My final opening sequence

 

CCR task 4- How did you integrate technologies software, hardware, and online in this project?

Here is the link to my Wix website:

https://adriannareyes6.wixsite.com/ccr4

CCR task 3- How did your production skills develop through this project?

https://prezi.com/p/k3t0yx_fvisy/?present=1

CCR task 2- How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

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CCR task 1- How does you product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Here is the Google slides presentation for my CCR task 1: 

Editing Reflection task

 

Last Thursday, we began editing our Opening Title Sequence. In order to do this, on the first day, we looked through all of our rushes. As we looked at them, we organized them and dragged them onto the timeline in order. Since we had re-shot a few key scenes multiple times, we made sure to pick out what we believed was the best iteration of the shots and put them on the timeline. Since there was a sequence of events, we made sure to color code and organize our shots into 3 main sections, the initial inserts, and Liv walking into the elevator, the dialogue, and the fight sequence which leads to her murdering him.  

We put in extra time further on in the day to really edit those shots down and consolidate them into the particular moments they required. While the editing wasn't seamless, this allowed us a much easier transition into fine-tuning our cuts and shot duration the next day. Soon, we had finished editing our shots, which was great, because it meant we had them all in order and sequenced. Then, we fitted them into an "elevator frame", essentially, making the shots fill the screen correctly when transferred and played on full-screen television, cinema, etc. This meant we had to fiddle a little with the spacing and composition of the shots. We were sure to use the rule of thirds on-screen to create a compact on-screen dynamic. We wanted our shots to feel cramped, and so we ensured to look at the way composition offered this feeling.

When editing the fight sequence, it was difficult to make the action look seamless and realistic, while still allowing the audience to follow along. In order to do this, we sped up our shots from 100 to 120 in order to create a more action-packed feeling but still allowing for coherent fight choreography that the audience could follow and understand. This provided difficulties later on because the audio was also sped up, which meant we needed to sync the original audio tracks to the action scenes, but we ended up being able to do this, which made the final product even more rewarding.

My favorite part of the editing was editing the titles. I think that was when I really began to see the Opening sequence come together. It was interesting to really look at the composition of them, and try to measure the amount of time they should be onscreen. Our group would edit them on the timeline, choose the font and positioning, then say it out loud 3 times before having it disappear. We made sure to crossfade all of our titles in and out of frame, some more quickly than others. It was a challenge to get our last title, the title "Going Down" correct. We wanted it to appear as the elevator doors were closing on the dead body. While we played around with having it slide along with the doors, we found it gave a strange, almost comical connotation, as if the title was animated, and opted not to.

We didn't remove any shots, but there were some we ended up getting rid of purely for effect. In one of the shots, we decided to augment the speed and make it slow-motion, this held real impact and was very effective. The issue was, our mid-shot didn't quite align, so we cut it out of that moment, and chose instead to have that shot, which I believe was the right decision, because not that shot carried so much more impact than before.

The sound was challenging because we had set our piece in a noisy environment. Elevators make a lot of sounds, and we needed to align the whirring, whooshing, and dinging of the elevator into the scene. We ended up having three full audio tracks. The first was dialouge, for which we increased the volume, and ensured we had a clean, clear sound. The second was ambient noise and sound effects, which we had pre-recorded, and edited according to the opening and closing of doors, pressing buttons, and moving of the lift onscreen. We opted not to have any non-diegetic sound within our scene, and rather, wanted our soundtrack to be contrapuntal, using elevator music as surrounding sound for a brutal fight and death. In the end, I think this worked really effectively because we were able to add this menacing tone to the undertones of our film. The challenging part, however, was finding the correct track. Since this elevator music was non-diegetic, I would be playing in the speakers of the elevator, which means the quality would've been awful. In order to do this, the track required an effect, and we brought the volume very low. The issue was, in order to do this, we needed sound that could sustain this augmentation. Any sort of Base, or deep string would be nearly inaudible, which meant most jazz or "elevator music" wasn't right. We ended up finding a track that used the correct sort of tone, and we were able to create the effect we initially aimed for.

In the end, we were able to fully create the effect we aimed for, and our concept didn't really change, the editing really created this piece, and brought it to life.

Shoot day reflection

 Our shoot day began, early at 8:50 in the morning, where we met our cast, Jake and Liv, and our supervisor, Matt, and our media teacher Mike. We had texted as a group the night before, ensuring we had planned everything accordingly, and I emailed our cast the night before, letting them know where we would be meeting, and just some general reminders about the day. Anna, as our editor, brought in a laminated shot list and shooting schedule which we planned to follow, and in reflection, that schedule ended up becoming virtually unfollowed. This was because we were told that the kitchen staff planned to use the elevator where we were located until 10:00 in the morning, fortunately, they finished early and we were able to use the elevator by 9:00, a whole hour early. So, we grabbed the Black Magic 4k mini ursa camera we were going to be using and the tripod and started to set up on our filming location. We ran into a few problems here, because, well, our location liked to move. The elevator operated on a variety of light-sensitive censors which had it react by dinging and shutting the elevator door. We were able to fix this problem by taping the elevator gap shut with black tape, which covered the censors. The elevator was such a confined space, we ran into a few problems, primarily being, most of the lights we tried to use to light the elevator, were physically too tall to fit inside. We ended up standing two strong lights outside the elevator doors, leaning inwards, which created a nice effect anyway. A positive was, once we lit and staged and stabilized the elevator, that was it, we did not require any other location shots or light settings, because of the way our plot was set out. We first shot a whole bunch of ten to twenty second clips of inserts, where we were able to see where we would place text and titles within the shot, and how it looked on screen. For instance, due to the nature of the back wall of the elevator, I often instructed either Liv or Jake to move slightly to one direction to avoid there being something coming straight out of their head. Another tricky thing was the confined area of the elevator meant there was not room for our whole group to be monitoring the actors directly, so I, as the director, relied a great deal on the monitor to allow me to get a visual into the scene within the elevator. Though this I learned how to direct the actors accordingly, for instance, when Jake entered the lift, we shot two over the shoulder takes of Liv’s reaction, I was able to direct her facial expressions and help convey deeper emotion onscreen, which was something I had never done before.

 Shooting the dialogue was interesting, because the actors gave a slightly different delivery each time, this was something we were able to explore. Since we wanted to create a cramped feeling within our scene, we took care to look at the composition within our screen, ensuring that, even during the close-up shots of Jake and Liv, they were both always in screen, even if it was only their shoulder or part of their head, because it created the effect we wanted to create. Our entire group was able to use all the terminology we learned in the confined technical workshops, everything from saying “mine” and “yours” when passing the camera, to creating a professional environment while shooting by saying “Standby” “cut” etc. These words allowed us as a team to work more efficiently and prevent mistakes, I noticed by the end of the day, we as a group had begun really getting the hang of using these words more commonly, and there was a rhythm we had begun to flow into. The shot list became an invaluable recourse, as our team was able to stay organized and efficient throughout the day and maintain that same order we had planned. One of the things I was most worried about initially was the fight sequence we had choreographed, but we learned that holding the camera hand-held for these shots gave it an instability which worked well. We also were able to get some amazing angles and perspectives that we would not have been able to achieve otherwise, considering the confined space within the elevator itself. I am happy with the shots we got, and it has made me really excited to get into the editing suite and begin to look at putting all the shots together. For one of the shots, we changed the fps to 70 to get a slow-motion picture, which is one of the things I am particularly looking forward to editing. My absolute favorite part of the day was covering Jake, our victim, in fake blood, and filming the scenes where he was dead in the elevator. Since we planned to cover him in fake blood, we bought the shirt and sweater he was wearing to be able to cover them in blood as well. This means we were able to put a bloody footprint on his sweater, and really cover him in blood, since our lead, Liv, was kicking his head in. We filmed this from a low angle, because not only does it connote a sense of power, but then we can also allude to the fact Jake is being murdered without causing him any harm. I instructed Jake not to be silent as Liv was fake kicking him, as it was effective to hear his last breath quite audibly. We had Mike bring in a GoPro, as we wanted to create essentially CCTV or security camera footage, and so, one of the final scenes we shot was manually using a Go Pro to create this effect, we filmed it a few times, it posed challenges since we wanted to film from so high, we were unable to see the composition

 before shooting, but we were able to go back and adjust a few takes, and we figured it our rather quickly, Our last few shots were the most difficult however, because they required the elevator to be moving, either up or down. There were entrances, and Liv’s final exit. In the end however, all these scenes were shot efficiently. Liv's final exit from the elevator was the hardest because the elevator had to arrive before she could exit it, and there was an envelope which she planned to rip up, but for continuity reasons, we could only take that shot once, because we had only been filming with one envelope. We managed to finish filming ahead of schedule, and I'm very happy with the footage we got. This has been an invaluable learning experience and really helped me become comfortable in a on-set environment. If I was to do this again, knowing what I know now, I would have probably aimed to film in a larger elevator, and ensure to have multiples of every prop needed so we can ensure continuity more easily. Overall however, this shoot day was extremely successful.