Treatment

Treatment

To edit the film opening I used Premier Pro. Within this programme, there is a large range of editing tools and devices that allowed me to perfect the final product. The following is a description of how I edited the opening and what tools I used.

First, I uploaded our footage, text, the company logo and other secondary images (Such as the BBFC Certificate) into Premier pro and watched the unedited film to make sure that all of the footage was there and editable. The audio in the film was very distracting to the Mise-En-Scene of the film as at points you could hear the camera focusing; Therefore, I decided to mute the raw audio and later choose an ominous soundtrack and other sound effects to later add to the film opening.

I then began editing the film. I started by choosing specific parts of the opening footage to cut and replace with cut-off scenes that held credits such as the name of Actors, etc. I used the cut tool in Premier Pro to do so - I made the cuts at points in the footage where the camera was trying to focus so that our overall footage looked as clean and polished as possible. I decided to keep a few of the moments where the camera was focusing in the overall film as I felt that they added to the ominous Mise-En-Scene.

After the footage was cut and credit scenes were implemented into the timeline, I added default fade transitions into the cut sections of the film so that there were not quick cut transitions between scenes. This added a flow to the opening which kept the creepy atmosphere. As the default transition's time frame was 0:25 seconds, I had to extend the time to 1:25 seconds. This allowed the fade transition to be seen properly and added to the ominous atmosphere. 

Next, after the primary footage was in place, I added the secondary images to the film opening. The introduction consisted of the BBFC Certificate, the company logo and the title. The BBFC Certificate is shown on screen for multiple seconds along side the logo and the title. After a certain amount of time, the Certificate and logo faded out leaving the title of the opening on screen. The title then fades out and the opening footage starts.

During the cuts in between the main footage, there are small second long segments that have been composed specifically for credits. In these scenes, there are blank spaces and within these spaces, I have added the names and roles of my group. The text I used was a very sharp, Gothic font coloured red. The text itself looked out of place of the scenes; I, therefore, added dimension to the text by adding drop shadow at a 45-degree angle to blend the text into the scenes. To further experiment, I added a keyframe onto one of the credit scenes: This key frame made the text travel from one side of the frame to the next and made the opening a bit more interesting.

At the end of the footage, I added a different logo to cooperate all of the groups work into the final film. This logo fades into a more detailed title screen which then fades to black.

Following this was the addition of audio - I used two different audio clips within the opening. One of the audio clips was a non-copyrighted, sinister music piece that overall tied all of the visuals together and made the footage more frightening. The music clip was continuous throughout the opening. I also used a separate audio clip which was a woman's scream. The scream is featured at the start of the footage when the original title screen fades into the footage - This is also when the music clip begins to play. 

Afterwards, I watched over all of the footage and noticed two things that I felt would distract from the Mise-En-Scene. In the entire film, there is a warm hue as the film used a lot of candle light and yellow toned lights. I, therefore, simply, colour-corrected the entire film to a white hue. This gave the film a cool colour tone and, in effect, created a more chilling atmosphere.

Furthermore, a segment of the opening was filmed outside where garden lights were used; These lights have a white hue and overall made that particular segment too bright. To fix this brightness problem, I added an oval shaped vignette over the footage. The vignette was placed in the upper right third of the frame. The vignette darkened the edges of the frame, fixing the brightness issue, and also highlighted a key scene within the footage. 

I then, finally, re-watched the footage and felt that the project was ready for rendering. The finished, treated opening was rendered specifically for a YouTube viewing and uploaded to YouTube. 

Written by Timothy Amaryllis

Resultant Footage

Edit Production List

Final Evaluation for the Film Opening

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

httpsf://bubbl.us/7959019

Evaluation of my Final Product from RebeccaIH

Evaluation from ryangriffiths1999

Evaluation2 from ryangriffiths1999

Evaluation-By Rebecca Harris
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Firstly, the technologies I have used to construct my product are photoshop and premiere pro. My group and I used Photoshop to design our company logo. We found this beneficial due to it being a quick and cheap process as well as making a final product which looks professional and realistic. In addition, we used Premiere Pro to edit and construct our final media production of a film opening. This was also beneficial due to it, again, being a quick process as well as it helping us construct our final media product and including tools such as colour correction and transitions.

However, to get to that point, we used Youtube; IMDB; and Rotten Tomatoes to research other horror/thriller genre films such as 'The Boy'; ' Insidious'; 'Woman In Black'; 'Ouija' and 'Poltergeist'. We researched the story plot as well as watching the trailers and film openings to them to gather ideas on how we should construct our horror film opening and include some conventions to indicate that it was a horror genre. For example, the use of dim lighting, blood and props used such as a knife. 

Furthermore, to film our final media product, we used a video camera (Nikon DSLR D3300) which has a resolution of 24.2 MP and a crop sensor size. It has a total of 24,780,000 pixels and an image processor of EXPEED 4, which gives high definition when filming. Using this gave my group and I an advantage due to one member already owning one, as well as everyone knowing how to use the camera, therefore the process of filming was quick and simple. 

Overall, as a group, we have learned that technologies are important tools when producing and researching media products due to gaining information and understanding key concepts of different genres, as well as gathering new ideas from other products to create our own. For example, we researched 'Insidious', which was the film that we mainly influenced our film opening on due to it meeting many conventions of the horror genre, which we were inspired with and therefore used some of the connotations ourselves. For example the blackouts, dim lighting, hysterical screaming and use of dead victims.

Planning Film Opening- Site Plan

Bottom Floor of Tim's house:

Top floor of Tim's house:

Production Schedule-Budget Proposal

Overall, the group had a very low budget due to having a member of our group, Tim, allowing us to film our opening scene in his house, the makeup and having majority of the props such as the candles and a knife. He also purchased the meal which was the bottles of water due to the whole cast eating before arriving at the filming location. In addition, I provided the group with the tarot cards. 
Having a low budget helped my group as we didn't have to spend a lot of time filming therefore this helped us have more time to edit the film opening, and make any changes such as more filming incase there was a lack of continuity editing or an error in the lighting or equipment used.

Planning Film Opening- Storyboard

A storyboard is a graphic organizer in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. -Wikipedia.
These are used within the media industry to plan a film, TV series or project to have a clear and understanding view of what to film, when, where, the duration of the shots, as well as the types of editing used and cinematography.

Evaluation

Firstly, we chose Tim's storyboard due to it meeting many conventions of the horror genre. For example, the mise-en-scene used in the storyboard is the location of a house, which is stereotypical for a teenage horror/thriller genre film as well as the equipment used being normal household objects such as candles and knives. Also, the costumes used for the characters are casual as the story plot is set in modern times (for example the antagonist wearing black), however the stroyboard focuses more on the dialogue of the walk-through of the house after the murders. The lighting within the film opening will be dim due to it being another key convention within the horror genre due to it forming a tense and eerie atmosphere which, using Barthes Enigma Theory, will be using the symbolic coe due to it connoting darkness and mystery such as why the teenagers are dead and what caused it to happen? Therefore, this makes the target audience watching question on what's happening and engages them to watch more.  

Secondly, the cinematography used within the storyboard are many extreme close ups when credits of the producer, director and actors are shown whilst showing props such as candles, tarot cards and a knife with dripping blood, which are key conventions of the horror genre as teenagers tend to play with ouija boards and tarot cards and end up getting into a dangerous situation. Also, many medium shots are used to establish the scenery around the audience and make it more realistic due to the cinematography throughout the whole film opening being in a point-of-view shot. Again, this will engage the target audience to watch the film and make them feel like they're in the scene themselves walking around the house. In addition, long established shots are also used to show the scenery as well as the dead victim (damsel in distress) and the murderer's (antagonist) body language as well as their facial expressions. According to Propp's character theory, every film uses at least two or more of the eight character types which are: the hero, villain, princess, dispatcher, donor, helper, father and the false hero. In my film opening, i'll be using the villain and princess. However, the princess will be the victim who cannot be saved and is a male, which portrays Propp's theory due to not following the stereotypical role of a princess.

Furthermore, the editing which will be used are mainly fade-in's and fade-out's as the film opening is a walkthrough in a teenagers house, which extends the duration of the shots as well as the opening itself. This is a key convention of the horror genre due to other film openings such as Insidious (which our opening was inspired by) having slow paced film opening which engages the audience to watch more and fears them by building tension. Also, blackouts will be used to build tension as well as fearing the audience as to wondering what will happen next (Barthes Enigma Theory). Blackouts are a key convention of the horror genre as they work well with dim lighting and it's also easier to edit scenes between them. This therefore helps consume time when editing as well as decreasing the pace of the shots.

Finally, the sounds which we will be including in our film opening are non-diegetic sounds. For example, in the beginning we tend to use screaming as the title shows the signify that an event has occurred and therefore, using Barthes Enigma Theory, making the audience question on what's going on by using the enigma code. Also, we intend to use continuous slow-paced eerie music throughout the whole film opening to build tension and create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the target audience watching. These sounds are key conventions within the horror genre due to the use of exaggerating screaming and slow-paced music, which is used in many films such as Insidious and Thir13en Ghost. This helps engage the audiences attention and make them watch it, which also helps my film sell easier and more successfully to the target audience.