Coursework project: Finished film

Here is the finished version of our two minute opening to our movie Moat Farm:

https://vimeo.com/153533593

‘The Shawshank Redemption’ (1995)

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1995) follows Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a former accountant who in 1947 is unjustly sentenced to two life sentences for the murder of his wife and her lover.  Andy is set to serve his sentence in the tough Shawshank Prison but he is the only one who knows that he didn’t actually commit the crime he was convicted of.  While in Shawshank Andy befriends the the prison contraband smuggler Red (Morgan Freeman) and experiences the brutality of prison life as well as beginning to help the Warden with his expertise in money.

This is an amazing movie and I’m sure that most people will agree with me on this.  The story is just brilliant and actually very simple, considering it’s really only following the mundane prison life of one man for 20 years.  But its the emotions that come with it and Andy’s constant hope for life, shown by him wanting to make a decent life for himself while in prison; he tries to help people and helps improve the library, making a name for himself within the confines of the prison but in a good way.

My favourite character is probably Red, mainly because of his attitude to life and how, even though he doesn’t want to, he begins to believe in Andy’s theory of hope.  Plus, when played by an actor with a voice as amazing as Morgan Freeman he is the best character to use as the narrator.

Also, if you’ve ever watched Highlander (the original movie I mean), then you’ll recognise Handely, the head guard, as being the terrifying Kurgen from Russel Mulcahy’s movie, played by Klancy Brown.  Handley acts as the threat that Andy faces when in prison, apart from that of the other inmates, however he becomes vaguely more likeable as the movie goes on, although he is still a rather repulsive and scary character.

Because of how good and well known this movie is, if you haven’t seen it you really need to because it is truly brilliant!

‘The Departed’ (2006)

“Congratulations on passing the detectives’ exam, and welcome to the Special Investigation Unit.”

The Departed is a crime thriller directed by Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, The Wolf of Wall Street).  It follows Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a South Boston cop who must go undercover to infiltrate the criminal organisation run by mob boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson).  As Costigan fights to gain Costello’s trust, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a career criminal, infiltrates the police department and reports on their activities for his criminal bosses.  As both organisations discover they have a mole in their midst, Costigan and Sullivan must discover each other’s true identities and intentions to save their own lives.

I really enjoyed this movie because of the mystery and suspense that was present throughout, not to mention it had an amazing cast, with Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin alongside DiCaprio, Damon and Nicholson.  The mystery of who’s going to get discovered first and what’s going to happen is brilliant, with DiCaprio really playing someone who wants to do whatever he has to do to get his job done, and Damon playing a real scumbag you love to hate.

There’s also a fair amount of action through, and if you like police movies then this is definitely a great one to watch, if you can get over the Boston accent.  However, this kind of does explain why Mark Wahlberg was given a role, but its a role thats just hilarious and well suited to him so I’m not complaining, plus I like him as an actor anyway.

I would definitely recommend this movie in general, but especially if you love a good mystery movie that has you on the edge of your seat.

‘Downfall’ (2006)

 

“Tomorrow millions of people will curse me, but fate has taken its course.”

Downfall, or Der Untergang, is a German war film which depicts the final days of Adolf Hitler’s rule over Nazi Germany in 1945.  The film, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (Diana, The Invasion, 13 Minutes), is based off the diary entries of Traudl Junge, Hitler’s private secretary who remained with him in Berlin’s Führerbunker until his death.  Junge, played by Alexandra Maria Lara, features heavily in the movie, following her from her arrival in Berlin in 1942 and landing her dream job of Hitler’s (Bruno Ganz) secretary.  She narrates the dictators final days as allied forces surround the city and he realises the war he is fighting is lost.

The film is all in German but with English subtitles, but this adds to the realism of it and doesn’t take anything away from it; it works because the film is set in Germany with German people all speaking German.  Having it in English would ruin the effect, just like in Valkyrie, a great movie but, with the first minute being an exception, all in English with Tom Cruise speaking in his American accent, which takes away from the fact that he is supposed to be playing a German soldier.

I really enjoyed this movie because it gives an insight into something that isn’t often considered when thinking about the Second World War and the fall of the Nazi regime.  Junge’s diaries give us an insight into Hitler’s very private life, and the fact that it is all based off diary entries written at the time by someone who was there and who experienced it makes it so much better.  I also really enjoyed it because I found it really interesting because I was studying this period and topic in GCSE history when I first watched this movie so it had extra meaning to me, but also I really like history anyway and I enjoy war films similar to this, such as Valkyrie, Enemy at the Gates, Saving Private Ryan, and Fury.

You’ll probably recognise a scene in this film if you’ve ever seen the YouTube sensation ‘Hitler Reacts’.  A scene from the movie where Hitler is told some disappointing news about invading Russian forces went viral due to his almost comical raving and ranting in German; the scene was given various different subtitles depicting the Füherious dictator shouting about everything from games consoles to football results and even the teaser trailer for the new Star Wars movie, although I do disagree with what Hitler has to say about it.  So yeah, that came from this movie.

As I said the subtitles didn’t put me off this movie or make me enjoy it any less than I would’ve if it had been in English, so I would recommend this to anyone purely because it’s different to what most people watch because of the language.

Coursework project: Evaluation questions – prep

Over the last week since we distributed the planning of the 7 evaluation questions between the four of us, we have each been planning and doing the preparation for our assigned questions.

My two questions are questions 3 and 5:

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Both of those are videos; question 3 is clips of our finished movie opening and clips of other official movies, with the four of us talking over the top, and question 5 is the four of us talking to the camera.  For both of these, especially question 5, I wanted to create movie style opening credits, and I really like the idea of doing a Tarantino style one.  I started making credits for both questions, and recently finished the credits for question 5:

I have also started the credits for question 3 and I have also downloaded various different film clips and trailers that have aspects similar to our film, such as the opening credits of Se7en, the trailer for Dream House, various clips from Psycho, and the trailer for The Shining.  I cannot do much more with this question just yet apart from finish the credits as I am just waiting on the finished version of our movie opening so I can use the footage in the video.  But here is what I’ve done so far:

‘Suicide Squad’ (2016) – New trailer

Now I know I’ve already done a blog post on Suicide Squad as an upcoming movie, but I just had to do a quick one about the new trailer for it that was recently just released, for the only reason that it is absolutely brilliant!  Released around the same time was the awesome and very creative new poster with all the members of the Squad represented as skulls, which I thought was pretty cool.

The trailer, first off, is played to the tune of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, possibly one of the greatest and most well known songs in existence, and I couldn’t think of a better song for it!  The music fits brilliantly with the idea of the film being crazy but fun, and the whole thing has been edited to perfection with the actions of the characters matching the music; my personal favourite has to be when Headshot (Will Smith) loads and cocks a rifle to the beat of the music.

The trailer also introduces the characters more and their abilities, or problems in some cases, and really sets up the Suicide Squad.  We are shown that Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) is a very angry person who is clearly not happy at being locked up, and that Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) is just plum insane, with a load of problems that make it understandable why she falls in love with the Joker.  We are also given a better look at Jared Leto’s Joker, probably the most anticipated character of the whole movie, and one that we only got a glimpse of at the end of the first look trailer.

All in all I was already really looking forward to this film but this trailer has made me want to see it even more!

Here is the first look trailer, a slightly more sinister one, but still great even without a killer song:

Coursework project: Editing – Audio

The editing process is well underway and we are now adding elements such as music and non-diegetic sound over the top.  We found three pieces of ‘mystery-suspense’ music that we really like the sound of, however we didn’t the full length of all three so we decided to use bits of all of them.  We decided to use the start of one at the beginning of our film over the idents because it worked really well and was perfectly in time, and then we faded that piece out and faded in the second piece which we used as an ambient sound throughout the whole piece.  We then faded another piece of music in right at the end of the piece before the titles but we only used the very beginning of it because of the drum beats in it, which fitted really well.

As well as adding music we have been trying to sort out all our diegetic sound filmed on location.  Although we recorded dialogue there was a loud static sound in the background of it, so we couldn’t have loud and clear dialogue without having the static.  But then we discovered a setting on Final Cut for audio enhancement, which allowed us to enhance and make more clear the voices within the audio clip.

Because of this static we originally had to lower the volume of the audio, which then meant we couldn’t here diegetic sound such as the boys footsteps as they ran up the stairs.  But then we discovered that if we raised the volume from -12 decibels, which we had lowered it to, to -3 then the footsteps we relatively clear and the music his most of the static.  Tom also discovered that adding a Bass Boost in the Audio Enhancement settings improved it further.

After doing all this we had music that fitted with the footage and diegetic sound recorded on location that could be heard clearly over the music without any interruptions by static.  Before we discovered the audio settings we thought that we were going to have to record foley effects for the footsteps an re-record the boys dialogue, but luckily we didn’t have to.

Coursework project: Editing – Lighting

As I said in my previous post one of the main problems we encountered when we came to start the editing process was the lighting of each of the different shots within the house; some were lighter and warmer, with a yellow tinge to them, and others were darker and colder.  This was caused by the variation with light on the location and the light changed around the room when we moved the camera, but because we didn’t have lighting rigs like we intended there was nothing we could really do about it.  Luckily there were setting in Final Cut Pro that we could change to adjust the lighting and the colour of the shots to make them how we wanted.

We first used a Balance Colour feature on the contrasting shots to match them up with each other so they were the same.  We wanted the darker and more cooler light to be in all the shots because it fitted with the sinister and eerie tone of the film, so we balance the lighter and warmer shots to look more like that.

We then used the show colour board feature of Final Cut to improve the colour of the shots further, because although the Balance Colour feature worked and was relatively useful it wasn’t as good as it could have been and there were still areas of improvement.  This also meant that the film looked really grainy in parts, which was something we were really not happy about.

When editing the interior shots of the bedroom we did not have to use this part of the Colour board much as most of the shots in there were already of the desired dark and cooler lighting, but for the shots around the rest of the house we wanted a brighter highlight colour.  Although we tried this and it didn’t really work or have the desired effect so we settled on a much more muted and milder tone of colour and light.  The brightness of the interior house shots that weren’t the bedroom were most likely caused by us messing about with the settings on the camera when we were trying to take the photo of the boys right before filming.

One element of the colour board and settings within Final Cut that we played around with a lot was the saturation feature.  We tried various different saturations on different shots of different parts of the house, but in the end we decided on similar saturations on all the shots, but with more of an emphasis on shadow in the bedroom because it is in there that the mood of the film gets darker.

Sorting out the lighting within the shots was a difficult and quite stressful process, especially for Tom who was doing the bulk of the editing, but in the end we got it how we wanted it.  However, it wasn’t until we’d finished faffing around and getting the light and colour of the shots how we wanted that we discovered the lighting presets.

For the shots of the bedroom we decided on the preset Cold CCD because that was the one we preferred the most and thought suited the tone and mood of the shot.  We used this preset but then tweaked bits of it to tailor it to our liking even more.

Sorting out the lighting of the shots was probably the hardest part of the editing process and we all got rather fed up with it, especially Tom, but we got there in the end and improved our film drastically because of it, and made it look more professional in the process.

Coursework project: Starting editing

While I was away the first week back the group started piecing together the footage we filmed to make a rough cut of our two minute film opening.  Now the proper editing process is taking place and Tom is the assigned editor in the group; he is doing the bulk of the editing but the rest of us have an input on any changes we feel should be made and what we think of his editing, so the work isn’t left completely on him.  So far the work that Tom has done has been great and the piece looks to be going really well.  In lessons we watched what every group has done so far in terms of editing and provided feedback, just as we did with the rough cuts, and then we are going to try and act on that feedback over the next 3 weeks to try and perfect and finish our pieces.

Here are some screenshots that Tom took whilst editing.  Here you can see the start of the editing process where the company idents and the first few shots have been put together with the sound we recorded on location over the top.

 

After importing all the video clips and the footage we filmed we noticed that some of the footage taken from inside the house varied in some of the shots; some of them looked very yellow and warm whereas others looks quite cool and were darker.  We decided to change the colour in the shots to make them all look the same and opted on going for the more cool and darker look as it fitted with the theme and feel of the movie and what was happening in the scenes.  This was done using the inbuilt function in Final Cut, where you can change the exposure, saturation and colour settings to make the shot look how you want it to.

 

On the right hand side of this screenshot, you can see the process of changing the colours of the shot.  We wanted to  take the pink/orange tinge away from the shot to make the colours cooler and to take out the warmth; this helped it to match all other clips in the piece, as well as giving it a more professional look.

Coursework project: Evaluation questions – starting off and planning

This week we started working on our evaluation tasks in our groups, and in my group we decided that we wanted to do the tasks together as a group as it would be much easier.  Because there were 7 different questions we decided it would be a good idea to split the questions up between the 4 of us for the planning process, and then when all the questions were planned we will come together and answer them; we all got 2 questions each to plan, apart from Tom who got one because he is doing the majority of the editing, so already had enough work to do.  Here are the questions, the way we are planning to answer them, and the members of the group which are planning them:

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Podcast

Patrick

2.  How does your media product represent particular social groups? (youth and old people, (Patrick’s grandma’s house features)

Stills of film with audio

Charles

3.  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Play film and show clips at same time of films with similar events and discuss which companies made those films

Jake

4.  Who would be the audience for your media product? (teens to adults)

Video interviews with non group members

Charles

5.  How did you attract/address your audience?

Video – group talking to camera

Jake

6.  What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Footage of editing and using camera with audio

Tom

7.  Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Video – group sat talking to each other

Patrick

We decided collectively that we wanted to mainly make video and podcast style answers to the questions because it is more interesting and involves all of us, plus there are loads of different things you can do when making videos that will make it different each time, which is what we have tried to do.  We want to make them as interesting and as fun as possible, and for the two videos that I’m planning I want to have introductions and credits that are in the style of and inspired by famous movies.

Hopefully in the next week we will start making our answers to the questions after the planning process is all finished.