Sound effects

We needed to add various sound effects and foleys into our film. Last year my group used Garage Band, a software of free and uncopywrited sounds that we were able to add into our film. However this year I used YouTube to download various clips to add.

Background car noises:





Heart monitor sounds:




Car crash sounds:





Songs to be played in the pub:

Restaurant background noise:

Deadline troubles

Over the past few weeks since our filming was finished, I have spent a lot of time in the editing suite puting together our shots. Although most of the project is finished, there are still aspects that I am not happy with and parts that we may have to change or possibly refilm.

Here is a list of things that still need to be done or changed:

1) We need to record a voiceover of Sophie's mum saying how tragic the accident was, and how she did not expect this level of recklessness from her daughter. We wrote a script previously and intend to still stick to that. The voiceover will go over a selection of scenes shot at the hospital which I have placed in between the conversation Sophie and Lucy have in the car and the crash itself.

2) We may need to refilm the crash itself. Unfortunately, because of our location we were not able to get the extreme long shot we were hoping for and so it is more of a medium long shot. The trouble with this is that when it came to editing I was unable to trim the clips to a realistic length so that the characters would have long enough to say their lines before the car hit.

THIS IS THE CAR SCENE I AM HOPING TO REFILM

I have come up with the idea of filming multiple shots of just one car head on, driving towards the camera, side on driving past and then another from inside a car opposite giving the impression that the car is about to hit. I will then stagger these as the car gets closer building tension and hopefully adding to the length of our film.

3) The film is shorter than we would like, and so hopefully with the new scenes that I am going to try and film over Christmas we will be able to meet the 5 minute minimum.

Submitted posters

These are the posters we have chosen to submit marking.

Filming the credit sequence - (Sarah)

Filming the credit sequence in the style of hospital lights:

I had the idea of filming the college lights to appear as the hospital lights in a worms eye view in the perspective of the character in the hospital bed. Overall this turned out really well and with editing definitely has given the look I hoped for.

Little White Lies Review Image Research

Little White Lies magazine always have an image at the top of every review they do, the picture is taken from the film that they are reviewing and is normally of an important scene, or one that represents the theme of the film, in this case the gun in the image is a semantic code for a thriller genre film. The picture measures 168mm in width and 70mm in height, this is the same throughout all the little white lies reviews. The image is also central and takes up nearly half of the size of the page making it stand out.

Final Stages of Editing

Over the past few days I have spent a lot of time editing the footage we shot in the car. I put together a number of shot reverse shots and adding some more footage into our sequence.

The first thing I did was add small snippets of clips from the hospital scenes into those we filmed into the pub. These were milliseconds lone and so only just noticeable for the audience. These are going to act as flash backs, and hopefully create a strong sense of enigma. I thought it would be appropriate to add them to the scene where they question how sober Sophie is, and whether it is safe for her to drive home. This is then ironic and juxtaposes the happy atmosphere of the pub with the tense atmosphere of the hospital. I changed the lighting again slightly using the three way colour correction tool, adding more white to the hospital shots. I wanted to contrast the natural lighting with the brightness of the hospital to emphasise Sophie's liminality and in between coma state. The colour correction tool has played a huge part in the editing of our shots because of its simplicity yet effectiveness at achieving the lighting we were hoping for.

Continuity is what makes the transition between shots smoother and less noticeable. One of the instances where I really had to bare this in mind was when Sophie and Lucy walk back towards the car after the pub. Sophie can be seen walking towards the drivers side from the left hand side of the car, before the shot changes to the right. I had to make sure that she was in the same place and the same distance from the car before the shot changed. Similarly when she reaches her hand towards the handle and the shot changes from a long shot to a close up, it was crucial that her hand was again in the same position.

During the conversation in the car, we wanted to give the impression that the vehicle was moving without actually driving it, and so instead of waiting to use garage band and take sounds off of there, I found a compilation video on youtube of the sounds of cars driving over different surfaces and terrains. I then used clipconverter.cc to download the video onto the mac. However, it was only the sound that I needed, so I imported the file into final cut pro and added only the sound to our sequence.

Additonally, I also used the 'Earthquake' effect on Final Cut Pro which made the footage judder quite rapidly. I then slowed down the movement which then paired with the sound effects and cars driving past made is seem as though the vehicle was moving. 

How lighting and saturation is changed in the car scene - (Sarah)

How lighting and saturation is changed in the car scene

Within using Final Cut Pro there is an editing section called '3-way-colour-correction'. Here you can change the whites, mids, blacks and saturation of a shot. For the car scene I needed to light some of the shots up with a higher contrast to make the characters more visible on screen. This made the lighting adjust however still keeping the dark background to show it's night time.

I also changed the saturation slowly in each shot to give the effect that the situation is slowly turning more and more negative and serious. 

Editing the car scenes - (Sarah)

 Editing - car scene 

Things we have edited in Final Cut Pro

• Shot reverse shots - We used shot reverse shots in the car for the conversation of the two characters discussing their night out and if Sophie is too drunk to drive. To do this I filmed from two different angles and placed the camera on the corners of the car with tape holding it down. As we filmed the conversation twice, in editing it was easy to cut each line the actress said and place it in between the other section of film. When playing it back, it now looks like one conversation and works very well.
• Adding slugs (cut to black) - The car crash has to be cut to black just before it looks as if they're about to crash. To do this, I added a slug (black film). Here I will also add the garage band sound effects of screeching tyres, horns etc to make the crash more realistic.

•  Cut the sound - For some shots we needed the sound to be cut or turned down for other sound effects to be made more apparent.
• Colour correction - I used the '3-way-colour-correction' tool to change the lighting for this scene. This was because it was hard to see some of the characters face or car so I turned the 'whites' and 'mids' up slightly so it gave a higher contrast. I also slowly made the saturation duller as the scene progresses to give the effect of something bad about to happen and the mood of the situation changing. I took this as inspiration from 'About a gir' which was a short film I analysed earlier in the year.
• Adding to the hospital section - The other aspect in editing was needing to add this new footage to the hospital scene flashback. There is a flashback before the crash (between the pub and car scene) and a flashback after the crash scene. This was easy as I simply moved the footage up and pasted it into 'Edit 8' our most recent edited footage of the film so far.

Filming in the Car

To film scenes inside the car, we used paper tape to selotape the secure the camera to the dashboard o the car. Josh and I then went for a quick drive to test the stability of the camera and how well sound was picked up against the background sound of other cars passing and the wheels on the road.

There were no problems picking up the sound. However, we decided that in the interest of saftey it was best if we shot the scene stationary so that Liz's concentration was not compromised. We parked her car in a dim part of the car park and used spotlights around the car to light the inside. While they were saying their lines, I then drove past them in my car numerous times so that my headlights could be seen in the background, giving the impression that they are moving. We then had Liz act as though she was driving, checking her mirrors and moving her hands on wheel, which hopefully alongside the diegetic sound effects and foleys we are going to add will create the impression that the car is actually moving.

Filming of the foley sound effects - (Sarah)

Filming the Foley sound effects:

After I listed the Foley sound effects we needed earlier in the blog (http://advancedportfolio201524.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/sound-design-sarah.html) I made sure to start the Foley sound effects as soon as we had finished editing the first two scenes of the film. We went out to several locations to find the correct sounds to fit in with our film. The majority of these were recorded using the car; for example the slamming of the car door, engine sounds etc. The footsteps were recorded outside of a pavement with someone walking on the spot. This gave a clearer and much louder sound than the film sound would've done and gives a more realistic effect.

We also needed to record the voiceover, used for the mother character. This will be put in editing over the hospital flashback scenes to convey how 'innocent' and 'perfect' the Sophie character appears to be to her mother.

Editing Shot Reverse Shot

Similarly to the scenes we filmed in the pub, we used shot reverse shots while filming in the car. We used them to capture the conversation between Sophie and Lucy.

On one of the angles, we placed the camera on Liz's dash board behind the steering wheel. However, this particular part of the unit was raised which mean we had to lower the steering wheel and the characters seats. Also, because it was raised it meant that the shot here was higher that the reverse. This wasn't an issue in the sense that the characters couldn't be seen, but it didn't give us the shot that we were hoping for. To overcome this, I am going to try and zoom in on the lower angled shot so that the difference is not so prominant and obvious.

I am not going to use a sound bridge while editing this part as both of the characters faces and mouths can be seen at the samet time, and a sound bridge works best for over the shoulder shots.

Continuity for filming tonight

For our filming last night we had to make sure we maintained continuity with our characters from the pub scene we filmed a couple of weeks ago. This means making our characters look exactly the same so the audience are left in no doubt. To do this we made sure they wore the same outfit on both days as well making sure their hair and make up were also a copy of before.

 

These outfits are the same, however in the latter photo our actresses are wearing coats, this was because of the weather being close to 1degrees cold and we felt it would be realistic for them to be wearing them as well as for practicality and warmth for our actresses.

Crash scene filming - (sarah)

Car and Crash scene  filming:


After filming the hospital and pub scenes, we unfortunately had to postpone the filming of the car and crash scene after one of our actresses catching flu and the other having a very busy timetable. During this time we were able to do lots of research on suitable locations for the crash. We looked at:

• Outside Oathall secondary school
• A small, quiet road in Crawley
• Any surrounding roads near Central Sussex College in Haywards Heath
• The pub car park of The Star (the pub we used for filming inside)

We finally decided on using the small road outside Oathall as it was quiet and had a few street lights which was helpful to us as we had to film in the dark.

Stages of filming:
Location 1: We first filmed the shot reverse shots in Oathall carpark. We had to use duck tape to stick the camera to the car, however this worked perfectly fine. We filmed some spontaneous talk first to get the actresses into the character mood and so we could use bits of this to fill spaces in the film. Secondly we filmed the scripted shots of the characters discussing the night and if Sophie is okay to drive (when is clearly far too drunk). We used Beths car to drive behind our actress' car to appear like the characters are in a moving vehicle.

Location 2: We then moved into a different part of Haywards Heath (still by Oathall) only a couple minutes away. Here we filmed the actual crash as there was more space and we could use the light of the street light in the dark to show the extreme long shot of the cars crashing into eachother. 





Problems in filming:

• Lighting
• No go-pro
• Script

The location of our filming - checked in daylight and darkness to make sure which space and lighting we would use.

Overall I think the filming went very well. With the effects of foleys, garage band and cutting to black I feel we will portray a car crash as accurately as we can. I took a lot of extra shits just incase we need more and also made sure to record far before I said 'action' to give a 'sandwich' effect so speech is not cut off etc.

Filming tonight

We will be filming tonight at 5pm at Oathall Community College, we hope to film the remaining scenes necessary to complete our film, these are:
-The car crash
-The shots of the characters from within the car
-The establishing shot of the characters death
-The close up on the debris from the accident

Setting and Decor of Car Crash Scene(Becky)

In our short film, there is a car accident scene in which both characters and an oncoming vehicle take place  in a crash during late evening in a quiet, well lit street, where one of our characters dies. Most of this scene will be filmed inside the vehicle when it is both moving and stationary. This will involve both shot reverse shots of dialogue as well as atmospheric shots to give a feel of the setting to the spectator.  

Example:




We will also film this crash scene from the exterior of the vehicle to show that the car is moving as well as to show the setting of the location in which this scene is set.

Little White Lies reviews - (Sarah)

Little White Lies  review magazine
http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/

What is Little White Lies (LWL) and who reads it?
What it is  - "A bi-monthly, independent movie magazine that employs cutting-edge writing, illustration and photography to get under the skin of cinema. Tired with the lack of diversity among film magazines, we launched our own publication in 2005. We wanted to introduce a new voice to the movie landscape, and offer readers an alternative to the me-too mediocrity that dominated the industry." The magazine includes information not just on film but also music, travel and pop culture to help appeal to its target audience. Every issue of LWL uses a different film for its aesthetics and layout. The company has released 34 issues, with over 2000 subscribers and sells in WHSmiths, Urban Outfitters, Magma, HMV, ICA, Waterstones and BFI Film store in the Uk and other stores worldwide.  

Who it's for - LWL defines it's audience as simply "people who want to read". The main psychographic element of their audience is people enjoy film.

What are the layout conventions? (The house style)

Little White Lies uses a select layout style through all their reviews in a very precise way. Each review will include the following:

• A main image in colour which will be a still from the film, centred at the top of the page, taking up roughly a third of the page length - this image will have all 90% angles.
• Title -  in a bold large font centred in the middle of the page just under the image. The first letter of each word is in capitals and all line up.
• Directed by, Starring and release date - in italics under the title (again central). The release date uses simply the numbers of the date (for example 23, rather than 23rd) and the month without the year.
• The names of the actors/actresses, date and director are in bold and capitals.
• 'Reviews' - rotated 90 degrees to the left. Centred in line with the director and actors.
• Actors names in the text are mentioned in brackets.
• Who the review is written by in bold and capital letters at the end of the review.
• Ratings justified to the right (out of 5) in bold in the bottom right corner of the page.
• Anticipation, enjoyment and retrospect (rating titles) - In capital letters with the description in italics justified to the left.
• The page number - three digits (e.g. 042)
• Plain easy to read font for the actual review text.
• First letter of the review is three lines big and in bold.

What are the style conventions? (Paragraph content and language conventions)

Firstly examining the paragraph content, I looked at Little White Lies review of 'Zero Dark Thirty'. Here they used the paragraph pattern of; historical and political context, links with the film protagonist, introducing the protagonist and links to the directors style and genre, the repetition and variation in the genre, the directors intentions, themes and aspects of style, The key scenes and unique elements that link to the genre and finally, the summary of the end scenes importance and distinctive features of the film compared to Hollywood styles. They then end this review with a positive last sentence which gives the overall outlook and tone the review takes on this film. The paragraphs evaluate a different subject, issue or theme of the film and tend to criticise or positively portray the same opinion the whole way through.

The language conventions of these reviews include a variety of language choices and points; for example:

• reference to film sources/contexts
• Evaluative comments, suggesting reviewer's opinion of the film
• Use of complex language (e.g. complex sentences, complex nouns etc)
• Academic referencing and restricted code
• Plot description
• Descriptive devices such as metaphors and adjectives to give a more in depth detailed opinion of the film
• The semantic field of film
• They also use the third pronoun 'we' which addresses the audience as a community so they feel welcomed and gives a more friendly tone.

Poster Draft Design (Becky)

Holby City Title

 mes colour  in bmy draft short film poster is typical of hybrid hospital thriller shuch as british televison series Holby city and Casualty. This style of effects and colour filters is used in the tv shows title sequence.
audience
ideas from holby and casualty
+ sign

Film poster design -(Sarah)

Film poster design for my short film 'Fault':

Choices I made with the film poster

Firstly, I chose the shallow depth of field still image from the film of the main character lying in the hospital bed with a tray showing bandages covered in blood in the background. This instantly indicates to the audience something has happened to the character, giving connotations of danger and injuries without giving much away about the plot. It makes the audience think of questions such as 'how did the character get there', 'is the character going to survive' and 'who is this character'. I edited this image to have a lower saturation to connote a serious atmosphere and also used an effect to whiten the edges of the image to give a dream-like effect with goes with the fact the character is in a coma. I used the same font as in the film to link this poster. The font gives connotations of skidding on a road which also helps gives hints about the film. 

I edited in the leaves used in every award and used the Toronto and London film festivals as the award giver. I chose best short film because it applied most to our film and 2014 obviously as it is the year we've made this film. I decided to use a white font for the awards and quotes to make the text more visable. The quotes I used I chose to come from 'Little White Lies' and 'Glamour'. This is because LWL would be a suitable review for our film and our target audience is mainly young women so Glamour seemed an appropriate source. 

The actresses names are placed in the bottom left corner because they are not famous names so are therefore less likely to be a selling point of the film. For this reason I decided to put aspects like the awards in a more visable place. I decided to use 'In cinemas soon' because the date of release of our film is undecided and promoting the film longer before it's released brings more publicity to it. 

When using the convention of the 'directed by' information, I placed this under the title, using the name of my AS film as it was under the same sort of genre as 'Alone' was a thriller and 'Fault' uses some aspects of the thriller genre too. 

I've also added the billing block which is a legal requirement for all posters and edited the website 'www.fault.co.uk' which would help give the audience more information on the film. I also added social network links such as Facebook and a twitter '@' for the film. As our audience is aimed quite young this would especially appeal to them. In conclusion I think this poster draft works well and will definitely consider all aspects when creating the final poster.

Film Poster Design

This is the design draft that I have created for our film poster. I decided that I would use a still image directly from our footage instead of taking photos specifically for the poster.

This was a shot that I particularly liked due to the wideness of her eyes and the fact that they are the most obvious and prominant part of the poster. Her smudged makeup suggests thtat she may have been crying, and the oxygen mask gives the impression that she is in hospital without revealing too much about the story line. I feel that the image itself is subtle yet powerful.

I used the same font for the title as we have used in our title sequence because of its resemblence to blood. However, I decided to go for a simpler font for the actresses names and for the tagline as I wanted the title to be the boldest text on the poster. I then added a billing block underneath and awards from the London Short Film Festival and Toronto Film Festival either side. I chose to place all of the text in the lower half of the poster again because I wanted her eyes to be the most dominant part.

The purpose of a tagline is to be catchy and memorable for the audience, and I struggled to come up with something that I felt would be effective. Eventually however I decided on 'One drink too many' because of its simplicity yet powerful message. Our film is about drink driving, and I feel the tagline coupled with the main image reveals enough about the plot to interest the audience without spoiling it.

I am proud of my firsts attempt at the poster, and hope some aspects can be used in our final product.

POSTER SCREEN SHOT

These are the shots that Sarah and I were thinking of using for our poster.