25th April update

25^th April update

Today we have completed our thriller apart from changing the opening credits effect. The hot tub lighting was a successful change as we used colour corrector and made the clip pinkie purple tones to fit in with the continuity of the shot beforehand. The quality of film has decreased from adding this filter but our teacher says this is fine as it’s only a very short clip we have imposed it upon. I added the fade out within the party scene where the sound bridge happens and this looks very effective. I reversed the end two clips as our teacher told us to but I didn’t think it made sense so I suggested to the group we should reverse the first two clips as it would be going backwards to previous day and then the events from the day before would take place and the end two clips that are at the beginning can stay going forward as the rest of the film would continue from there. My partners agreed this made more sense so I spent a long time changing this around and adding the reverse and fade out again as I had to delete the clips and add them back in the wrong way round. After completing this I added a fade out to the audio at the beginning and end of the thriller, there was a cross fade on the music already so I evened it out by also adding it to the audio. We played around with the sound of the audio but found if we change one clip then all clips would need to be changed, the clip it worked on where it didn’t sound odd in the next clip was where the sound bridge and fade out happens and I go and speak to Doug at the party, so we added it here as I am supposed to be talking over music. When our other teacher watched it through they told us to take the echo effect off one clip where Maddie drags Rose away because then the clip is more visible, but we kept echo on the other clips we had previously added it to. We were then completed and all’s that is left to do is change the opening credits which we will do tomorrow and then burn our thriller onto a disc. Our teacher was satisfied with our thriller and likes the shots we have produced as the framing has been a huge success.

By Jordan Gale  

Final cut express

Final cut express

Using the software final cut express has been a challenge. Personally I don’t like the software as I found it confusing and hard to work with, but nearing the end I have learnt many functions and can work at a quicker pace, and I know my way around the software. We found it hard to add transitions as we spent many hours trying to fade out and then back in but for some reason this did not want to work on our timeline, as we could not increase the timing. The transition would be a milli second and not visible to see. So we changed macs to try and resolve this. Nothing could be done even though we had moved our sequence to a different desktop, we asked all the media teachers for help and even a year 13 student that had previously completed their thriller coursework, but nothing seemed to work on our sequence. We made progress by moving our sequence to V1 as it was on V2 originally and this helped as it would now fade in but not fade out. Expecting that this transition would not be successful we ended up making a gap and adding the transition onto the clip that we wanted to fade out. I extended the timeline and clicked on the transition and it allowed us to extend the timing, we could now successfully fade out. Moving the rest of the sequence back next to the transition we put a lot of effort into trying to fade the next clip in but it simply would not work. Even looking at YouTube tutorials, it was the impossible. But we are satisfied with the fading out and think our thriller looks effective. Adding the text was another challenge we faced. Firstly when trying to add it to our preliminary it was not successful. So in a free of mine I experimented and still could not layer the text onto the clip as it kept coming up as a separate clip with a black background when we wanted it overlaying on top of the video. I asked a teacher for help and we discovered that putting the letters on V3 layered it over the video. My partners were very pleased to know that the text issue was now solved. Rendering the clips took a significant amount of time but we made sure we rendered small sections as we went along to ensure the continuity was correct and to minimise the amount of time it took to complete rendering. When adding effects many hours were spent perfecting and finding the right filter we needed as final cut express does not allow you to view the effect without putting it on the clip and rendering it, we found this most inconvenient as for most of the effects we spent time putting onto the sequence we then spent undoing what didn’t look effective. In the end we found echo, which we introduce once Rose starts smoking the weed, this shows the audience the film from her point of view. As she is becoming high and hallucinating the screen represents this, creating an understanding of what is happening in the sequence and so the audience understands she is not in her right state of mind. What I did like about final cut express was the colour corrector as when filming outside the audience could not see our bodies at all and this would have lost us marks so we played around with the colour corrector and created a balance that made our bodies and faces visible. The quality of the video was slightly altered but isn’t too visible to see. The only time the quality is very visible is when we had to add a pink tone to a short clip where I receive the weed. The hot tub lights were on a changer and had changed from pinkie purple to blue as we cut two clips and put them together. Our teacher said this did not flow and would lose us marks so we corrected this by changing the lighting using final cut express, but the quality of the video is very grainy. The main thing is the continuity and that has been achieved so our teacher is now satisfied and pleased with this part of our sequence. Adding the music was extremely easy, we created sub clips and added them into the first two boxes of sound on final cut express and found that you can drag the clip of music longer or shorter depending on the timing you want. The music used is copyright free as it has been homemade. The fading out of music was also easy to achieve as I added the audio transition and could extend or decrease the timing by simply dragging the clip that was on the end of the audio. Taking audio out from certain places for example our establishing shot of the sixth form sign was simple as I simply clicked on it and deleted it from our timeline. We made sure we saved our work progress after every successful edit we completed to ensure our thriller was safe. After using final cut express I would not recommend it as it was difficult and time consuming to use, I didn’t think it was user friendly but after using it for several weeks it’s not as bad as I first thought.

By Jordan Gale 

April 25th, Editing and Finalising Thriller.

April 25th, Editing and Finalising Thriller.

Today we stayed behind at school to finish editing from yesterday in class. We changed all of the text to the 'crawl effect'- white 'Skia' font, this gave the appearance of a clear, professional font that could be seen perfectly over the top of the clips- we played around with the timings of the text so all of the credits finish just as scene 2 begins. Another piece of text we added was 'The Previous Day', to clearly show the time change, this was in the same font as the title 'Oracle', to help the piece flow together, creating a more continous opening.
After many our many struggles with the 'FADE TO BLACK' effect, today we were successfull and were able to add this to our thriller! We highlighted the clips and moved them along the timeline, which inserted a black gap inbetween the scene 1 clip 2 and scene 1 clip 3. Then, using the Video Transitions, we attached the 'Fade in and out to black' to clip 2, then allowing us to change the time of the transition, which it did not let us do before. Therefore the clip 2 fades to black, just as Rose looks up into the mirror- which adds a sense of mystery due to the fact her face is only on screen for around 1 second, keeping the audience hooked as they wish to find out more. This transition also shows the time change clearly- with the text helping to back this up. Another effect we completed today was the 'Echo' Video Filter, adding this onto the clips after Rose has taken the drugs, we all felt that this looked fantastic on the last shot where Maddies hand hits the tree, as it shows this from Roses perspective and adds a distorted point of view shot- as if the audience have been put into Roses unstable position, connecting them to the characters.  This filter was also added to the close up shot of the ripped PHOTO in the bedroom at Maddies house, as the eerie music from the start is playing, this effect again links to Roses unstable character near the end, after she has taken the drugs- linking to the foreshadowing of danger for Maddie.
The hot-tub shot where Doug takes the drugs, and then hands it to Rose had to be cut into 2 different shots, yet as the lights (on the hot tub) change colour throughout, when we put the two clips together- they changed from purple to dark blue immediatley, weakning the continuity of the clips.Therefore by adding a purple colour filter, the lights now stay purple- and although the quality of the clip was reduced, and the speech jumps slightly, we came to the conclusion that this 'transition' between the shots were more co-herient and flowed much more successfully together- improving the continuity of our thriller and making it look more professional.
After showing our 'finished' thriller to our teacher- there were still a few outstanding features which they felt we could improve on, which we can complete in our lesson tomorrow, these include;
- Changing the 'crawl' effect on the text at the start, as it looked to 'student-like', and having the text fade in and out would look more professional.
- Adding in another fade to black in the party scene where it cuts from the conservatory setting, to where Maddie and Doug start talking by the sofa, as the sound bridge of the music shows how they have changed room, also it is later on in the party, the fade to black make this time and room chnage clearer too.
- Try reversing the final clip of Rose washing her hands, which is repeated at the end, as it will bring the audience back to where it started.
Tomorrow, we are also going to burn our thriller to a disk, along with our preliminary.

Lauren Taylor.

Final editing - 25th April

25th April update:

Today we our whole group stayed behind after school to do some extra work on our editing, because we really wanted to finish as we knew that we only have 3 lessons before the deadline. We added different text at the beginning of the thriller and the opening titles which we felt worked very well. This took some time, because we couldn’t get the right speed for every name as some parts were faster than others, which means we had to play around to change the time. We also added ‘echo’ effect to the party scene to show that this part of the thriller is showed in Rose’s perspective, as she’s high because of the drugs and she’s not fully aware of what’s happening around her. We felt that this effect worked amazingly on this scene, as it carries on all the way to the end in till the audience see the hand covered with blood that is slammed against the tree. We also finally figured out how to add fade out transitions, which we we’re unbelievably happy about, because in the first place we had a few problems with these, so when we finally worked out how to do them we we’re able to edit our thriller fully as we planned to. As it was very obvious to the audience that the hot tub lights changed between the two scenes, this meant that it didn’t work very well together, because at one point the lighting was purple then blue so we changed the colour of the second part of the clip which was when Dough as some weed and passes it to Rose, so after editing this, it looked very good and the lighting watched well together. So today we have finally finished our opening of the thriller, which we are very happy about. We might change some areas tomorrow in the lesson if we still find little parts which we are slightly not happy with.

By Anastazja Stanowska

24th April update

24^th April update

Today we continued from yesterday and uploaded our productions clips, by making a separate folder and importing them into final cut express into their very own bin. I then made a sub clip of both of them and managed to add them into the beginning of the timeline without the rest of sequence timing out. We decided to remove the audio as we filmed these two clips within class and you could hear people’s voices in the background. This was a shame as the noise from the pen on notebook productions had a good sound effect. In the end we decided to layer the music used in the first scene where I am washing my hands for the production clips as well, we did this because it brings the movie in smoothly and show continuity, also it has been done in many thrillers and movies and we are trying to make this look as professional as possible. We then proceeded to watch the departed opening credits to gain an insight of the order in which they are introduced on screen. We found the production companies were enforced firstly followed by the directors and then the main actors and actresses. We already had our title Oracle on the first clip, coming in on a typewriter effect. So we decided to contrast the opening credits and have them crawling across the bottom which we were satisfied with. Lauren then added a clip in-between the title Oracle and the opening credits, onto the establishing shot of sixth form reading previous day so it is clear to the audience that there has been a change in time. Today we also had a break through as I managed to fade to black by selecting the timeline to the right of the clip I wanted the transition on and moving it away then dragging fade out to in onto the clip and this then allowed us to change the timing and make the transition visible, I then moved the sequence back in line and this also showed the time change from me washing my hands to the previous day. We added a fade out to the same clip at the end of the timeline as well also from the last productions clip. Thinking that we had finished our thriller we showed our teacher who told us a few amendments. She didn’t like the crawling opening credits and commented that it looked to student filming, so we will try and change the effect so they fade in and fade out. She wanted us to add a fade out where the sound bridge is within the party scene, this is when Rose walks into the living room from the room with the snooker table in over to the character Doug. The sound bridge confirms the change in timing but a fade would ensure it had continuity as people that were in the snooker table room from the previous clip were all of a sudden in the living room, so when we add a fade out this will be resolved along with the sound bridge. Our teacher also commented that the hot tub lighting would need resolving as when I receive the weed the hot tub changes from pinkie purple to blue as we used two clips and edited them next to each other. Tomorrow we will try and find a filter on colour corrector to modify this mistake. Nearing the end of the film our teacher said that it became a little unclear and encouraged us to add a distort effect so the audience knows the character Rose is high on drugs and not in her right state of mind. From when the weed is passed to me we added an echo effect, decreasing the filters from the original state as it was to blurry when we first layered it on. We were pleased with this effect as it showed the film from Roses point of view. Lastly our teacher suggested reversing the scene that is at the very end of our thriller (that is also on the beginning) as this would tie the events together. We left it there and tomorrow we will experiment with reversing the clips.

By Jordan Gale 

24th April, Editing.

We watched the start of this
 American Crime Thriller to help us with
adding credits at the start
of our thriller.

24th April, Editing.

Originally we were going to re-shoot a small shot yesterday of Rose and Maddie talking (scene 1)- where the car drives past, from a straight -on, mid shot camera angle. However an item of clothing was missing and therefore we could not shoot this as it would break the continuity. Afterall we decided as a group that we should just remove the car shot from the scene 1 as it did not look continuous. Although we filmed it all on the same day- when we filmed the car scene, the sun was lighting was slightly darker and a car drove into school and parked where we were filming- so it had just appeared in the shot, therefore taking this out will improve our continuity. Plus foreshadowing of Maddies 'danger' is highlighted with the use of the ripped photo in the bedroom- where the music played at the start is also played briefly here- linking this with Maddie washing her hands with blood- a small but effective link for the audience to follow. In todays double lesson we added in the shots we filmed yesterday of the production name 'Notebook Productions', plus our 'Lord Stanowska Productions', at the start of our thriller. We were abe to increase the speed of the clip on final cut express, so that the speed the writing appeared was quicker, and took on the form of a 'quirky, handwritten, teenager style' which also fits with our teenage thriller theme too. The Lord Stanowska is written on a whiteboard which flows and fits in well with the first shot, accompanying our style of teenage thriller perfectly. We decided as a group to extend the music used at the start to play while these shots are being played at the start- to set the mood of a thriller and to entice the audience into the film immediatley. After this, we played around with adding text onto the thriller, following on from title which appears on the opening shot of the camera tracking into the bathroom where Rose is washing her hands in blood. The 'crawl' effect for the white text allowed it to be seen clearly as it contrasts with the background, the text we will include is 'Previous Day' plus 'Notebook Productions, Lord Stanowska Presents, Oracle, Directors- Anastaszja Stanowska Jordan Gale Lauren Taylor, (actors appearing in order of appearence on screen, the last being the lead role) Anastazja Stanowka Mike Borzoni Lauren Taylor Jordan Gale'.  We have chosen to include this text as we watched the beginning of 'The Departed', an American Crime Thriller, which included the two prodcution names at the start- twice, one where it uses thier own unique background etc (for example we have used the Notebook and Whiteboard), then again where it uses white text against a black scree, yet we chose to include it while the film is running. When we analysed the start of  'The Birds' by Alfred Hitchcock', we also noticed how the actors/actreses names appeared in order of apperance, the last name being the main star- this is also simular to 'Silence of The Lambs', where Jodie Foster's name was incuded in capitals last, with the co-stars appearing beforehand- which is what we have done in our thriller.

We have now added all the text, yet we experimented with the scrolling effect and felt it 'ruined' the thriller and made it feel unprofessional, therefore we will plan to sort this out tomorrow after school. After many hours of trying to add 'FADE TO BLACK' from the washing hands clip and 'previous day' where it cuts back to the 6th form sign, which re-calls the previous day and how maddie ended up in this situation- we still had no luck in adding this to our thriller. We spoke to year 13's, other students in our class and many teachers and no-one was able to figure out why it did not work. We tried changing the line our videos were situated on, to V2, yet this still had no effect,chaning onto a different MAC,  and a long series of other changes yet it could still not be added. Our teacher informed us that it may be because our clips are too short, yet after also looking on many youtube videos on this subject- it seems you should be able to simply drag the transition to the length desired, however this does not work. Therefore we will need to think of an alternative solution- possibly adding a black clip. Our teacher reassured us that if the examiner feels the 'change in time' is not clear enough to see (as there is no fade to black), they will be able to explain how it is simply not working as we have tried everything possible!
Another effect we added today was the 'Echo' effect. This was after a discussion with our teacher as they felt that the end narrative was slightly more difficult to follow than the beginning of the movie- i.e, when Rose takes the drugs. As a group we decided that we should add this 'halicination, high' effect after Rose has taken the drugs to then show the rest of the thriller from her perspective. Therefore this effect represents Rose' unstable state of mind suggesting more clues towards the blood-covered hand on the tree at the end- as she kills Maddie. Overall I feel that our editing was successfull today,learning more about continuity and effects, also how to made sure our narrative is cleatr for the audeince.  Tomorrow we intend to stay behind after school- as we do not have a lesson, and finalise the text and 'Distort' effect.
Another point to add is that we were given the 7 questions needed to be answered for our evaluation- these need to be answered and posted on our blog from each person in our group- and two of the questions need to be answered using some form of digital media- for example Webcam or Audio file, showing how we are able to add different medias when blogging online.

Lauren Taylor.

23rd April update

23^rd April update

Today we came to school prepared to re shoot a clip in scene one from where Maddie says ‘Takes the ladle’ because we were going to both turn into each other when we say ‘stirs it round’ to show the audience our closeness as friends, also when the car drives past the continuity is extremely bad quality so we were going to get it to drive past within this new shot. We couldn’t re film because I had my hair up when in the original filming it was down, I also forgot my hoodie, but we couldn’t film anyway as the weather was not the same as it was when the beginning of scene one was shot and it was raining. Our car driver was also unavailable. So because of these factors we could not proceed to re film, instead we cut out the car clip. We as a result have lost one of our motifs but we still have our most important one of the picture, where Maddie’s face is cut out. Another scene we were asked to re shoot was the establishing shot and instead of establishing sixth form our teacher thought it would be a good idea to input a clip of my face opening the door as it would smoothly continue on from my face in the mirror in the previous clip and then have our establish shot at the beginning as just the camera going through the house and then into the bathroom showing me washing my hands, the problem was we filmed that at my house, when my house is posing as Maddie’s and I am supposed to be at Roses house in the film. So we kept the sixth form shot and didn’t produce the opening the door clip or the establishing shot at the beginning. Putting these troubles aside we made our beginning productions clips. Our first production that funds the filming is notebook productions and to film this clip I opened a notebook and in slanted stylised writing wrote notebook productions using a thick black pen. Our next productions were the main director company called Lord Stanowska a combination of all 3 of our names. This was simply filmed on a white board where the logo and productions company was already written and Anastazja wrote the word presents to emphasise the movie coming in. Next lesson we can begin to upload these clips and add them to the beginning of our sequence.

By Jordan Gale