Making videos appear darker via editing.

Because of the lack of lighting to film in a forest at night. I have decided to edit it in post-production with adobe. In a test which I will upload*, I lowered the brightness and contrast and lowered a value in levels. This will allow me to film safely and have more time available to film.
Brightness -100
contrast -70
2nd white value in levels 140

Pre-production for Chesnut

Genre: Thriller/Horror
Target audience:  Fans of thriller and Horror films.  12+, films they would watch would be Coralline & The Others.

Actors:  I 2 of the 3 have the actors I need, two of them will be around 11-13 years old and there is also a voice over for the beginning. I need permission for the younger actors from their parents to be in photos and/or films.

Locations:  I will be filming in the New Forest, my house and a public pathway. I don't need any permissions. This fits in with genre conventions because the New Forest looks very 'wild' and far from civilisation, so it is an ideal place to 'get lost' in. The setting for horror films is normally somewhere rural, either a house or a forest, because the trees are thick enough to hide potential 'monsters' or other things that are similar

Costumes:  As the context is that one girl is visiting the other, normal everyday clothes can be worn. For the rider I am planning for her to be wearing all black, and for safety reasons she will be wearing her hard hat as well, because the script requires her to be galloping/cantering. Genre conventions for the normal everyday clothing shows that nothing extrordinary is 'going' to happen which put the audience in a false sense of security. The black/dark clothing is to hide that character in the 'night' and also a general convention is that black = bad/evil character/thing

Lighting:  As a narrative convention of thriller/horror themes, this will be partly set at night, especially the last section in the film opening. But because of the location  (New Forest) it would be unsafe to film at night especially as I wouldn't be able to get lighting up to the locations, so I will film in daylight and then edit in post-production with adobe to make it more like night time, by darkening the picture overall and decreasing the saturation and lowering contrast.


Edits I have need to make:
 Actors:
27/02/13:  I have now found all my actors, but I need to notify the voice over.

Locations:
27/02/13: Because one of the actors can't travel to my house, so I will need to change the location to at the stables. Therefore I will need to redraw my storyboard to take into account difference between the two rooms. After visiting the location, I found that the storyboard angles still work for the new location so the only pictures that needed to be changed was the journey from the house to the forest, which is only a few pictures.

Costumes:
27/02/13: Because the rider doesn't have all black riding gear, we will be wearing dark colours like navy, browns, etc. Also because I am planning to darken this scene anyway it won't matter as the rider will turn out darker in the final version than the original film.


I will now look at sound and find appropriate music for all the scenes from incompetech as all the music on there is royalty-free so I only have to credit the creator. I also need to write an analysis of some horror films. I did get the idea for the story from typical headless horseman horror stories, as the first draft did invole a sleepover with horror stories being told.

Continueity task filming and editing.

I did have to make some changes to my story board when filming.
The main difference is where person 1 and two are sat in relation to the table. we swapped it over when filming because the door was in a different place to where it was on the story board because I didn't know, at the time of doing the story board, where I was going to film it, because it didn't matter as long as there was chairs and a desk there. Also I removed the first line that person one speaks because I thought it was out of place.

There wasn't as much range of shots towards the end in the storyboard because I thought I hadn't included a match-on-action, and I wanted to show varying range so I added a handheld shot and far out shots mixed with a mid shot.

Looking back I realised that I filmed the shots in the order that they would happen rather than filming all the shots that are from the same angle, which is inefficient, but it helped me to know what shots I had done and which ones I haven't.

I also didn't have the continual pen tapping after they originally started, but I liked how it sounded like a ticking clock, and it echos the first draft of the script I wrote for this task, which sounded a lot more formal, as it is like the interviewee (the character who says no) is running out of time. Luckily this was easy to edit as it was almost the same gap between the two tracks when repeated and between two individual taps in the same track.

Story board. for 1st task.

this is my story board for the 1st task...



SCAN IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Continuity editing task

We have just got our task for the continuity editing task and I have already done the script which is...

In an office with 2 chair and a desk.  Clean/messy depending on location. Person 1 sat down in a chair wearing smart.

Person1

Enter!

Person2 enters also in smart, and sits down in the other chair

Person2

Good morning!

Person1

Yes?

Person2

Umm…No?

Silence from Person1, tapping pen

Preson2

I think I’ll just leave.

Person2 gets up to leave, just before they leave Person1 says…

Person1

By the way the correct answer was “maybe”.

Person2

Right…

Person2 leaves.

EDIT for the 23/11/12: I have cut out Person 1's first line of "Enter!" and niether characters are in smart anymore. I did this to make it seem less informal and it is being filmed at school, so I'd have less filming time if we both had to change into our costumes.

Narritives

Narritive is how the story is told, ficton or non-fiction.

Simularities
All narritives share certian elements.
Audience's expectation will have an effect on the narritive


Theorists

Vladmir Propp  1875-1970

 

He looked at folktales. There are 8 characters (AKA spheres of action) in most stories.

They are:

Hero

Villian

Donor

Dispatcher

False

Helper/Sidekick

Princess

Princess's Father

 

31 function/story lines

 

Tzvetan Todorov  1939-

 

His theory was that at the start of a story it is in equilibrium then it goes to disequilibruim, and then by the end of the story it's back to equilibrium.

 

Rolands Barthes 1939

 

A single narritive has more than 1 storyline within it.

 

Some storylines within the narritive:

 

1. The enigma -sets up and solves the puzzle
2. The action -cutting unimportant stuff out
3. The semic -connections built around characters & actions
4. The symbolic - references we can pick up.
5. The cultral -Terminolgy

 

Claude Lévi-Strass 1908-2004

 

Narratives depend on binary opposition.

 

Rich/Poor

Weak/Strong

 

Stroylines reflect beliefs of the culture/society.

Films openings 2

Touch of Evil
1958
Orson Wells

Bomb into car. Camera on crane on van, one smooth continous shot. Music overlapping - diegetic - from the shops. Car is always there. Meet the hero walking. camera never stops At the border. Sucessful  cop Vagus. Then the car explodes, bit unrealistic....

Jaws
1975
Steven Spielburg

Shot throught the seabed. The iconic 'shark' music.
Quite calm, sunset. Camera and music from shark perspective. (subjective camera)
Sudden stop- back to calm.