Faery greenscreens

Rough Cut for Flame Faery

L3 - GROUP 6 (Sophie & Charna) Film Opening Rough Cut from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

This is mine and Sophie's rough cut for our film opening. We have recently gotten feedback from a teacher (Steve) and a fellow student (Jahmal).

Steve told us to take out the dialogue originally, so we did. I then went out to fire troupe and filmed them at their practice session. In total I got about 30 minutes of footage. We have started to take the clips from there which we want. I think we should have the scene with Ali walking down the path and seeing the faery before the random shots of fire, as this will set the scene in a less abstract way. I'll also add in the faeries and we should make Sophie's music (The happier sounding one at the beginning and end of the rough cut) longer throughout the music.

1. What did people rate as strengths of the work?
Variety of camera angles, the colours, titles and how it keeps the audience's attention.
2. What did people rate as weaknesses?
The music was the main thing people didn't like, it jumped a lot. There should be more camera shots towards the end and they need something to understand the plot.
3. What do you intend to change?
Add faeries into flames, Sophie's music continually no jumping. Get some close-ups. See what the trails effect works out as in Final cut and perhaps add some of the dialogue again.
4. what is still to be done? e.g. titles, sound, visuals
Just the stuff we intend to change.

I have started to animate the fairy, with a greenscreen background. I decided to start off simply and animate a butterfly, so that I would begin to understand the program Maya (It's very new to me). I decided to make a butterfly as it seems like the Torchwood opening, as the fairies there looked a lot like butterflies, which shows that I don't need to create the most complicated animations. I found a tutorial for making butterflies in Maya and followed it and then added fur at the end. It took me a while to figure out how to change the background colour and make the program render from the caera I had set up instead of from another automatic view.

I seem to have clicked a wrong button in the rendering process as well, as the files exported as image files (which I had intended to do) but I now have to rename each file so the format isn't 'butterfly.###' but is 'butterfly###.jpg' (which I did not intend).

Other than this fault, I think the butterfly has turned out quite well. I may try to make a fairy as well at some point, for a challenge and because It'll look cooler. Though I will finish this as it will make a nice backup. All I have to do now is finish renaming the files, import them into monkeyjam to get a video file, and then convert it to a .mov file for coleridge.

Feedback for Sven/Jahmal

1. What did you rate as strengths of the work?
- The camera work, there's a lot of variety in the shots whilst still making sense. The actors did well and I like how you can't see the face of the bad guy.
- Costume, you've represented your characters well using costume and props.
- Setting, the graffiti in the background works well to show the kid is in danger.
2. What did you rate as weaknesses?
- Put some music in, you don't want the sound of footsteps or anything?
3. What do you think the group should change?
- Some more ambient stuff in the background as he walks would be nice, like a cat or people in the park. It seems a little too empty.
4. what has the other group still got to do? e.g. titles, sound, visuals
- Sound and titles.

Openings similarities

I think there is a lot of similarities between my film opening and Torchwood's film opening for the episode 'Small Worlds'. For a start the film starts with a woods and one person walking through it, they go towards an opening and see fairies. The difference is that the characters are different, what happens after meeting the fairies changes, and the way we will animate the fairies will be different.

The first 30 seconds of this video shows the opening scene for Torchwood: Small Worlds, though the music is not what was used originally-someone edited the film.

Risk assesment for Tuesday 11th Filming

What could go wrong?

1. We will be using fire, So any of the crew, actors or the whole woods could be burnt down.

2. The camera is expensive, but with the tripod it's also heavy and flammable. It could fall on 3. someone it's filming, Never mind breaking the camera, it could really damage someone!

3. One or more cast members could fail to turn up

4. The camera may be low on battery, not have a microphone or not have a memory card.

5 Some stranger might come into the woods and attack us in the night 

6. Someone could hammer themselves whilst setting up the tent 

How will we prevent these?

1. We will have my mum ready with a wet fire blanket just in case the fire gets out of hand.

2. Any camera shots we plan will not be dangerous  helicopter shots. They will be set up, normally below people and far enough from the fire.

3. We have prepared a list of everyone's contact phone numbers. If needed, I was close to home so we could have used my aunt, mum, niece or uncle for backup cast members- All have agreed to be around just in case.

4. Steve has given us the cameras, and we have checked them for everything we need. It has hours of film time and we'll only need up to 15 minutes, It has two charged batteries, a microphone and a memory card. It'll be fine. 

5. The woods are at the back of my house. If needed we can run inside. We also have parental supervision around.

6. During the setting up we will not need to hammer in the pegs. We will just put them in the ground with our feet.

Dialog for Draft film Opening (Will not be used, but was an idea)

Sophie: So what if there is something in these woods? what will we do?

Adam: Listen, that girl just ran away it has nothing to do with these woods.

Kirk: Yeah and, we are here now, so we might as well just enjoy it.

Sophie: Yeah suppose your right.

Sophie: Are you alright over there?

Alison: Huh!? yeah I'm fine.

Sophie: you seemed a bit away with the fairies thats all.

Adam: (LAUGHS) so anyway were running low on firewood any volunteers to go get some.

Sophie: No.

Alison: (SIGHS) I will go and get it.

New plan for film opening

After we started editing our footage, we realised that our idea seemed more suited for a middle of a film than for the opening scene, as there is just a campfire with conversation, and not a (possibly) dramatic start which makes the film obviously starting for the audience.

Originally we decided to have the dialog in there to help set the scene, as the audience would be left wondering why the girl would be walking into the woods following a random path of candles in the first place, so we put in a scene where she was sent into the woods. Right now we are debating whether or not to go and re-shoot most of this scene to feature the girl (Ali) as well as taking the camera out to fire troupe to film the fairies.

A new idea based on what footage we have:

the girl walking along the pathway of candles (as filmed previously) and coming across this fire faery. She asks the flame what it is and she gets a flashback of the birth of the faery. It shows her at a campfire with friends, she puts petals into the flame which makes a spark, which grows into life as she isn't looking- It's been following her since.

Other than this, I plan to animate fairies in either Blender 3d or Autodesk Maya at home, in order to greenscreen them into the flames. As for music, we are going for an eerie effect. We could play and record piano to achieve this, or use random natural sounds such as birds and such.

Filming on Tuesday 11th October

During college time on Tuesday, we did the night time test (see below) to see if we could turn daytime filming into night time. This turned out not to work as sunlight could be seen (though, it may have been different in the woods). However, we didn't need to use it anyway in the end as everyone could stay for an extra hour after the bonfire was started, meaning that we could film after it got dark. Also during college we went to set up the tent, and dropped off the props at my house.

After school, me and Sophie went to get the props for the scene, whilst waiting for Alison to finish her lessons and to go get Kirk. We needed:

- A Tent

- A lantern

- A fire wick

- String

- Kindling wood

- A lighter

- A wet blanket

- Marshmallows

- Newspaper

- Alison bought along a dress too, which she changed into whilst in the woods so that she'd look more fairy-ish to match her character.

We also needed the camera equipment, including the microphone headphones and tripod. Kirk also brought along his digital camera to take pictures as we went along.

The tent, lantern, lighter and the blanket was provided by my dad, and I went to get these before meeting everyone at school in the morning, the kindling wood, newspaper and the string my mum gave to me as we went into the woods (she came with us for safety reasons, ready with the wet blanket in case anything got out of hand). Me and Sophie went to Budgens and got the marshmallows.

Credits:

Girl: Alison

Character One: Sophie

Character Two: Adam

Character Three: Kirk

Safety Supervisor: Alison Ghiday-Prince

Camera: Charna

Performers: (to be filmed)

Greenscreen Test

For this session, we used a green blanket and a exercise machine to give the effect of Jahmal walking across the screen. We put this into final cut and added the greenscreen filter and added keyframes for the motion.

At the time we were thinking about the Juno effect, and we had a lesson on how to transform images into cartoons using the pen tool in Photoshop. I used this image as a background to make it seem like he's walking in the long road car park.

I think at one point in our film, I might greenscreen something into a flame, like a fairy. This could be done with the green blanket, I could animate a faery, or draw one. I could also have an abstract thing in the middle of the flame in the same way.

Test footage for night time scenes

Me and Sophie realised that to get an effective use of the hulahoop in the scene and make it pass as a fairy, or other supernatural beings, we would have to shoot it in the dark. However, this is a problem as the cast live sightly outside of town, and so can't shoot in the dark due to train times.

We decided to have a go at taking footage from the daytime and adding color correction filters in Final Cut. We made the main color blue and slightly lowered the brightness levels. Hopefully this will be more effective in a camping environment. Plus, towards the end of the filming tonight, it should start to get dark (as we will stay until 6.20)

This morning we have already found a location (the woods behind my house. This is effective because I know it'll be possible to set up a bonfire as there isn't any trouble with the public). I will take the cameras out of school on Monday, when Cambridge Fire Troupe practice. I will then get footage of each of them with fire (with permission of course)

Our cast is:

Sophie, as Character 1

Alison, As the girl

Adam, as Character 2

Charna (me) and fire troupe as performers.

Kirk, as Character 3

Filming for tomorrow

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Tomorrow we are going out to film, we will meet at Coleridge Community College at Radegund Road (where we take our lessons on Tuesdays anyway) and we'll go out into one of the woods close to there, preferably where able to use my fire hula hoop and set up a campfire without causing any fuss.

Tonight I will go and scout the area of three different woodland areas in Cambridge which we could film in. I'll take pictures and post them here, and then compare them and tell my group tomorrow at Coleridge.

We have each other's contact details (phone numbers, email address etc) and each of us know what props to bring. Tomorrow I will bring my tent, camping materials and possibly my fire hoop- Though I doubt we'll get that far in the filming.

Hopefully we'll et a rouch cut by the end of the day.

Brothers Bloom

This is the finished opening scene for 'Brothers Bloom', directed by Rian Johnson and released in 2008.

In the early staged in the production of this film, an animatic was made by Rian Johnson and Daniele Auber to present the way he would like his scene to work out.

This is the animatic:

As you can see, the film opening follows the animatic very closely, and was very successful in keeping to its initial idea (though at points camera work changes and so on, but these were informed decisions.

My Final Ident Video

This is my final ident video. I started with creating how the final image would look (see posts below) and then worked backwards at how it all would be animated. In all fairness I did thing about the animation from the beginning though we were supposed to concentrate only on the final image- From when I started to draw the first faery, I knew I would have to get her to wake up then close her eyes again. Whilst drawing the outline I decided that a small wing flapping should be in the motion as well.

To animate this I put all the faeries into one Photoshop file, in their correct order and on top of each other. This helped as I had to use Photobooth on the macs instead of the scanner, so the images wouldn't have been aligned properly otherwise. When everything was in the right position, I exported each layer as a transparent-enabled .png 24 file. Then, after importing them all into Final Cut, I arranged them into the timeline, and then went backwards so that the reverse would work after the first 5 frames. Then using the pen tool I added fades in the video so that the overall effect would appear much smoother.

Finally, to create the sound effects, I wanted the timbre of the music to be normal at first, and then warp into something slightly strange, but not so strangely that the audience feels that the ident is out of place, as they are generally slow and subtle. In order to create this effect, I went into the program Garageband, and used one of the samples I found on there as a starting point. This was from the drums section and was quite fast paced. I think this would be fitting as the beginning of my ident as the 'normal' music, but I wanted it to fade out, and not simply by using the volume fading pen tool in Final Cut, as I think that then the music would be uninteresting. I had heard about a musical device before called 'Flange', which creates a bubbly sound effect on a track. After seeing that this effect was available within Garageband I used it as a fade for my track. Therefore, I feel that I was successful with the original intent I was going for with my production ident.

Timeline

This is the timeline to go with my last post about the opening scene of Boris 2.
It portrays exactly how and when titles come in, and what each of them say.

Although this is a foreign film, and I couldn't understand exactly the roles each person had in the production of the film. The way they were presented meant I didn't need to particularly. Each crew member was shown in the opening scene along with their names, which is very unusual for a film I think. However, what is typical of a film opening and is shown in this title sequence is the way titles are used. They are for a start presented within the background, and a lot of them appear as waves in their transitions, with ripple effects on them. They also have the names in an interesting, larger and unique font, whereas the more formal text is presented in a more generic font.

I noticed that this sequence is only a minute long, and which made me realise that I don't necessarily need a full 3 minutes or so to convey the story, and it could be in a fairly abstract way ( for example in this film we don't know anything about the scene or the characters yet, we only see a connection to a fish in a tank, and the fish out of water theme). I also noticed that in this scene the titles appear about one at a time, and are held for about three seconds each, with only a second or so transitions between them.

Feedback

Looking good!

Boris 2 Opening titles

These are the nine keyframes I took from Art of the Title.

The titles are: {where the colons are, there is a new line, new font and smaller text.

Allesandro: Lo Stagista (6-9 Seconds, wipe in effect)

Ariana: l'assistance alla regia (10-13 Seconds, zooms out and dissolves)

Karin: Le Cosce (15-19 Seconds, ripples with the water in the background)

Itala: La Segretaira Di Edizione (19-22 Seconds, also ripples)

Christina: A Nuova Star (23-25 Seconds, dissolves into water)

Stanis La Rouchelle: Il Divo (26-29 Seconds)

Rene Ferreti: Il Regista + Alfredo: L'Aiuto Regista (29-34 Seconds, camera pans up)

Diego Lopez: Il Delegato Della Reta (35-38 Seconds, quick camera closeup cut)

Duccio: Il Direttore Della Fotografia (38-41 Seconds, dissolve into water again)

Biascica: Il Capo Elettricista (41-44 Seconds, bubbles come up screen and consume text)

Sergio: Il Direttoire Di Produzione (45-48 Seconds)

Lorenzo: La Stagisa Muto (48-50 Seconds)

Boris 2 (Main Title, 50-54 Seconds)

For this title sequence example, we thought more bout the postitioning of the titles, and how they should fit in smoothly with the background. Again, we simply took imaged from google images, and went with the scenic option of landscapes.

The font we used was Ink God. We decided to make this second storyboard test so that we could test this font we downloaded from the internet, as we are deciding between this and Angelic War at the minute.

The making of my production ident

After deciding to animate a faery, there were many options I had in how exactly I would animate it. I've already done a lot of 3d animation in my spare time, and didn't think that the fairy would work very well as a claymation, that's to be experimented with later with something else.

I decided to draw out the faery in pencil, slightly basing her outline around a postcard I have at home. I then used a black permanent marker to highlight the outlines. Then I used an overhead projector which my brother uses to create his stencils as a light box, and traced the outline onto a new piece of paper ontop of the other, so I could very slightly change it's shape.

I only needed to create 5 frames, as the ident isn't going to be very long, and I could reverse the frames to make it repeat. Once I had the outlines, I used colouring pencil to shade in the faery picture. Once in college again, I used 'Photobooth' on the mac to take pictures of each frame. Then I imported them into photoshop and added an effect to them.

I decided to have an earthy style background, which would be green and brown, in a camoflage style print. I did this through experimenting with the different brushes in photoshop, and I removed the white background of the faery to use the alpha so that the background shows through.

Finally I added the name of my production company 'Sundance' with blending options around it, and 'Productions' right ontop of it as the idea was to fade the Sundance layer into the productions one to make the change subtle.

Ident idea 1

My original idea for my production ident was going to be based around gold feathers. I figured that the elvish translations for the words 'gold'- Lorina and 'feather' - Quesse sounded quite pretty so went with that theme for my ident.

I got an image of a gold quill from google and imported it into photoshop. I then used a swirly golden font with blending options such as inner glow and drop shadow and experimented with these until it looked like ink. The plan was to animate the quill writing the name of the company, whilst smaller feathers seem to rain down (the same image as the quill but transformed with filters to look different and more fluffy).

When I first thought of the idea for my opening scene, however, I decided to change my idea entirely and decided to create an animated fairy to hint at the theme of the film instead.

Title position test (and font)

For this task we got 9 images of clouds from google images, copied them into a storyboard format and used the 'Angelic War' font for the name text. For the other text we used the 'Apple Symbols' font in a smaller size so that the names are highlighted.

Opening sequence Idea

Our ideas for the opening sequence are fusing together both mine and Sophie's supernatural thriller ideas. We have decided that we want to have a girl going missing and she ends up in a woods and encounters a strange light which she follows further into the woods. It leads her to a clearing in the woods.

feedback

really good- you've caught up the other stuff really well!

Fonts

Mood Board

Credits for Film Opening

1. A Long Road Film presents

2. Gold Star Productions

3. Sundance Productions

4. (Cast) Jerry Richards

5. (Cast) Alice Williams

6. (Cast) Sandra Peters

7. Costume Design by Catherine Taylor

8. Art Direction by Amy Crowe

9. Production Design by Shaun Prince

10. Casting by Harry Barton

11. Film Editing by Zoe Long

12. Cinematography by Jason Hartley

13. Original Music by Mary Black

14. Produced by Lance Green

15. Directed by Edward James

16. Main Title

Briefs for film openings.

Brief One:
A mainstream action film that will appeal to 15-25 year old males. (based on a comic book)

My Brief:
Man naturally absorbs color into him and summons fire, another emits colour and summons ice. What'll happen when they meet?

Brief Two:
A supernatural thriller that will appeal to female audiences (international coproduction)

My Brief: Invisible faery sprites inhabit a woodland area, a child builds treehouse and disrupts the nature. Sprites steal child into deep forest magical labyrinth.

Brief Three
An independent movie with a young protagonist (local funding)

My Brief:

Brief Four:
An animated feature to appeal to adult audiences (based on a novel)

Examples of other briefs (from BBC website):

The Cleaner by Peter Michael Rosenberg - When a crime scene cleaner haunted by his past uncovers evidence that suggests LAPD cops are working as assassins, he becomes their next target.

Shoeless Joe by Andrew Clyde - A holiday of a lifetime across the desolate heart of the Australian outback turns into a living nightmare for five friends.

Storage by Chris Denne and Matt Winn - Terror stalks a storage facility. Survival for those trapped inside depends on the secrets in those endless units. But some doors are better left locked.

What is continuity editing?

I worked with Tina, Liam and Sven for the continuity task. Me and Tina filmed, and Sven and Liam acted. We all helped to come up with the dialogue and storyboard.
The three rules we tried to use were: the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot.

The 180 degree rule is a rule stating that the camera should be on the same side of the imaginary line during a scene, otherwise the scene will seem to have some odd quality about it as if the character is running away. In some cases this is intended but in regular scenes it should always be maintained. We did this throughout our scene (see picture below from google images/animatedbuzz.com )

The match on action rule is the way clips should be edited so that it flows niceley and actions don't seem to occur twice. I feel that for the most part me and Tina achieved this in our editing, but at one point in the camera work, someone (Alison) appears in the window behind the door and the word 'action' is heard at the beginning of the clip.

The shot/reverse shot describes the over the shoulder positions that the camera should follow during dialogue, and that they should follow the 180 degree rule and cut to face the speaker as they get a new line. Our group did this well, but due to restrictions of our room, some shots had to be taken at much closer distances than we had planned in our storyboard

.

CASE STUDY OF A FILM OPENING

TITLE- The Matrix. Green on black random looking codes, futuristic and digital goes with the theme of the movie. The code then dissolves to reveal the title, in the same font as the code was in.

INSTITUTIONAL INFORMATION- Two production companies are shown: Warner Brothers, and Village Roadshow Pictures. Both are show in green on the black background, which is the colour theme for the Matrix.

Job titles are not shown in the opening two minutes. Perhaps they were thought to be distracting where they wanted to keep the scene clear as the audio gives audience privelidge, and so not hearing it may lead to confusion later on.

MUSIC and OTHER SOUND- the first sound we hear is throughout the two production logos- Some kind of squeaking brass sound, with a bass running through it. This ties the two production teams together in the same space and makes it seem more like equals.

This continues and fast string instruments some into the song and the new timbre of soft tapping (like a cross between rustling leaves and typing- most likely designed to sound like fast typing to match the digital code) comes into the audio.

All fades out as the video does and we can just hear bleeps to match the green typing line for 8 seconds with a phone ring in the background. Then we hear audio from a phone call which is important to the audience to listen to as it hints that there is 'the one' out there who they're finding, and that the girl likes watching him. At one point the audio is pointed out by the girl through her saying 'did you hear that?' in response to a very slight change in the soundtrack, and says she thinks she's being traced. Which gives the audience the hint that they are hiding from something.

Following that is the audio from the police chase- loud footsteps and a fierce kick of the door and dialogue demand to the girl to raise her arms.

MAIN CHARACTER INTRODUCED- The main character is mentioned here as 'the one'. Though at this point, the main person featured at the opening is the woman speaking, and then shown at the end of the opening scene in trouble with the police. This may be so that the female side of the audience has something to relate to from the beginning.

MOOD SET UP THROUGH SETTING/LIGHTING- dark lighting for the police scene shows that a dark thing is about to happen- Lit by torches the lights have purposefully been turned off so it's obvious the police are there to look for something hidden.