Editing practical

Editing Practical

My task was to edit the quick succession shots at the end of the trailer. This was a stressful task at first as I could not find any tutorials to help me with my task at hand, this therefore meant that I had to used my initiative and previous editing skills to help me complete this task. 

In addition to this, as I couldn't find any videos or tutorials which could have helped me I therefore had to experiment a lot with the editing of the black shots between the quick succession shots.

Firstly I started off by trying to use the transition effects between these short 1 second clips, such as 'fade to colour' however when including this and watching it through, I did not see this as being effective as this transition was slower than what I was looking for. 

I then got the idea of using a 0.5 second blank screen between each of these 1 second clips, as this would give the fast paced feel and effectiveness in which i was looking for. 

Another decision I had to make was whether or not we add these the black shots to be in-time with the music. However when trying this I felt that this made it look more like a music video rather than a film teaser trailer which was our task at hand. Therefore I stuck with the simplistic however effective method of adding in 0.5 second black screens between each shot in the montage of quick succession shots. 

Poster construction

 Poster Construction 

Firstly I started off by inserting the photo,in which we went to Bearsted train station in order to take. We used this for the background. I then realised that the picture was slightly dark, especially in the part above the main character's head, in order to remedy this, I adjusted the brightness of the image, but just enough to conform to that of the urban drama genre (shouldn't be too bright and should have some hints of darkness).  I also changed the saturation and vibrancy of the image. This resulted in certain colours becoming more noticeable and vibrant (such as yellow).  I then decided to sharpen the image I did this by going on smart sharpen and adjusting it so that it looked more professional and clearer.

I then added our title at the top of the page in a bold impact black font which contrasts with the white background behind it making it stand out more. And also put the tagline just below this in a smaller font and in green writing as this correlates with our websites colour scheme of green, white and black. I also added coming soon at the bottom of the poster, the age rating and production company logos in the bottom right of the poster and also added 'From the director of Fishtank' in green and black in the middle right of the poster.

I then found a billings block template on a website called ' Video copilot' and downloaded this template, imported it into Photoshop and integrated our own roles and names into it. After finishing this I imported it into our poster and placed it at the bottom, under coming soon.

 Here we were close to finishing, however we felt that some of the text did not work well with the background. We decided to change the critics reviews to white as the part of the poster they were placed in were darker and therefore black text would have been harder for the viewer to read. We chose to change the colour to white as we thought it stands out more and would be easier for the viewer to read. I also moved the coming soon text lower down which was the last change needed.

Finished poster can be viewed below:

Editing practical (Typography)

Editing Practical - Typography

Firstly I started off by inserting the titles at the end of our piece. We didn't need many titles due to our efficient use of music and other diegetic and non diegetic sounds such as our voiceover.

When looking at the effect that best suited our piece, I chose the dramatic as I thought this would fit very well after the fast paced shots. I then added the same font used for the title in our poster and website in order to keep up with the coordination. 'OFF THE RAILS' in white.

Lastly I added the text 'COMING SOON' in bold white text and it fades in a few seconds after our main title, 'OFF THE RAILS'.

Sound practical

Sound Practical

As we are filming an urban drama trailer, it is evident that the music we use is very important. The music is very important as it accompanies the footage and helps convey the genre. For example we use the music in our piece to differentiate the main characters two lifestyles, when he was good we use a voiceover, however when he turns bad and joins a gang we used the song below which fits with this mood due to the drums, bass, gunshots and profanity used in lyrics.

Non-copyright Song used:

Here I added 2 soundtracks to our piece, one being a fast paced, electronic song, the other being a slower and melodious trap song.In order to experiment with which song sounds better with our piece, I played both in the background of our clips.

I chose to go with the trap song as even though it wasn't as upbeat as the electronic grime song, it fit well with our piece and were able to use it  for a longer part of the trailer.

Here I have added this song in at the train station where the main characters girlfriend has just got on the train and he didn't have any money to get the train and sits on the bench, switching to the shot of a tree where the music builds in tension and reaches its peak/climax when the quick succession shots are played near to the end.

In order to make the sound of the music flow with the rest of the piece, I had to fade in the audio so that it didn't just start playing abruptly but however slowly builds up tension before the drop happens. I faded in the audio by moving the orange dots in order to create a curve, making the sound fade in.

Website construction - Part 2

  Website Construction

Firstly I started off by selecting a blank template, so that I am able to edit and create the website exactly in the way I want to. I used the minimal layout template as this is the simplistic style I am going for. 

I then proceeded to add the background video to the home page. This video included the main character of the film sitting at the train station as a train passes, and I will have this playing in a loop.

I then experimented with the text. I used the same font for the title 'OFF THE RAILS' that we used in our teaser trailer in order to connect the site to the trailer. I also added a navigation bar and changed the colour to green.

Next I added the critic reviews by inserting the stars and changing their colour to green to fit in with the colour scheme. Under these stars are the reviews in bold writing and in white.

I then decided to make the colour scheme white and green, also conforming to the stereotype of urban dramas using bright colours in their colour schemes. I changed the title to white and added the 'expand in' animation to make it more interactive and to catch the viewer attention more.

Here I managed to align the title and text so that it looks more professional and so that nothing looks out of place. I also added our trailer into the website and we are left with the finished website down below:

Website link: https://invictayear13.wixsite.com/offtherails1

Lighting Practical

Lighting Practical

When viewing some of the clips that we had filmed, we realised that some of these clips were dark and therefore hard to see clearly.

In order to remedy this problem I needed to learn how to brighten these individual clips. In order to fix this problem with our piece, I went on to YouTube in order to find a tutorial that could help.

The most effective method I found was titled as 'Colour matching on Final cut pro'. This method involved changing the colour of the darker clip by matching it to that of a lighter clip.

Screenshot of the dark clip on the right and the lighter clip on the left. 

In learning this process I have managed to do this process with other clips that need to be brighter or the same colour as other clips, so that time and effort is saved as there is no need to re-film these clips as they can easily be adjusted and fixed.

Poster Practical - Part two

Poster Practical - Part two

After the first stages of the poster which was adding in the image editing it and the title and age rating I went onto to do more.

First of all I changed the font of our title to our chosen font that is 'Bebas Neue' I downloaded it on to the mac where I could access it from Photoshop. By having the font downloaded I was able to add in the rest of the text onto the poster such as the tag line that is 'Money is the route of all evil' I made it smaller then the title as this is one of the conventions of posters. I made the colour green as this is our chosen colour for our film.

I then added in our 'By the director of' we chose the director of 'Fishtank' as its likely our film would be made by this producer as it is a low budget film. I thought it would look best on the bench where it would stand out, I decided to changed 'Fishtank' to our green colour just to add another aspect and incorporating our colour more. After that I put in 'Coming Soon' at the bottom in the same text and green, I went onto Google where I found our production companies logo that is 'legendary'  I imported this into Photoshop and put in next to our age rating as this is where it usually is seen.

I added in our critics reviews which we had already planned out what they were going to say. I made sure they were in the right position for our poster and size, I had to move them down as you could see the black text on the black background. I then used the custom shape tool to add in the stars for the reviews this was hard as I had to make sure they were all the same size. When I added these in being 5 on the first review and 4 on the second I changed the colour of them to green, I used the selective colour tool where I went onto the tag line and selective the colour green I used on that so the same green could be used throughout.

I then searched for a billings block template and font, I finally found one on video co pilot after downloading the font and template I imported it into Photoshop.

I then edited the text relevant to our film such as our producers and actors. After typing the right text and editing it I copy merged it on to the poster. When it first went on the colour was too dark and made it unable to see, so I changed the colour to a light grey/white so that it was viable.

This was what the poster then looked like. We decided that we needed to have an aspect of the light grey/white somewhere else on our poster, we thought that our critics reviews was hard to read to changed them. We also decided that it didn't look right not having our title and tag line central with the pillars so we moved it over to be in line. I also changed our production company logo the other side to make it look even, I had to change the colour of it to the same white/grey as it wasn't visible.

This is our finishing poster.

Overall I am extremely pleased with how our poster looks, I had to be particularly careful with the colour scheme and placing's other wise it wouldn't of looked right.  If I was to-do this again I'd use a clearer camera as our image is a litter bit bluer than I wanted, and I would of also paid more attention on the lighting as we had to work around the dark shadow. However I am happy with how it has turned our and feel it looks professional.