Signing Off

Overall it has been a great journey, one which I've enjoyed a lot and learnt new skills in this which i`ll hopefully carry with me to A2. This is me Rahma Abdulle Alasow officially signing off my blog.

EVALUATION: Question 1

EVALUATION: Question 2

EVALUATION: Question 3

EVALUATION: Question 4

         

EVALUATION: Question 5

EVALUATION: Question 6

Created using Visme. The Free Online Presentation Tool.

EVALUATION: Question 7

     

Post Production

During the production of Doppelgänger Editing has been the part which i believed I've learnt a lot of skills and improved in from the prelim to our final piece. Personally, i found editing the most difficult part but after getting familiar with prier pro and after and watching a few tutorials i started to get the hang of it. Watching the tutorials helped me a lot while editing as it allowed me to understand all the different panels and tools.

From our rough cut 2 to our final piece we made a lot of changes as you can see below from the 2 videos. But ill be just be talking about one of the changes I made.

One of the first things I did was look back at the storyboard and the shot list i made as this gave me a structure and allowed me too look at what clips needed to be where. This helped me decrease the gaps and make our sequence more organised. At first i realised there was lot of things missing at the start, we didn't include a distribution company nor did we included our first few scenes shown in our story board. Our whole idea was to show the conversation between the two characters and how the got to meeting up so that our audience could understand what was happening and won't be confused.
So, in order to show a quick insight into their conversation to the audience we had to show the text on the screen.
The first video on the left was how i constructed it at first but then i decided using text bubbles would be better as it would depict how they was messaging each other on social media. As you can see below on the clip on the right this is then how i further developed the clip from the left. I created these two using after effects, first i used photoshop to the text bubbles. After looking back at it now i should've spent more time editing the actual text bubble instead of just making the back ground transparent as it looks to fake and animated. It stands out and contrast with the black background of the laptop a bit too much looking out of place. Then, using after effects i placed the text message into the scenes placing the text on top. Using different key frames it allowed me to make the text bubble appear in different sizes throughout the scene, so at first it would start at 0 degrees so nothing shows up then at 50 degrees so that it pops up onto the screen and then put the last key frame back to 0 degrees so that it goes back to blank. I made sure the text and image was synced together so that it would follow it when it appears and disappears. I used the type writer effect on the text.

Throughout, the post production of the sequence i worked a lot on the editing even though i didn't have any experience or knowledge. It was a matter of trial and error and i learnt a lot during this experience. Even if i struggled a lot and was stressed majority of the time i was on premier pro i managed to finish our sequence and edit majority of it. Overall, i would say I'm proud of what we've achieved as we literally started from the bottom not knowing anything about after effects or premier pro and came to producing our whole sequence on our own. Despite, how much we've achieved during this process there is a lot of things we could've improved in our sequence and worked on to make it even better.

FINISHED Title Sequence

   
                

Editing 2

Editing was one the things we struggled with as a whole group. But editing is one of the most important parts in a production of a title sequence as it brings your whole title sequence together. So after getting familiar with both premiere pro and after affects we managed to get the hang of it. We still had several things to do including,

• Effects
• Title credits
• Ident
• Distribution company
• Colour Correction, Lightening  
• Soundscape
• Match cuts

With editing it was a matter of trial and error as none of us had any editing experience other then AS media and we was all new to the programme. But working together as a group really helped excel our understanding and allowed us to explore premiere pro and after effects. All of our individual inputs allowed us to get creative ideas and see things from different point of views.

1. Cutting- When you finish filming all your scenes and you have all your footage the first thing you would do on Premiere pro is put them all together. You'll start cutting your footage and placing them all together so you have all your titles in order. As we made a detailed story board and shot list we found this particular easy to do as we just had to follow it. This allowed us to see any imperfections and what we had to re shoot and fix up. It gave us a rough idea of how our title sequence would look like.

2. Idents- Creating our ident was one of the first things we did as it should appear at the start of the a title sequence. We used after effects in order to do this and used a simple effect which gets our point across.

According to the codes and conventions of a title sequence the distribution company should come next after the Production Ident which is what we did next

This consisted of the same concept of making a production ident so wasn't difficult at all. After doing these a number of time it become no struggle at all.

3. Sound- Creating a Soundscape for our title sequence went well for us. We used a mixture of digetic and non diegetic sounds to create the most realistic out come possible. As well as including the original back ground sound from filming we had our instrumental music and a low drone sound effect both run through the entire title sequence. At times we increased the volume to heighten certain emotions from the audience and build suspense and vice versa, decreasing the volume as well. The low drone complimented the title sequence. We used the fade effect to have a nice slow build up of the music and a fade out to create a nice effect. We had sound effects at certain places to compliment the title sequence such as the iPhone text message sounds when a message poped up on the screen, a low steady heartbeat at certain scenes, and much more. Personally, i found sound too be the easiest aspect in editing.
          

4. Effects- The main thing we struggled with when editing was applying different effects. This where things started to get complicated as we had to apply key frames and experiment between the effects. But we managed to get the hang of it. Our first scene is mainly done in after effects as the text bubbles considered some work. We first got the image and edited in in photoshop the placing it on top of our footage on after effects. After looking at in now i would say we should've spent more time on photoshop making the text bubble look more realistic. We included some subtle effects throughout our title sequences like fade ins and fade outs to compliment it.

5. Colour Correction- Some of our scenes we filmed when it was dark to get more spinster and mysterious effect which was great but was too dark that you couldn't see the actors facial expression when she gets grabbed from behind. This was an important factor as you can see the shock and fear in the characters face which we wanted to get across to the audience, so to be able to see her facial expression was key. Thus, we had to make them scenes lighter increasing its lightening and contrast. This complimented the film and made a huge difference. In order to make all the scenes flow we had to colour correct lighter scenes and darker scenes so that they look more realistic as if it all happened in the same day.

The main thing that helped us when we struggled with editing was video tutorials or the media technicians during workshops. Both broke down what to do step by step helping us understand it much more. Overall, compared to how we was at the start we've all improved our editing massively. If only we had these skills had the start, eh.

Blog Evidence Audit

Research into similar products and audience

At the start of the blog it is evident a lot of research went into the title sequence looking at similar genres and target audience we aimed to have which gave us a lot of ideas and inspirations. You'll find that we researched into camera shots, genres and its codes and conventions, film openings, sound research, BFI statistics and much. By spending so much time researching into similar products and audience i believe it made us confident within our genre and aware of the things we need to do to achieve a successful title sequence in that convention. 

Organised use of actors, locations, props and costume.

We planed out our mis en scene, holding casting auditions for our actors but decided it would be much better if we acted ourselves as it would be more reliable. Blog 25 shows our props and costumes and explains why we didn't use many as we wanted to make it as realistic as possible. Our organisation skills throughout has been good shown through our blogging as we carefully decided on everything.

Working on shot list, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboard.

Most recently we've planned our story boards and shot lists. We've made updated versions of both as we changed a few things during filming and I made an animated version of both the story board and shot list as you can see below.

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Presentation of ideas

My blog isn't complicated and is quite simple to follow and read. Everything is in chronogical order from where we started we first did our research then planning and filming and you can see this structure in my blog. Every blog has a title so you have an quick insight on what it is about. Ive used different media sources and visuals to illustrate my blogs such as press, emaze, powtoons, youtube and much more so it isn't just all text and boring. 

SWOT

Strengths- We've completed all of our filming and have been working together to improve our title sequence. Personally, i believe our main strength is that fact we continue to take feedback on to improve our editing and title sequence.  As well as working on our title sequence we've also been blogging or experience and kept up to date. 

Weaknesses- Within our group our main weakness is that lack of people. As there are only 3 of us we are limited to do many things and puts more pressure on us. Nevertheless, we continue to work on our title sequence. Another weakness we need to improve on is our editing skills. We also need to work on our time management. 

Opportunities- Whenever I have an opportunity to improve on my work i take it and improve our title sequence and blogs. Ive been watching several editing videos on youtube to learn new skills to use and experiment on. Ive been attending workshops so that we could have extra time to work and improve. In my blog I've lacked individual posts which i need to start working on but have a good use of different types of media. 

Threats- Editing is one of my main concerns within our title sequence as we aren't very good with editing and struggle to use premier pro and after effects. At the start we was very ambitious and came up with various ideas which included really good editing skills which we lacked and refused to comprehend. But as we continue working on our title sequence we decided to stick to more simple editing so our title sequence dosent look all over the place but is still effective. 

Editing 1

Titles and title credits are featured in every title sequence and is a very important element. The title of a film often relates to it as a whole and sets a tone. It does this by the name of the title itself e:g 'Doppelganger' , immediately giving the audience an idea of what the film is going to be about, due to the fact that specific titles are used with clear connotations. Credits are also very important in films, as the give recognition to the actors as well as the people who were involved in the production of this film. 

          HOW DID WE CREATE TITLES AND TITLE CREDITS?

Our title sequence was constructed on the software Premier Pro, however our title credits were produced in After Effects. We began by opening our title sequence through Premier Pro and then clicking 'file' 'Adobe Dynamic Link' and then 'New After Effects Composition.' This is a more efficient way of creating credits for our title sequence, as this way we did not have to continuously import titles from after effects to premier pro. This in turn saved a lot of time. By creating title credits this way, whatever we produced in After effects would automatically import itself to our Premier Pro file - changes and all. 

 

After clicking 'New After Effects Composition' a blank page would appear in After Effects. After typing a simple 'Doppelganger' the title of our title sequence, we went onto the website Dafont, to find the perfect font for our film. Font play an important part in a title sequence, as it often sets a tone, telling the audience a lot about a film. We chose the font 'Lugosi' a font that had connotations of crime, violence and something immoral. To make this font appear as an option in After Effects, we simply downloaded it onto the desktop.

After applying the font Lugosi to our title, we decided to add an effect to give it more of a personality. We did this by clicking 'Effects and Presets' to the right of the blank page. This gives us options to various effects to add to our title. At first we were very adamant on using an effect called Jiggy, which caused the title to shake vigorously. We got this idea from the title sequence 'Se7en', a title sequence that we were majorly influenced and inspired by, that is also a thriller and has a stalking element. However, after some consideration, we decided that this effect is to heavy and perhaps over the top for our title sequence. The connotations were too harsh, giving off horror vibes rather than thriller. Our film did not involve any gruesome, grotesque scenes and upon realising this we decided to use a more toned down effect. We ended up choosing, a fade in effect, where each letter of our title appeared slowly. This related to the fact, that Alessandra (evil twin) slowly entered Millicent's (good twin) life, unknowingly. 

To add the effect, all we did was simply drag it onto the title itself and clicked the space bar to watch it. After we were content with it, we merely clicked off After Effects, onto Premier Pro, where our newly made title sequence was already waiting. After watching it once more, we dragged the short clip onto our other title sequence clips. Because this was our main title we did not drag it onto our other title sequence clips, in order for it to appear on a blank screen. With the main title on a blank screen, the audience will focus purely on it and not be distracted by anything else, which emphasises it purpose. However for our other credits, we dragged it on top on of of clips, in order for them to merge. 

One problem we faced while completing our title and title credit, is making remembering to save it to our video drive. Each time we opened a 'New After Effects Composition.' an option to save it to either our desktop, downloads etc was presented, however due to the process of making credits being so simple and quick, it was difficult to remember to stop and click save to video drive. This was a problem, as when we opened our title sequence on another computer, all our new credits would not appear. This in turn slowed us down as we had to re create the credits all over again and this time save them to the video drive.

Rough cut 2 evaluation

Theres a lot of things we need to improve and fix with our title sequence as you can see from our rough cut 2, it didn't go as successful as i hoped, but after receiving feedback and doing some critical evaluation, its helped us realised the aspects we need to work on more and improve. 

Things we need to change and improve:

• Title Credits (font,effect,order, spacing)
• Distribution company Ident
• Complete the gaps 
• Finish editing (Video transitions, effects)
• Colour Correction 
• Music Touch ups 

What went well....

We've managed to complete all of our filming and stick to our story board and shot list. The camera work was good using a range of shot types to make to more intriguing and less repetitive. Our mis en scene and new location for our last scene was more creative and eye catching. We stayed on our plan and schedule so that we don't fall behind. We've started to edit and work on finalising our title sequence, working during our free time such as workshops, free periods. So far we are all working well as a group on our title sequence and need to improve on our title management as we have a lot of editing we need to do. 

DEADLINE

20th December 2017 

Heres a quick video audio of me talking about the feedback we received for our rough cut 2, what we need to improve and change and quickly analysing our rough cut:

           

Rough cut 2 Audience feedback

Get video of other people

Rough cut 2

      

Reshoots

Website

DOPPELGANGER WEBSITE

http://thedoppelganger2017.weebly.com/

Our group have created a website for our film 'Doppelganger.' We  believe that online forms of media such as websites, twitter, facebook etc are great ways to create a loyal fan base and also to further promote. As our generation grows, so does online presences, which is why creating a website for our title sequence is a very efficient idea. On our website it will feature information about our film such as, cinemas local to you that are now displaying Doppelganger etc. Also extras, interviews, behind the scene shots and information about the actors. As well as all of this, there will be merchandise available to purchase also, such as t - shirts, stationary, toys for children and much more. 

Targets

Three things i could do to improve my blog

        


                  1.  Complete all tasks as soon as possible and not leave it to last minute.

               2.  Make my blogs more creative and eye catching using different media platforms and more visuals.

        3. More in detailed and depth individual blogs, to work on my own personal grade.