror.

We decided we wished to carry out the Casting process for this character in a similar manner to that of the main character. We took pen to the board, and began contributing ideas as to what this actor would need to have, attributes, looks, props etc. Once we discussed idea's that we threw about, we brainstormed the very best and most important on the board. Below is what we managed to come up with:

Me and fellow group member Pav brainstorming our ideas is iconic fashion of late. We go about things in a similar fashion as we find it brings good order and structure to our location and planning. For this brainstorm we knew it would only be small so we took to a smaller whiteboard. We branched off the title 'Illuminati', as this is the character we wish to cast for. We began discussing what is important for the character to have and how each attribute gives a positive effect to the performance, we also consider the difficulties of getting each attribute within a person. Finally we discussed suitable candidates for the role, and came to a few conclusions. Branched of this title were a number of different attributes as shown below:

Above is each attribute we feel it would be ideal for our cast member for this role to with-hold. We have reasons for each of them. They must be able to be serious to help set the scene and separate the piece of media from comedy, to horror. This is a key factor in the production of this opening. Another aspect we wish for the candidate to have appearance wise is a big build and of a tall appearance, this is important as the bigger they look, the more important they will look, it will also make the audience fearful of them. A third attribute is acting ability, we feel this is important, however not completely demanded as we think it's more important for them to be serious. However acting ability will be a bonus to the production as it will look more natural and give off a more authentic look towards the audience. Finally we want our actor to be willing to perform when called upon and most definitely very flexible as we may only have on opportunity to get all the footage we require.

In similar fashion to that of the previous casting discussion I took it upon myself to create a script for a second Casting Podcast. We think this is important as we can look back at the voice recording and get a better idea of what it is we really need to look for. This was recorded of Joseph's phone, he then sent me this over Skype. I uploaded this straight onto SoundCloud and sent each member of the group the embed code for this for them to stick straight onto their blog.

Casting Discussion 12/12/11 by JackWhiteAS

Despite the absence of Jordan due to having other subjects to attend we feel we have been able to move forward in the production stage. We also feel that our planning and research has come on leaps and bounds over recent weeks, we can now start to tell that our production is starting to all fit together nicely. By completing this discussion we put ourself in a better position, with a better idea of the type of actor we wish to vacate this role to. We feel this is important as is means we get the correct man for the job, rather than just any old person. We have informed Jordan about all the on-goings he missed in his brief spell without the group earlier today, he is upto date and now has a clearer understanding than ever as to what we are looking for. We have decided upon to candidates and we will look into getting them interviewed over the next day or two, these interviews will be posted on my blog.

Main Character - Casting Candidates and Auditions

Today, Myself and The Group thought it would be a good idea to come to the conclusion of our potential candidates for the role of main character, after each coming up with a suitable person we started to discuss which attribute of the desired each candidate holds, once we decided on the candidates we definately wished to consider further we went and found each individual candidate, we informed them about the whole situation including a basic on the spot pitch and explained what we wished them to act out for us, below are the confirmed candidates for The Main Role of the Exposer and The Role of the Masked Illuminati Member:

Main Character Role:
Candidate #1 - Bruno Stifanelli
We feel Bruno is an ideal candidate for the acting role in Breaking The 4th Wall, I personally recommended him to the group. I know Bruno well as he is an old friend of mine and I feel he's the full package when it comes to playing this character, he's got the rogue like look, the swagger, that controversial look of importance, he's willing and confident but best of all has past acting experience. The only dilemma when it comes to Bruno is he is unable to supply a Black and White suit, but we may have to arrange something for this as we really see Bruno as an ideal actor.




Candidate #2 - Phil Henton
Phil Henton has it all when you consider the attributes we're desiring in the casting specification, well, almost. He brings confidence by that bag fall, along with his years of acting experience as a well respected Media and English teacher to students from Year 7, all the way upto A2 Students in the Sixth Form. It these aspects that brought our attention to Phil in the first place as we know he has that utter stage presence we wish for, he will make the audience sit up and watch as he really gives of a sense of importance with his walk and look. But as with every good thing, comes the bad, the availability of such a busy teacher may cause problems to the groups film schedule especially with the location being miles from his place of work.

Main Character Casting Discussion

During another constructive non contact session in today's school day, Myself, Pav and Jordan decided we would begin planning for our Casting section of the planning and research section of the process. We decided just to look into the casting for our main character, the character who wishes to expose the Illuminati. With Joseph absent for a consecutive day we had to crack on and couldn't wait for him to recover. We took ourselves over to our usual destination and the brainstorming began the same way it has in weeks gone by.

Pav with the blank canvas ready to brainstorm our Casting Ideas.

Pav wished to take a leading role in this discussion, wanting everyone to improve their skills and stepped down from my usual lead role and let him work his magic. Immediately I suggested we should do our brainstorm in a wish list, branched of the central brain of  'Casting - What do we want?'. Myself, Pav and Jordan all got into deep discussion as to what it is we need in are main character, we came up with a number of different aspects we wish for them to have. Below is what we came up with:

Desired aspects for lead role (Click to view larger) 

Instead of writing about each desired attribute we wish for our lead role actor to have. I came up with this idea and straight away we realised that we weren't prepared well enough to give a PodCast, knowing this I decided to write up a script during my own time, this is shown being used by Jordan and Pav below during the PodCast session.

 We decided to take the voice recording of it on Pav's iPod, he then emailed me this audio clip and I used Sony Vegas to edit it down including merging clips and trimming down clips. I then saved this file as an MP4 and uploaded it to my already made SoundCloud account, I have embedded this PodCast Below, Enjoy.

Casting Discussion 06/12/11 by JackWhiteAS

Despite being with Joseph we feel this meeting has benefited the group hugely as we now have a clear idea of what type of look we are aiming for with our Main Character, it means we can visual our final product even more and adapt any faults and flaws we find. This is all important in the journey to creating the perfect teen horror opening, we will inform Joe of all going-ons of today and will help him get up to date with what he has missed. Now this is in place we will look into Casting ideas for the secondary character who plays the suspicious figure of the Illuminati, the masked man, this should be alot easier as they only feature briefly and doesn't require much acting at all, we have been discussing the idea of one of the group featuring in this role, further discussion will take place tomorrow and we will update as and when it happens.

Samsung Flash-Cam - Time Lapse Practice

Today Mr Henton introduced our group to the brand new Samsung Flash-cam, the best Camcorder available to us in the school. It comes equip with internal memory, HD recording and most importantly to us, The Time Lapse Feature. We were given the camera inside an un-opened fresh box and told to go and have a play around with the Camera and see what we could figure out. As Jordan has two non-contact periods he volunteered to give the task a shot and by the time we had arrived back to his location he had completely cracked how to use the camera and had already recorded a short time lapse over the course of 1 hour.

Samsung Flashcam

The Time Lapse lasted for 3 seconds but took close to an hour to record, knowing this throws a dilemma into our initial plans as The Lighthouse Theatre, the original location we wished to shoot The Time Lapse in isn't the biggest of arena's. This means that it won't take any more than 20 minutes to fill up for the show, thus meaning we will only have 1-2 seconds of footage to come out with. We have decided to investigate if they have any up and coming sell out shows that we can try and record our time lapse at. I have contacted my friend who is part of the sales team at The Lighthouse Theatre to find this information out. If there are we will try and record a time lapse in advance at this venue as it will give us a more realistic sell out effect in our final product, if not then we will have to re-think our time lapse. We came up with the alternative idea of recording outside of the actual Theatre area and in the pre-show lounge area where the show builds up for a good hour before the house lights come up, this would provide us with a reasonable amount of footage but may not give the same effect as the in theatre shot would. Once we get feedback from my friend from The Lighthouse Theatre sales team.

The Lighthouse Theatre - Small section of Pre-Show lounge

Back to today however, once Jordan showed us how well The Time Lapse turnt out we were all eager to try it out, I suggested we go and record the table tennis club during the 40 minute lunch break at school, we set up straight away, switched to time lapse mode, pressed record, and the rest is history. Below is what we produced:




Short and sweet but we believe that today we have put ourselves in a more advanced position when it comes to understanding what shots we want, the effect they will bring and how to complete them. We now know that The Time Lapse feature gives off a brilliant and professional looking effect but have to deal with the issue of timing for shot, this means we don't turn up on the day of recording clueless and come out with shabby, unprepared and poor results.

We have thought up an alternative type of 'Time Lapse', as this one speeds the shot up to much and the shot we our looking to get only lasts 20-30 minutes we are looking into normally recording a shot, and then speeding the footage up to a suitable pace and length. We feel this may give of a better and more useful effect for our final product rather than simply using the actual Time Lapse feature. This is something we have considered and we our looking to go ahead with when the time comes.

Location Planning

Today, Myself and Pav took our time to walk to the local theatre and take some location planning pictures, below is what we came up with.


The Lighthouse Theatre (Audience Stage View) - This is the shot we are planning to use early on in our Teen Horror Movie Opening. We want to use the Samsung HD Camcorder's time-lapse feature to show the audience building in the theatre, we will sit the camcorder at the back of the theatre and we hope to have a similar view to the one shown below.

The Lighthouse Theatre (On-Stage View) - This is the type of location ideal for the shot we need in our teen horror, this will be the over the shoulder which will change into a 360 rotation of the main character.

The Lighthouse Theatre (View Across Stage) - This shot will be used a short jump shot and we will film from around about the same spot as the picture below has been taken, this will have the expose facing the audience and will be a short piece of footage to add a variety of different effects through the usage of different shots.

The Lighthouse Theatre (Backstage Changing Room) - This is a location in which we plan to use for many shots in our short opening, it will be where we get the early shots of the main character who plans to expose the Illuminati, it will show him prepping himself and the build up to him going out on stage.

The Lighthouse Theatre (Backstage Corridor's) -  This is the location we plan on getting a key shot to the production of this opening, it will consist of a tracking back shot of the main character, this will have a voice-over of an defying speech. To view an example of this tracking shot,view the video embedded at the bottom of this post.

Aswell as the above pictures Myself and Pav decided to take some basic recording's or The Lighthouse Theatre, I have since edited all the footage and below is what we came up with:

Untitled from Jack White on Vimeo.

We feel that the location planning process has helped us get an even greater feel as to what our finished product will look like as we can now visual the surroundings that we will have included in our final product. This also helps as we now have a greater idea of how to plan our shot list etc because we have a good idea of  what is what and where thing's our at our prime location. Now we have completed this we must now move onto the Casting process, we will hold group talk's tomorrow as to where to go from here with casting.

Animatic Storyboard

I have spent the last 4 hours of my Friday evening doing an extra piece of work, this work goes back to Storyboarding. I decided to re-sketch the shots shown in the storyboard further down my blog and create my very own Animatic Storyboard using my camera and Sony Vegas Pro, after hours of sketching away I could finally take my Lumix G10 and snap away, I swiftly uploaded these images to my computer and flung them into Sony Vegas in the correct order. I then downloaded a sound track to go with it and uploaded it straight to Youtube. I have inserted the embed code below so you can view it. Enjoy.

I feel this has helped me improve the variety of ideas in which I can present my work and shown that I have the ability to range the methods I use, it also helped me understand the storyline of our horror better as I can now see the animated version of what our finished product should look like. I am glad I took the time to do this, it has taken alot longer doing this by myself but the upload process was alot easier as I didn't have to worry about rendering, exporting and using different software, this is because Sony Vegas offer an easy method of uploading your video, as shown below.

The 'Upload to Youtube' feature was very easy and effective when publishing my finished product.

Location Planning Discussion.

In our non contact session today, Me and the rest of the group decided it would be a good time to try and crack on with our Location Planning process now that our Storyboarding is successfully finished. As always, we decided to go to our usual location for discussion and carry this brainstorm out in a similar fashion that has served us well in recent weeks.

We used the script we created just recently to help assist us in our location planning, Joseph got this script up on his phone and then I took charge and stood at the board prepared to plan. We worked this planning logically, Joseph would tell me the shot, then we would discuss what location ideas we could use and listed them on the board and labelled the shot #1, #2, #3 etc. This helped us get a better idea of what location each shot would need instead of just talking about general locations. We did this for every shot and then we went back, and nominated several locations that would suit best, since then we have been doing some research into the accessibility of the ideas we wish to use. One location that we found we would need alot would be The Lighthouse Theatre which is a local theatre, so in aid of this I immediately contacted the manager of the theatre regarding this, this email can be found below.

Click the image to view it in large view.

I believe that this discussion has helped us decide what locations to use but more importantly gave us a clearer idea of the sort of setting our shots will have and we now feel that we have an even clearer idea of what our final product might turn out to look like, we must now look into securing these locations and making sure we can get use of them, once we have done so we will provide pictures of all the locations we have decided to use.


Below I have provided some pictures that Joseph and co took during the discussion -

Joe writing notes for future use.

Full brainstorm - Short one, just for confirmation

Vimeo & SoundCloud.

Vimeo -

In recent weeks gone by the school filter system had picked up on some explicit content on DailyMotion, the site we formerly used to upload and publish are video's for our Blogger, this meant that we had no means of showing evidence of any further video's we created, to try and overcome this problem a few of us spent some time searching for a new website that provides this service and one of the class came across Vimeo. Vimeo is a well established website that provides a fast, easy and effective video uploading service. This is perfect as it will allow us to provide the examiner and our teacher with proof of a variety of different video's we may need to upload, such as different audience reactions, practice shots etc for our planning and research to our finished Teen Horror Task.

SoundCloud -

Another problem we faced was the inability to upload music tracks onto the internet, as we had never been able to do so with DailyMotion, as we did with the above we went in seach of a reliable, easy to use and trustworthy site that, again we came across a solution, this time it was SoundCloud. SoundCloud is very easy to use, it requires you to set up an account very easily and then you can simply select your audio track, rename it and upload and it will be uploaded fairly quickly. This will help us with a number of different things, for example we can now produce a number of different pieces of audio for thing's such as Original Sound Tracks and we can publish them to our Blogger via SoundCloud, this will help the examiner see we can use a wide range of technological aspects.

Storyboarding

Now that we have completed our discussions and brainstorms and finished the script, our next plan was to conduct the storyboard for us to use as a guide later on in the task and to give us a stronger idea of the way we will lay out our production and what the final production will appear like. In the abscece of Jordan, Myself, Pav and Josepeh took iniative and went and collected some A3 sized storyboard from the Media Suite and began to storyboard, as Jordan contributed alot towards the script yesterday, we had no qualms or disappointment in completing this without him whilst he is unable to attend school due to illness.

Me hard at working constructing the Storyboard for our teen horror film Breaking The 4th Wall.

We went to a classroom in the English block and logged onto the computer, loaded up my blog and got the script viewable for us to read from our seats on the interactive whiteboard. From this we could see what we needed to include everything that the script listed, this included audio and sounds, camera angles and movements and label each shot 1, 2 ,3 etc accordingly. Me and Joseph took responsibility for the illustrations whilst Pav took responsibility for the writing of Type of Shot, Movement, Location and Sound etc, and was in control of the computer.

Below is what we came up with:

1st Page of the Storyboard - Includes 6 first shots with location, camera movement, sound etc.

2nd Page of the Storyboard - Includes the 7th to 12th shot with location, camera movement, sound etc.

The final 3 storyboard sections including with location, camera movement, sound etc.

Now that we have completed the Storyboard we are ready to move onto location planning, from constructing our storyboard I feel we all benefited massively as we now have an even more in depth idea of how our film will look and can asses for any floors or errors that may play against the effect we wish to have with this piece of media. We will have a third group discussion over the course of the next 7 days and see where we wish to go from here. This will allow all of our group to stay informed and communicated which will be vital in the success of this project.

Producing The Script

 

Today Jordan Mander and I set to work on producing our script, we made sure to include a number of different aspects in this piece of work including all visuals, audio, diaglogues and types of camera shots and angles. We have provided a print screen of this script below, we followed the rules of script writing shown to us by Mr Henton, these rules are: The font must be Courier, any soundtracks, audio effects and dialogue must be in CAPS. Above is what we produced.

Now that we have this done we can now move onto task 2 in the process of tasks we need to complete in order to get the best quality product at the end of production, tomorrow we will take our time to conduct a full storyboard, we can use this script to our advantage because it can be a sort of basis as what we have to include in the storyboard.

Screenplay Decision Making

Today Myself, Jordan, Joe and Pav took it upon ourselves to go and do another group discussion. As we have been left free to crack on with the tasks set we knew that to do so we needed to discuss and decide how we plan to set out the opening titles and scene, we went to the room previously used to try and discuss and illustrate these ideas and that we did. We decided to include new aspects into our movie project including big camera flashes between titles and camera flash noises that are overly exaggerated and prolonged to unsettle the audience. We also want to include different cut shots to cause a sense of unknown amongst the viewers, this amongst other things that we will include in our script that will be provided in the post above.

We thought this was beneficent hugely to the group, as we could take our ideas from the previous meeting of the group and adapt and improve them, but more importantly make important decisions on which shots, props, locations and even actors we are to use. We have all the ideas we need in place and we are working hard to maintain the high quality of work we have set the standard for so far. We have discussed our thoughts with a number of highly experienced figures in this subject within the school and they are looking forward to being involved with the acting of the opening and are excited to see what we can produce.

Below is a few snapshots of us in action at our latest meeting - 22/11/2011.

Jack (Me) & Pav discuss ideas and share thoughts

Jack (Me) & Pav at the end of our group discussion.

Portrait Picture - Mr Craddock

In our previous lesson with Mr Craddock on 18th November 2011 we were asked to submit a portrait picture that we have taken, having learnt about the different aspects that create a quality portrait photo, such as lighting, rule of thirds and looking space, amongst others I set to work and below is what I created

This has taught me that it isn't just focus that makes a good photo but many other aspects, I feel this also links into my work for Mr Henton, the creation of my teen horror opening titles and scene. Things such as lighting and rule of thirds will help me with my camera skills and set me up perfectly to go and film a good piece of footage for this task.

Media Lesson Content | Update In Schedule | Deadlines.

In today's lesson we were asked by Mr Henton to make our way to the Media Classroom rather than the Media Mac Suite. When we arrived we were asked to be sat and silent, he wanted to talk to us about a number of things including Media Success, Blog Management, To-Do-List and Deadlines.

Media Success and Blog Management - The reason I have included these two parts of the discussion into one section of this post is because they are very strongly linked together. The key to success at this stage in Media Studies is maintaining the management of your blog is kept at a high standard, this includes keeping all posts analytical rather than just descriptive, this means the user should explain and anaylise rather than just describing and giving an overview on proceedings. Another thing that will help good Blog Management is good time keeping, this basically means not just leaving everything to the last minute and doing a number of blog posts in one night, it means updating your blog as and when things happen. We have also been told that over the 3 month period we should be updating our blog of research and planning etc every other day, this means the amount of posts we should have on our blog should be 45.

We should also make sure our blog contains mass amounts of presentation and should look loved by the user, this means making sure all colours go easy on the eye and it is laid out correctly and in an orderly fashion. But to obtain the high marks we need to make sure we include research into similar products and explore the potential target audience in order to get a greater look as to what needs to be included in our product to make it suit the audience and work better all round.


Deadlines -

To-Do-List -

Below is a list of things that we have to do before our deadline of January 4th 2012 - This is all of the research and planning that needs to be completed before we can start to film footage for editing.

• Script - The script should include a number of different aspects that we wish to include in our media project. A script doesn't just include dialogue, this is merely a misconception that alot of people seem to believe. We must include aspects such as visual, dialogue, audio, soundtracks, amongst other things. To ensure that we can produce the best script possible we will be hosting another discussion session in which we can brainstorm ideas for the script and finalise any thoughts and make decisive choices that will allow the go ahead of the script writing.
• Storyboard -  This piece of work should be completed on the A3 storyboard sheet that we previously completed storyboarding for our preliminary tasking upon. These can be obtained from Mr Henton himself, Reprographics or the Media Suites and should be used sensibly and responsibly by the groups. We need to include photographic, audio or visual recordings as evidence of us carrying out this task and show research put into conducting this along the way and provide this all on our personal blogs. The storyboard it's self should include a number of different aspects in filming, things such as camera shots, angle and movement of the camera, along with sound and location of each shot. 
• Location Planning - This should be completed preferably with pictures of the chosen locations and should match up to the locations planned to be used in the script. We have chosen to include video evidence of our locations as it will help us get a more realistic effect and help us visual better as to what our final product will appear like. We have also decided to get a number of secondary back up locations incase one location is unavailable or unsuitable nearer the time. Pictures and video footage shall be posted to our personal media blog, using embedding from Youtube on the video.
• Casting -
• Filming Schedule -
• Risk Assessment -
• Shot List -

Main Task Brainstorm

Today me and my co-workers spent over an hour of our own time brainstorming ideas. We went and found a free classroom in which we could use a whiteboard and we set to work. We set 3 different branches of what we wished to brainstorm ideas; Location, Visual and Audio. We then went onto give branches coming off each initial branch with ideas springing of them.

What we were looking for -
Audio: When thinking about audio for our opening titles and scene we had to try and remember not to plan to far ahead. This is because if we find a track that we really like we may start to try and fit the scene around the track, when it should be the other way round. However we did start to brainstorm some basic thoughts and we wish to remain undecided on this until the future. We came up with a few thoughts of using a certain Barrack Obama speech where he touches on a New World Order within our opening titles if it links in productively, we feel this would set the scene and give our opening a professional look. Our inspiration for this was the opening titles of Dawn of the Dead where they include press interviews of important figures touching on important subjects. We also wish to vary the volume of all our sounds and any OST we wish to vary in sound and go from loud to quiet to continuously put shock through the audience and keep them on edge and jumping at the loud sudden sounds, Jordan mentioned on creating our own OST using Garage Band on the iMacs available within the schools very own Mac Suite, he also said that we should link up the music keyboards to the iMacs and productively create our own soundtrack, these our all brainstormed below and all up for selection when we finally get round to selecting what options we wish to include within our audio for the main teen horror film task.

Visual: As for visuals we focussed more on the type and vairety of effects we wish to include within our opening titles. We thought about including a brick wall and then suddenly a section of the bricks start to break and smash out the wall leaving the gaps where the bricks formerly lay spelling out 'Breaking The 4 Wall'. However upon further thought we have decided this maybe a little to difficult to replicate and have pushed it down the pecking order of ideas but we will try our very best when the time comes to give it ago and hopefully make it work, Pav mentioned using a piece of software called Fireworks to try and create this idea so we will definately have to keep that in mind when it comes to it. Another idea our group came up with was to include Illuminati shadows, what we mean by this is cutting The Illuminati Symbol out of the paper, getting the room dark and shining a tourch onto the paper to get the shadow of the symbol on the wall, we feel this will improve desired effect and create a spooky and devilish atmosphere within the audience.

Location: In terms of location the discussion were slightly briefer, going with what we plan to do from the pitch we know that we have to address the issue of a 'west end theatre' & 'views of audiences queing up for the antcipated show'. I came up with the idea of using the local theatre in Kettering called The Lighthouse Theatre, if permitted to do so we could que crowds gathering and queing for a well watched show at this theatre and also get any footage of the theatre needed, but we need to keep in mind that we will need permission from the theatre autorities to do so. Another idea we manage to come up with was using the drama stage in school, the drama stage gives us good access to a stage with a big red curtain, this could be used as back up if our plans for The Lighthouse Theatres fall through, we feel having a back up plan is good because it means we have less chance of coming unstuck later on in the production process.

This is what we came up with:

I have also attached a couple of further images of myself and my group during the brainstorming session. (Below)

(Jack) Discussing ideas with the group in front of the brainstorm.

The group as a whole with the brainstorm behind.