Production Log Week 9

This week is the final deadline to finish all our production and post-production work. me and my partner have done a lot of editing the clips like changing the lengths and choosing the best shots. We decided to change the voice actor for the voiceover in our library scenes, because the original actor's voice didn't sound serious enough and didn't express enough anger to match with the actor's facial expressions on screen. We also re-shot the whole library scene the same day and make a whole different range of shots. The original table we used was taken so we had to find a different seat. We found one by the window so the shots looked really bright on camera, so we adjusted the brightness to see the character better. We managed to get as many different shots possible from different angles.

Me and my partner have decided to change the order of the two scenes in the film by having the library scene before the park scene, based on my teacher's feedback. We did this so the story is denoted more easily to the audience. The audience can understand who the character is and what the film is about which gives a greater impact on the park scene. This still creates enigma as the audience doesn't know where the character is going and why, but they can understand the character a bit better from the previous scene. We also changed the protagonist's name from Ben to "Zakir" as we felt this represents the character more and is more realistic to his ethnicity.

Another slight thing we changed was the production logo. My teacher told me and my partner that "Concrete Corporations" shouldn't have an "s" at the end so we had to edit that letter out. However the problem was that at the time we done this using photoshop we forgot the save the PSD file so we had to create it again. We only saved it as a jpeg file but that cannot be edited. Unfortunately we were unable to find the same font we used at first which everyone have said they really liked, so we had to do with an alternative which looked similar but not quite the same and not as good as the original. Me and my partner know now that we should always save our work even after we finished it as it can still be useful in the future.

top picture (old)
bottom picture (new)

We were contemplating which software we should use to create credits for the opening sequence. We made titles on both iMovie and on Livetype but we were unsure which was more suitable so we decided to ask our peers and have a vote. The credits we made on Livetype had a typing effect so it looked like the credit was being typed as it comes on screen whereas the iMovie titles were more basic as it just pops up on screen with a fade effect and fades out when it goes. My peers all decided the style and effect of the credits on iMovie created a greater impact that suits with the style of the theme in the park scene so we chose this and disregarded the Livetype credits. 

Final opening sequence of "Hit List"

Call Sheet 4

Date and Time: Monday 15th April, 4:00pm

Location: Goodmayes Library + South Park
Script scene shot numbers: 22 + 26 - 35 
Cast: Muhamad Rahman
Props: Camera, Tripod, Monopod, Hoodie, Jeans, Trainers, Laptop
Reminders: Recording the entire scene again so the seat is not too important, just aim to have a table to yourself.

Production Log week 8

an example of Photoshop

The past week me and my partner have been doing a lot of editing as we have finished our production. We have created our film title logo using Adobe Photoshop which took a while to get used to as I am not familiar with this software. So we had a play around with the effects and features to see how this works which was helpful. We also decided to create our production logo using Macromedia Fireworks, because we wanted to add a layer of an image behind the text and we thought Fireworks is more suitable and easier to achieve this. Also we had to create other titles on iMovie as we were running out of time and didn't know how to add titles over the film using Livetype. Our film contains some titles running during the film and some of them are placed on a black screen cutting between the shots in a scene. We had to do this, to make a break between shots that are non-continuous so that it flows more better. We added the most important titles on the black screen and the less important ones are shown during the shots at the bottom of the screen.

Another issue was creating sound. As we cannot take other Artists' music due to copyright laws, the best option at hand was to create it ourselves. We attempted this using Garageband which is a new software we used in a Mac. We had played with many different types of sound using Garageband but we were unsatisfied with our work, because me and my partner are inexperienced with making sound. I resolved this issue by kindly asking a friend of mine who has the experience we seek and he accepted our request in creating a sound for us to use in our production. However we had an issue with time as we only had a matter of days before we had a draft deadline of our production and our friend didn't have much free time to compose the music to the best of his ability. Nonetheless he managed to produce a sufficient piece of sound using Logic Pro and I quickly incorporated that into my production. I also found out the music was not long enough to fully cover the scene we wanted, so I had to extend the scene by adding another layer and trimming the sound in the second layer to match with the first layer.

an example of Logic Pro