Cutting a Performance.

Here is a video I made of me and my friends performing live from two different angles and I made an edit of it for our band. I learnt about cutting together a performance and used the techniques.

Enjoy.

Editing Post

It took us as a group just over a week to complete the editing of our sequence and then a day to polish it off. 

First of all we went through our rushes to re-look over our footage that we took on the day and started to name them them for example - Close up of Antagonist.
- Good candle focus pull

We decided on our opening shot which would be the aesthetic shot we took of the spider climbing up the wall which worked really well and was a mysterious opening for our sequence. 

We then chose the shots for the rest of our sequence which included mostly the same shots which doesn't create confusion for the audience but we did use some of the shots that had movement.

One we finished editing the sequence and making our final judgements on it and it was at its best, we then discussed our production name and roles and most importantly our title.

Our production company name was a Francis Durham production along with another name that I have forgotten. We then credited our actors and noted down a few other names who were in our film as a whole.

Finally we used a copyright free soundtrack from a music producer in Sweden and used a repeated sample from one of their pieces. This worked really well and our whole group were really pleased with the finished sequence!

Mise-En-Scene video

Here is my video explaining Mise-en-scene choices

Behind the scenes Video

Here is the Behind the scenes video we created...

Shoot Day write up

Short Narrative
Our Group met in the editing suite at around 8:30 where we applied our makeup and costumes to the Actor and Actress which took around 10 minutes and the costumes looked really good on them too!

After that, we went down to the studio and collected the equipment that we needed and piled it on the minibus and bevelled to our location. When we arrived, we unpacked everything and took the equipment down to the basement. 

We then set up the altar, lighting and the set in general. The group decided to give the set a red tint. Near to the back we had a a brighter light which made the set lighter. 

We then filmed the first half of our sequence in about 40 minutes with a variety of shot, Went back to school for lunch and then came back to the location to film the second half which involved our creature!

What Went well?
Almost everything went well on the day. The night before, we briefed the actors and gave them their costumes for them to wear into school the next day, They completed it and we had no hassle or problems with the costumes or when we were doing the makeup. This part ran smoothly. 

Setting up the set took around 30 minutes, this is because it required only a few items. For example, to gain the red tint, we used two red fluorescent lights one on the wall to the right of the altar and one on the ceiling connected to some hooks that were already in place there. behind the camera setup and just a bit to the left of it was a brighter light which had a white and red wrap over it. This made the set brighter but still kept it red to create the devilish feeling. Lottie set up the altar with a few helpful inputs from me and Alfie. First up she played a black cloth over the stool that was already impulse there long with 4 pillar candles and around 6 tea lights on either side. A black bed sheet was put at the back which created some metaphorical darkness on the set with added to the eerie feeling. A circular shape of bath salt was laid around the altar for our actress to lie in. The setting up was the hardest part of the day as it took a long time to get the set perfect which after 30 minutes it did.

Shooting
Shooting the first half of our sequence took around 40 minutes. In this time we took a wide shot of the whole sequence which without the creature part lasted about 3 minutes. Then we did a tighter wide shot and then many close-up shots of certain important actions e.g. Antagonist cutting his hand on a knife, Lighting candles and tucking the girls hair behind her ear. We did a few aesthetic shots, Lottie wanted to capture a fan on the wall and a spider that was crawling up the wall too. We did some focus pulls and pushes of candles which look very nice. In the second half of shooting we filmed the creature part which wasn't as challenging as I thought it would be. To create the monster, Alfie put on a gorilla costume and we attached the mask onto him using duct tape. The over the shoulder shots from the girls perspective took some time as Alfie had limited vision which affected us. We got the shots we wanted and it was all good.

What didn't go so well
In one of the takes of Alfie being the creature, he ran into the doorway accidentally and injured his shoulder quite badly but is okay. He couldn't carry on and so Ed our Actor stepped in as the creature as he wasn't needed anymore. We did a few more shots of the creature from its perspective looking towards the girl where the creature rose from underneath the camera which looked really good with the fur. This is really the only thing we had to deal with all day.

The most difficult element of the shoot was filming the monster and getting the the balance of light and dark perfect in the room and on camera by adjusting the big bright spot light at the back of the room. We did this by taking the light from 1 half of the room and transferring it to where the girl was positioned which made it so we could see the monsters eyes and some of the outline of the suit. Other than that, Our shoot was relatively easy to film.

Our idea changed slightly with the creature section. For example, our original vision was to have the creature reveal just its eyes and have it end there. But we had shots from different perspectives. We also had the creature also do some inhumane movements through the doorway. The movements and different idea helped the monsters character build up. We also took these shots because in editing it is better to have too many shots than too little to work with.

For me in enjoyed the whole day as it was so interesting to work on at least a semi-professional film set which felt great. My favourite part was being on the camera for the majority of the day oh and lunch. But also, it was just great to our idea pan out and come into effect especially as it was my original idea that we all worked on to improve and how also the mask I created looked incredible on camera. 

As a group, I thought we did really well. We worked together in sync and we barely had any disagreements all day as we let everyone have an input on ideas.

Back up to our monster mask

On the rare occasion that our monster mask doesn't work or bales on us, I have got some red light up thumbs. As silly as they sound, they do emit a good red light. 

Title Conventions

Credits in a sequence

In the title credits, there is usually a hierarchy of which role/s come beforehand. There are traditions within the film industry about credits but they're fluid most of the time. 

They start usually with the big companies that were involved in the making.
Its then followed up by the "top billing" those who are obliged to a credit who are usually the star actors/Actresses
Then the job roles. Here is the usual order:
Lead Cast
Supporting Cast
Casting Director
Music Composer
Costume Designer
Associate Producers
Editors
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Executive Producer
Producer
Writers
Director

Sometimes it will start with the director and writers and producer but many variations exist.
Another variation of this is that the genre of film can effect the order of credits. For example in a musical film with lots of dance numbers like Moulin Rouge. The dance choreographer will often be near to the beginning in the hierarchy.

There is an average of about 15-20 credits being shown in the opening and the first 5-10 are the most important people involved in the film and the rest are for example are the ones who write the screenplay or are the visual or sound effects supervisor.

Titles should be easy to read and that is why the font is BOLD and usually names are done in CAPITALS to make them stand out.

The History of Titles

Titles in film are used for notifying the audience about who has worked on the film and who is in the film. On some occasions a few of the crew will be announced before the film comes out. A film which was directed by one of the greats e.g. Spielberg or Tarantino would be very popular amongst cinema goers.

Film titles can be recognised by the design in the words and the colour in them and the font. Some iconic examples are 
- Star Wars I-IX  

- Back to the Future

- Die Hard

Often, the job role in a film title such as 'executive producer' is written in lower case as the audience can just read it easily. The name that goes with the title is done in UPPER CASE for example ANTHONY DANIELS or STEVE CARELL.

These are some of the first designs on a film title, as you can see it has a border on it unlike present film titles.

As the years go by, we can see that film titles have become more and more advanced and more pleasing to look at. This is because the audience can start to tell the genre of film just by looking at the titles.

Lettering
For ease in reading, letters on the title were done with small 'serifs' and were in mono-stroke letter form. The white lettering on a black background is the easiest to read out of all combinations.

Here are some examples off title sequences of 'TheArtoftheTitle.com'
James Bond title sequence are iconic as they're obscure and very visual for the audience.


The Lego Movie is also a good example as it is creative and shows the audience what it is about and how its also about lego. This is also an example of a more modern sequence.