Plans for 14th - 18th January 2013

Monday 14th - For Monday I want the group to make a decision on what font will be used to feature our titles. Therefore I hope to have four fonts chosen after which we will be able to pick a final one, which will be able to convey our narrative, genre and key themes. If this is completed then the editing process will be continued.

Tuesday 15th - Hopefully the decision will be final for the font at this point allowing us to be focused purely on editing as this is where most work needs to be done. Since we filmed most of our sequence on green screen each group member will be working with a set of video's to turn the green into a simple black background which enables us to do this quickly as everyone will be contributing to the same process.

Wednesday 16th - If the video's are ready and are as we originally intended then we will start ordering the clips in final cut pro. At this point if we are unhappy with any of the clips then this will be the time to re-shoot any footage which isn't of the standards we expect. However, if the videos aren't ready we will be continuing the remove the green screen and starting this process on Thursday.

Thursday 17th - Today I hope we will be editing the videos in which a change needs to made to the speed. To do this we will be opening the files in final cut pro and choosing a lower percentage for the speed located in speed settings. Once we are happy with the speed they are in we can insert the clips into the production. If we finish this early then we can start on putting the titles into the sequence and experimenting with effects to put onto them.

Friday 18th - By this point I expect the editing and arrangement of clips to be coming close to the end or completely done. If this is the case then it is just matter of inserting the titles, or continuing if we have already started. Hopefully by the end of today we will have most of the titles done and a chosen effect for the way in which they enter and exit meaning we should be finalizing everything by Monday.

Next step - Typography of crew members

Our next step is to find a suitable typography for our crew members names to appear in. As a group we have already looked at some fonts on dafont.com so we have a general idea of what we want to use for our titles. We wanted this font to be different to the one we have used for our production name as we feel this will emphasize the title more and give it significance. We are looking for a font which like our title replicates handwriting as this ties into the themes of our film however, it needs to be rather thin in size as our title isn't particularly bold. We will be nominating someone from our group to do the deed of choosing four fonts then we will have a discussion as a group as to which font we should choose. We will be taking into account the colour, size and thickness of the font to ensure our title is more distinct. We also need to think about how we want the titles to appear and exit the screen so I have conducted some research of how this is done in films of the same genre so we can apply this to our title sequence.

This is the typography used for Johnny English and this appears in the centre of the screen. Whilst on screen a light shines across the writing and then it splits into two sections and exits the screen from the left and right side. The light mimics the way in which a light would reflect off a gun and with this being key iconography for an action film this effect fits well with whole aspect of the film. The titles exit the screen at a fast pace which indicates that there will be fast paced action scenes. The fact the titles stay on screen for a rather long period of time gives them a sense of attraction and also gives the audience time to read and knowledge them.  

In the title sequence of Casino Royale the typography also enters from the centre of the screen however, in this sequence it simply fades out with no movement of the text. This is due to it being aimed at an older audience. The titles vanish and change at a faster and more consistent pace than Johnny English which creates a more serious atmosphere and indicates to the audience it will be heavy on action scenes. The simple fade used could be a reflection of the Protagonist, Bond, and how he eliminates villains fast.

From looking at these two films I think our group will agree on having our titles appear in the centre of the screen. We will be discussing whether or not will add a special effect to the text as it exits but I think we will choose to add an effect as it is expected for a children's film, to keep them engaged. 

Journal 11/01/13 - filming the coin toss

Today we attempted to film the coin toss, as I said in my previous post we needed to use a more advance camera which could capture 120 frames per second. To our advantage we managed to film with a camera which had the power to do this so today we shot the coin being tossed however we are still in the editing process and have yet to alter the speed of the footage to see the result. Regardless of this I am overly pleased with the progress we are making and the with the footage we filmed today. As of today we have finished filming all the footage, unless we decide a scene should be re filmed  and we are editing is our number one priority. We are currently replacing the green back ground of our videos with a black one and thinking about images to insert in the background of our footage to experiment with the location Teddy will be in. We are set to use an image of a street for our protagonist to walk through during the suitcase scene as Louise has provided the group with a photo of a street which fits the scene.

Journal 11/01/13 - Improving footage

Today we re-filmed the mobile phone, this time we shot it at eye line level to ensure the line of the table wouldn't get in the way as it couldn't be removed when inserting the explosion. To improve our previous footage we used a white phone so it was more distinct however as we filmed directly in front of the phone we have encountered reflection which we can hopefully remove during editing. We also was cautious to use a tri-pod to remove any uneven footage as this doesn't look professional.

This was our original footage in which we were testing the explosion to get a rough idea of what the result would be and we created this using after effects. This is when we realized the video didn't meet our standards due to the awkward angle and the table being in shot never the less the result was very impressive and I personally think it will look very professional once we add the effect to our new and improved footage with the white phone. The reason for the explosion is to represent Teddy's lifestyle as he is entering a dangerous world and we think the explosion will really convey the action adventure genre to our audience and give them a taste of the narrative.

Journal 11/01/13 - Using the green screen

Today we wanted to finally remove the green screen background from our filmed clips and add in the image we wanted. To do this we opened up the program adobe after effects. We then imported our original clip and the clip we wanted to replace the background with in this case an explosion. In our storyboard we intended to add an explosion in the background of our phone using green screen as we couldn't physically destroy a phone. This is a screen shot from the video we will be using in the background of our video.

once this was done we dragged the two clips into the timeline, making sure the image for the background was over the foreground image, and trimmed them to the desired size. We then went into a setting in effects labeled 'keying 1.2'. In order to to make it look as sharp as possible we used the pipette tool and hovered the mouse over the screen to find the brightest shade of green we could find. Once found we clicked and the quality was boosted. This successful removed the green, however the quality of the image wasn't sharp enough at the edges and we was left with a slightly pixel-ated image. In order to fix this we selected a setting named 'screen matte' this inverted the colours on screen, with this we could alter the colours until they contrasted and was as vibrant as possible, this allowed the final image to be sharp. We then put the video back to 'final result' to see the final footage. In order to add the explosion in we downloaded a video which consisted of an explosions and dragged it into the timeline as the background video this meant that when we played back the footage in 'final result' there would be a bomb in the background in order to replicate the phone actually exploding. This is the final result which I am very pleased with as it is sharp and isn't at at awkward angle like the previous one we filmed which made the green screen difficult to remove. We will be repeating this process with the rest of our videos however we will only be changing the colour of the green screen to black.

This is our final result once we added the explosion in the background.

Journal 10/1/13 - Experimental filming

It has come to our attention that we are unable to use existing footage due to copyright issues thus we will be attempting to film this troublesome scene ourselves.
We need to record a coin toss and the coin flipping through the air needs to be in shot as this is the key element of the whole recording.  In order to do this we will be needed a camera with a high resolution as this will enable us to capture more detail as currently the coin we will be flipping is not showing up when we play back the footage and this is due to the flip cameras having a resolution of 640 x 480. The flip camera also only records 30 frames per second thus making it impossible for us to shoot a coin in slow motion.

Luckily for us we have other cameras at hand with a higher resolution which will hopefully be able to meet the requirements of what we need. However, the resolution alone will only be a mild improvement as we still need to be able decrease the speed of the video in order to place our titles onto the coin as it flips through the air. What we are really looking for is a camera which is able to film 120 frames per second, preferably in at least 720p this will enable us to have the required speed and still have a pristine picture. If we are unable to find a camera with these features we will simply have to rely on the coin to be seen visually on screen and place our titles else where thus the least we expect from this shoot is the coin to be picked up on camera.

Journal 10/01/13 - Filming the brief case scene

Today we decided to shoot one of the last scenes on our story board, this was the brief case scene, which consisted of Teddy walking with a brief case with coins littering the floor. As we were lacking the desired props we had to substitute the suitcase for a black art folder, however the folder does still resemble a legitimate suitcase. This wasn't a problem for the group as we were not expecting to be able to use an actual suitcase and on the other hand the folder still looked sophisticated on film.





However we did encounter a problem today and that was trying to get the coins to fall out of the folder as we didn't wish to puncture a hole into the folder as then it would be damaged so we attempted to create a pocket in which the coin would be placed and then fall out due to movement. But the tape used to hold the pocket wouldn't stick to the material of the folder so we had to position the coins in Tom's hand and have him carefully drop them as he moved. Although I doubted this ,as I though it would look obvious that they were being dropped, it came out very successful. We then filmed our hands reaching for the coins to end of this segment of the storyboard.