I got both positive and negative feedback from my colleagues, teacher, and friends. I found it very useful to see a second opinion, and sometimes they realized some things I couldn't have seen without them. What everyone appreciated was the constancy of the colors, the font, the background sound and the smooth movement. The initial song that I chose for the first scene didn't please everyone's ears, and I decided to change it as I realized it was a bit too aggressive and high pitched. What also stood out for a few people was the length of the shots with Francesca, thus I shortened them. The plot of the opening was a bit confusing for some people, so to avoid that, I added the voiceover and added the clip of KL looking at Alexis once again after the hallucination disappeared, to make it more clear that she's not real. As I applied most of the things people reported could be changed, I also stuck to some things that I thought were right. For example, some people were not agreeing with me attaching the 'She's staring at me' part of the narration to the shots of Francesca but I found it necessary for the development of the story.
Conclusively, I believe that feedback is a very important, it should be taken into consideration and shouldn't be taken personally, as it's an objective view of someone's work and genuine tips on improving it.
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I had to go through all my footage and select the best, most appropriate shots for my opening. I left out a small number of videos, as I was satisfied with most of my work. I chose to introduce the TV shots in between those of Alexis in the abandoned house to add that certain surrealism to them and try to make my audience understand that this might not be a real occurrence, hence the rapid transition to her looking into the surveillance camera in the hospital. Most of my clips are about 3 to 4 seconds long to keep the audience engaged and create match-on action, but one clip is 9 seconds long, the one where Alexis is shaking her head after which she stares at the wall. I felt like leaving this part longer to get real glimpse into Alexis' behaviour and how she uses her body to reflect her inner thoughts. Below I inserted a few pictures of what the set looked like behind the scenes. Iulio, playing KL had the great idea of getting his white hoodie a little dirty by rubbing it to his pennyboard, to look not so 'put together'. In most of the pictures you can see me using a monopod, my handy piece of gear for stabilization. Before the three shooting, I made sure my actors have their hair messy and look ill, which were achieved by teasing their hair, applying brown and red eyeshadow around and under their eyes, and using eyedrops to create the 'cried' look. There is a picture of me explaining Alexiana, who plays the main role of Alexis how she should hold the pills, and of me standing on some stairs, holding my phone to film the surveillance camera scene. What I had to pay attention to is for my actors to look exaclty the same, as there were two different shoots that were interconnected in the plot, so they needed to have the same clothes, makeup, hair. I efficiently communicated this through our Facebook group and provided them with a few items they needed.
After hard work, dedication, trial and error and research, I've finally been able to finish my film opening for Urban Decay. It's been a long but knowledgeable journey, and I'm looking forward for next year's work. Color editing + effectsEditing was a big part of this project, I spend many hours twitching every little thing until I was satisfies. Firstl, I edited the saturation and exposure on the abandoned house shots I took down both of them on all highlights, mid-tones and shadows to create a dark, colorless look. What I then added was the effect 'Bad TV' to the shots of Francesca, to make it seem like it's unreal, like she's not physically there. For the surveillance camera effect I took the saturation at its lowest, as most of these cameras are black and white. Then, I added the 'Camcorder' effect to it, to show the audience that the footage of her is being recorded, and to make it even easier to understand the type of camera used. What I also did was add a 'noise' effect, to make the footage less clear and more grainy. All the following shots were color edited in quite the same way, took the saturation down, because the lighting was quite strong so if the colors would have been vibrant it wouldn't match the feel I aimed to create, plus I wanted to keep the whole intro within a grey color palette. This is why I chose those particular costumes, the grey wall outside, and the inside of the hospital. I also took the exposure down from all three values, shadows, mid-tones and highlights, after which I raised the exposure of the shadows on a second color correction palette, to create that faded effect which creates a cinematic look. I also used the 'scopes' tool to adjust the exposure and keep it between 0 and 100, in order to avoid under or over exposure. Sound As for the sound, I inserted a song at the beginning, for the first scene to create intensity, I played around with Alexiana's unintentionally recorded voice on my camera, talking about how she cooked pasta, and I cut bits of it, overlapped them and added a slight echo to create an ambiguous sound to add surrealism (this is seen in the screenshot below). After that we hear a strange-sounding song, which fits perfectly with the uneasiness I wanted to create, this then fades out and a constant, ominous song is played in the background, which made the biggest difference in the feel of the opening. I looked for an eerie, simple song that would complement the visual part of the film, and this particular one fits impeccably. Other sounds I added were an ambulance sound effect, TV static noise, footsteps, a cigarette being lit, cars passing on the street (to add a bit of realism), the voiceover of Alexis (to add more meaning to the story and lower the risk of confusing my audience) and the dialogue between Alexis and KL. When Francesca, the hallucination, appears in the scene, I added the part of the voiceover when she says 'She's staring at me', to clarify what the protagonist meant in the beginning, in addition to tv static noise, as its a motif in this opening. Production company logoMy production company logo for Nyx Productions was quite a journey. At first, I wanted to create a glitch effect on Adobe After Effects but I got stuck at one point and got discouraged. As I was determined to create something from scratch, I had the great idea to try to work in Final Cut. I added the 'X', that I made in in Adobe Illustrator, and made its background transparent in Photoshop, and added it to the beginning of the opening. This is how it looked on my first tries. Then it came down to something like this, after which I made it bigger, to fit the whole sheet. Finally, I upped the brightness and contrast to make it perfectly white, and used the magic eraser tool to make its background transparent. Moreover, I added my text written in the 'Engravers gothic' font, and animated by a 'tracking' effect. When the X appears, I added the 'Bad TV' effect, used on other shots too and added a glitch sound, to match the visual. In the end I decided to add the background sound I used throughout the hospital scenes at a very low volume, just to not make it completely silent. Title and creditsAfter I chose and downloaded my font, I cut it into three parts, the first one which glitches (the Bad TV efefct), then it stays still, after which it glitches again (this time for a shorter amount of time) and disappears. I was very happy with this result, it complemented the whole look of the film. As for the title, I added it on one of the TV shots with the 'Knock out' effect, which allows the text to be hollow and be filled by the video behind it. I kept the same font, Doctor Glitch for it.
I used the site dafont.com in order to research and use a font that most suited my liking. I can say that this site is very useful, as it has keywords that you can search fonts by. For example, I used the kewords: 'glitch', 'TV', 'static' and 'distorted' to find some fonds that I was keen of. Finally, decided upon one called 'Doctor Glitch' as it most fits the atmosphere conveyed, it has the glitch effect which is a motif in my opening, and it's still easily readable. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2018
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