Test Screening Responses

The feedback we've been given was good and we made a few changes.

To fix the problem with the title, I put some effects on the text using Adobe After Effects and put a glow around each letter and made them fade up in a random order so it's unclear as to what the title is until it fully appears.

We also added more titles and spread them out across the sequence to make it more of a title sequence and less of a random part of a film.

We fixed the sound with Matt being quiet and the music being too loud.

Test Screening Results

The audience screening went fairly well but we had a few problems to iron out.

Sound

With some of the shots of Matt (Scary Guy) there was a slight buzz in the background of the shots that we should have removed beforehand. We got some advice on this and edited it out. The main problem with sound though was that the levels between Matt's shots and the music was wrong. The music was much too loud and Matt being fairly distant from the camera, he was fairly hard to hear and having a quiet voice anyway, we needed to adjust the sound. There is also a part where he shouts at Rob (tied up guy). This was a problem as he went from being very loud to very quiet so getting the balance was quite difficult.

Credits

After Ms Blackborow watched the sequence, she said that we needed more credits as we only have a few at the beginning so we created some more and placed them at regular intervals along the timeline to make it seem much more like a title sequence and less like a random part of the film. We got some feedback on the main title, most people said that they found it really difficult to read and it was too small and similar to the rest of the titles.

Other

One of our last clips is of Matt leaving and closing the door. It was suggested that there should be a locking sound to the door so it would seem much more like he is locking them in and it being much more dungeon-like rather than just pulling it to so they could easily get out if they managed to get free of the chains. It also makes it so its more difficult for anyone else to get in. Also, we put a sound of someone whispering 'help' behind the shot of the hand banging against the window but most people said this really spoilt the atmosphere and didn't really have much significance.

Overall, most people really liked it and there's just a few changes we need to make!

Back

We're back after Christmas and all's well except Shaun's voice!

We're really close to finishing the project so we've arranged a screening with the other group that Shaun is going to stay and record all they say.

Christmas!

Sorry, it's the christmas holidays and I won't be blogging for the next 2 weeks!

It's nothing personal...

Honest...

Editing

Over the past few weeks, I've been doing a LOT of work on the edit suite.

One of the things I like best about our sequence so far is the first few shots we see of Rob waking up. In this bit, Rob wakes up slowly in 2 different shots, one a CU and one a BCU. I then cross-faded them over eachother while reducing the opacity of one of them at intervals. This makes the whole sequence really disorientating and confusing, similar to how Rob is supposed to feel. We also took a tilt from his feet chained up, all the way up his body but this was too long to fit over the top and also ruined the disorientating effect and made the editing really obvious. So we decided it wouldn't be a good idea to use it. We also took some sound effects of chains clanging. This was put over the top but it just detracted from the original shots. I actually feel the music by itself accentuates the effect. Also, with our opening credit 'A film by' 'Live Wire', we put an glow on the writing and then used the 'Solarize' effect on and off to make it flash then put some electricity sounds beneath it to anchor the meaning. This was over the clip of the light turning on which also anchors the meaning.

After looking at a large selection of fonts, on http://www.1001freefonts.com/ , we narrowed down our options to:

We chose these because they all seemed fairly sinister with 'Barbed Type' being similar to the 'Twisted Pictures' logo who make the 'Saw' films. In the end though, we decided we didnt want to be too similar to saw as our film is more of a thriller than an all-out gorey horror movie. The font we decided to go with in the end was '1942 Report' as this font look sort of old and dingey, much like the set for our sequence. It's also quite out-of-line with parts seeming to be uneven which accentuates the unnerving feel of the sequence altogether.

Actual Shoot Reflections

After the first real shoot, we discovered a few things that will need to be foxed on the next shoot

• We have got to keep track of the shooting script and storyboard and not just decide on random shots - This could have saved us a lot of time that we spent just milling around and deciding there and then what the next shot should be.
  
• We need to use the whiteboard more effectively. We struggled when we were trying to edit the clips to find which was the best take. This is also due to not using the shot log as much as we should have!
  
• Stop messing around and wasting so much time! This was a MASSIVE problem. We had too many distractions there and we could have gotten so much more footage if we'd just been a bit more focused.
  
• Have less helpers. This was really the main distraction. They really helped when we were moving the stuff in the basement at the beginning and end but during the shoot they didn't have much to do so tended to muck around which made us less focused.
• We really need to make sure when we can move the stuff in the basement. We did it without asking and this resulted in some very angry caretakers! So we ended up having to move it back and then move it again later for the shoot.
• We also managed to break a light filter. This was due to a combination of carelessness and stupidity. We ended up leaving the lights on unnecessarily for too long then when packing up, the filter was too hot to handle and its easy to tell what happened next...
  
• OVERALL make much better use of the time we have and be a bit more careful with equipment.