Film festival review
This is what my final film festival looked like before using the feedback given to me by my teacher:
What are my thoughts on the video?
Overall I'm really pleased with the outcome of my final film festival video. Me and Louis wanted the best equipment when recording the sound and I think the camera I had that we ended up using proved to be useful, producing an easy to watch high quality video. We ended up borrowing a boom stick mic to record my film festival. This was the second time I had ever used one for filming. When making the Brooklyn nine nine video me and my group used it to record our voices. The outcome of that video was really good so I wanted to have a similar impact to that. If I have to do a similar task the boom stick will be my go to device that I'll use for filming.
Something that I didn't expect we would be doing in this project is creating our own music. This in my opinion played a big part in making my movie scene. It took a while to get the right sound for my music but I think it works really well in creating a scary atmosphere with the visuals. I'm really pleased with this aspect of the film festival project.
Above is my demo for the film fest video I made while editing. So this was early development of what I eventually made.
Sound
There's a lot of different sounds that were used in my film scene from music to ambience to sound effects. Before I go in to detail about how I created or recorded the different sounds I just want to note that I only took one track off the internet. That was the strong wind, you may notice it in the video. Everything else I created or recorded using the boom stick or the studio mic.
Ambience and sound effects
The ambience in the background was all filmed at my house using the shotgun mic. During one of my recording sessions it was raining so we got some rain ambience that can be heard in the final video. It is quiet though and is slightly overpowered by the strong wind in the scene but can still be heard. Another ambience I recorded were the chimes in the back-garden of my house that we recorded at. Again the sound is faint but I didn't want it to change the atmosphere of the scene by being louder that it is. Again the quality of the sound that the shotgun mic picked up is amazing, definitely going to use it the next project when I can.
Louis and I did the same thing in recording the sounds of doors and windows closing as well as footsteps in different areas. When filming we made sure that we'd get the appropriate sounds to back up the visuals so we created tracks that would have minutes of us walking with the shotgun mic close to our feet. This is the same for our ambience footage.
Music
I made the music in my film festival on GarageBand and exported the final track as a WAV so that I could add it to my final video. I used the same loop browser tool used in my 'Need for Speed' music on the 'Investigating audio productions' page. This allowed me to put together multiple tracks to create my music.
When adding the track to Adobe Premiere Pro I found that the music was too loud and sudden, so I used the razor tool to separate the track to make multiple sections of my music. I then changed the volume of the different sections of the music so that the volume would slowly rise and fall. I wanted my music to slowly come in and out of the scene so that the tension would increase, creating an eerie feeling. Something that I did was I made the track before finishing the recording stages of my film festival scene. This helped later on as I wouldn't have to worry about the music saving a lot of time. I might do this in future projects if I have extra time on my hands.
Dialogue sound manipulation
In our scene that Louis and I filmed there is a moment where the focused character is on the phone to their friend. I used this as an opportunity to use something I had learnt a few weeks before production. On Adobe Audition I could change the vocals of Louis's line to make it sound like he was on a phone. This is the same trick I learnt/used on the phone conversation page. This was very effective and I'm pleased that I included it in my video. Definitely wouldn't be the same without it. I did the exact same thing as what I did on the phone conversation.
Roles
There were only two people in my group, me and Louis. Because of this we had to split and share roles when filming. I would be an actor as well as a sound guy and Louis was a camera/sound guy. We were both directors as well since we were always coming up with potential ideas for filming. Whenever we were recording when I wasn't in scene I was carrying and using the sound equipment I did this especially for sound effects and ambience.
Something though that did come as a disadvantage with two people was when it came to filming itself. Because Louis was operating the camera and boom stick while I was acting we often had to place the boom stick somewhere near me instead of someone holding it so we were't able to move much during filming. This meant that me and Louis would have to re-record certain sounds that weren't picked up before. Sounds such as my window closing and blinds shutting.
Editing
Something that I find quite frustrating in this project was the editing. Not because I find it difficult but because there was loads of files I had to go through from our recording. There were a lot of audio recordings. Some were outtakes others were ambience/sound effects and the rest was dialogue. So the editing of trying to find different files was very time consuming. Other than that I find it quite enjoyable. I started the editing by sorting the visuals in to Adobe Premiere Pro, that way I could manage what sounds need to be used and thrown out of my messy SD card, later helping to find certain files. Because I've had a lot of experience editing on Adobe softwares the post production came quite naturally after a while of learning and marking the files. After labelling all the different files and going through each one, sorting and cutting the visuals the first stages of my video were completed quickly. Something to also note is that whenever I would add my audio files I would right click and use the synchronise tool to match the scenes. This helped a lot especially with dialogue. The sound/dialogue would be in sync with my mouth whenever I was speaking.
Another simple yet effective tool I used was the scale. I used this when the killer is being focused on. You may notice in this shot that the camera starts to zoom in slowly, that's the effect of the scale tool. I thought it was a nice touch to the scene.
Second version of my video
After sending my video I had made to my teacher I was given feedback to build up on it.
The first thing I did to clean up my video was removing sections of the first few shots, this was due to the blurriness and odd focusing that kept having with the camera. Because I removed these snippets of my video I had to move everything backwards such as the music as there were gaps in my footage. I also removed some sound glitches in me walking up the stairs as well as some with the wind. I think the loud stair sound was caused from filming by touching the shotgun mic on the stairs or something. Another thing I did to help make my video look a lot nicer was by adding an additional shot of me removing my shoes so that it would make more sense when watching the video. I was looking at trying to hide my feet instead but the shot of me going up the stairs would be hard to not show my feet. I wasn't able to remove all the blurriness from the footage that Louis and I gathered so it is a little annoying to have some of that still included, nevertheless I think I did a good job on improving my video.
One last thing that I do want to note is that I tried removing the blur form the killer but the footage was just way to short without it. Even If I just took out the middle of that footage it would look a bit glitchy. That's something that was annoying and I wish I knew when filming on the day. As I could have shot it again.
Reflection
After going through my experiences with the different aspects of my film festival project I have gathered my total struggles and thoughts when working on the Halloween scene. In my reflection I will talk about what I would have done instead and what I enjoyed.
What I enjoyed:
In terms of what I enjoyed about the project I had a lot of fun when making music in GarageBand. This was something quite new to me this project, I'd never had any experiences with this apple exclusive software. I originally found it quite intimidating to use and create music but the overall layout of the app is very simple and easy to use. The blinding lights task in this blog was my first introduction to GarageBand and it helped a lot knowing how to use and navigate through the software, especially when it came down to the final project video. The music was essential for my final video. So I'm really pleased with the outcome of how the music turned out in this project.
What I would change:
For the things I would maybe change for next time if I had to restart my project would be sorting out the files on my SD card straight after a recording session. This would save time for later making it quick and easy to grab the files I'm looking for. In this project I found it so painful to try and find these and I dreaded starting my editing. I think if I were to allocate the files prior post production my work would be done maybe a few days earlier. That and sorting out the lighting when I'm in my bedroom. I know the lighting wasn't great when filming and it could've been a lot better. At the time it was something that we didn't think of, I think next time in a future project I will better prepare with devices that will help with that. Probably my main concern when looking over my footage. It didn't help that the light from outside was changing the focus and lighting of the camera when filming in the room. So I'm a little annoyed at that. Nevertheless I still think What I've produced is made at a high quality. It resulted in a lot of scenes having an unfocused shot making it hard to focus on what was going on for the viewers.
One more thing I think I would do For potentially future projects is add another person to the group. I mentioned the pros and cons for having two people in a group and I definitely think the cons were more impactful, weighing the work a lot more over Louis and I's shoulders. Next time I might be more open to joining a bigger group or ask a friend to help out. So I would do that differently.
Final thoughts
I had a lot of fun making this project just like the others that I've already done. I liked the fact that there was some acting in this project, the other we've done didn't involve a lot of that and I think that made things more creative and enjoyable for me. There was so many ways me and Louis could film, taking in to account all the filming factors we'd learnt in our first project such as lighting, camera angles and sound. Because of all the knowledge I'd picked up from our how to video I felt like I was more productive with the time I'd been given, Having had more experience with the equipment and what to do differently. For example the camera and tripod was set up a lot quicker than when I tried to set it up in my first project. Also I learnt a lot of helpful tools that I will definitely use late in future projects. One of those tools is using the green screen in Adobe Premiere Pro and another is the phone voice used in Adobe Audition. So I'm looking forward to using these in future projects and work.