Peter Bamforth: 2012

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Preliminary Task - Final Piece

Preliminary Task - Editing

We wanted to give the film a more cinematic feel so we altered the brightness and contrast. This made the film feel a lot more eerie and mysterious. The contrast between blacks and whites made Aydin's face even more shadowed and hidden.
The first 30 seconds of the film's audio was made completely in post-production, this is so that we could bridge the garage door opening/closing accurately and also not have unwanted background noise of cars etc. ruining the film's feel. We added in footsteps to emphasize Aydin's entrance.

We also decided to add a changing blur effect to the P.O.V. shot to show how nauseated Sam's character was. The drum beats were added to emphasize the mood changing and add tension to the escalating situation. The eerie soundtrack that plays almost throughout gives the scene a sense of unease and mystery.
We made sure that there was match-on-action with each transition to keep the film believable and fluent. When Sam is shot in the head we added in a gun shot, chair hitting the ground and body impact sound effects to sell the effect. We also added a puff of blood and a quick reflection of light off the walls of the garage to give the gun shot and murder even more realism. The clip then slowly fades to black at the end.

Monday 29 October 2012

Preliminary Task - Recording sound effects

When we watched back the footage we noticed that some of the sounds weren't clear and that we should record some sound effects that we could add in to emphasize actions. So we took a microphone, went to the set (my garage) and recorded Aydin's lines among other things. We recorded the lines and sounds in the garage so that they were recorded under the same conditions as the rest of the clips and this would make them fit in with the scene well.

The other sounds we recorded included:

- Garage door opening
- Garage door closing

(We recorded the door opening and closing so that we could bridge this sound across the clips and make sure it was fluent and not jumpy)
- Breathing
- Umbrella being placed on a table
- Jacket being placed on a table
- Chair falling over and hitting the ground

All of these sounds contributed to making the final piece consistent, clear and clean.

Sunday 28 October 2012

Preliminary Task - First edit

This is the first attempt at editing our footage.

What can we improve?

- The colours don't seem eerie enough. By adding some contrast and possibly dimming the brightness could give the footage a more cinematic feel.
- The audio seems to cut into each shot, this makes the film feel too jumpy and messy. This could be solved by bridging the audio or playing a constant sound in the background.
- It doesn't feel mysterious. By adding an eerie soundtrack and some other sounds that build tension the film would seem much more thorough and make the audience more emerged.
- The sounds of the gun shot, gun cocking and Sam falling off the chair seem very unrealistic and pathetic. We should add in real sound effects that make the scene feel much more realistic.
- Nothing visual happens when Sam's shot off the chair. If we added a flash of light, to represent the gun going off, and a puff of blood then it will sell that Sam's been killed to the audience and make the scene much more serious. At this point in time the film feels very empty and amateur.

Although the raw footage is good there are a lot of improvements to be made in the editing.

Preliminary Task - Practice shots

Before filming our main piece, Aydin and I took a camera and filmed some rough shots so that we could get a feel for how we were going to film the main piece. By doing this it let us see what worked well and what we could improve. It also gave us some more knowledge of the set, space and time we had to film within.

Preliminary Task - Storyboard

Preliminary storyboard from Peter Bamforth

Preliminary Task - Audience

We wrote a survey and gave it to our target audience to see if they were in fact the correct audience we should be targeting. Below is the survey, the results and analysis of these results:

Audience survey from Peter Bamforth

Questionnaire results from Peter Bamforth

Preliminary Task - Location

We chose to film in my garage because we were able to control the lighting in there and it provided us with an eerie setting.

Because there is quite a lot of clutter we had to hide it so that it didn't distract the audience. In our final piece you can clearly see how we covered the clutter with large white sheets. These sheets were also helpful in reflecting the light and provided us with a nice clean backdrop in many of the shots.

These windows we covered up with sheets so that we could control the lighting and therefore we could shoot throughout the day without the outside light making dramatic, obvious changes to the shots.

Although we had other lamps and lighting available to us we decided to just stick with using the 'garage door' light. We decided this because it was in the perfect position to light both the characters how we planned to anyway. This is because it is situated above and between both of the characters. It also didn't make the room too bright or too dark for filming, it was just right.

For the first shot of our film we wanted a garage door to rise slowly and reveal the mysterious man. We also wanted it to show the contrast between the outside world and the place where a man was being detained. The way the outside is much brighter than the inside makes this contrast clear.

Preliminary Task - Scripts

Preliminary script from Peter Bamforth

Above is our final script. This script was chosen because it suits the scene and characters well and it also fits into the time period we have been given (around one minute). The script effectively portrays Aydin as the dominant character because his lines are short and blunt yet reveal he knows a lot about Sam. The rhetorical question Aydin asks builds suspense and shows how he shouldn't be messed with. The contrast of the length of Sam's lines to Aydin's is crucial in showing Sam's fear and panic. Also, the large amount of punctuation in Sam's lines further demonstrates his anger, fear and panic.

Preliminary Task - Basic Planning

Preliminary planning from Peter Bamforth

Preliminary Task - Initial ideas

Above is our very first rough storyboard of an idea we had. The initial idea consisted of a mysterious man. This man would be made mysterious by being dressed in black and by us making sure his face was always shadowed, obscured or cut off by the framing so that the audience couldn't work out who he was. The second character in the scene was a man who had been tied/strung up and beaten. The setting was to be in a garage/storage unit and very gloomy. This initial idea is where we came up with the point of view shot from the tied up man's perspective showing his face covering being removed. Here we also started planning the sounds we would introduce into the scene to give it an eerie feel (blue writing).

Above is our initial camera movement planning. We drew out a very basic outline of the set and sketched how we thought the camera should follow the character's around the room. This initial planning helped us visualize what the shots would look like and whether they would be effective. We thought it would help us when designing the set because we could determine where we should position the props and characters.

Film/Camera techniques

We decided to put together three short videos that explain the "180 degree rule", "Match-on-Action" and "Shot reverse shot" techniques.

Sunday 21 October 2012

Alfred Hitchcock

The following in research into the famous film director Alfred Hitchcock.

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock on Prezi

I also researched Hitchcock's unique and pioneering style of directing and producing films.

How to be Hitchcock from Peter Bamforth

M. Night Shyamalan

I did some research into the popular thriller film director M. Night Shyamalan.

M. Night Shyamalan research from Peter Bamforth

I analysed a scene from Shyamalan's film 'The Sixth Sense'. The clip I analysed does not allow embedding on blogs so here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc5B-ercdKE

The Sixth Sense from Peter Bamforth