Final Package

The film:

The Poster:

The practice Magazine Review:

The official magazine:

Evaluation question 4

Evaluation question 3

Below is a Prezi I created for Evaluation Q3:

Evaluation question 2

Below is an 'Emaze' presentation I made to answer evaluation Q2:

Evaluation question 1

Below is a keynote presentation that I edited in final cut pro and uploaded to youtube as a blog:

Making the film poster and final product

Below is a youtube video showing how I made the poster for the film 'The Unknown'. I took a film using quicktime screen record and used photoshop to edit the actual poster:



BELOW IS THE FINISHED PRODUCT:






































WHAT HAVE I LEARNED?

PROS:
- I learned more about how to use photoshop so that next time I can use shortcuts for things to be more accessible.
- I learned how to use Dafont and the two fonts that I liked in particular were 'Nuev' and 'Universal accreditation'. They allowed me to work quickly and effectively, although, they became very pixelated as they weren't fantastic quality.
- I learned a lot about how film posters work, i.e. the dimensions, where the titles go, the film poster symbols.

CONS:
-The final result came out extremely pixelated which was an issue because if we wanted to blow this up into the size of a poster, it wouldn't look like very good quality. However, that being said, we are only as good as the equipment we have and hence, as we were using a beginner SLR camera, the final project was always going to be pixelated.
- I felt as though the poster wasn't 'catchy' nor 'poppy' enough. Perhaps some colour or different fonts would change this.
- I didn't leave enough room for social media symbols and release dates.

Director's notebook

Here is a youtube vlog I created to go through my director's notebook, where I kept all my creative decisions and references during the production of the short film 'The Unknown':

Making the magazine review

In preparation for writing the film review I analysed a film review from the Empire magazine. I chose their review of "Bridge of Spies" as I thought that the layout would be most like the layout of our own film review. In my analysis I stuck post-it notes to the different sections of the review explaining the information that was given in each section and so showing the layout. Below are a number of photos that I took of each post-it note with the magazine:

The film review begins with the title of the film and some key points about it such as the release date, the name of some actors and the director. Then there will be an intro in which the basic plot summary is stated. This summary is only a few lines long and gets straight to the point.

After the plot summary is stated there is the main review. This is the section which writes about all of the different aspects of the film and the critic will tell the reader what they thought of each individual aspect. The aspects that are mentioned tend to be; writing, acting, cinematography, editing, muse-en-scène and soundtrack. The reader can make their own judgement on whether or not to watch the film based on what the critic has to say. In this sense, the main review is quite useful as it encourages people to go and see the types of films that they should hopefully like and it will also make it clearer to the reader whether or not it is a film that they would enjoy watching.

At the end of a review the critic will often write one last line or a few last lines to sum up their overall review of the film. It is by reading this part of the review that readers can tell whether or not this film is a good quality film to watch or not. The summary of the review will often be what make people decide to watch a film or turns them against the idea of watching a film. The rating may also be placed here although it can also be placed at the start of the review as well. The rating is normally out of 5 stars and so any film that receives 4 or 5 stars is normally a film that people will want to go and see.

Audience Response

This is the survey we intend to show people:


Below is a graph showing the answers to a survey about THE UNKNOWN. The test audience we showed this film to were teenagers of mixed genders and interests:

 

Below is a youtube video with a review from one of the test audience members:

REDRAFT: Script

As the film has begun to take place, we have realised that the script we previously had was simply not enough. We wanted to make the dialogue as interesting and informative as possible ad so we looked at different literary references. One poem that we found very striking was 'Aubade' by Philip Larkin. The stanza below stood out in particular. The plan would be to have this right at the beginning before the story kicks in as an intro/ prologue.


These few lines in particular:

"...No sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round."

Below is the very final version of the script:

FADE IN - EXT.

Dylan, a young man of 19 years old and wearing dark clothes stands on the shore of a deserted, isolated beach. The sky is grey and the waves are calm. He looks out to the sea with an expression of desolate hope.

An internal monologue (VOICEOVER)

Montage one:

(with building intensity throughout) 

It's been one hundred and nineteen days since I last saw another human being...

Sometimes I wonder if this is just a nightmare that I’m forgetting to wake up from… Or maybe I’m in a coma and unconscious to the world around me. I feel lonely and I feel scared. Maybe that’s a blessing because I used to feel nothing. Once upon a time, I had a family. People said we were the perfect family. I remember my mother and father. I remember playing out in the garden with my older brother in Summer. We were young. The warmth from the sun soothing our skin. The smell of freshly cut grass and the vivid colours swirling around us. I remember our brightly illustrated books and comics. They gave us the belief that we were invincible. I think that’s as close as you can get to pure happiness.

Montage two

I should probably introduce myself now. My name is Dylan and I am Nineteen. I’ve never been very good at the whole social convention thing. You see, at the age of thirteen I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. My parents passed away in a fatal accident which I don’t want to talk much about. Firstly, I suffered from PTSD and then it developed into something completely different. I completely lost control of my own head. By then, my brother was eighteen. He had to leave school, abandon his hopes of a normal life and take care of me. He did a great job, considering what a burden I was. I was going to university in September to study astronomy and I could even stretch so far as to say, the future was looking bright. I had a girlfriend. She made me feel something. Love? I’m not sure it was that, but it was something. I told her I loved her and I felt like a fraud. I just couldn’t keep it together and I wrecked it like everything else in my life. I felt distant and thought I didn’t need her anymore. Never ever lose sight of the important things in life…

Montage Three

***’Nothing Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear - No sight, No sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with

the anaesthetic from which none come round.’

Hindsight is a funny thing and somehow, no matter how much control I clawed back from my schizophrenia, I was fighting a losing battle. And so, I left. Ignoring everything my heart was telling me and fully submitting to my head. Everything went grey and I lost sight of what I had. The schizophrenia came back with a vengeance and the more I suppressed it, the more my head contorted. I was paranoid and couldn’t silence my thoughts. All I could think was death would be easier and no one would even care. Selfish old me. I think of how I felt back then and that was easy in comparison to this. This Hell… This middle ground… This purgatory. 

What’s really strange is that I find things long lost from throughout my life. Memories wash up on the shore of this abyss like pieces of puzzle that I’m supposed to connect together.  Am I supposed to make some kind of self discovery to buy me a ticket out of here? Some kind of realization to get me out of this prison world?…When I first came here, I liked being alone, the peace, the solitude. Eventually I became confused about what was happening as a thousand rational and irrational thoughts flew through my head. Did anyone know I was here? After a while, it didn’t matter what this was but I couldn’t handle it. I was sinking deeper and deeper every single day. My chest confined like the waves above it, unable to breathe or reason. Then it became clear to me that I didn’t get out of the bath I took four months ago. That I had taken too many of my meds that night….

Montage four

(Whispers) This is my afterlife.

Editing: Voiceover

Recording The Voiceover:

The only voice heard in the film is a voiceover. The voice in the voiceover is Dylan's. This is used instead of him talking in the present moment of the shot. It helps to make the film seem more reflective as he speaks of the times in his life where he felt happy and everything that he misses. It also shows how he has reflected on his existence in the afterlife. The voiceover plays so that we can hear him speaking of the "middle-ground" that he is stuck in while the camera shots show him exploring this very place.

Recording the voiceover was the last task we had before making the final touches to the film. This was because we wanted to have the shots all taken and edited correctly so that we would know exactly how long he would need to all for and the different start and stop times in the voiceover. This meant that once it was done everything would be together. By shooting and editing everything first and leaving the voiceover to last, our group made the process of editing much more simple.

We recorded the voiceover on an iPhone using its built in speaker. There were a number of reasons for doing this

We had to record at the weekend and we therefore did not have access to the recording studio at  our school.
Using an iPhone was going to make the recording process a lot faster than spending hours in a recording booth thus meaning our actor wasn't being made to take up too much of his time.
An iPhone produces a lot less static noise than most recording equipment and therefore would help to give a clearer sound which would sound a lot better in the film.
After recording the voiceover, we transferred the recording onto the MacBook. Once this was done we added in into the video on Final Cut Pro and made sure that each clip matched up with the voice and that there wasn't a voiceover in any of the clips that we didn't intend to use of voiceover in. We also checked to make sure that the voiceover could be heard over the other background sounds.

Editing: Soundtrack inspiration

Inspiration for the soundtrack

Michael Suby:

Movie poster photoshoot

Below is a youtube video with a keynote presentation on my inspiration for the movie poster photoshoot. None of the footage we had was sufficient enough and therefore, we had to create our own. I intend to use a bath with different liquids such as milk and ink to create an effect. I will be using a two point lighting system with filters and the cameras I will be alternating between are a Canon 1200d SLR and a GoPro.

Editing: Colour Grading

After the first edit was simplified as much as possible and all the obvious formatting was completed, it was time to think about the creative editing solutions that go along with the film. This being soundtrack, sound design and colour grading.

Typically, we associate warm colours with happy themes and cool tones with more sinister and menacing themes. Therefore, it makes sense that 'The Unknown' will be colour graded with dark colours and cool tones. Before editing, I looked at some colour grading techniques for DSLR cameras. Below is a colour chart by Wes Anderson that I drew on for inspiration:

On Final Cut, the whole process is pretty easy. You just go to colour correction and decide which hue, exposure and saturation levels you want. Below is an example of my colour chart. After this, you can make one colour grade the dominant by copying and pasting attributes to other clips then just varying little bits as and when necessary.

Below is the original image alongside the new colour graded image. As you can see, there is a completely different tone

Editing: Formatting

We used Final Cut Pro X to edit. At the very start of the editing process, we took all of our original footage and pieced it together to make a working and continuous story. Then we used the 'blade' tool (shortcut CMD, SHIFT KEY, B) to fine-tune each individual piece of footage so it connected. We removed all the audio and put it to 0 DB in preparation for the voiceover and atmosphere tracks which would be taken from foley, free sound.org and also, from imovie effects.

Then after some research, we used the letterbox tool to format the movie into the standard film ratio 2:35. To do this we selected one clip and put the effect on the film, then we went to the side bar where 'LETTERBOX' had shown up and chose the preferred ratio for the film. Following this, we used copy and selected all of the tracks and hit paste effects. This was a simple way of ensuring that all of the clips had the same continuous ratio. As the clips original frame width was being squashed down, we had to use keyframes to ensure that the movement was flowing up and down from the central object of that particular frame. E.G. When using the props, the central object was the book etc and hence, that was the thing that had to be the most central.

Following this, came the stabilisation, rolling shutter motion and rendering. Below are the definitions of all of these things:

 Last year, we were unaware of all these methods of formatting. We used stabilisation but were unaware of the correct ratio for the film. Therefore, when we went to stabilise the shots in the new ratio, they would distort and slant. This meant that we couldn't simply copy and paste these attributes and instead had to stabilise each individual video. A lot of the film was shot handheld, my one issue was the lack of tripod use throughout, therefore stabilising on these particular clips wasn't possible.

Finally, when we were ready to upload the film unto Vimeo/Youtube, we had to ensure that every single clip was rendered in full. For this we went to FORMAT > RENDER ALL and waited until each clip reached 100% rendered.

Titling of the film: 'The Unknown'

Our group spent time discussing possible title names for our film. It needed to be something that grasped the audience's attention and suggested what sort of themes the film would include.

We decided to name our film 'The Unknown'. This is a fitting title for a sic-fi film as it creates mystery as to what is happening.

Our film is set in purgatory, a place unknown to the protagonist. He does not know how to escape or if escape is possible. It is unknown whether or not he will have to spend eternity here.

As he explains how he got there we learn that once he began to drown his decision of suicide was full of regrets which is something that his family and friends still living could not know.

Dylan is in isolation. For someone who had previously been very sociable and happy, his lonely and unhappy existence in purgatory is not something he would have been familiar with.

It was also unknown to Dylan what was going to happen to him once he died. Being stuck in purgatory does not seem to be the afterlife that Dylan expected.

Another thing is that Dylan's situation is unknown to the people he left behind on Earth. There is no way for them to know what has happened to him as they cannot possibly know what happens after death let alone what happens after death by suicide.

Throughout his voiceover, Dylan speaks of how he does not understand what is happening to him. He feels stuck and describes the setting as a "middle ground".

The title helps to give some background information to the audience as well as making them question what is happening throughout the film. Also, it creates enigma in line with Barthe's Enigma code.

Making a film poster

INSPIRATION

Before diving straight into making the film poster, I thought it would be a good idea to look up some examples and references that are relatable to my own poster. I watched the video below and came to realise just how much work goes into every final detail:



One film that I have continued to relate to throughout the making of the short film 'The Unknown' is 'Submarine', directed by Richard Aoiyode. The highly styled elements including the colour grade and the cinematography are very similar to this movie as well as the constant references to the sea and the depression related to the sea. I really enjoyed looking at the posters and there are so many official and fan made variations of the same film. All of them are relevant and include some prop or detail to convey a little about the movie, falling in line with Barthe's enigma code. Below is a youtube video I made of a few variations of the submarine poster:



I looked at some other posters with a darker tone and noticed that the protagonists face was always centred with attention to the lighting and colours. As well as this, the text closely relates to what is going on in the film. Below are some examples:



I really like the idea of superimposition of the character. One thing I was thinking of was having the sea superimposed in the protagonists. It is very certain that we will have to take more photos for the posters as the film footage is not sufficient enough.

DIMENSIONS

It is important to follow international standards for dimensions when making a poster for a film. This means that it will be easier to have your film displayed in a number of different places like the subway, the cinema etc. Below is a screenshot on landscape and portrait film poster dimensions:

Editing: Making an ident

To show I have thought in depth about production, I decided to make my own 'ident'. After my post on choosing a sufficient distribution company for the film 'Unknown', it became clear that after the main funding film companies' ident there are lots of smaller production companies. The first Media Studies project that we did was a titling project called 'The Witch project', we became immersed in the project creating a production company named 'Bronze age Productions'. This year, I decided to change it up a bit and go for 'Bronze Age Vintage'. I felt that it really fitted in with the idea of colour burn flashbacks and the colour grade looked like a vintage french film. Below are the steps of how I made it and the indents:

1) Downloaded rustic film roll stock footage
2) Downloaded 'moonrise' font from 'Dafont'
3) Chose name 'Bronze Age Vintage' and edited the style to allow it to suit the video. This meant turning down the opacity and blurring the title.
4) Added in a shutter roll foley to fit the video
5) Made the creative decision to add in an orchestra warm up. I wanted the sound to swell in the middle like magic so I added in audio keyframes and tapered the track.

Below is the result:

Final checks for the day

We wanted to check the weather forecast and tide forecast before we went to ensure that Friday the 22nd was suitable for filming:

Tide times:

Precipitation:

Temperature:

Wind:

Risk assessment

Below is a risk assessment that we created warning of the various threats surrounding filming in this particular area:

Schedule for the day of shooting

Schedule for the month

Character profile

Character Fact File

Name: Dylan

Age: 19

Gender: Male

Why we chose the name Dylan? 

We wanted the name to be as meaningful as all of the other cinematic elements. The film's title is 'The unknown' which ties in completely with the theme of Isolation. Everything is almost metaphoric as we tried to keep in with Barthe's theory of the symbolic code. The name Dylan means:

Dylan's story

Dylan was born into a very warm and happy family life. Growing up was easy for him as he succeeded in almost everything he tried. His mum and dad were always extremely supportive and he always had great friends around him. He had a girlfriend who loved him and a family dog. Everything was normal until he lived out what he thought was his dream and moved to London to go to university. Cut off from all of his friends and family, broken up with his girlfriend and broke with no social life, alone in his flat everyday. He felt the pressure of London life and the sheer isolation and decided to end it all in his depression because he had no other way out. Dylan is immediately regretful and longs for the simplicity his old daily life.

Casting Dylan

When casting, we had to realise we were very restricted with no budget. We had to think of our actor in advance and book him, weaving him into the story as though this was the perfect casting solution. We chose 17 year old Micheal Lynch as we just felt that he fit the part. As well as this, he has sufficient acting experience and is very enthusiastic. The perfect actor to play Dylan.

A list of possible shooting locations

We decided to try and scout out a number of possible locations in Northern Ireland. At this point we were dead set on filming on a beach and all that really mattered now was the actual aesthetic along with the accessibility and also the risks. Below are a shortlisted number of five beaches that we have decided to look further into Beaches:

1) West Strand beach:

West Strand Beach, also known as West Bay or Millstrand is a popular resort beach in the heart of this busy seaside resort. West Strand Beach is bounded at its northern end by the busy habour and flanked along its eastern boundary by a well used pedestrian/cycle promenade. Easy access to and from the town centre and all associated amenities/services. Very vast and in keeping with the theme of isolation and loneliness. (Co. Antrim)

                                             
2) Ballycastle Marina:

This is much different from what I was originally thinking off but the harshness of the rocks may actually work. (Co. Antrim)

                                   
3) Whiterocks beach, Portrush

The beach, situated just off the Causeway Coastal Route, enjoys a stunning natural coastal location, with the limestone cliffs of the White Rocks stretching from Curran Strand to Dunluce Castle. These soft, sedimentary rocks have been carved through centuries into a labyrinth of caves and arches. Shelagh’s Head, the Wishing Arch, Elephant Rock and the Lion’s Paw are headlands of distinguishable forms which rise out of the ocean. Under the road, there are cavernous caves, accessible only from the sea, home to seabirds and a hunting ground for hawks. The cliffs are extreme and would be very aesthetically pleasing.

                                        
4) Cranfield beach:

Cranfield West offers a gently sloping, mainly sandy beach located at the entrance to Carlingford Lough, an area designated as being of Special Scientific Interest. Set in an idyllic location at the mouth of Carlingford Lough in County Down, this south facing beach boasts the majestic Mourne Mountains as a backdrop. Probably too far for us and too busy for us to shoot in. Although visually nice, this is the weakest candidate.

5) Crawfordsburn Beach (Helen's Bay):

This is what my heart is really set on. As I was growing up, I was brought here and so it holds a very personal note for me. I know that the silhouetted trees along with the sun casting light leaks through the sky looks great along with the grey and vast beach. There are rocks that we can use for symbolism and it is extremely easy to access within 30 minutes by train.