Bloopers & Filming evidence

RDO

Titles

I wanted the titles of my film to be more dynamic than just having them stay put during the opening, similar to the Walking Dead's more fast-paced intro. For this, I used 'title roll' whilst typing out the text in a capital font with sans features. 

The font reflects the content of the film opening. The words are bold and clear, but the spindly corners add some scruffy-neatness due to the fact that the survivor and the radio host are crossing paths: two very different characters.

Editing Sound

 To makes the sound of the radio microphones more distorted, I edited Thomas' voice clips that overlay scenes in the woods with Adobe Audition.

To get some static feedback, which is reminiscent of walkie talkies, I went to:

Effects > Special > Distortion

which bought me to a pop up screen that looked like this:

I then clicked and dragged the red and green lines in order to manipulate the pitch and volume, and also accentuate feedback - it was like turning up the sharpness of a low resolution photo, which created static and noise.

Finding Ambience

Due to a poor sound quality due to the fact that there was a technical hitch with the microphones SD cards, ambience sounds were needed to make the film seem more professional.

To achieve this, I went to the website: freesound.org , made an account and looked for sounds with a public domain symbol:

This means that the intellectual property rights of the sounds clips have expired, have been forfeited or are inapplicable.

The ambience clips I used were titled:

• Outdoor forest
• Running refrigerator
• Creepy Piano
• Negative Ambience

The outdoor forest ambience was used, obviously, for the forest scenes, and the running refrigerator diegetics were used for inside the studio. The piano, however, was added at random intervals during the film, similar to how a low budget thriller may uses music to string out the tension. Near the end of the film, the negative ambience was used to create tension as the survivor stared at the phone.

Noise and Grain

Whilst editing, I noticed that the shots taken in the studio environment were grainy due to a lack of light, which caused spots to flicker about the picture like there was dust on the lens. To combat this, I went on to you tube to look for some tutorials about getting rid of the grain.

Here I found an After Effects tutorial that was very useful.

Though the effects were small, I managed to minimize the grain and make the pictures a little cleaner.

2/2 Filming

1/2 Filming

Weather Forecasts

As long as this weather prediction is correct, we won't have to worry about grumpy actors and mud stealing our tripods. Just for the sake of being prepared, I will bring an umbrella.

Hiccups

Sadly our intended actor for the Survivor - Alex - couldn't make the film due to an operation. It was evident we needed a new leading man, so I headed down to the drama department on Thursday to look for more actors. To do this, I described the film opening, the genre, and offered them a memory stick with the copy of the film on it so that they can use it in their port folio.

I managed to get two phone numbers off of potential acotrs (Monty and James), and all that's need now it to arrange a time with he rest of the team to give to them, and see if they can make the filming.

Costumes

SURVIVOR
The costume that the survivor will be wearing shall be simple - a large leather jacket over whatever clothes he has on, and we will paint his face to make it look like he has stubble. He will have a pretend gun and a holster, and maybe a scarf. The point of dressing him simply is to help him blend into his surroundings. He is the main character, so he doesn't want to draw anymore focus.


RADIO HOST
Though the room will be dark and the radio host's face is never seen, his costume will have to make up for his anonymity. The clothes he wears are going to be comfortable, colourful and clean. He is a recluse who lives in a radio station, so it's quite unlikely that he'll be covered in mud. He will be wearing a dressing gown or a hawaiian shirt, and additional bracelets and accessories. Anything bright and childish. However, we ended up asking Thomas to bring in one of his dressing gowns and simply draw focus to his mouth (but never his whole face). The is, after all, the speaker, and should be protrayed thusly and just a voice of reasons (Despite him being insane).

INFECTED GIRL
Due to the fact that we don't want an agitated child on our hands, she will not be wearing as much in regards to costumes. Her make up will draw the attention away from her clothes, and she may wear a hat as well as have fake blood covering her hands and face.

INFECTED MAN
The infected man will be wearing a large coat, and again, he'll be wearing the make up to draw attention away from anything else.

Final Script

During a free period, I took the time to lengthen the script so that we would have more to work with whilst editing. This is the final script that will be handed out to our actors.

[Interior: Radio station. Background music is upbeat]

RH And welcome back to 237 days since the Incident. That’s right, folks. Christmas is just around the corner, so stock up on that delicious canned turkey for the festive season. Or better, we could get together some time. I know you’re all giving me the silent treatment, but—fun. Well you know where I am: Same bat time, same bat channel.  And now for the weather.

[As the radio host is talking, there’ll be crosscutting to the survivor: the polar opposite of the host. Broody. Dangerous. The setting is the woods.]

RH The gamma levels out in sector 2 are a low and pleasant 24, and chances of the sun making an appearance is pretty bleak.

[The transmission can be heard coming from a rucksack. The survivor approaches where the noise is coming from. Opens bag. Find walkie talkie. This is the first voice he’s heard in almost a year.]

RH For you younger listeners, it was the big ball of fire in the sky before we replaced with one of those energy saving do-hickeys. God bless the late, great government. And that’s about all we—

S [Speaking into the walkie talkie] Hello?

RH [Freezes] …And we have our first caller. [Typing, clicking, and trying to find the right security footage to find the survivor] What’s your name, friend? What’s your story?

S [Amusement] You’re crazy. This is crazy.

RH You’re crazy, I’m crazy…How about another one? Can you tell me where the nearest infected is in your local area?

S It’s just me. It’s just me now.

RH Wrong answer. Take a look around and see what you could’ve won.

S What?

RH There’s someone behind you.

S [Tense, already reaching for the gun. The infected behind him has blotchy green skin. Vacant stare. Survivor shoots him]

RH That was violent. Wanna talk about it to our listeners?

S Shut up. [Rummaging through the infected’s pockets; finds photograph of the Infected before the Incident. He’s with his daughter. Looks up and sees the daughter, now infected.]

Meet the Cast

Thomas Williams will be our Radio Host. We chose him because he has an excellent speaking voice and is easily imaginable as an eccentric recluse in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

This is Martin - our leading man who'll play the survivor. He is related to Bradley, a member of our group, and was therefore easily to get a hold of. We chose an older actor because it would make our film look more professional, and he has the look of a survivor. Note: Tattoos

Alexander Dawes is essentially the guy we're going to kill off. We chose him because he is currently studying drama, and would play a convincing survivor well as he's the most highly trained.

Alex's little sister shall be played by Summer, another one of Bradley's relatives. We chose her because he's one of the youngest children we could find (I can assure you that we did not hang around playgrounds, asking for children to star in our movie) and she has a good likeness to Alex.

Make-up

Cheesy, cheesy tutorial

What would our antagonists - the infected people - be without their makeup? Seeing as I had too much free time on my hands, I decided to flicked through some online tutorials and try to replicate the special effects.

First of all, I scraped back the hair from my face with an old motorbike scarf and put on some basic foundaion. This made skin more ven and less greasy when the white facepaint is applied, but adaptations may have to be made whilst doing the actor's makeup outside (And I doubt that the male actors will be happy about wearing blusher.

I then applied the white facepaint for the ghoulish complexion. It's a cheap product and came out patchy when applied with the sponges, but that added to the effect.

As you can seen, my phone's camera isn't the best for demonastrating what colours were used, but I decided to highly any sunken areas of the face with brown facepaint and black eyeshadow.  Everything was framed (Note the patchiness near the forehead).  The patchier it was, the better it came out.

This is the finished product (And actually resembles what I look like in the morning). Red lipstick was used around the eyes to make them look red, as well as add to the contoured areas. Fake blooded will be added to the actor's faces also at a later date.

Animatic

Recce Shots of Locations

THE STATION

Finding the Interior location for our radio host was simple. There is an English classroom in lower school which has a mini radio station.

 With the addition of props such as bean cans, posters, bits of wires and additional laptops, we have ourselves a radio station. The lighting will be low - the computer screens will be the main light source and aid in silhouetting or illumination our actor.

THE WOODS
There is a dog walking area being the kirkby train station. Bradley 'et al' went to investigate... 

Along the paths and sparse woodland area, there are a selection of hills and ditches, which would be perfect for setting up low/high angle shots. Also, it's the infect girl could crawl up the hill at the end of the opening and the viewers would never see her coming.

Here is a broken arch, created by trees. This would be good for a long shot with the actor emerging through the trees, as the framing is neat and almost symmetrical.

Due to there being spacey parts of the woodland area available, the lighting will be bright and the film opening will have a more desolate feel. All the colours are faded; it's reminiscent of the Walking Dead.

Here, we decided to think of places that a back pack could go during our filming and incorporate the rule of thirds and thing how the scenes were going to be set up.

To show how much space and freedom we'd have during filming, here's a picture of some of our explorers...exploring.

Rought Script

To make our ideas more original for the film opening we decided to individuall work on our own timelines and scripts before coming back to the group and pitching our ideas to another another, and add different elements from each of the scripts to come up with a final piece.

The Survivor is a survivor as a hardened veteran, unphased to the events unfolding around him in an abandoned world.

On the other hand, our Radio Host will be eccentric, brightly dressed and very reclusive. He hasn't talked to another soul in so long that hasn't wanted to kill him, and the cracks are just beginning to show in his psyche.

 



 

 

This is the rough draft we came up with. We all picked the same storyline due to the mood board we created - then all we had to do was mock up our impressions of the character and what they might say.

Eventually, Chris wrote up the rough draft of the script, and we were to add further speech during filming or if more inspiration comes to us.

There are no certainties as of yet.

Planning: Story Board

After we were satisfied with our research, our group began to plot out a basic story board for the film opening so that we could visually plot out which camera angles we were going to use and what would need to be incorporated in the mise en scene.

This story board is a mock-up of our film opening, though nothing is concrete as of yet.

The basic plot for our post-apocalyptic film opening is that two characters (A radio host and a survivor) are going to communicate with each other via a walkie talkie in a near-abandoned world. An unknown disease has wiped out most of the population - the rest are feral scavengers.

Note: A new and improved storyline that's more orientated around the story of the film opening has been made by Jack on a comic strip creator sight.

Moodboard

The main theme of our opening will be touching on isolation and loneliness. Two characters - a radio host and  survivor - are going to be connected by just their voices. They never actually see each other. There will be a large amount of cross-cutting from a dingy radio station to a bright, grimy landscape (either a forest or deserted street).

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Poll

Comic-con & Costumes

During a trip to Nottingham Comic-con, I took this opportunity to study costume and the importance is has on the overall impression of a character.

Here we see a Bane cosplayer and a Tony Stark cosplayer (See the reactor glowing through his chest?) Due to the fact that Bane-guy is so tall and imposing, and his face is concealed, it de-humanises him and makes him seem less, well, approachable. On the other hand, Tony-guy's hair is scraped away from his face and his has a quizzical expression whilst looking at the villain. He is also wearing a band T-shirt, which makes him more apporachable to a viewer/passer-by.

Here we have myself and another Supernatural cosplayer. Our clothes are very dull and we each wear plaid. On the left, Winchester-A is wearing glasses - this makes her seem studious and book-ish whereas Winchester-B is holding a [plastic] gun and dresses generally darker. Though their costumes are similar, they are very contradicting characters.
NOTE: Winchester B's costumes may feature in the film opening.

Now the interestign thing about stormtroopers is that although they follow the villainous archetype as faceless and armored, their attire is clean and white which makes them seem more robot and less human. It could also mean they're a blank slate with no personality. In the foreground, there is a cosplayer in glasses, a smart shirt and a lab coat. Obviously, he is a scientist. There's definitely a character clash in comparison with how much detail is in each outfit.

PLANET TERROR | Production Companies, Attraction & Connecting Genres

To umbrella an array of tasks and to stop some repetition in posts, I have decided to analyse the Planet Terror as a means of picking apart its conventions, attracting features and production companies.

PLOT SUMMARY (Planet Terror)

"After an experimental bio-nerve gas is accidentally released at a remote military base in Texas, those exposed to the gas are mutated into zombies out to kill. Various assortments of people including a stripper and her mechanic-ex boyfriend, a doctor and a local sheriff have to join forces to survive the night and stop the "sickos" fro taking over the town and eventually, the world."

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino teamed up to create a fake production company called Grindhouse in order to sell their films: Death Proof and Planet Terror. It is also a parody of the Hammerhouse film production company based in the UK that used to develop early horror films such as the Frankenstein and Dracula franchises and crossovers. Ofcourse, the style has been heavily Americanised with action, sex and violence to attract a mostly male audience. After all, a Grindhouse is an American term for a theatre that mainly shows Exploitation films. It is named after the Burlesque theatres of New York where strip teases and bump'n'grind dancing was featured. Exploitation films are usually in the horror genre, which links into the Post-Apocayptic films as Zombies seem to be the most popular choice for ending the world. The films are seen to be low budget (Despite Tarantino being influential directors who have hired a plethora of A-list stars for their films) and include sex & violence as a key selling point.

Despite a large budget and a substantially well-known cast for both of these films, they appeal to their audience because they seem so culturally unappealing.

The real production companies for Planet Terror, however, are high budget and are famous for bringing us numerous amouns of different-genred films.

Dimension Films is a major American film production and distribution studio formerly owned by The Walt Disney Studios, it is now owned by The Weinstein Company. It is famous for horror and action films such as The Crow, From Dusk till Dawn, the Scream Franchise, Sin City and Equilibrium.

Troublemaker Studios is a film production company founded and owned by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez and producer Elizabeth Avellan. They're responsible for for most of Robert Rodruiguez' films such as Once upon a Time in Mexico and also Spy Kids.

These studios create cult classics which mostly appeal to the male genre. Though not culturally fulfilling, they generate alot of money and hype among cinema go-ers.

Conventions: 28 Days & Weeks Later

Animal activists invade a laboratory with the intention of releasing chimpanzees that are undergoing experimentation, infected by a virus -a virus that causes rage. 28 Days Later, our protagonist, Jim, wakes up from a coma, alone, in an abandoned hospital. He begins to seek out anyone else to find London is deserted, apparently without a living soul. Selena and Mark rescue him from the horde and bring him up to date on the mass carnage and horror as all of London tore itself apart.

28 Weeks Later picks up six months after the Rage Virus has decimated the city of London. The US Army has restored order and is repopulating the quarantined city, when a carrier of the Rage Virus enters London and unknowingly re-ignites the spread of the deadly infection and the nightmare begins... again. 

The 28 "" later franchise is a perfect example of films that possesses all the qualities and conventions of the post-apocalyptic genre.

However, unlike the previous films that put quite alot of focus on each shot, 28 days later was filmed with small, cheap cameras and scatters about the sets so that match on action could be accomplished on a larger scale, and the changing camera angles added more action and horror. You don't know where to look because the zombies, the heroes and creatures are continually moving at a fast pace like Danny Boyle himself had taken a shot of the Rage Virus.

In the first film, colours pop throughout the drab environmnet (For example: Jim's blue hospital gown in the empty city or Selena's red dress in the dusty old house.)
Due to separate film makers in the second film, more focus is put on the quality of the shots (For example: The boy staring through the glass to give off his reflection/A rifle scope showing a girl in the window), but there's less suspense in the sequel. This is due to the fact that you expect what's coming, and there is less attention on the jumpy camera angles that frighten the audience - gore is key in 28 weeks later.
 

John Murphy's In the House, In A Heartbeat is a score written of 28 Days later's soundtrack. It is one of the most iconic instrumental songs in film making and the horror genre due to its gradual build-up of sombre instruments that conjeal into a mass of whirring guitars, heavy drums and coincide perfect with the film's themes of rage, human nature and shocking horror.

The blue of Jim's scrubs stands out in the vast, empty city. Everything in this shot is out of place, even the carrier bag.

Selena and Hannah'd red dresses could almost pass off as befitting for the old house that they're now living in, if not for the soldier guarding them and the mayhem happening outside of the doors. The portrait that separates them is of a lady, which may infer than womanhood is the only thing that stands between Hannah and the fate she's subjected to at the hands of the soldiers who want to repopulate the earth.

 

Look Alive, Sunshine.

Staying on the similar focus of radio broadcasts, I like My Chemical Romance's Danger days album and the Post Apocalyptic, gun toting, gamma radiated universe it creates in the dunes of America's deserts. The radio host gives the introduction of MCR's Na Na Na a Vanishing Point meets Mad Max feel to it. The stings and sound parallels tie in with the Western-ised wasteland, and the bold imagery stays in the mind. Not too much information is given out about how the world's turned out this way. All we know is that we're on the side of the killjoys and whatever they fight for.

Of course, there aren't any deserts around Kirkby, but I'm sure the themes of Dystopian wastelands and rock 'n' roll gun toters can be incorporated, especially in the wardrobe and costume department.

Examining Sound: Night Vale

"Look to the North. Keep looking. There's nothing coming from the south." 

                                                                                        -- Today's proverb, Night Vale Pliot

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast presented as a radio show for the fictional town of Night Vale. It was created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor (Who voices Cecil Baldwin), and is inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The podcast consists of "news, announcements and advertisements" from the desert town, located "somewhere in the Southwestern United States". Every episode of the podcast includes a piece of music as its "weather report,", each by a different independently-published artist.

I've decided to examine a podcast rather than a film opening due to the fact that Welcome to Night Vale's sound choices are pretty interesting. Though not directly part to the Post Apocalyptic genre, the dystopian and conspiratorial atmosphere is very inspiring for a world that our group are soon to create for our film opening. 

The initial theme is mellow and slightly unnerving - in addition, the themes and ambient sounds used throughout the broadcast to coincide Cecil's smooth narration adds further unease and draws in the listener. Every sentence is abstract and incomplete and deliverance, and questions are never really answered.

Title Sequences: Stake Land

When a pandemic of vampirism strikes, humans find themselves on the run from vicious, feral beasts. Large cities are left as tombs and survivors cling together in rural pockets, fearing nightfall. When his family is slaughtered, young Martin (Paolo) is taken under the wing of a grizzled, wayward vampire hunter, called Mister (Damici).

In contrast to The Walking Dead, there are no names of actors shown in the titles sequences - only the presenters and the producers. This advertises where the film gained its sponsors (Seeing as it is a low budget film) and the viewers do not need to be drawn in if they've bought or chose to watch this movie. Therefore edgy titles and actors are not necessary to stop the viewer from changing channels.

The film opening starts with the pruction companies such as Dark Sky films, so that the additiona films that the company may make are advertised to the viewers.

It is done with Scarflix as well. The company has its title spray painted on the side of a wall, which indicates that the company do not help produce or create rom coms.

The production companies and sponsors of the film are advertised one after the other due to the fact that this film is low budget and independent, so it needs all the help it can get.

The establishing shot is of a country lane with a sprawling field and trees which frame the shot. The credits appear in the corner of the screen beside the tree. It sticks to the rules of thirds, and thusly draws the eye towards the titles to make them read them.

The titles in question are advertising the labels shown in the first few seconds of the opening titles to makes sure the viewers hadn't tuned out and ignored the production companies. As well as this, the car is coming into view of the camera, being track by the camera as it comes by. This makes the viewer feel like they're spying on the car too, and soon make them want to know more about who'se drivign the car in the middle of no where.

As the car leaves the shot, we are left with a broken sign advertising a small town. The population part of the sign has been shot out. This adds to the theme of desertion, andwe immediately feel like we're in a wasteland rather than a quiet country road.

We soon find out who we've been following in the car with an interior shot over the shoulder of our protagonist and the music ends. His voice over then begins to paint a picture of the world they're in and what he's suffered. However when he turns around, we see he's only a young teenager who looks anxiously to the back seat; to where the growling and scratches are coming from in the trunk.

The man beside him is similar to Zombieland's Talahassee; the quieter, more confident survivor of the duo who seems to be a paternal figure. All we see of him is his tired eyes in the car mirror, but it's all we need to see to figure out what kind of character he is.

Match on action is used here - we see the back of the two and the elder man pulling out a gun before seeing a close up of the gun firing at the back seat. This change in camaera angles adds a sudden change to the initial calm and quiet of the opening.



We see the bullets hit the upholstery of the car sea tand the growling eventually stops. The speaker continues talking throughout this, like he's used to this situation.





A long shot of the car driving is shown, and makes the viewer feel like the characters are always running from something, and the least of their troubles is what the viewer may think of them.





The ending shot is of a parn with its doors open. There are forks of lightening and thunder used for sound effects. The colours are warm inside the barn, and may be seen as a fond memory for the protagonist before the vampires took over. Everything is centred, because it is the centre of attention.