Christmas Holidays

DUE TO EXAMS - 

THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS WILL COMPRISE OF REVISION. 

I'LL CONTINUE TO WORK ON THE 'THRILLER OPENING VIDEO' PROJECT.

AS OF 

WEDNESDAY 9TH JANUARY 2013.

Recording non-diegetic sound

When recording the non-diegetic sounds of dialogue to later externally put into the video, I decided to use my Iphone. (Chris then recorded his voiceover parts as 'the witness' on his iphone).

Initially I considered the technicalities of recording audio. As I have previously recorded and done some producing on Cubase and Logic this was a platform I considered. However, because the quality of the microphone on my Iphone I felt this was a justifiable option and instead opted to use this. 

By doing this we now have the audio of Tommy (The main antagonist) to put into the sequence. The dialogue of both the characters will feature in between the cafe shots, as well as over the sequences of flashbacks. This will be a great way of integrating the two different spaces of time. 

Draft #2

Here is the second draft of our thriller opening video. 

We realised on upload that the video had not been exported properly, hence the poorer quality video. However it will suffice as a draft and demonstrates of all the frames of the video we now have in place. 

The following parts of editing will consist of:

Recording Non-Diegetic sound.
Further sound consideration.
Considering a limited use of special effects.
A title screen. 

This draft will now be loaded into Final Cut Pro X on my computer. As a group we have agreed that my knowledge of the program and its greater 'bank' of effects and video tools will be of much more use to us than Final Cut Express. 

Filming #4

By piecing the footage together on Final Cut, we were able to find out which shots were left to get. I broke this down into 3 shots that were crucial to the story:

1) Chris (Witness) exiting shops.

2) Witness walking onto the estate.

3) A shot of him dropping his shopping bag when he notices the mob and victim. 

The jump between shots from the shop exit to the estate, is narrated over. Between the estate shots we have made references back to the cafe to avoid jumping shot to shot on the estate which would not look right or portray the flashback narrative correctly. 

Sound Scape

Since my research into sound featured within thriller films, I have begin giving consideration to the soundscape of our group's piece. A Soundscape is a very important aspect of a film, especially within the thriller and horror genres. As part of our group's research into sound, I have been looking into the possible avenues of royalty free samples to guarantee us the right type of sound for our thriller opening. I have browsed through pre-recorded diagetic sounds to place into our thriller during the last unsupervised lesson.

"Sound is 50 per cent of the motion picture experience" - George Lucas.

Though we might think of film as an essentially visual experience, the importance of film sound cannot be underestimated. The entire sound track is comprised of three essential ingredients:  

• the human voice (Dialogue) 

• sound effects (Ambience and Effects) 

• music (Soundtrack, Score)

These three tracks must be mixed and balanced in order to produce the necessary emphasis on effects and to create a desired audience response. These comprise to form the Soundscape. They are analogous to elements in the real world.

I have looked into various websites such as SoundJay and Sounddogs. I found both of these sites very useful, when searching for free audio. Here are just some of the sound effects we have considered:

'heartbeat' effect - This can be layered on top of the running scene during the beginning and at the ending of the opening when this scene is repeated, to realistically emphasize the character's emotions.

Cafe noise - Adding to the background scenery during the shots. Because the dialogue will be imported, we therefore need to essentially build our soundscape back up, so creating realistic cafe noise is a must. This is something we may also record ourselves instead of simply sampling it. 

'Eerie Atmospherics' - Providing a transition between the flashback sequences and the 'real-time' as the Witness narrates the story. This is something I am going to look into further because it is important we harness the right sort of music. I.e. Too over-the-top  could quite easily be mistaken as horror music which is not in keeping with our genre. 

A screenshot of one of the Sound archives I have been looking in to.

Animated Title Experimenting

I spent some of my time experimenting with Titles in our unsupervised lesson. 

After designing the logo in photoshop for our thriller, I will then move onto Apple Motion on my laptop where I can then create a full-working animation sequence of approximately 5 seconds.

Here are a few of my plans in photoshop so far: 

Here is my first attempt. The 'Bebas' font was something I found online and will definitely be using in the animation. By making this short animation, it will give my video more of a commercial-look, thus more realistic and professional as a music video.

With my second attempt, I focused on drawing more attention to the director name. Across the 3 lines I included an 'outer glow' effect and on the bottom line, included an inner shadow angled to give an effective shadow. 

Here's my third attempt, similar to the first but I took into consideration the screen placement. This will give me an idea of how I am going to go about making the frames of the sequence. (i.e. splitting it up into different colour effects and font manipulation). 

Although our project will read as 'The Witness', I was merely experimenting with my name, effectively as a director's title. This will be very helpful when it comes to constructing our final title. 

The first draft

Research into Sound of Thriller films.

The Sounds featured within thriller films are used to create understanding and meaning for the audience. This will then help create an audience's response to the film. The sounds are predominately used to illustrate the characters feelings and emotions, allowing a response to be generated from the audience. This will create a certain mood and atmosphere that is in the context of the visuals and genre, which is often used to symbolise both the protagonists and antagonists actions during a scene. There are many different sound techniques that directors use including: diagetic, non-diagetic, parallel sounds, on screen sound and off screen sound.

Diagetic sound can be anything that a character would hear within a scene; for example, a telephone ring, dialogue and dogs barking. It is also used to distinguish elements of tension from the rest of the scene. Diagetic sound tends to be used to convey realism and meaning within a scene, however the sounds can also have hidden connotations. One example of this could be heavy rainful, which often connotes sadness and stress, whilst the onomatopoeic, 'pitter patter' of slow rain can connote a long wait or gradual build in suspense.

Non-digetic sound does not exist within the narrative of the film, but is placed into the soundscape during post-production editing. Examples of this sound include, a music soundtrack, a voice-over or other sounds that can enhance the meanings and elements of the film. For example, the building of a thick texture of orchestral music within a minor key, would connote extreme tension and infer that something fatal or enigmatic is about to take place within the scene. 

Parallel sound is when the sound we hear goes hand in hand with the events on screen. An example of this would be if we were about to witness a murder and dark, fast tempo music would accompany the action. The opposite of this would be 'Contrapuntal sound', when we hear sound that would not be associated with the events on screen.

'On screen' sound is used to illustrate an action. For example, a shot of the character switching the radio on. 'Off screen' sound does not accompany a visual action, for example somebody shouting in a room next door to the person who has just turned the radio on. Both of these 'Screen' sounds are examples of diegetic sound.

Research into how sound is used within the Film Industry:

Randy Thom, is the current Director of Sound Design at Skywalker Sound.

He has worked on many award winning films including Star Wars Episodes V & VI, Temple of Doom, and the second and fourth Harry Potter films.

Here he discusses:

•  how 'real life' vocalisations are added to a film to convey certain emotions. For example, a manipulation of pitch is often made or a transition to other sounds, i.e. the sound of a tiger. 
• For his sound work he uses Pro-tools and Sound search libraries at Skywalker. 
• He emphasizes the importance of having portable recording setups when coming across inspiration. 
• The use of volume variations between sound and the consideration given to real world sound vs synthesized sounds, where he often favours real sound as storytelling sounds over synthesized, electronic ones.
• Challenging scenes, such as action packed scenes of gun fights and car chases take a while to produce sound for, in order for it to be coherent to the audience. 
• The use of Dynamics.
• The future of sound and how he feel it will develop; increasing advances in technology. 

These were particularly interesting considerations I will take when creating the soundscape for our group's thriller film. 

Filming #3

I filmed the whole of this - Part III of the filming comprised of tying up specific scenes.

After looking over our first parts of filming on the estate, I broke down the main parts of the flashback sequence that need to be finished:

Introduction Running scene, interaction between the Witness + Gang and several establishing shots (including the victim entering the estate by car). 

What I focused on also was incorporating the entrances of the mob members onto the estate so I included shots of 2 men walking down from the alley next to some bins (as seen above). Although this may not be used, I made a habit of filming more than I needed so that it is useful for cut-scenes during the later stages of editing. 

What we needed was a strong establishing shot of the mob and their placement. I decided to film this shot whilst I drove up the road, because of the scarcity of people and obstructions present, I was able to do this with ease. I decided to film it like this to get the point of view of the driver and to hint to our audience a connection between the driver and these men later. By filming it with somebody sitting in the passenger seat, it simply wouldn't have had the same effect. 

At stage 3 of the filming I am happy with the outcome of my filming so far. At this penultimate stage, we have just a few more bits of footage left to capture. 

Motion 5

As part of the editing process, I am going to be using Motion 5. The video above explains the basics of the program and how to animate text.

Motion 5 will be a great way of creating a full-working animation sequence of approximately 3 seconds during the start of the video.

Here is some of my research into Motion so far:

Anchoring text is something else I am considering using during the the credits of the video. 

Key-framing will be important in animating the text/logo. 

I also have the option of going down the route of developing text as Kinetic Typography.

I have also recently discovered the Trail effect that can be made in Motion. I think this might be particularly useful during the shot from the victim's perspective, where we see him being attacked by the mob.