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