Wednesday, 9 February 2011

Intro to still photography, basic composition and Photoshop.

In our first week at Hurtood House we learnt about the rule of thirds in photography photos.  



The red circles are hot spots, the lines come in in the thirds hence rule of thirds.

to create an effective photo you must keep in mind the rule of thirds and hotspots.
here is an example I have made using the poster to the Matrix, the yellow lines are for the thirds and the hotspots and the red lines signify the sight lined which are looked at while making the poster, they are used to guide the eye to the important places on the poster

Wednesday, 26 January 2011

account of shoot day



we arrived on set on friday the 21st of January after having set up a basic outline of the set the night before, we recieved more probs and mockups to make the set more realistic, the set we created was pretty accurate according to the immage of the set we came up with. Once having set up the set we realised that we could not have the correct focus on the objects chosen in accordance to our story board so we had to move parts of the set to get the right focus and later in the day place tracks to move around the set for our tracking shots.
we started with the easier shot which was that of a lightbulb flickering with the brick wall background, for this to work we had to move the suspended lightbulb forwards and place the camera at least a meter away, we then had to place a redhead light aimed at the wall which would turn on at the same time as the lightbulb. the shot consisted of about 1 minute of footage of the light bulb flickering and going out and turning on. this shot worked exactly as our story board had intended exept the light bulb was on the other side of the screen.
the next shot was a five part shot as we had to shoot a minute of the glass with a computer mouse, then a minute of the dead mouse, another minute of the mouse placed differently, the footage of the dead rat and finaly the footage of a drop of oil going down the whine glass. the shot hopefully will come together nicely.
 The third shot is that of an ice cube melting in real time which we will now fast forward and then reverse to make it seem as if a puddle tuned into an ice cube.


 to set up the next shot we had to start weeks in advance geting some fruit and allowing it to rot, then setting it up into two identicle fruit bowls having rotten fruit in one and good fruit in the other, then setting up two tables, one to place the bottle of wine and the next to place the fruit bowl we then set up the tracks and set up the camera on the Spider Dolly, we then had to repeat the shot panning across focus pulling and panning all at the same time, this did not work very well but eventually we managed to get it right. we then changed the good fruit bowl to the bad fruit bowl and repeated the shot.

we also set up a window in the studio and placed a green screen and shot that for about 1 minute which we will then place a city scape into. or something else on the green screen. the lighting was slightly stronger on one side so we had to set up another light on the other side to balance the green.

we then needed another shot which we did by using smashed glass and making it fall in front of the camera which we shot in slow-mo to use possibly as a transition or as a new shot placing titles into it.

the lighting for our set we used a wash to light the whole set, at diferent strengths of light depending on the mood needed and the way in which we shot it. we also used a light bulb that hung from the cealing which we shot flickering to place credits into, and finaly red head lights to light up more specific areas of the set and to light the close ups better, such as the ice cube, the lightbulb and two for the green screen.

pre filming we decided to go with slow clasical music to make it seem calm and slow it down, so not contrasting the footage that we have shot, it was decided that me and Anushka in the group would produce the music.

my role in the shoot day changed from setting up the shots,this involved handling a dead mouse and rat, lighting, setting the lighting, camera man and melting ice using hot water and a pepette over the course of about half an hour. this altered depending on who was doing what.

Thursday, 9 December 2010

planning our film sequence

this is our first plan for the thriller film sequence opening.

Monday, 6 December 2010

what is a triller

thrillers are designed to keep the audience on the edge of their seats till the end of the movie, thrillers are designed to cover many different genres that are recognised largely by movie goers such as; misteries, murders and cheesy chase scenes in the woods.


generic conventions of trillers:
1. Plot twist
2. keeping people unsure about what is going to happen
3. a lot of action
4. often chaotic
5. have resourcefull heroes and exotic settings


thriller plots can vary widely, very intelectually chalenging, spy thrillers, supernatural themes and scientific and medical.


a popular theme is spy thrillers, a spy vs an unpopular enemy in exotic locations= LIKE
these are so popular because everyone likes a bit of action suspense and exotic locations.


some thrillers are challenging and can attract slightly more intelectual people to the cinema, these tend to involve some phsycological aspects which can get intelectual audiences to start analysing the character.


thrillers are often Hybrids, this means that they are not just thrillers, you can have any mix of the following and many more:
1. action-thrillers
2. adventure-thrillers
3. sci-fi-thrillers
4. crime-thrillers
5. western-thrillers
6. film-noir-thrillers
7. horror-thrillers
and even
8. romantic comedy thrillers


thrillers are massively suspensefull, arguably the best director of this was hitchcock. he would cover up information, this added more suspense and tension keeping the audience more on edge. this normaly would build up to a climax later in the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsobNoNJzOc
this is the link to a video of thriller conventions i could not get the embeded code as it was blocked...

Wednesday, 20 October 2010

Prelimination post production blog

Before editing we must open the fotage from the final cut server(basically a big external hard drive where we keep all the fotage) to the final cut pro (the etiting software)

first we open final cut server and find our footage that we shot, on the left hand side there is a side bar that has a little cog that when you press it brings down a list of options. you drop down to find the item that says check out, press it and a new box poppes up asking you where to put the files. You press the browse button and select the desktop option, this will put it on the desktop, then select to change the media into a type that you can edit using the drop down box on the left and press ok. the files will load onto your desktop.

Once they have moved across to the desktop you can then click on them to open the footage in an editing software. The editing software will open with all your footage in a box to the left.
creat a new folder calling it edit bin and then go thru all your shots selecting which ones you want and which ones you dont, place the ones you want into the editing bin and rename them appropriatly (to do this you press the modify button on the top of the screen, this gives you the option to rename it.) and leave the ones you dont in the original folder.

Logging our shots:
when selecting the shots go thru them carefully watching them to make sure that they are not out of focus, or not bubbled (leveled correctly), or that they are to fast, or the light is not ballanced, basically any shot you do not like as a group you get rid of leaving in the rushes bin, moving all those that you do like into your editing bin.

Organising your shots:
when it comes to organising your shots you have to think about how much screen time to give to the characters, and making sure you keep to the story board. We shot with two actors that we grabbed out of PS (private study) they acted out the story very well and did remember the lines very well however they did cut into each others lines to fast making it extreamly hard to edit and cut so we attempted to keep to the story board but it made the scene seem more like some sort of machine gun action sequence, which does not work so well so we have tried to cut in some calmer shots to make it a lot more calm but we need to stick to the story board and this is not really working out.

Editing in final cut:
when editing in final cut I found it really easy to cut to the exact place that we needed to cut to in the shots and the audio, the only thing that does not work out is that the actors cut into one anothers audio to fast making the editing really fast and seem like an action scene. We told the actors not to play around while acting and to not play with their hair so that the shots made sence. Wells the male actor in our Prelim is quite fidgety and we had several problems with the cutting as his hands where always doing something different. so the continuity was slightly off but we have sort of managed to cut it correctly.
The final cut program works like any editing software, two screens to view, one to view the shots in the editing bin and the other to view the shots that you bring down into the time line.

The time line:
the time line is the basic cutting floor you can add shots, take away shots, cut the shots to exact frames, add frames to the begining of shots or the end of them and do the same with the audio.
while using the time line you can get the parts of shots that you need to the areas that you need them in. you can also make sound bridges linking the audio to another visual shot.