Audio & Copyright

Through research I discovered that I could not just use any music that I liked. Music has to be made to be royalty free under the creative commons licence for it to be free for anyone to use. Even then if you are using it and making money off of it it may not be allowed. I found many different websites and youtube channels where I downloaded the music for my film from, in order to keep from breaking the law and using music/ audio that isn't mine to use.

Like this one for example, https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/

I chose the music very carefully for each scene and shot for my film, adding in sound effects and different tracks on a frame by frame basis. Here is a screenshot of the audio timeline of my film in Adobe Premire Pro. As you can see my the number of keyframes in each separate audio track, and the number of audio tracks, I didn't take making the sound for my film lightly.

As you will see above there are sections of my sound design where I used silence, or very little sound. This was done on purpose for dramatic effect, to emphasise these parts of the narrative, and to make the audience feel as if on edge and uncertain. I believe this has worked effectively as my feedback on my versions so far have commented on this being a positive point in my film. 

The Disjointedness

Due to my lack of editing knowledge, when I first began putting my clips together I made a individual project for each scene. What I really wanted to do was just make a new sequence within one main project. However as I didn't know this feature existed I ended up editing each scene of my film individually on a separate Adobe Premiere file for each, and exporting each one, putting them on one new timeline and exporting it. This was fine in the beginning, if a bit lengthy, but the problems came when I realised how disjointed my film was. None of the scenes, while good in themselves, flowed together well. I have had trouble creating synergy through out my piece as I cannot ocular correct, pace, or edit my film together as a whole only in separate sections. This is something very small, but very valuable I have learnt though the corse of this project. And something that I shall not be forgetting in a hurry!

Improvements: Emma - The Second Draft

• fade slower when she is walking 
• blur George opening part
• aspect ratio??
• ring scene little parts jump cuts to shorten the sequence and cause confusion-
• callender shots cut to be leaner there is unneeded extra frames 
• more obvious that it speeds up during calendar scene
• re record audio in kitchen scene??
• background noise of other people taking and working 
• 180 degree rule is messed up in kitchen scene
• cut jenny's line
• add claps
• speed up Lydia looking
• shorten whole film by cutting unnecessary frames from shots
• its still a little disjointed
• cut down the ring scene its still to long
• George finding emma > kitchen > finds the ring (flashback) > train/ calendar (Intercut with) > shorter councillor scene > CCTV

Emma - The Second Full Draft

Emma - Act 2 Scene 3 Version 3

Poster Developments Part 3

Because of the new direction my film has gone in, in terms of the new CCTV footage scenes, I decided to play around with the Poster. I wanted to try and create a more powerful look as my poster is kinda weak with its current lack of direction. 

It was pretty easy to do as I am very confident with Adobe Photoshop. I added some noise, desaturated the picture and played with the contrast / brightness/ exposure. I then used the rulers to create guides of where I wanted to add lines in to make it look like it was recording. 

After drawing the lines, I added back in the text I had before, just on top of black boxes to make it look as if it was part of the recording. And finally superimposed on top a recording symbol to further reinforce the idea of it being a CCTV recording, and after lining this up to correlate with the other boxes I was done!

Im not sure if this will be my final poster, but I like it a lot more than my previous versions. 

(Inspired by this scene of my film)

Focus Group Feedback

Feed Back Questions:

(X= number of times it was commented on)

Did you understand the narrative?

No- 3 Yes- 7 

Did you sympathise with the main character Emma?

No- 1 A little/ Sometimes- 3 Yes- 6

Have you figured out who kidnapped her?

No- 2 Yes- 8

Overall improvements?

• Reshot councillor scene with an older actor and better location X2
• Speed up/ shorten councillor sequence
• Black transitions are too long/ boring X3
• There are some out of focus shots X2
• The shots are badly framed when emma finds the ring X2
• Speed up/ shorten calendar count down scene X4
• When Emma finds the ring there is a editing mistake of a black screen of a couple seconds
• Editing and sound needs tightening
• The first half doesn't flow very well
• More synergy between scenes - maybe do the warp stabiliser throughout?
• Sound design in pitch scene
• Needs to keep up the pace throughout
• Do you need the councillor scene?

Overall positives?

• The ending is really nice X3
• Clever shots/ good camera work X4
• style of narrative was cool/ advanced
• When Emma was being found, the transitions were good
• warp stabiliser was beautiful
• Very creative
• Good locations
• Editing was great X2
• Sound design was great X3
• The tracking shot was very effective
• Love the editing/ effects X2
• Very good cinematography
• Interesting character/ character development

Emma - The First Full Draft

Audience Theories in relation to my Media Product

• Will your intended message get across to the audience ?

I think it will, because of the clear message and reinforced ideas throughout my film.

• What barriers might there be?

Audiences may not get the intended meaning from the film that the producer may have been wanting to get across. In relation to my media product, my film is slightly controversial and is heavily stylised. This may not agree with some people's grand narrative and they may oppose on principle. 

• How will I overcome these barriers?

I will overcome these barriers by reinforcing my message though multiple different filmmaking methods. 

• What factors may influence my message?

The audience themselves will influence my message as well as the place, time, and method of consumption of my media product. 

• Which is the theory I agree with most?

The theories seem to link and correspond together, so I have had trouble picking a one that I agree with most. However I think I agree most with the uses and gratifications theory. It seems to make the most sense to me. 

Poster Developments 2

These pictures are screenshots from various points of my film so far. I think they make great contenders in terms of the poster because I didn't really love the other picture. I will think about it and maybe edit one of them up to compare and come to a decision once I have finished the rest of the film. 

Emma - CCTV Footage Scene Before and After

Teaching Myself Adobe After Effects

After I decided that one of my scenes was gonna be shot like CCTV I realised that I had no idea how to do this, and that my (slightly) limited Premiere Pro knowledge was not gonna cut it in terms of the professional look that I wanted. I researched the effect I wanted and found that I would have to use another of Adobe's software products After Effects to create my desired effect. I had absolutely no previous experience or knowledge of the software, so I was very apprehensive about the whole thing. To start off I watched a whole bunch of Beginner After Effects tutorials on Youtube. I tried to mimic  a couple of the basic effects on some tester footage. It didn't really turn out that great, but I was grateful for the small amount of experience. 

After that I watched multiple "How to make your footage look like CCTV footage" tutorials. In the end I combined a few tutorials to create my end effect. 

Basic things were difficult as I literally had zero experience with the software, so I had trouble importing the footage and putting it onto the timeline to edit. After troubleshooting however I got there in the end. 

Following the online tutorials I put a vinaigrette onto my footage, and then added a night vision filter. To this I re coloured the footage to be greyscale. 

Here I added a timecode to act as the time on my footage. As this is not its intended use I had to cheat a little by upping the starting frame by a ridiculous amount so it would show the time of day that I wanted it to, instead of the actual timecode of my footage. 

Next came the difficult bit. I made a new shape layer on my timeline, and then used the rectangle tool  in the colour black, and made a box the same size as the timecode. I moved it across to the other side of the frame, using the rulers as markers so I the would it be perfectly in position. Then I used the text tool over the box and created a fake camera name, making sure it was the exact same font, colour, and size as the timecode. 

(This was my crazy timeline at the time)

I then duplicated this box and put a fake date inside, again being careful to use the same text settings as both boxes before. 

Finally to make the CCTV footage really believable, I lowered the frames per second from their normal 25fps to 4fps. I played around for a long time trying different numbers and seeing how they looked, if they were TOO jumpy or not enough etc. 

I ran into some problems when I tried to export my finished clip. I couldn't export directly to a video file format, or to adobe premiere. I encountered many error messages, and had to spend a lot of time online troubleshooting. After a while I got the Adobe Active link to work and I sent it into my master Emma film in progress  premier pro file. 

From here I exported normally the beginning of the film, just to include the clip.