Friday, 16 March 2012

Final Cut is finished!

Today I finished my opening sequence and exported it ready to be shown next weekend to a small audience with the other A level media work.

Last week we got some feedback from our class on our opening sequences. Overall people seemed to like mine however a majority of the people felt that the black screen towards the end was too long.
So after a few tweaks I managed to cut it down to make it shorter, add some extra clips in and shuffled some shots around to make it fit in better. I added in a shot of some wood being chopped which fitted around the shot of the woodchopper. I also had to cut down the music and move the last shot so that the woodchopper chopped on the last beat of the music. This emphasised the ending much more than it did before.

Overall I am pleased with the outcome of my opening sequence. I think it is different to what other people have done and I'm pleased that all the hard work I put into it has payed off.

Friday, 2 March 2012

Finished!

Today i finished my opening sequence. The plan is to get some feedback from everyone to see what they think and if there are any improvements that I can make.
Personally I think that i can improve the title sequence as I feel that it is the weakest aspect of my opening sequence. A part from that I am really happy with how it has turned out.

Monday, 20 February 2012

Using Black and White

For my opening sequence I decided to use black and white. This makes it seem as if it is filmed in the 1940's and also helps to emphasise that the footage is from the past. There are two clips in the sequence as these are in the present day from the girl trying to find out what happened to her mother. The black and white effect makes it seem more artistic and more appropriate to the era.
However, films such as Changeling which is set in the 1920's is in full colour. I am yet undecided whether to keep mine in black and white or to have it into full colour. This is because I wanted to give my film a fairytale feeling to it and made the main character, Marie wear a red dress with red lipstick as the film is set in the woods and she encounters a woodchopper which is much similar to Little Red Riding Hood.
My plan is to do two different rough cuts, one in colour and one in black and white to get some feedback on which one looks better.

Soundtrack

After trawling through Youtube trying to find a piece of instrumental music appropriate for the opening sequence of my film I finally found a track called La Plage by Yann Tiersen.
This is just a piece of plain piano music which fits perfectly into the sequence of my film. As the piece develops it becomes more and more dramatic which fits in with how the opening sequence develops and I purposely edited the clips together so that the more dramatic scenes fit in with the more dramatic music. In addition this also adds a lot of emotion to the sequence and sets the mood and tone of my film.

This is a link to the soundtrack I am using. I posted a comment on the video asking for permission to use the music.

Sunday, 19 February 2012

Finally managed to Film

Today I finally manged to film the final shots of my opening sequence. I shot the woodchopper scene and the scene where the baby is left alone in the woods. Im glad that I managed to get it all filmed as I hadn't been able to due to the weather and the snow.
All the filming went really well and I managed to get it all done in the matter of about half an hour. This means that I will be able to fill the gaps in my sequence and complete the editing for a rough cut to get some feedback on.