As we have mentioned we filmed roughly 30-40 minutes of footage and this may have caused a problem when cutting down our clips and selecting ones we could use and ones we would have to discard. However, over half the footage wouldn't be needed as the camera angle was wrong or they actors made mistakes ect.
This was the first set of footage that we recorded and as you can see this mainly consisted of the soon to be cut calendar scenes, the scenes with Ivy stumbling into the bedroom and the bathroom scene. There is more footage of the bathroom scene as we did struggle with the lighting and when we realised this couldnt be fixed physically, we soon fixed it manually. The orange lines show you the footage that we did use in the end.
These are the vital fruit scenes, the ending scenes with the parents confessing of their divorce and then little clips here and there. Again we recorded too much footage and the orange lines under the clips show you the footage that we did end up using.
This was the last day of footage that we recorded. This was a reshoot of the stair scenes, added in scenes of washing her hands and the final scenes where our character burst out crying. As you can decipher, we filmed Louise crying in many different ways just so we had a choice. Again the orange lines show the footage that we ended up using.
When we got the editing stages of our two minute film opening, we found that some of the more important scenes, had a darker lighting that what we originally intended. For instance, the bathroom scene had quite low lighting and we struggled to see some of the key features. To over come this problem we adjusted the light levels through I-movie.
Here is the bathroom scene and as you can see the lighting is extremely poor. You aren't able to clearly see our character through the mirror which is wanted. This was due to many things, we had the naturalistic light coming through from the window however our characters back blocked out this light. We didn't want to turn the light on as we wanted a more naturalistic feel.
To overcome this problem we edit the brightness of the clip to make our character more visible.
As you can see from the above clip, by changing the brightness of the clip, her face has become clearer and the colours surrounding her such as the wall and her clothing have slightly become brighter.
Throughout the rest of our two minute film opening, we wanted the lighting to have a warm atmosphere as seen in many films from this type of genre. We used the lights already in the house to create this so it looked realistic and effective.
Here is an example of the warm lighting that we liked throughout our two minute film opening. We feel that the bathroom images have quite a cold lighting which is symbolic of our characters OCD and how she is feeling yet when she is with her family it is contrasted with the warm lighting to depict the comedy aspect of our drama.
We managed to film all of the footage we needed but when it came to the editing process, we felt that there were certain scenes missing that would be needed to help the film flow more smoothly. Going back to the drawing board, we came up with new scenes and went back to film them. Here are some examples.
We were especially interested in portraying more of the character Ivy's 'rebel' side where she purposely upsets her sisters OCD. An earlier scene shows the OCD girl Lily walking down the stairs, noticing the picture is slightly off balance, straightening it and then carrying on walking down the stairs. We thought it would be good if, as shown from the clip above, her sister Ivy walks down the stairs and purposely knocks the photo so it appears off balance.
We have added the music onto our two minute film opening that will play right up until the scene at the breakfast table, and then will continue when the OCD girl starts to cry. When we added the soundtrack to the opening, we noticed that the music was extremely quite compared to the footage we had filmed. This problem was easily fixed as we doubled the volume of the music to 200% and decreased the volume of of filmed scenes to 20%.
When listening to the lyrics of the song, we decided to switch around one of scenes to fit the content of the music better. We changed the sink shot to appear before the 2nd stair shot as shown below.
We also have an issue with the beginning of our two minute film opening. We decided that we wanted the sound of running water to be played as our credits appear on the screen, however we had to crop this sound from previous clips and add it over the top. When doing this we heard a mumbling sound over the top of the running water however we aren't able to get rid of this sound as it is the only audio of running water we have. Because we used the same audio clip over a few section the mumbling sound gets repeated however it cannot be helped.
Our film name has now been changed to 'You Call It Crazy' and we tried to be a little creative and change the style of font and colour that we had previously used.
As you can see the font style has changed and we used a pastel yellow colour. However when watching back over of opening, we felt that this text and colour didn't fit with our previous titles. We decided to go back to our original font style and colours as we felt that this would be recognisable to our audience and fit better on screen.
Here is our final shot of our two minute film opening where the name of our film appears on screen. We adjusted the brightness of the clip so the titles can be easily seen.
After finishing filming, we uploaded our footage into imovie and saw that we had roughly 40 minutes of footage we had to condense into two minutes. A lot was just retakes due to mishaps such as characters laughing, the shot not being set up right ect. However we also recorded extra scenes that weren't in our story board due to spontaneous inspiration.
We also recorded footage following the storyboard, however when we watched over it we felt it didn't go quite how we wanted it to. An example being our opening shot of the calendar. We took various angles to try and better the shot.
As you can see from this shot, it wasn't the angle we originally planned for. We wanted a close up shot, straight on.
This is a straight on close up shot of the calendar which is the shot we intended to capture. However when it came to the editing stages, we noticed that you could see my arm in the top corner holding up the camera. Jess and I decided to not use any of the calendar scene footage and would proceed with a different opening.
This was the third shot that was on our story board ready to use however we felt that it was unnecessary to add this into our two minute film opening as it held no purpose. In the left hand corner, through the mirror, you can also see Ruby, who isn't meant to be in the shot we is a poor shot from me and Jess.
Finally this was an extra shot that we had inspiration for when filming our actual footage. We thought it would look good for the opening titles however watching over the footage we wasn't convinced. You could see Jess through the mirror recording the footage and we felt it didn't match the rest of the footage for the two minute film opening.
We are in the final stages of our editing process and as evidence, we are trying to add some of our deleted scenes and extra scenes added onto our blog. To do this we have to upload the video files onto youtube however we are experiencing some difficulties.
When we try to share the video from imovie, this picture shows up:
It process the video clip however it then doesn't upload it to youtube.
We had to find another way. Our next idea was to connect the mac to my phone using bluetooth to send the video clips onto my phone so I could then upload them to youtube via my phone.
However, when we did find my phone, it said that it didn't have the necessary settings to allow the computer to connect so we weren't able to upload them this way.
Our final idea was to upload them via youtube its self. We followed the youtube help, to convert our videos so they would be able to be uploaded onto youtube. This process does work however its is very time consuming and can take hours for one clip to upload. We have to proceed with this plan as it is the only option.
As previously discussed, Jess and I decided to use an original song on our two minute film opening and below are the lyrics to said song. The ability to be able to include an original song allowed us to be creative with the lyrics and had them match the theme of our two minute film opening. I feel that these lyrics help portray the torment that our OCD teenage girl is going through.
It all started with a grin,
I move back as you lean in,
You take my hand I push you down,
I really like you but oh Stan,
You need to wash those clammy hands,
I have a genius solution,
You see this beautiful solution,
It comes in red and green and blue,
And all that you have got to do.
The music is now complete with Ruby singing the main part and Jess harmonising in the background. Jess has played the main guitar role with Ruby playing an extra part that fits over the top. Jess has recorded an extra guitar part towards the end so we can use this in editing and add to the end of our two minute film opening.
As you can see from the picture below, this was the name we originally came up with for our two minute film opening, however as you can also see, we are not quite sure that this is particularly appealing. The film name seems too long and doesn't quite fit onto the frame neatly.
We started to brain storm to come up with a new title name.
We finally decided that we preferred the film name 'You Call It Crazy...' We felt that this is appropriate as it is fun and quirky and not too long so it easily flows.
We have changed our storyboard slightly so as the film flows smoothly. Instead of the end shot depicting the title on the wall above the character, we want her to be the main focus where a freeze frame on a image of the girl crying will feature the title.
As you can see the title name will appear in stages resulting in the final shot.
We have also edited the titles for the actors/actresses who played our characters which will appear in a freeze frame, Louise Weaver, Ruby Harris, Paige Woods and Joseph Poole.
Here is the second progression piece for our acoustic soundtrack. The chords have been chosen and these consist of C and Cmaj9 played on capo 6, major chords which is exactly what we desired. The lyrics have almost been completed and below is a short snippet of them. They tell a story based around the simple conventions of a love song yet morphed by our characters extreme OCD that adds difficulties to the relationship. This fits perfectly with our two minute film opening.
Film Names: As our film is a comedy drama, we wanted something fun and quirky to match the tone of our opening. We have decided on a sequence in our film, where the OCD character Lily is preparing her breakfast which is strawberries, apples and yoghurt. So the name for our film is 'Three Strawberries Sliced, Two Apples Diced and a Greek Style Yoghurt.
The Royal Tenenbaums
When researching into comedy drama's, Jess and I decided that we wanted our main focus to be the opening titles, basing what we'd experienced in this film opening. We especially liked how the introduction of the character and which actor/actress was playing them appeared over a clip of the actual character. Using this as inspiration we adapted the idea so that our characters names and the people who would play them, would appear on a freeze frame of the actual characters.
Due to copyright issues we aren't able to use a well known song on our two minute film opening without obtaining permission from the artist. To solve this problem, Jess and I have decided to compose our our soundtrack to use on the opening. As I cannot play an instrument, or sing for that matter, Jess and her sister Ruby will be composing the song. We have decided that we would like an acoustic piece and this has been progressing well. Below is a section of the music in progress. These progression parts have been recorded using a basic recorder on Jess' computer. However the real track will be recorded on Audacity and exported as an Mp3 onto our film.
The website we had originally intended to use to upload our music onto our blogs didn't end up verifying Jess' account and as time was running out, she was able to find a much better website which was highly recommended. www.SoundCloud.com was the website we used, and Jess made an account and was able to upload the music onto our blogs. The process was extremely easy, including a simple upload of the desired clip and then embedding the code onto our blogs, exactly as we did for our Prezi.
As we had previously decided, we wanted to create our own music to go onto our two minute film opening, however we are having some trouble putting the podcasts onto our blog. It was suggested that we upload the music onto a youtube video, but as previously mentioned, uploading the video is very time consuming. We managed, with the help of Google's help forum, to find a few recommended websites which allowed music to be uploaded onto our blogs. We found what we needed was referred to as a 'third party website' as the music must be uploaded onto the internet before transferring over to the blog. The website we found was called www.Iodapromonet.com which allows users to use free and legal music from the website on their blogs. It also allows you to upload original music onto your blogs. Jess made an account and has the music ready to insert onto our blogs however it takes two working days for the account to be verified.
The fruit scene is one with have the most footage of so we decided to edit this scene first. We stuck to using the fruit from our film title which was strawberries and apples. We wanted to mess around with the effects of the video to add a more dreamy atmosphere to them.
Here is how our fruit scenes look without any effects added to them.
We clicked onto the clip and went onto clip adjustments, and then video effects where a whole list of effects came up that we could use. After looking through all of them we found an effect called 'Romantic' which we thought added to our whole dream effect idea.
Here is a screen grab from the fruit scene with the romantic effect added to it.
However as we progressed through our editing we thought this effect looked unprofessional and out of place when put together with the rest of our clips. We decided to revert back to the original settings.
When editing the fruit scenes we had many clips to edit and we decided to make them look like a sort of montage. We edited, trimmed and put together all of the fruit scenes switching between the cutting of the strawberries, to the apples. We also were careful to highlight the protagonists OCD by having her continually clean the board. We also see the rebel sisters hand steal some fruit from the bowl and have our protagonist start again. The fruit scenes, we are central to our story line last for roughly 14 seconds.
We wanted to be quite creative when filming this scene so we decided to put the camera in the fridge and have it start by the character opening the fridge and pulling out the ingredients she needed. At the start and the end of this particular clip, using the transitions available on imovie, we used the FADE TO BLACK transition so it flows into the next scenes more fluidly.
Today we will begin editing our two minute film opening. We have roughly around 40 minutes of footage to edit, however not all of it is relevant. This was partly due to our actors/actresses making mistakes, testing out the different camera angles to see what worked best, and messing around with the settings. We also shot a few of the scenes 2 or 3 times just so we had an option when it did come to putting the final product together. This could either be a good thing. We could be so overwhelmed with footage that we aren't able to condense it into two minute or we could have just enough footage to make our film opening perfect.
As previously mentioned we came up with the name Moody Cow Productions for our film company name. To edit and create this logo we used Fireworks on the macs. We used the same text we would use for our film titles/credits for continuity and so it is familiar and recognisable. As our company is called Moody Cow and we are specialising in comedy dramas, for the humour aspect we thought our logo would stand out and become humourous if we had a picture of a cow. We created this image through the paint tools on fireworks and below is the final product.
When we added this onto our two minute film opening, we found a audio clip of a cow mooing on youtube and this was appropriate to add to the humour effect of our comedy drama.
Using the films we had previously selected for our comedy drama research, we looked into the production and distribution film behind them. We hope that these names and logo give us inspiration for our Film Company name.
Juno: Produced by Mandate Pictures and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures
500 Days of Summer: Produced by Watermark Productions and Sneak Preview Entertainment and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures
I Am Sam: Produced by Avery Pix, Bedford Falls Productions, Red Fish Blue Fish Films and distributed by New Line Cinema.
We would like to create a production and distribution name that would sound genuine and professional while also being recognisable, fun and catchy such as Red Fish Blue Fish Films. What we also noticed was that either film or pictures was incorporated into many film company names, so we would like to also use this idea.
Possible ideas included; Fruit Bowl Productions, Dairy Pictures and Banana Films. We decided that we liked the idea of Dairy Films and altered this to become Moody Cow Productions. Through our research we found out that when the production name and logo appears in a film, a sound accompanies it. Using this idea, we tried to be creative and decided to include the over voice of a cow's 'Moo' to fit with the humour of our comedy drama.
As we noticed our story board doesn't quite fill 2 minutes, we are hoping that this will add onto our time when we fit it at the start of our opening.
