Production

PRODUCTION Practical skills. exploration, adaptation and application of skill in film

Tuesday 14th May - (Test) Shoot Day
Tuesday 14th was the day of my shoot, I planned for everybody to arrive on location at 8:45 - 9:00 so we could start shooting at 9:30 latest. Everybody arrived around 9:20 which gave me 10 minutes for everybody to know what equipment/props they will be using. I contacted the Police on 101 to notify them that I will be shooting from 9:30 to around 12:00 and there will be use of prop guns which they said was fine and thanks for notifying them. For some reason my road was very busy with construction and because all the outside shots were on this road this meant that it was difficult to actually get the shots I want. For example when I had my actors stop in the middle of the road and start equipping their weapons we had to stop shooting to move the car because there would be another car coming down the road which meant we had to reshoot this scene 3-4 times.

My shoot required a hefty amount of blocking with the actors and crew so they could understand my vision. I also had to choreograph my fight scenes with everybody as I required them to over exaggerate their actions which would make a bigger impact.

I felt that the shoot went well without any major issues or injuries however when inspecting the footage we had shot I found out that continuity was off and the overall flow of the footage didn't work and I wanted to reshoot.

This is my favourite clip from the "test" shoot. If I remember correctly it was the 3rd take which had taken it's toll on the wood I jumped over and required some repairs. It was great to work with people who were willing to throw themselves around to make the clip seem over the top.

Friday 17th May - (Re) shoot
With motivation lacking I changed my idea at last minute to a DEA drugs bust. I wanted everybody to be on location for 9:00 so we could shoot as soon as possible however we had to wait until 10:30 for Cameron and Chris to arrive. From 10:30 to 10:45 I gathered everybody and went through the idea. Apart from the cold, having to snort icing sugar and having Corbyn go from being my main character to a backup due to an injury, everything went ok. Courtney took Corbyn's role which meant Corbyn took the role of street dealer and thankfully the clothes he was wearing suited the role. We finished filming around 3:00 and this time when reviewing the footage I felt that the flow was much better than the first shoot and I had Corbyn assemble all the clips on the timeline for me.

For the scene where I had to snort fake cocaine, I first poured out a tiny line of icing sugar just to see if I could handle snorting it which I was able to so I felt that in the actual film I will snort a big amount and was that a big mistake. It was probably the worst part about my shoot, thankfully being the A list actor that I am, I was able to keep a straight face until we cut the cameras. Sadly I don't have any pictures of it happening however I have a screenshot of Corbyn trying not to laugh.

Marketing Production

I planned to create a poster as a form of marketing to announce my film. Below is the development stages I underwent to get the final piece. 

This is the first stage of the development, this stage is trial and error to get the right font and position. I went for yellow text and a yellow border to match the costume style of DEA agents

The font was selected as I felt it looked a lot like the CIA blacked out files that you can see in some films however Justin pointed out that my graphics looked a lot like a uk band's logo.

This is the second iteration of my film poster. I have included an image in the background (this won't be the final image as my idea has changed). I added a vignette to the image to represent the barrel of a gun. This isn't my favourite edit as it doesn't feel like a professional poster.

The vignette was achieved by using the elliptical marquee tool and then clicking on "Select and Mask" and turning the feathering effect up 100% and then finally clicking invert. This made the selection area inverted and instead of a "circle" it had selected the corners

I also made a version with all the text slanted and increased the vignette and it gives me a 1980s film poster vibe.

This is  my second try at creating a film poster. I really like the outcome of it because it feels grungy and the smoke effects relate to the idea of my film.

To start off, I grabbed these two pictures from google images. These are the only pictures I used.

I then placed the scratches and dust image as the background and the coke picture into the foreground and resized it to my liking.

To create the smoke effect I downloaded a free smoke brush preset from brusheezy.

Steps:

1)Create a new layer.

2) Select the brush tool and go to the brush settings

3) move the direction of the brush to your liking

4)Apply the brush and then select the quick selection tool

5) After selecting the quick selection tool highlight the smoke 

6) Go to the layers panel and click on the layer you want to apply the effect to.

7) Copy and Paste the selection, then hide/delete the brush layer and picture layer.

I used this effect for the text and rectangle.

Film Production

At the start of Post-Production I was still finishing off my essay which meant I wasn't able to do both post and essay so I asked Corbyn to assemble the clips together and he used the storyboard I supplied him with to give him a rough idea on what I want.

This is the layout of my Premiere Pro. I prefer having a longer timeline as it saves time from having to move up and down it. As you can see I have all my footage, sounds, pictures and sequences in their own bins because it's much easier to figure out where everything is.

Once Corbyn sent me the project file I started to import all the sound effects that I needed. These sounds include white noise, birds chirping and nature sounds/ambience, car doors opening/closing and car engine sounds. Throughout the film I will have to add sounds for every movement/interaction because I didn't record sound on the day.

This screenshot shows the effects control panel for the car incoming sound and the car radio sound. I had to apply keyframes to the sound level to make it sound like the car is coming from a distance and then past the main car and into the driveway. I also applied ease in to the car sounds just to make it sound smoother. I added the lowpass effect to the radio sound to make it sound like it's coming from within the car.

While in the process of creating a title sequence, I came up with this.

Testing and Feedback

So with the production deadline looming over my head I did uploaded the draft video and asked a few people to watch my video and give me feedback on it.

"I liked the tone of the video and when the car drove past with the music playing was really cool however there are some sounds that repeat themselves." - Corbyn Back

"Good use of colour and interesting story but it's missing half the audio and doesn't really have any graphics." - Cameron Ager

"Overall the majority of the scenes are well put, however some are out of focus and the timing is off" - Online Peer

From the feedback that I have received, I understand that people liked the tone of the video which I find fascinating because I didn't have time to colour grade the video. People have said that the audio needs to be improved because the video is missing almost 50% of audio and somebody was able to hear audio that I duplicated as I rushed.