Film Poster Draft 1

Today, I finished my first draft of the film poster. I spent time super imposing Heidi's image onto the background of the alleyway we filmed at, and tried out different effects with the colours and brightness, as well as trying out different font types as the titles and actors names. In the end, I've finished with a first draft. Below you can see two pictures, one with a slightly lower brightness than the other. I decided to post these two as my first draft to show the difference in visibility of the dark figure at the end of the alleyway. To create this figure, I found an image of a figure from the internet and drew around this figure to give me my own and avoid any copyright issues. As you can see from the pictures, the visibility of the figure is different as I'm not sure which one I'm going to use yet.

Reflective Comment:
Completing a first draft for this was good because it has moved me a step forward with the ancillary tasks and meant I can now focus on my editing and extra filming as well as looking at starting my magazine article. I think that this draft went very well and demonstrates how I want the poster to look. To improve this task, I could have obviously spent longer adding effects to the text and perhaps more to the images, however because this is a first draft I just wanted to get an initial idea for the style and look of my poster.

Magazine Review Format

My other ancillary task involves a review of my film from a magazine, which I've already done some basic research for within my previous posts. Now, I've decided to do some research on what type of website I will write my film for, so I know the style of writing I'm going with.
After research online, I've narrowed it down to one website which appeared to specialise in film reviews for independent films. The budget for my film means that it falls directly into this category, and this website could suit the review I plan to write.

As you can see from this screenshot, the website is the 'leading news, information and networking site for independent-minded filmmakers'. This means my film would suit the website, and this is a starting point for the style I want my film magazine review to be. My next step is to actually begin writing the article, which I will probably do separately before adding the text onto a layout of a magazine review.

Reflective Comment:
Finding a website to base my magazine review for was a good next step with my ancillary task in order for me to begin writing. I think I did this task well because I simply found the best website that suited my independent film. To improve, I could have included more examples of reviews from this website, but I will probably do that at some point in the future when I begin writing mine and comparing the styles.

Film Poster Starting Draft

Today I took some pictures of Heidi and decided to begin and play around with the effects on Photoshop. I have never used it before and so this poster is extremely rough draft to help me have an understanding on how it works. With some more practice, I plan to continue with this and use an actual picture I've taken as the background as well as editing Heidi's face onto the background with much more precision.

Reflective Comment:

In between editing and filming I have now started to work on the ancillary tasks, and working on this brief poster draft has allowed me to gain an understanding on how photoshop works and what my poster will look like. I'd already done a lot of research, and so I had an idea on what I wanted the poster to look like. Tomorrow, I plan to spend a few hours playing around with a few different images on photoshop and constructing a more final version of my poster.

Editing Update

There has been a slight change with my editing now I've begun. Originally in my equipment list (which you can see by clicking here), I stated that I would be using iMovie to edit my footage. However, now it has come to the editing process I have changed my mind and decided to go with Final Cut Pro instead. I downloaded a 30 day free trail of this onto my Macbook which gives me a whole month to get all of my editing done. As you can see from the screenshot below, I have learnt how to work this software pretty quickly and my film is coming together nicely.

Reflective Comment:
I think that switching my editing plans to Final Cut has been beneficial for me and will continue to be beneficial to me as time goes on. Final Cut has a lot more effects I can use and has also assisted my massively with the use of on screen text message effects.

Filming/Editing Progress

Last Monday and Tuesday night I began my filming process which went really well despite some problems.
On the Monday, we spent several hours filming the scenes that take place inside my house. This involved Clare (Heidi) in her room, and Clare's Mum coming up to shouting. All of these scenes went really well, but were very time consuming as I had to film in a variety of different angles. However, as I have now began to put the clips together and edit them, filming with a variety of different angles has proven worth it.
On the Tuesday, me and Heidi went out of the house and down the alleyway to complete the filming that needed to be done outside. Despite the cold weather, we successfully did this, setting up the tripod in specific ways so that me and Heidi could both be in the scene at the same time.
My plan now is to continue editing the scenes I have until they are all put together well, and then this weekend (Sunday 29th January) continue to film the scenes I still need to do. I have over 4 minutes of footage meaning that it is all nearly done. The remaining scenes I need to do involve an additional one of Clare in her room and leaving the house, as well as Clare's Mum standing over a grave stone to represent her grief of Clare's death.

Reflective Comment:
This post is simply an update on what is happening because I have been completely focused on filming and editing recently and so haven't done any new posts.

Editing Research - Text Message Effect

As I've mentioned before, when I edit my piece I want to include an effect that displays what my main character (Clare) is saying to the boy she meets online (Tom). Below are some examples of this effect and these have acted as an inspiration for me:

By including this in my piece, it will mean that I can engage my audience with the conversations Clare is having with Tom on her laptop. It also means that I won't have to rely on my camera focusing on the laptop screen to see their conversations, as this can be hard to achieve with focus, and the fact that it makes the film boring to have to watch a laptop screen. I started to look online to attempt to find ways in which to do this, and the main thing that came up as a recommendation was Adobe After Effects. I have considered using this software but after looking I found that the cost of it is very high, and free trials have been reduced to 7 days meaning I wouldn't have it for long enough. Instead, I've downloaded a 30 day trail for Final Cut Pro which allows me to create a similar type of thing. 

I've been looking a more simpler way of doing this and have been using Sherlock as the inspiration. The text message effect in Sherlock is much simpler and does not actually include some sort of bubble, and the text is instead just displayed on the screen. An example of this is below:

As you can see from this screenshot, the message from the text is very simpler and just appears on screen. This could be used for me as a last resort, but I do want to try and add an actual text effect like the ones at the start of this post. When it comes to my editing process I will have to see what I can do.

Reflective Comment:

This post has allowed me to look at the different options I have when editing the text message effect onto my film. I am a bit concerned about how I'm going to do this because I'm not familiar with the effects that Final Cut Pro offers. When all my filming is done which will hopefully be soon I can play around with the effects and work out what is best to use.

Reflective Blog Entry (Christmas Break)

Over our Christmas break from sixth form I got a lot done with my course. My main goal was to tidy up my blog as much as possible, adding reflective comments to every post to ensure that when it comes to my evaluation I can refer back to the things I wrote about each post. I achieved this goal and now each of my posts includes a comment reflecting on what makes the post I did good and what can be done to improve it. In terms of filming, I wasn't too sure whether or not I was going to be able to find the time to complete it all. As it was, I didn't manage to find a day which suited my actors and me so we were not able to get much done. However, I did manage to get some test footage done with my main character, Heidi, which was very useful for both of us. As of now, I am completely ready to film with all of my actors decided, costumes discussed and ready, and locations sorted. My plan and goal is to begin the final filming process this Sunday (15th January), and finish it off the next night (Monday 16th). If I can achieve this it will mean that I can focus on editing and putting everything together, as well as beginning to put together my ancillary tasks.