Evaluation task 2 - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? - Emma Taylor and Tom Bailey

Written by Tom Bailey and Emma Taylor

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? What particular camerawork techniques & editing tools were used and to what effect? You need to discuss specific tools and techniques that your knowledge of the cameras & Pinnacle Studio HD V.15 enabled you to use.

Final Cut Pro X

Final Cut Pro X -  For the post production editing of our trailer we have used Final Cut Pro X (FCPX). FCPX is non-linear editing software developed by Mac for their Intel-bases OS Mac computers. FCPX provides effective and extensive use of editing techniques used within the film and television production industry. It supports a number of simultaneously composed video tracks, and user friendly interface, making it easy to edit complex edits such as multi-cam editing, Chroma-key and colour grading. It is a very effective and efficient editing system, which uploads straight to Vimeo which is particularly useful for time efficiency and sharing purposes.

Canon 6D

 Canon 6D -  We used my Canon EOS 6D to film our production, with a 82mm full frame lens with polarizing filter. This high spec professional DSLR films at 1080p HD video, giving us the clearest, cinematic footage we could get to use for trailer. However the disadvantage of using this camera is that it is very expensive, especially with the range of lenses we used and could be easily broken. The camera is also complex to operate compared to other cameras, and an in depth knowledge of camera operations such as ISO and aperture must be understood in order to be camera operator.

Tracking Dolly

Dolly -  We used a dolly for many of our tracking shots in the school scenes, and we used the dolly for professional looking shots. Although Broken Coal Productions do not have a professional dolly, I had made a dolly from some plastic piping from B&Q. The home – made dolly worked well in creating smooth and cinematic shots. However one issue with using the dolly was that they were not collapsible and remained their full size, making them difficult to be ported to different locations.

SD Card

 SD Cards -  My Canon camera takes SD cards, and whilst lower spec SD cards are known for running out of storage space when filming, we used four 62GB and 32GB cards which can hold a lot of data. We didn’t have to worry about storage space on our camera running out, and on the mac we were editing on, the SD card could just be imported into the computer and the files transferred quickly onto the desktop.

Tripod - We used a tripod to stabilise some of our shots as we didn’t want any camera shake which would make our work look messy and unprofessional, even though we did take it off the tripod to have some hand held shots to give some variation. The tripod proved useful for panning tracking shots, and we also used it to go onto the dolly for extra stabilisation. It was a very key and useful part of equipment to have.

 Batteries - Whilst expensive, the Canon, rechargeable lithium camera batteries (Canon LP-E6) are very effective and let us have up to 5 hours filming time for each battery (we had two). These allowed us to film continuously for a long period of time without having to stop frequently to change the battery pack. Sigma 24-105 F4 DG OS HSM Full Frame Camera Lens This sigma lens which cooperates with Canon full frame cameras. I bought this lens as it is the latest addition to the ‘art’ series on lenses which give good image quality and has a 19 element/ 14 group design, with Sigma’s FLD glass, to minimize aberrations. The 45cm focusing range enables us to use a large depth of field in our work, giving sharp image quality and cinematic effect. However, this lens is very expensive and so we had to be careful when filming with it. To stop the lens glass getting damaged, I also bought a filter to protect the lens glass.

Polarising Filter -  Another filter I bought is an 82mm polarising filter which we used on the last few shoots to deepen the contrast in the colours for better quality images. This also protects the lens glass, as it is much cheaper to replace the filter than the lens glass.

Example at the results of a polarising filter

LED film panel lighting

LED Film Pannel Lighting -  The pannel lighting allowed us to channel a strong light source onto our actors to allow us to manipulate the cinematophy of the scene, enabling us to change and create moods. For example, when filming in the school and in a basement, we used a low level of light to create a chiarascuro lighting style, but we have enough light in order to not create grain by increasing the ISO settings on the Canon 6D. The lighting was useful as we could adapt the mood of the scene by changing the intensity and place of the pannel. The lighting is very expensive however and we had to be careful when mounting it onto it’s stand and putting the bulbs into place.

Reflector - We used a reflector, as we only had one main light source, which meant that shadows would be created onto objects and faces, as all objects are either rectangular, square or circles. Faces are circles, so shadows are easily created and so a reflector is used to bounce light back onto the face to eliminate shadows. The reflector came in very useful on shoots as we were able to create shots with minimal shadow.

Photography Reflector

Clapper Board - We used a clapper board in order to sync the sound and the visuals together in the editing process. We used the sound from the DSLR to sync up the sound with the boom mic from the chosen shot (marked by the clapper).

Sound recorder - Zoom H4N Solid State audio recorder We used this sound recorder which records onto SD cards and works in conjunction with the boom. This operates on two separate channels (one for right and left ear) and gives clear, detailed sound recordings which can be edited during post production.

Boom Mic - We used a boom microphone in order to get the sound as close to the action as possible. This would enable us to cut out any unwanted disturbances in the sound, and get the sharpest sound possible. Danny Boyle said on the production of his latest feature film ‘Trance’ that ‘sound is pretty much 50% of the film. And I was lucky that my sound producer got as close as possible, and it really showed. I think the sound really made some of the scenes in this film.’ Continuing from this idea, we wanted to focus on the sound production to make it the best it could be, and with the boom mic being able to get close up to the sound being produced eg. Feet walking then this is beneficial to us in order to make the most realistic, detailed trailer. The boom is easy to hold and manipulate, making it easy to record sound effectively.

Dead Cat - We used the dead cat in conjunction with the sound equipment when we were outside on location, in order to not get any wind feedback into the microphone, which would spoil the recordings. We found this useful as on some of the days, the weather would ruin some of the shots.

Dead cat / Recorder Muff

For our trailer ‘Fallen Grace’ we also used a variety of different software in order to conduct our research, display and share our work and edit the final production.

We used the video sharing site Vimeo as a way of uploading rushes, animatics and the trailer. Vimeo was a good site for us to use as we could embed the videos directly onto our blogs and also share them on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which we also used to create fan pages, updating the followers on the latest film news. Vimeo is also accessible on the school computers. This was very convenient considering a lot of our work is being done within class hours so being unable to access and share our footage from school is very important. 

E-mail was also very useful as a quick and effective way of sharing work with each other, as we could always access the work whether at home or at school.

                     

We conducted much of our research on websites such as IMDb and Vimeo, as they both allowed us to watch the trailers of films with similar conventions to ours such as ‘How I Live Now’, ‘Abduction’ and ‘I am Number Four’ and then analyse them so we could understand the genre specific conventions and adhere to them when making our trailer. Vimeo also allowed us to take screen shots of relevant features that we could then convert into JPGs to display on our blogs.

We utilised the software Open mind 2 to create a mind map of our initial ideas surrounding a coming of age genre and other sub genres such as thrillers, action films and Sci-Fi’s.

 Imdb actually had a huge impact on our decision making and what we would ultimately include in our hybrid genre of a coming of age and a thriller. For example it was only after watching the trailer for ‘How I live now’ that we decided to include an explosion as we felt this had a huge impact on the effectiveness of the whole trailer. We also drew influence from the editing style, of example, the end of the ‘How I live now trailer’ Includes a reversed montage edit of all the clips included in the trailer, we really liked the effect this added to the trailer as it essentially sums up everything the viewers has just seen in the trailer into a few short seconds, we wanted to replicate it in our own to bring the trailer to a close. We also included chiaroscuro lighting similar to that seen in the trailer for ‘I am Number Four’. The chiaroscuro lighting connotes the dark sides to the story. In 'I am Number Four', the chiaroscuro was most prominent at the point of disruption, in this case it is when he discovers he isn’t who he thought he was and his life is torn apart. We also used chiaroscuro lighting at the point of disruption in our trailer for 'Fallen Grace', in both the explosion scene and in the scene where Zara is going off the rails.

                     

 We took a lot of our inspiration on costume design from figures in popular culture and also characters from other films and TV shows, Charlie for example was based loosely on the character of the same from ‘The perks of being a wallflower, IMDb and YouTube gave us a constant reference to the character, allowing us to mould our own characters according to dress codes etc..  

Our research expanded several mediums; one of which was the software Prezi. This is online software that can be used to create presentations, this was a really fun and creative way of displaying our research that could then be easily referenced back to when planning our own trailer,

Photoshop cs5, although we didn’t need excessive use of Photoshop it was extremely useful when creating our poster. Photoshop allowed us to change the gradient so it goes from black to white from bottom to top. This way we can have a light colour at the top and still have back at the bottom allowing the important institutional information to be seen with a smooth transition from light to dark.

                                       

Using Photoshop CS5 also allowed us to import images onto transparent layers meaning we can have our photo of our main character Grace in the background with other layers of text on top such as the title, the age certificate and institutional information. We were also allowed to add further layers to alter the colour (selective colour layer) and another layer for contrast (brightness and contrast layer. This meant the colours could be altered within the poster to add more of a thriller atmosphere similar to that in posters we analyzed like the poster for ‘Shutter Island’ which features heavy chiaroscuro lighting and the main protagonist’s face half in shadow, we tried to achieve a similar affect with our poster with focus being placed on the Grace’s face, this was all possible due to Photoshop. The colours we used were also to connote an idea of death and destruction. We were also able to include conventions such as primary opposition into the poster with the monochrome effect using black and white to represent good and evil, reflecting what will be seen in the film itself.