Initial Feedback - Notes to myself

Overall- Positive :)
But- Some pacing issues in Scene 4 (Take out the last day's sequence)
Reshoot two shots from scene 2 because of bad framing
Lots more filming to be done!

Poster Developments and Typography

My Personal Interests and Influences in Film

Why Is A Raven Like A Writing Desk?

The film “Alice in Wonderland” (2010)  directed by Tim Burton. is a great inspiration to me. When I was growing up Alice in Wonderland was one of my favourite stories, combined with Tim Burton being my favourite director, I knew I was going to love the film before I saw it.

However the reason I have chosen this piece to write about it because it was the first piece of inspiration that made me think I want to go into film.  It was a year 8 English class we were analysing the film was part of our studies and it blew me away to think of the level of depth and thought that had gone into a piece of media and consequently has stuck with me all this time. To me Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton are a dream team. Visually they are two imaginative creatives and together they made a spectacular film with a haunting design for Wonderland, a seamless meeting of live action with animation, and a great deal of offbeat, twisted charm. The film tells the story neither of Alice Adventures In Wonderland nor Through The Looking-Glass but more a kind of sequel that references both and incorporates characters from both.

I love hurtling down the rabbit hole and experiencing life from various size perspectives thanks to the ever-popular potions and cakes, as the audience, Alice, and I are re-introduced to some of the most unforgettable oddballs in literature. I think it was worth losing a few classic lines of surrealism, satire, poems and freaky stuff in nonsense literature to impose a very Burtonesque brand of bizarreness makes for an engagingly creepy story of girl power.

In my opinion, exchanging the child Alice for an Alice who bravely infiltrates the Red Queen’s court of tantrum-driven whimsy and rage as a secret agent, rescues her comrades from the head chop and bursts beautifully into battle in armour on the back of the Bandersnatch creates a pleasing, exciting adventure in its own right.

But for me, with my background in cinematography and photography, ultimately, it's the breathtaking visuals that make Alice's adventure so wondrous, as technology has finally been able to catch up with Burton and Carroll's endless imagination.

Emma - Act 2 Scene 3 Version 2

Film Review Research and Progress

I have decided that from my research my film review is going to be a one A4 page, as if from a magazine. This magazine will be posh and highly stylised. The monochrome nature will set it apart from other magazines and reviews like it. 

This is a template I have made in photoshop for my film review that I am going to write for my film. 

These reviews from Empire Film Magasine I found show what I used for inspiration. I identified features of the layout of the reviews and combined and incorporated them into my own template.  Although before I looked at online film reviews, here I have looked at paper based magazine ones. This is how I am presenting my review to be laid out, as if for a film magazine. (I have analysed this review in more depth in a earlier blog post). I have noticed how the text is presented in columns and important parts of the text are written in a different colour and in a different bigger font, in order to stand out. This is something I didn't add in to my original template, but I will utilise in my film review.

This review is from Empire magazine. I am going to design my review as if to also fit into Empire's page layout. However I am also going to keep with my own classy monochrome colour scheme as I want my film review to stand out against the others in the magazine. This I feel is something Empire would let me do as they are all about films and expressing creativity. When I redesign my film review template I am going to keep all of these things in mind, and create the best one I can. 

Progress Report Presentation & Emma Second Draft

Questions:
Did you understand the narrative?
Did you sympathise with the main character Emma?
Have you figured out who kidnapped her?
Overall improvements?
Overall positives?

Emma - Act 2 Scene 1

This is the scene that I am most happy with so far. The sound design, and colour correction that I did in the editing combined with my actors performance pulls this scene together very well. I am thinking of improving it by including a train noise in the sound design, and maybe editing the ending to reverse all that had happened to finish the scene in a succinct way. 

Colour Correction!

 I used the three way colour corrected wheels to manually adjust the shadows, mid tones, and highlights. And then added the automated contrast and shadow/ highlight to achieve my desired effect. Here I have screen shotted the before and after for comparison. This was one of my first successful experiments with colour correction in premier and I am very happy with the result! 

(After is first, followed by the before)

I toned down the vibrance of the greens in this clip because they looked unnaturally bright, and this was not what I wanted in my film. I wanted a more washed out look to fit with the feel of the rest of the film. 

This shot needed a lot of work. The room where I shot it was very dark and I has to turn my camera's IOS up very high to get enough light into the shot. This made the image grainy and with a yellowish tint. I got rid of all of that and made the image a crisp and clear white. It is now much cleaner and looks a lot more aesthetically pleasing than before.

The colour correction I did here has added depth and different tones back into the shot that the lighting washed out of it. The lowering of the sepia tones specifically help to bring out the greens and blacks of the shot.

This shot illuminated by the golden sunset was much more sepia- orange than I would like it to be, so I upped the blues a lot to counteract this. It gives a much more interesting image after the colour correction with more depth and interest for the viewer. 

I toned down the vibrance of the greens in the grass of this shot because it looked rediculously unnaturally bright, and I wanted a more toned down feel to come from the shot to fit with the style of the rest of the film.

The blues that I added into this shot provide it with a much grittier look than before, fitting the tone of my film much better.

I took out all of the sepia orange tones that the sunset gave from which I was lighting my scene. This gave the shot a much more professional look. However I feel that I could have improved this shoot even more by also getting rid of the pinky tone on my actors face which aren't very flattering. I will keep this in my mind next time when I colour correct my actor.

The bleak tones that I added into this shot represent my character feelings, of bleak prospects and a troubled past. I took out the orang-y vibrancy to add in this symbolism.