I really dont feel like doin anything tonight, but i figured this is worth putting in even if its really bad (and short).
The Cinematography in a film is directed by a cinematographer (more commonly referred to as the director of photography). Traditionally a cinematographer can affect the whole look and feel of a movie.
Some aspects of cinematography include:
-Film stock (choosing they type of film, so the desired effect is given from film)
-Shot angles/types (i.e. Long shot, Over-shoulder shot, High angle shot…)
Mise en scène
At first I thought “Mise en scene” was a spelling mistake until I googled it, I have honestly never heard of the term before,, but from some quick research i got some infermation.
Mise en scene is used to describe the look of a scene, it includes lighting, character placement, character movement, prop placement, music, camera movement, what is included in the shot, white balance. Mise en scene basically is aspects of composition of the shot as a whole.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Working on an intro inspired by intro of Resident evil (1)
Pre production went for the whole of term 3, we had to:
-Think of a story
-Write a screenplay
-Draw the storyboard
-Get our actors
-Do a bit of planning for filming
I found this to be easiest part for us; it just took a long time for us because of the other assignments we had to do. The hardest thing about this part was probably thinking of an original story. Writing the screenplay was easy after we knew what the story was, and the storyboard was just a visual representation of our screenplay.
We also sort of got Brady.M, Ben and Matt to play the parts of our main characters. We planed Ian to play one of the parts (but we didn’t end up filming with him)
I knew where we were going to film most of our movie at this stage.
Production
Places we filmed:
-Underpass (legal spray painting site)
-IsabellaPlainsPrimary School car park
-Street in IsabellaPlains
-My house
-Photography lab
The first day of filming involved us filming for about 1.5 hours; we had Brady, Ben, and Matt to act for us in that period. We got some good filming done in that period; although we didn’t use a tripod (I planed to stabilize the film in the post production). Ben’s car broke down at lunch so we couldn’t film for the second period.
Brady M got bashed by some A…Holes on the weekend, so we were down 1 actor for the next filming session.
Our second day of filming, we had Matt, Chris Colless, and Lyle to film for us. Chris replaced Brady; I played the part of Joe.
Post Production
Currently i am in the process of post production. I'm useing After Effects to stabilize the film and resize the aspect ratio closer to 16:9. Also i need to key out a bluescreen scene and put in a flash background.
I am also in the process of removing noise from the sound files, and aslo removing unwanted sounds from the movie. I still have to record some sound effects and make it fit into the movie.
Then then i need to put the movie togather befoure november 16th...
Just some thoughts/what lies ahead...
By going through the production prossess of making a movie i have learn a lot of things/skills:
-Making a film is not eazy
-There is a lot of plannning involved
-learnt to/got better at useing a lot of software like After Effects, Audiocity....
-got a lot of skills for filming/editing
-learmt to write a proper screenplay
-a lot more
There is about 3 weeks left to get this film done. I have left a lot of things to do for the last 3 weeks (whioch was stupid)
I used AoA Audio Extractor to extract the audio from the video files.
I’m using Audacity to edit the sound:
-Noise removed
-Unwanted sounds removed
-Change position of sound
-Add Sound effects
-Render out final sound file
I’m using FL Studio to make music for our movie, I didn’t want to use songs in our movie because I don’t think it will go well with our movie.
FL Studio is a rhythmic beat making software, its mainly for Hip Hop or techno music but I’m attempting to make some movie music with it. If that fails I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I didn't ask Amber for the sound recording thing. The sound we have while filming is very low quality, there is a lot of background noise and a lot of unwanted noise. Our actors don't even sound loud so i will have to amply the sound by a lot (this reduced the quality even more)
Even though i realize that sound has a big role in making a movie successful, i didn't really plan the sound for our movie.
Without sound a movie will just be boring. There could be the greatest visual effects/cinematography in a scene but if there was no sound it wouldn't look as impressive(or just plain boring). I think sound can have a greater impact on the audience then the video. (we listen to music but we don't watch movies with no sound)
-Sound creates emotion in the viewer
-Sound supports what being shown
-Sound gives us an idea of whats happening (even if its not visual)
History of sound in films
-First known Film with (non-synchronized)sound was shown in Paris in 1900
-First known commercial Film with synchronized sound was shown in New York City in 1923
-One of the biggest problem with sound was the volume, before electronic amplifiers were invented.
“Motion pictures will do for the eye what the phonograph has done for the ear.”– Thomas Edison
When I got the film off our first camera it was in “.MOD” format, I had never heard of this format. I started using Adobe Media Encoder CS4 to encode the videos to mpeg format. But after doing some research it turned out I could just rename the files from .MOD to .MPEG (they use the same encoding but has a different a camera records to .MOD)
For our second camera we had to import the video into iMovie using a firewall cable, then export it to mpeg-2 format. I used my USB to transfer it from school to home….
Currently in Adobe After Effects CS4 I’m just stabilizing the footage, and changing the resolution to 632x288 because its closer to 16:9 (windscreen) ratio, …i aslo need to key out and render the bluescreen footage and put in a background which i will create with Flash. I plan to use a After effects to fix a lot of other stuff in the film (if I get around to it lol..)
- Stabilize the footage: If you know this object was supposed to be in the same place from frame to frame, but it moves for some reason, After Effects can track the object's movements, then animate it to move on the exactly the opposite direction so it appears to be steady.
– copied from http://www.dvpa.com/public/536.cfm
If i don't Stabilize the film it doesn't look as professional, it gives the illusion that we used a tripod for filming the whole movie (even if we didn't). I am going to stabilize the stuff we filmed with the tripod to make it perfect.
I am currently planning to use Windows movie maker, I’m also going to put the sound and video files together useing Windows movie maker because I don’t render audio with the video files. I cant really comment much more on this because I haven't done it yet
I am currently planning to use VideoTagger (software from Electric Happiness) to make the credits for our movie, I cant really comment on this because I haven't done it yet
I also didn’t mention in the blog that my Video Card on my computer broke at the start of the holydays, and I have bought a older video card. This really makes my editing process a lot slower!
We got news that Brady Mitchel was bashed on the weekend for no reason, (some people are just as*****).
Filming Time again!
Amber suggested we use a new camera to film, the new camera we got records to a DV tape and its better quality. And we also got a tripod this time.
After failing to get a time that will work for everyone we decided to film on Wednesday morning. We had a few changes to our actors as a result, on Wednesday:
-Ben was unable to film with us so we removed him from the scenes we filmed that day
-Chris Colless replaced Brady Mitchel character. (we are just gona put Brady M’s face on top of Chris’s face)
-Lyle M came along with us but we didn’t end up using him in our film
-I played the part of Joe
-Had to change the storyline as a result of the changes
Our filming went as planed. I personally wasn’t really focused on the task, I think I lost a lot of inspiration from the last time we filmed. I just wanted to get this over and done with, I think its stupid that we spent over 5 hours filming for something that isn’t even going to go for 10 minutes.
Friday – got film off the camera to computer +more filming
We needed Ben to do a bit more filming for us, We filmed in front of the blue screen in the photography lab.
My computer couldn’t get the footage off the camera so I had to import the film to a mac computer and then transfer it with my USB.
Seriously i have like 7 assignments due at this point i feel as though i'm not gona get this done
I spent most of this week preparing to film. We had to think of where to film and also how we are going to film it so it’s easy to edit. I got our storyboard back so it made planning it a lot easier
A big thanks to Brady Mitchell and Ben Mcewan for taking time off filming their movie (“Guitar Hero: The Movie”) and Matt Southwell for taking his class off. (and Ian for taking his class off, but we couldn’t film with him due to Ben’s car breaking down)
Friday Afternoon – filming
-We sort of knew where we were going to film. -Filmed for an hour before lunch, we finished filming about half the movie -We didn’t use a tripod (which was stupid) -Ben’s car broke down at lunch so we couldn’t film after -We changed a lot of the script because it sounded stupid when filming -We changed some of the screenplay as well because it looked stupid when it was acted.
Filming – Final Thoughts
-It’s a lot easier said then done -It requires a lot of planning (we didn’t do enough of it) -Our actors were great we just failed at filming -The filming was pretty bad but we had fun doing it.
I found the script easy to write, I looked up a few examples of screenplays online and used them as a template. From then on the screenplay wrote its self from our story…
The storyboard and screenplay was due on firday, I had finished the screenplay earlier in the week, and with Brady’s help we got the storyboard finished in time (Brady is surprisingly good at drawing).
With that done we sorta settled down, we didn’t have anything to worry about until next term. We had planned filming, editing, rendering and all the post production stuff.
Our seminar went pretty well (considering our standards), not everything went to plan such as the south park clip I wanted to show. Brady and me sort of stuck to the script as we planed, we did have to make up some stuff when I youtube’d a different south park clip.
No one else had the idea of taking the classes opinion so that was good, but I sort of stuffed up when I was designing the suggestion form (I had too many options). The class was way too small to get a clear result; none of the options got more than two votes.
CIT FAT awards DVD.
I went to CIT and picked up the FAT (film and television) awards DVD, There are 14 short films on the DVD, each of them were the winner of the 10 years of the awards. After I watched al of the short films I really couldn’t see why they won an award, in most of them the story was too slow or they tried to put in too many ideas into a short film (in my opinion).
I did like one of the short films, the film “The Carpark” by Scott Holgate. It follows someone into a car park; he is there to pick up his girlfriend, but he finds himself followed by another car. The other car keeps harassing him; in the end he confronts the other car to only find a note left for him. I think the storyline is simple but its effective, not much really happens in the film; but for some reason you just want to keep watching it.
I would put the clip on youtube..but CIT has copyright laws lol
OH NOSE follows the journey of three brothers, Joe, Larry and Snoop. Snoop is desperate for money so he asks Larry for money, when Larry refuses, Snoop steals Larry’s nose and runs away. Larry turns into a nose-less zombie, to save Larry Joe uses the iNose to find Larry’s nose.
Joe and Snoop have a huge fight at the end; there will be a few llamas in the fight
We need your help to finish off some parts of our story, so can you guys plz fill this out (show the suggestion form)
Now we are going to talk about were we got inspiration for our film, first we have a clip from South Park
------Show South Park Clip------
In that clip it shows Kenny playing the PSP to guide the armies of heaven against satin’s army, although we don’t actually see it, we get a good idea of what’s going on.
The sound quality in the video is really bad, but the sound effects and music are a huge part of the scene,
For example they used sound effects to back up what’s going on, and they have dramatic music when the battle is happening and when the battle is over they have slow and calming music.
We’re gonna use this technique because its easy to film and edit, and also because we will be able to add impossible things to the story. We will make our own sound effects and probably make our own music.
We also have a scene from the movie Sin City
----Show Sin City Clip----
Most of the scenes in Sin City are like that, they are black and white, but have some color. They use color to make us look where they want us to look.
Like the south park clip, they use sound to let us know what’s happening, the sound effects in sin city are louder than what they would be in real life.
In our film we are going to use something similar to the coloring technique used in sin city, we are going to make the movie color but have black and white stuff in it, mainly because it would be much harder to plan and script
Had an awesome idea for our seminar: We are basically going to ask the class to give us ideas that will influence our screenplay/Storyboard.
We had to think of a lot of taglines that would be appropriate for our movie. To involve the class a bit more we put up the options for our “game show” scene of our movie into the handout, anyway here is a nearly final handout we designed so people can give us ideas:
OH NOSE
By Brady Spencer and Zahid Akbar
We need your help to finish the planning of our short film…
Joe is our main character in our short film. Help decide what happens to him…
