Evaluation Website

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Final version of OTS for Silent Temptation

Silent Temptation Cut Two from Sophie M on Vimeo.

Mine and Sophie's final version of our Opening Title Sequence 'Silent Temptation'.

Continuity Task

Sixteenth Day of Editing: Making the improvements from the feedback sheets to our OTS

In our feed back sheets, the last question was 'What improvements overall do you think we could make in order to improve our OTS?'

One of the answers was 'Lengthen the sound of the gunshot.' even before this answer me and Sophie have tried many different things to do this as we have noticed it finishes too suddenly; we have tried stretching the clip but instead of lengthening the sound it adds noises from the clip that we trimmed back in, we also tried changing the speed of the sound from normal to 'snail' speed and that distorted the sound too much that it didn't sound like a gunshot anymore, we have also tried overlapping the gunshot with the same gunshot noice twice but this also didn't work. We may try to record another gunshot sound, add it to our OTS and see if that sounds any better.

A second answer was 'I wondered if having the gunshot noise at the same time as the killer raises his arm would be more effective.' originally me and Sophie did have the gunshot at this point but having it when the music stops and just before the title of the film created more of an impact and we found more effective, plus it still makes sense, so we have decided to keep it where it is.

Another was 'The background noise.' particularly when me and Zach are talking in the wedding dress shop, however we needed to raise the sound of the clip up high enough that you can hear me and Zach over the music but also low enough that you don't hear the fuzzy, crackly background noise. I think me and Sophie have got the clip at a volume where you can hear both me and Zach but also not really notice any background noise.

Update: As one of our feedback repliers in the second focus group had mentioned making the sound of the gunshot last longer because it comes to a sudden stop, I tried finding new ways to make gun shot noises instead of a staple gun, my brother has two gunpowder balls which when she smack them together they make a sound similar to gunshot so I recorded the sound but a problem I faced was sending it to Sophie so that she could add it to our OTS because the recordings cannot be sent to anyone and I can't record it by video because adding a video to our OTS would play over top of our video. So I have asked if there is any way that she could try making a sound that sounds like a gun shot to add.

Update 2: I have found a recording app called 'QuickVoice' which I can record sounds on and send to Sophie in an email the recording of the sound for her to add to our OTS. So I tried making the gunshot sound with the two gun powder balls again and have sent it to Sophie in an email. Now, it is up to her to add to the OTS and decide whether it is any better than the gunshot sound we already have.

Recordings of the new gunshot foleying sounds.

Sending the recording to Sophie in an email.

IMG 5394[1] from Emily Smith on Vimeo.

Update 3: After trying the new recorded foleyed sound of a gunshot in our OTS it didn't work as well as the one we already have so we're keeping the original one. Above, is a video of what the new recorded sound sounded like in our OTS and as you can hear it sounds too weak to be a gunshot and doesn't really create an effect or impact.

Fifteenth Day of Editing: Feedback sheets

Me and Sophie made feed back sheets for our second focus group to fill out when we showed them the second draft.

Feed back sheets.

Below are the questions that were on our feedback sheets and the average answers for most of the questions.
1. Is the story line clear to you?
Every single one of our replies said 'Yes'.
2. If you answered no to question one, what confused you?
No one answered this question as they had all answered 'Yes' to the first one.
3. Do you think that the Film Noir genre is evident throughout the OTS?
Many didn't know what the Film Noir genre was but after explaining it they answered 'Yes, it is similar to the Film Noir genre explained.'
4. Do you like the pieces of music? Do you think they flow nicely into one another? Do you think they're too loud or quiet?
'Yes I could hear the actors clearly enough over top of the music.'
5. What do you think of the titles? The font? The colour?
'The titles are clear enough to read, and the colour of the fonts fit in with the typical Film Noir conventions.'
6. Do you like the black and white filter over top of the scenes? Do you think it would look better a darker B&W?
'I don't think the B&W needs to be darker, this could make the lighting look less natural.'
7. Is the gunshot, heavy breathing and footsteps loud enough?
'Yes.'
8. Do you think their is a wide enough variety of shots to keep you interested?
'Yes.'
9. Do you think the monologue and the use of a voiceover is effective?
'The voiceover created suspension.'
10. What improvements overall do you think we could make in order to improve our OTS?
'Lengthen the sound of the gunshot.' 'I wondered if hearing the gunshot noise at the same time as the killer raises his arm would be more effective.' and 'Make the background noise more quiet.'

Fourteenth Day of Editing: Second focus group

After making the first lot of changes to mine and Sophie's rough cut, I now showed it to another person to get another perspective and a second lot of opinions/views as this will help us improve our OTS to a standard that is satisfying. After this viewing I handed a feedback sheet to Carl (the person in the picture below watching out OTS) so that he could fill out and answer the questions we needed answers to and that we felt were the main areas that we were a bit weary about. I have also asked other people to watch mine and Sophie's OTS so that they could fill out our feedback sheets as well, the more feedback the better. Sophie has also done this.

Carl watching Silent Temptation, our opening scene.

The replies and improvements people suggested are in my next post about the feedback sheets.

Thirteenth Day of Editing: Our second rough cut

After our focus group and writing down a list of things that they had asked us to change, me and Sophie took out some time to make those changes, which are listed and explained in previous posts, we're hoping to now show this to a second person/group for more feedback on anything else, to get another perspective with someone who might have different ideas or opinions and if so we will make those changes as well.

Here, is our second rough cut of our OTS Silent Temptation:
Silent Temptation Cut Two from Sophie M on Vimeo.

Twelth Day of Editing: Making the changes to our rough cut

After the focus group yesterday, me and Sophie kept in mind the changes our media class recommended so we wrote them down to remember and made those changes today to our rough cut. Hopefully, it looks and sounds a lot better and more natural now. We will now show to people of our target audience and see if there is anything they recommend about it or whether they specifically liked something.

Here are the changes our focus group recommended that we made.

We changed when the titles of people in the OTS and who helped make it appear, originally they were on a scroll on a black background but that looked too much like end credits instead opening scene credits, so we've changed them to appear over top of the wedding shop scenes, in the same font as the title of the film and in a grey colour.

Names of cast and crew now appear over top of our footage.

We also had to trim down some of our clips so that they didn't linger too long, and got rid of a piece of music that wasn't necessary and moved around some of the sounds and music so that they sounded more natural.

Moving around clips and trimming them.

Eleventh Day of Editing: Focus group for our rough cut

Today, we showed our rough cut to our media class:

We got some very constructive criticism back on our OTS:

1. Our titles of names of people who are in the Silent Temptation and who helped make it looked too much like the ending credits to a film, with the scrolling white font on a black screen, which obviously doesn't go with the conventions of an Opening Scene.

2. The gun shot is too short and comes to a sudden end which makes it sound unnatural.

3. Some of the scenes in our OTS linger for too long that it also doesn't look natural, Miss Humpleby described it as "Like in a dance you count the beats as to when you do your next move, you look like you're counting or thinking of when to move on in the clip."

4. Some of the sounds start and stop one after another and people don't hear things like that in real life. Music in the black and white titles seemed pointless and unnecessary.

Although, this focus groups main aim was to get criticism and find any improvements needed, we also got praise, they liked the style of lighting and the way is was clearly and crisply shot.

Research into Focus Groups

Tenth Day of Editing: Rough Cut of OTS

In the video below is mine and Sophie's rough cut of our OTS for Silent Temptation, we've added all clips that we filmed and trimmed them down to what we wanted. All titles, music and foleying sounds have been added.
Now, we will be showing it to our media class as our first focus group to get feedback and first opinions on our OTS, we would like to know if there are any improvements needed to be made and whether there is anything they think we should cut/add. Hopefully, we don't get too much of a bad reception from our first focus group as we would obviously prefer not to have to change much but we need opinions to know how to make it better. After this, we are hoping to show it to some or a group of people from our target audience, to get opinions that matter more as they are the audience we expect to go and see our film Silent Temptation.

Ninth Day of Editing: Adding the foleying recordings to our OTS

After recording all the foleying sounds, we finally got to add them to our OTS and sort out where they should go and adjust the volume of the sound and cut what parts of the recordings down to what we actually wanted to use.

Adding the foleying recordings.

The heavy breathing and footsteps were added to the running scenes, we had recorded quite a long recording of running footsteps and chose what section of these footsteps fitted best with the scene and cut it down to that. The gunshot got added in between Danny stopping running and the titles.

The small sound clip is where we added the gunshot to the OTS.

Below is a vimeo clip of the actual heavy breathing and footstep recordings we have added to our OTS:

Eighth Day of Editing: Recording Jingle for our productions title and Adding it to the shot

Production Studios from emlouiise

Above, I have made a slideshare explaining what production studios do and why we include them in our media productions, and I have also named some of the most popular ones.

Foleying our jingle sound.

Above is how we made our jingle sound, by tapping a fork gently twice against a metal item, doing it lightly made it sound similar to a metal triangle instrument whereas when we tapped it harder it just sounded like we were knocking something which isn't what we wanted as it did not sound right, we added this noise to the beginning of our production studios logo at the start of our OTS.

Below, is a video of the foleyed jingle sound we made to go with our production studios logo:

IMG 5390[1] from Emily Smith on Vimeo.

Seventh Day of Editing: Final experimentation of foleying for our opening scene

Today, we recorded the foleying noises that we needed for our opening scene. These are the foosteps, heavy breathing, heartbeat and gunshot:
The footsteps went well, I wore a pair of Sophie's heels and we made sure to choose a pair that had a thick heel instead of a thin one as the heels I wore on the day of filming had a thick heel, so we needed to make sure the noise fit the shoe and the scene. I just ran on the spot while Sophie recorded me as the sound would be more realistic than if I made the running-heel noises with my hands.

Me and Sophie recording the footsteps.

For the heavy breathing we went with what we'd done in the experimentation foleying and I wore myself out so that the heavy breathing would sound more realistic when we recorded it, instead of it being obvious that I had made myself breathe heavily.

Me and Sophie recording the heavy breathing.

The gunshot went quite well, we used a staple gun to create the bang and we tried it on plenty of different surfaces to find the correct one that we liked most, the one we went with we'd used the staple gun on one of the noticeboards on the wall, here's a video showing us trying it out:

Update: We decided not to record the heartbeat as anything we tried didn't sound realistic enough and we decided it wasn't necessary to have it in the running scenes anyway.

Sixth Day of Editing: Adding music to the opening scene

In a previous post I linked to to one of Sophie's post about finding music for our opening scene and how she had found two bits that we both liked, today we got a reply from the person who owns the piece of music from YouTube saying that we could use it as long as we mentioned him in the credits and linked to him, and he asked if we would be able to send the video to him as well as he was interested to check it out:

Daniel Carison confirming that it is alright for us to use his piece of music.

We used the first 40 seconds of 'Forever Film Noir (Part VI) - Daniel Carison for the scenes where I am being chased and we lowered the volume of the music as it got to my voiceover so that it was still playing underneath to keep the tension but not too loud that you can't hear or understand what the femme fatale is saying. Next, we added '"Case Closed" by Chris Durian', originally we had planned to put this in with the wedding shop scenes but we found the jazz to jolly for the kind of mood and feelings that we want to come across from those scenes, so Sophie is currently searching for a piece of music that is more mysterious, dark and seductive for those scenes. However, we are using this piece for the title of the film and the credits as it is appropriate and fits with the conventions of film noir.

Update: After asking Chris Durian if we could use his piece of music in our OTS, we got a email from him saying that we could.

Asking Chris to use his music.

His email back to us with his reply saying that we could.

Adding the pieces of music to our opening scene (bad quality from the camera).

Update: Previously, me and Sophie were having difficulties finding a piece of music to go in with out wedding shop scene, but yesterday I went to hers to finish of the final piece of editing for our first cut and we looked on YouTube for a piece of music to fit it, click here to listen to it:

The piece we decided on for the wedding shop scenes.

Us asking the owner for permission to use it.

And we have added the piece to our OTS as we have sent a message asking, we have also checked if the owner replies to people's comments which he does and quite quickly so as soon as me and Sophie get that reply we can add it as evidence to our blogs.

Adding the piece of music to our OTS.

Fifth Day of Editing: Creating the Production Logo and adding it to our opening scene

In a previous post I uploaded the production logo that I had created for mine and Sophie's production studio title for Silent Temptation. In that post I mentioned how the 'L' wasn't straight and how we'd both agreed that the 'L' and the 'P' don't flow into one another like how the 'N' and 'L' do, this was because the vertical lines and the 'P' went all the way down like they were blocking off the 'L' so I have created a new one:

This new one has had all the alterations made to it so that it looks better and more professional:

Now, I need to send this logo to Sophie through email so that she can add it to our opening scene, we cannot do this at school as we do not have the wifi at school for me to be able to send it to her MacBook. Once, this has all been done we will move on to creating a sound/jingle to go in the background of the production studios title.

We have finally added our production studios title to our opening scene, and we added a transition before and after it. The transition we added in before it is 'Crossover Zoom' and this makes it look sharp and clean, following this the transition after it is 'Fade to Black' and this makes it flow into the scene of me running more easily. Soon, we will create some sort of sound or jingle to go in the background of it. Below is a video of the two transitions and our production studio title in the opening scene:
IMG 5269[1] from Emily Smith on Vimeo.

Fourth Day of Editing: Final decision on music

Sophie has been looking at pieces of music to be used in our opening scene of Silent Temptation, and sent them to me for me to listen to and give her feedback on what I thought of them so we could make a decision as to whether we would use them.
I listened to the first piece:

With this piece of music I agreed that I liked it and thought it was suitable, I think it would be best fit to the scenes of the characters in the wedding shop, as it is mainly jazz which has more of a romantic feel to it which fits with the attraction between the femme fatale and the anti hero in these scenes.
From looking at other comments from people attached to this video, the owner is pretty willing to let people use the piece of music for other uses as long as he is included in the credits, so we will send him a message asking if we can use it and then we will decide on what part of the piece to use in the scenes we want it for.

However, for Sophie's other suggestion of an artist who composes his own music I didn't really take a liking to as his pieces of music have more of a classical feel to them and he also sings in all of his pieces of music so I don't feel it is appropriate for the conventions of our film.
Also, we need a piece of music for the scenes where I am being chased that creates tension, I tried looking around but it has proven difficult to find a piece, I will have a look around again and so will Sophie to see if we can find something that fits what is requested.

Update: We think we've finally decided on a piece for the scene where the femme fatale is chased at the beginning, we like the first 40 seconds of it and Sophie said she thinks it goes well with the scenes we would want it to play over top of.

Researching Music

As neither me nor Sophie are very musical and we don't really know anyone to ask who would be able to create a piece of music for us, we have decided to look around online for some pieces and we will ask the owner for permission to use them in our opening scene so that it is not classed as copyright.

Sophie was allocated to carry out this task and if you click here you can see her post on it.

I will be listening to the pieces of music that she has found later on tonight as we can not listen to them at school because the school has blocked the sites. From there, we will decide on what we like and then we will ask the owner for their permission. We have decided where we would want music to be in the background of.

Third day of editing Silent Temptation: Recording femme fatale's voiceover and adding it to Silent Temptation

Ever since me and Sophie came up with our idea for our opening scene of Silent Temptation we always had the femme fatale doing a voiceover in mind. What we decided on isn't very long, just the matter of two lines but it's effective. Click here to see what is said.

Here, is me recording the femme fatale's voiceover.

We were originally going to have the voiceover right at the start of the scene, but now we have moved it to just before the titles so that when the femme fatale finishes speaking the gunshot is heard, we decided on this because it was more exciting and connected more to the scenes she will be speaking over top of than at the start.

We've added in the voiceover and decided on what scenes we want it to be playing over top of.

Second day of editing Silent Temptation: Adding transitions & titles

Today's lesson was a double and so we decided to add transitions so that the clips flowed into each other more, we haven't completely finished this yet so next lesson we will hopefully finish this up.

We also decided to add titles with the name of our film noir, some of people who helped make the film and the amount of hours between the scenes before the titles and the scenes after the titles.

We chose the font type in the middle 'Zapfino', however with the style of title we picked it would not let us change the font type for the writing to the one we liked and we couldn't keep the one that it was because it was too modern and wouldn't fit in with the context of film noir. So, we searched it on google to see if there was another way to change it on iMovie, (bottom picture) but it mentioned that some fonts for certain titles could not be changed. So, then we tried typing it into a writing document in the font we liked and from there tried copying and pasting it into the iMovie title text box, but this did not work either. In the end, we gave up with the title style that we liked as it became obvious there was no way to change it and chose a title style that we liked as well where we could change the font to the one we wanted.

Finally, we could start creating the titles we needed and these were:

Name of our film noir.

Names of the some of the people who helped make the opening scene.

Time change between the two different scenes.

Here you can see the titles and transitions we have added to our opening scene.

First day of editing Silent Temptation: Trimming clips & adding filters

Today, we started editing our raw footage.

And in this lesson we deleted all the clips that we didn't want so that we were left with the ones we needed, from here we started trimming the clips so that they started and stopped where we wanted them to, and finally we added a black and white filter over the top of the clips all the way through as this is a typical convention of film noir, however with the scenes that have been filmed on Elm Hill we wanted it to look a bit darker so that it looked like nighttime but after a long look around the software we couldn't find anything that would help us do that, so we decided to change the timing so that it would be set in the early morning at 5am.

This is image is an example of what the rest of the opening scene now looks like after the first lesson.

We are very close to our final edit of the rough draft which we will show to a focus group so that they can tell us if there is anything to improve, to add or to get rid of. 

To Do - First Cut

Done / Currently doing / Not done

• Add and trim clips
• Finish adding transitions 
• Add productions studios 
• Sort out music clips
• Foley sounds we need - Gunshot, Footsteps, Heavy Breathing, Heartbeat, Jingle for Production Studios.

When we finish these few steps we will be ready to have a focus group to get feedback on it etc.

Strengths: As I have done some editing previously in GCSE stage, editing is a fairly strong point for me, however because we are using the newest software which is different to the one the school has we are having to teach ourselves and learn new ways of editing so it does come with some challenges.

Weaknesses: Making a final decision on some things is proving difficult because if we cannot decide on something we'll agree to sort it out later, but it would make quicker progress if we decided on something and got it out of the way because we could always change it later if we preferred something else.

Update: We have decided not to have the heartbeat sound anymore.

Cinematography

Cinematography from emlouiise

Final preparation for filming and the final day of filiming

For our final day of filming, Sophie copied and wrote down the script and camera angles we are going to use from the post we created a couple of lessons back, which you can find here. This is so we had something we could refer to when filming so that we and the actors knew what we needed to do so that we got everything.

After Sophie did this, she sent the picture above to me on iMessage to check that it included everything we needed to do and so that she hadn't missed anything, I confirmed this for her.

We're planning to get to my sister-in-law Allison's shop by 4.45pm on Friday, I sent this to Danny to let him know and asked him to pass this information on to Zach, I double checked to make sure he had.

Update: As this scene we were filming in the shop is meant to be the day before, so we decided that a different blouse would be appropriate to wear as the femme fatale will have changed. So I wore the black pencil skirt that we'd borrowed from our friend and the other blouse that we were choosing between before we picked the cream one.

The blouse I wore with the black pencil skirt for our second day of filming.

I also decided to wear red lipstick with my outfit as this is another typical convention for a femme fatale in a film noir.

Danny and Zach were both wearing the same suits as there was need for them to change, because you will cannot really notice that they're still wearing the same suit and as they are men it's not as necessary or normal for them to change outfits everyday. To see their outfits ~click here~

The final outfits

Today we filmed at Elm Hill and in the next lessons we will be able to start editing the footage we have, Sophie has the same software on her MacBook at home as what we use on the Mac's at school so we will also be able to edit our work at her house outside of school, and bring her MacBook to lessons to keep updating so we have more time to work on it.
The boys both wore suits:

Left to Right: Zach who plays our villain/killer, and to the right in this picture is Danny our anti-hero

Here, is my outfit (femme fatale) I am wearing the coat that I mentioned in the previous post because of the extreme cold weather conditions, we were lucky it  fit in with our femme fatale look.

The final props and filming update

Filming: The final filming date we decided on is Thursday 22nd to film the outside scenes on Elm Hill, and we've arranged to do this in the afternoon as me and Sophie have double media that afternoon so we could leave the lessons to go up the city and film because both of our actors could make it. We have arranged to film the scenes inside Camilla Brides on Friday 24th.

Originally, we were going to ask the drama department if we could borrow some hats for the boys as they are a typical convention for film noirs, but from previous experience we learned the drama department like you to ask quite a bit beforehand to borrow their props unless you are a drama student, which neither me nor Sophie are. 

We were also going to use a fake pistol gun from my grandad but after much discussion between me and Sophie, and Ms. Moore we agreed that it would be much safer if we didn't use a gun on the streets where another member of the public could see it, just in case anyone reported us. So, we have just changed the camera angle of how this shot will be taken so that it looks like Zach is pulling out a gun but you do not see what he is holding, so the audience will just guess what it is.

Another problem we faced was the friend we originally asked if we could borrow her skirt for the femme fatale's outfit now can't let us borrow it, so we asked another friend who agreed that we could.

For the femme fatale's outfit we also needed to decide on an appropriate blouse for her outfit, we had three options to choose between.

Blouse number 1

Blouse number 2

Blouse number 3

We got rid of option number 2 because it looked too modern with the stud design around the collar so it didn't fit in with the context. At first, I was a bit skeptical about the third option because it has no sleeves and I would be running outside in the cold weather, so it didn't seem appropriate health wise, but me and Sophie agreed on a black coat which fit in with the conventions that I could wear so we went with the third option as it looked more vintage.

Detailed timeline of what we need to do

done // currently doing // to do //

time - management

you have 6 weeks left for productions

you need to plan time carefully:

complete a detailed timeline to ensure you meet the deadline - here is an example; 

Week beginning 6th January -  filming / Planning shoots / capture of photo images for phot storyboards / Uploads of footage / evidence of this added to blog

Week beginning 13th January - final week for getting all footage shot and uploaded / editing and creation of raw footage / editing to complete the first' Cut'/ creating studio & production idents/screens

Week beginning 20th January - editing images - to produce first cuts ready for feedback

Week beginning 27th January -first  focus group work (collect feedback from within the group & HY/MO) / re-editing / planning and completion of any reshoots / planning construction of sound

Week beginning 3rd February - construction of sound / titles / final edits of film OTS

Week beginning 10th February - exhibition and distribution of 'first cut' of final films shared on digital/social networks for the purpose of focus group feedback - use surveys/ questionnaires and allow time for feedback / work on Blogs to ensure all the above is evidenced: talking head, reflective note, production plans, slideshares.....

Week beginning 17th February = Half term - complete focus group research / complete Blogs / plan final improvements to productions in response to the feedback

Deadline for completed Research & Planning Blogs and First Drafts of Productions is the 28th February (Friday after half term)

Organising filming

Firstly, me and Sophie decided to sort out props, location, moodboard and sound for the opening scene of our Film Noir, Sophie decided to take on this task. She also took on the job of uploading a post about the script and allocating tasks to people. You can find the locations, props etc by clicking on this link. And the link to the script etc is here.

We have started a Facebook chat between both me and Sophie and our other two actors (Danny and Zach). This will just make it easier to communicate, and decide when and where we will be filming, what they need to bring and who they will be playing. Originally one of our actors could not film on the afternoon we had decided, but we have resolved this by all agreeing to do it on Saturday 25th.

The boys agreeing to be actors for our film.

Next, we needed to sort out my costume for the femme fatale role, we needed to borrow a black midi skirt to fit in with the context of when our Film Noir is set and to stick with the typical conventions, it just so happens that one of our friends Gemma has one so we nicely asked her if we would be able to borrow it for filming and she said we could.

Asking Gemma if we could borrow her skirt.

Update: Danny has now been able to rearrange his original plans so that we can film the scene at Elm Hill on the afternoon of Wednesday 22nd. We have also sorted what the boys will need to bring to the filming scene on Wednesday.