Construction Post 27: My Personal Contribution to Filming the Sequence

I served different roles in each of the different locations:

Location 1 & 2: Laith's House and Enfield Island Village Forest

• Director: This meant that I helped organise actors and help them with things such as learning the script. It also meant that when shooting I would position the actor and give them pointers on how to deliver their lines or action. Part of my role as director was also ensuring the set looked how we wanted it to.
• Cameraman: As both other members in my group were acting in these two locations we agreed that I would stay on camera as it meant that not only would I be able to direct easily but it also ensured I was still doing a fair amount of work. Additionally, our outdoor shots were handheld shots and we realised that I had the most steady hands, therefore it made sense for me to shoot these.

Footage of me as cameraman

Location 3: School - Media Classroom

• Organizer: I was in charge of organising our actor for this scene, I discussed an ideal shooting time with and confirmed it. Then the night prior to the shoot I made sure to remind him of the shooting arrangements the next day. Additionally, I was in charge of organising a suitable costume for the actor and making sure it was ready for him on the day. I am happy to say I fulfilled both these duties well. 
• Actor: I wasn't the main actor, however I was in the newsroom acting as a worker. This involved me wearing a smart costume and acting as if I was filing documents. My role here was important as it added to the realism of the scene, thus allowing the audience to engage easier.

Screenshots of myself organising with my actor when and where we would have our shoot

Construction Post 26: Edit Week 2: Titles, Video FX, Grading

Following a successful edit week 1, we wanted to continue this by completing our film opening by the end of edit week 2. This involved us putting in and editing all the footage from the back up shoot, as well as grading each shot, and putting in titles and video FX when necessary. Similar to edit week 1, we had an edit schedule for edit week 2 to ensure everyone did a fair amount of work.

In terms of grading, we wanted to darken and increase the contrast of every shot, particularly the ones of the antagonist so as to subtly obscure his facial details and build an atmosphere of suspense and mystery. Our inspiration for this grading style was a film of a similar genre; The Dark Knight; as seen below:

The grading in Disturbances (our film opening)

The grading in The Dark Knight (inspiration)

I believe we achieved this effect with ours, although the orange look that we had in each shot interfered with this and perhaps held us back. In the future I would consider using a less orange room as all the walls in the room were orange which went against our intended dark, high contrast theme.

To achieve this effect in grading we used three tools:
1) Three-Way Colour Corrector
2) Levels
3) ProcAmp

In terms of titles, we created them on LiveType using the 'frigid' effect as well as also using the 'drop in' effect on the title 'Disturbances'. Our titles were white so as to create a strong contrast against the dark shot and effectively super impose themselves onto the screen. The inspiration for our titles came from a variety of similar genre films, for example Se7en inspired the idea or a white contrasting title colour and The Dark Knight inspired our title order.

Title contrast in Disturbances (our film opening)

Title contrast in Se7en (inspiration)

Finally, we didn't use too many video FX in our film opening, we only used them when the camera fell and broke during the news report as that was the only appropriate time to do so. We used a glitch effect, wave warp and noise FX to create the effect of something inhuman interfering with the broadcast whilst also making the breaking of the camera look realistic. We took inspiration for this from Blair Witch and Quarantine.

Construction Post 25: Our Back Up Shoot

We scheduled our back up shoot for the 5th of March from 9am to 4pm, although as we were very time-efficient we did not use this whole time slot. Our efficiency can be put down to our preparedness beforehand as we had all the shots we needed to reshoot on a back up shootboard:

We shot the news reporter scene again and it was far more successful than it was in the main shoot. The costume looked far more professional and conventional of a news reporter and our actor stared straight into the camera as you would expect unlike in the main shoot.

News Reporter After

News Reporter Before

We almost faced huge complications with this shot though due to the weather as it was forecasted to rain all day, however, having paid close attention to the weather using the BBC weather app we managed to shoot in a relatively dry period of the day so it didn't interfere much with the shot.


We also took advantage of the back up shoot to shoot some reaction shots of the antagonist reacting to the news report in order to solve our continuity errors. This turned out very well and allowed us to establish a clear sense of continuity throughout. One reaction shot can be seen below:



Overall, the back up shoot was a resounding success and was definitely worth the time as we more than achieved every goal we set.

Construction Post 24: Edit Week 1: The Basic Edit

As a group our target for the end of edit week 1 was to have gotten all our shots into the editing timeline and edited for continuity with the soundtrack and sound effects behind it. The reason for this is because this way we could see if there were any poor quality shots or if we weren't meeting the two minute demand of the brief and thus decide if we needed a back up shoot or not. This proved to be a very sensible approach as we realised we needed a back up shoot in this week which gave us plenty of time to organise and prepare for it. We also agreed an edit schedule at the beginning of the week to ensure everyone did a fair amount of work, this can be seen below:

We flagged up two main issues that required us to do a back up shoot:

1) In the news reporter scene, our actor does not look directly at the camera but instead looks to the side as she is in fact reading off of a script. This was very obvious when we were editing and having talked to friends, our technician and teachers we decided that it was not good enough and we would definitely require a back up shoot.


As you can see our news reporter clearly looks to the side of the camera

2) We had continuity errors throughout as it was not obvious to the audience that the antagonist was watching the news report on his laptop. This therefore ruined the atmosphere and immersion of our film opening and so we decided that we would have to shoot reaction shots so as to really enforce that the antagonist was watching the news report.

Even after highlighting these issues, we as a group felt very good about what we had and very confident going forward as we were being very efficient with time and already sticking to the brief very closely.

Construction Post 23: Our Post-Production Kit

Our post-production consisted of two factors:

Editing Hardware:

1) A computer with dual moniters

2) Headphones

3) A MacBook

These three pieces of hardware combined formed what we referred to as our edit suite.

Our Edit Suite

Editing Software:

1) Adobe Premiere Pro

2) LiveType

All editing was carried out on a PC on Adobe Premiere Pro with the exception of titles which were done exclusively on the MacBook using a programme called LiveType.

LiveType on the MacBook

Construction Post 22: Our Main Shoot Session

Following our test shoot we had made some revisions to the shootboard as we felt the need to add in two master shots for the sake of continuity and reaction shots.

Issues:

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances our main actor for the main shoot (the news reporter) didn't show up and only told us the day of the shoot that she couldn't make it. As a result, Aisha - another member of our group - had to step up and be our actor. However, due to the short notice Aisha was unable to memorise the script and as a result you can quite clearly see in the shot that she is reading off of a script to the side of the camera. This created a very unprofessional atmosphere and took away from the intended realism of a news report. This can be seen below:

Another issue is that when our antagonist opens up the laptop we experience a huge lighting error as the camera solely focused on the light from the laptop thus darkening the rest of the room to the point at which all details are obscured. We experimented with lighting in the main shoot to try and resolve this but had no success, then following a discussion with out technician and teacher we decided we would have to try and resolve the problem in editing.

What went well:

The test shoot highlighted multiple issues to us that we went on to resolve in the main shoot. For example, in the main shoot our outdoor setting does not look realistic as a forest as there is not enough trees or shrubbery, and you can also hear children  playing in the nearby park. We resolved this in the main shoot by venturing deeper into the forest and in the end it created a much more realistic setting.

The news anchor scene in the newsroom was also very unrealistic due to our actors costume and a lack of activity in the newsroom behind our actor. To resolve this we provided the actor with our own costume, one that was more fitting of a news anchor and this proved to be a huge success. Furthermore, for the main shoot I went into the newsroom and worked on organising documents from the printer so as to effectively connote that it is a newsroom.

In the right of the shot you can see myself organising documents from the printer

Construction Post 21: Our Production Kit

Before we took out our production kit, our media technician gave us in-depth demonstrations on how to use all the equipment in a safe and efficient manner. Then we signed an equipment release form to confirm we had been taught how to use the equipment and that we understood we had full responsibility for the kit.

The equipment found in our production kit

The equipment release form

Equipment List:

Canon Legria HF G30 Camera

This camera was small and easily portable, therefore very easy for us to shoot with, particularly in the outdoor shoot. Additionally, the camera has an instant face detection feature which helped ensure our shots were in focus and of a good quality. Finally, the touchscreen feature proved very useful as it allowed us to easily watch back our rushes and decide if we had enough good takes on the day.



Canon DM-100 Directional Microphone

The microphone allowed us to easily pick up dialogue even through heavy background noise, This proved very useful in our outdoor shoot as this shoot was dialogue heavy, however there was also heavy rain and the microphone allowed us to still hear our actor through it, thus ensuring a high quality shoot,



Libec TH-650 HD Tripod

This tripod was very useful in the outdoor shoot, as with its retractable legs and spirit levels we were able to ensure the shot was straight despite it being on uneven forest floor. Additionally, the tripod was very lightweight and therefore very portable which was ideal for our shoot.