My AS Media Journey

This is a post in which you will find a prezi that will explain how my journey has been throughout this year, what I have learned and how our group has developed. I hope you enjoy it.

Titles for our Rough Cut 6

After having gotten feedback on our Rough Cut 5 with music, we decided to change the font of the titles. 

As you will be able to see in the first post Bronwen did on titles, there are common conventions of horror/slasher titles in the specific movies we analysed such as "Insidious", "The Cabin in the Woods", "Friday the 13th" and many more. You can see in my link list on my blog, which horror/slasher genre movies we analysed. 

Some movies, such as Halloween, did not have the typical conventional fonts of a horror movie (look at the picture on the left). However, it is also to note that this movie was produced in 1978, and the technology to create fonts such as the ones from the movie "The Cabin in the Woods" did not yet exist. 

After the feedback that was given on rough cut 5, we had to change a couple of things including the titles. Since Bronwen had created the titles for rough cut 5, I wanted to do the ones for rough cut 6 so that I could learn how to use Final Cut Pro X to create titles. 

I decided to use the font called "Friday the 13th", which I found on dafont.com. I considered this font to be just the one, since our coursework has something in common with all the "Friday 13th" movies. The killer in the friday 13th movies is called Leather Face. It is a typical slasher convention, that the killer is a psychotic masked person. Therefore, I intended to use this font as a connotation that our film opening and the friday 13th movies are in some way linked to eachother. 

The font is red, which denotes the blood and danger that is in the movie.  Also, it is written as if someone had written it with blood so that it is splashed a bit all over the screen, denoting that a lot of blood is going to be spilt. 

We created a video where we did a titles rough cut with 3 different ways of introducing the titles. This video is going to be shown to some of our target audiences, who are then going to tell us which of the 3 title sequences they consider to be better fitting for our final cut and why they think this. The audience feedback will be done soon, so that I can include it into my evaluation questions.

I also decided to do a vodcast on this post, since I thought it would help the audience to see by which titles we were inspired and why we chose these specific titles.




Furthermore, I decided to screen recording, while I was doing the titles, so that I could explain how to do those in detail using Final Cut Pro X. Before doing the screen recording I wrote down a list to make sure that we got all the titles that we needed. These were:

Starring:

Under starring we wanted to write 3 star names from movies we have been inspired by. Therefore we chose names such as Chris Hemsworth and Kristen Connolly from "The Cabin in the woods" and Adrienne King from "Friday the 13th".

Introducing: 

Under this, we used the actual names of the 2 of us that had played in the film.
Bronwen Vaughan
Jonathan Paris

Edited by:

Jonathan Paris

Cinematographer:

Bronwen Vaughan

Produced by: 

Sophie Rasmussen

Sound by 

Max Genson

Producer:

Sophie Rasmussen

Director:

James Wan


Below you can see the video of the titles I created:

2nd Rough Cut of the Final Scene

This is the 2nd rough cut of the final scene, where the killer kidnaps the final girl. This is the bit that I edited, where I am still going to put sound on and either detach the audio that is on there now to just work with sound effects and non-diegetic music for there to be created a lot of tension.

In the exam there will be 4 main technical aspects that we need to comment on. These are:

• Mise en scene
• Cinematography
• Sound
• Editing

In terms of mise-en-scene, the costume of the central protagonist such as her jacket and her tight jeans denote that her age is around 16-17. You can tell that the central protagonist is not the typical character of the usual scream queen. Had it been a scream queen, she would have had blonde hair, ripped jeans or even a skirt and maybe have a handbag or clutch with her. The choice of the central protagonist wearing a concervative high collar T-Shirt, also emphasise the fact that there was a counter-typing by using the final girl and killing her instead of the scream queen.

Also, the costume of the killer waering all black and having his hoodie up around the mask denotes the genre. The mask is very good, because it really emphasises on the horror genre. Throughout the entire film, the audience isn't able to see the mask until the last bit where the killer finally appears on screen. This creates tension, and I intend to work a lot more with non-diegetic music to be able to build up the tension. Furthermore, when looking at the 1st rough cut, which was edited by Jonathan, you can see how our final girl is getting a false scare, by a woman who only wants to return her bible.

In this clip, which I am going to edit as well, I will begin with the non-diegetic music in order for there to be continuity throughout in terms of sound.
Moreover, there is a different ambient sound in every single shot. because we hear Bronwen's shoes going over the street and then you hear a car as well in the background. Due to this, I will loop the sound from the first shot, so that there will be continuity in it and that the sound doesn't change in the different shots. 

The mise-en-scene is very good outside, and the darkness and the natural appearance of the blue tint helps to connote the genre. This location was chosen on purpose because of the very bright lighting that added this specific blue tint as a natural effect. Because it turned out this well, I will be editing the first rough cut, by adding a blue filter when our central protagonist comes out of the church as well.
Another way we could have portrayed our central protagonist as more vulnerable would be to have framed Bronwen on the left or right side in the frame.
There is also some foreshadowing because she is walking towards a less lit space, where it is very dark, which foreshadows that something is going to happen.
Two other angles, that could have been incorporated, would have been a low angle and a dutch angle to make Bronwen appear as more vulnerable.

This shot was done on purpose to foreshadow, how she is going to get kidnapped. In thsi shot, she is a dark silhouette, which connotes that she is practically already gone.

Editing - Final Cut Pro X

In terms of editing we used Final Cut Pro for the creation of our film opening.

We used Final Cut Pro X, because it offers a lot of different opportunities and varieties in terms of editing. With the use of Final Cut, we were able to adjust the lighting and the look in our film opening. Furthermore, we will be creating our title sequence with Final Cut, because it has very simple controls that allows us to generate studio quality titles. 

The timeline that you can see on the bottom, offers you a flexible way to edit. 

Clips automatically move out of the way to avoid clip collisions. Moreover, it is very clear and simple to use Final Cut Pro, meaning that you always know what is happening as you work and you can always try out new ideas with all of the different varieties of effects and transitions.

Rough Cut 1

This is the first rough cut of our new idea.

Call Sheet 2

After having changed our idea, and deciding on all the final details, we were able to create a call sheet with the individual shots, basic scene and shot summary, dialogue and props, costume etc. This call sheet was a useful guideline to when we had to film, and after we filmed we added some more detail in there about the different shots. So this is the final version of our call sheet.

Call Sheet

Scene/basic Shot Summary	DIALOGUE	CAMERA (shot type, movement, framing)	MISE EN SCENE (location, props, costume, make-up etc.	CAST (note any directions)
Scene 1: A dark screen, where all you can hear are footsteps and then a door opening and closing. Adding sound effects to signify that it opens and closes. The basement then comes to sight, when a red bulb light turns on and flickers. We first see a bulletin board, where a lot of different things are attached such as pictures, locks of hair, calendar, newspaper articles etc.  The killer then all of a sudden comes into the shot and focuses on the different things by lighting at them with the flashlight.  The killer will come by a picture of the house, where we will frame in on the picture of the house and after that cut into the next scene that is an establishing shot of the house from the outside. Signifying that the killer is now outside of her house.	\	Long shot of the room, where the bulletin board is attached on the wall Medium shot when he walks closer to the bulletin board. We are framing the killer so that the audience can’t see his face until right at the end. Point-of-view shot when the killer walks towards the board. Pan from the left to the right to show the entire board. Showing each of the individual props on there by using extreme close-ups.	Location: A basement at one Jonathan’s house. His basement will be covered in plastic and will light in a very dim flickering light. Props: Bulletin board Locks of hair Small bags to put hair in Calendar Map over the house Pictures of the girl Picture of her FB profile Picture of her house Newspaper articles Red Pins Red light bulb Flashlight Plastic Costume: Black hoodie Black gloves Black jeans Black combat boots Mask Make-up: No make-up at all. Only the killer wearing his mask, but his face is not yet shown.	Killer is breathing heavily
Scene 2: The killer is outside of the house. There are point-of-view shots, taken with hand-held footage from behind a tree of bush to signify that he is observing from his perspective. There is then a light that turns on in one of the rooms. Then cutting to the girl in the bathroom, signifying that light turning on was from the bathroom Once in the bathroom, the girl is brushing her hair She is then putting on red nail polish on her nails and some of the nail polish drips onto the table.  There will be a flash forward, created with the use of a match cut. Blood is dripping on the floor running down her legs and landing on the floor in the basement. Signifying that blood will be spilt and showing what will happen to her.  It then cuts back to the bathroom scene, where she is now fixing her hair and tying it up in a ponytail. The second she ties it tighter, there is another flash forward to when her hands are tied with rope down in the basement. Her hands are covered with blood and wounds and are tied really tightly.	\	Establishing shot from the outside of the house. Point-of-view shot from the killer’s perspective, from behind a tree. A master shot of the house. Panning upwards to show how the light in the bathroom turns on. Cut to inside of the house, girl coming into the bathroom and turning on the light. There is then a shot seeing the girl walk into the bathroom from the back and standing in front of the mirror. Creating a close-up, from inside the closet, where the girl is taking the nail polish out from Mid-shot of her closing the closet and walking back towards the table next to the sink to put on the nail polish. Low angle shot that shows how she is observing her finger nails. Close-up on how she puts on some on each nail and then all of a sudden the nail polish drops onto the table. Creating a deep focus on the red nail polish that is signifying blood in our flash forward. Mid-shot from the side, showing how she is brushing her hair. Low angle, looking up on the girl to see how she is putting her hair up. A close-up from the back, the focus on her hair to see how she is pulling it tighter and creating the flash forward where rope is tied around her hands.	Location: Jonathan’s bathroom. Costume: The killer’s costume consisting of the black clothes and the mask. The girl’s costume is a pair of blue jeans and a plain white T-Shirt. We decided to make her clothing very simple, because we are counter typing and a final girl never dresses that girly, but has a very simple and nerdy style. Props: Fake blood Red Nail Polish Rope Wooden chair Brush Hair band Make-up: No make-up at all, except fro the nail polish. Signifying that she is the nerdy clever final girl, who prefers to spend her time on books rather than make-up and clothes.	Girl sighing when she looks at her hair in the mirror.
Scene 3: She walks into her bedroom and grabs her bible to go to church. When holding it up, there is a close-up of it and the shot cross fades to when she is in church praying with her bible in her hands. After a while she gets up and leaves the church and say amen. Outside she gets a false scare, when someone puts a hand on her shoulder. It is however just the pastor who wants to give her back her bible because she forgot it in the church. She immediately calls a friend right after to tell her what just happened. While she does that, the killer comes up behind her and puts a bag over her head. It immediately cuts to black, and we create an audio bridge where the friend is still on the phone, yelling for Casey, the girl.	“Amen” “Haha it’s just me, I just wanted to hand you your bible, you left it inside”. “Thank you” “Hey Claire! Omg I just had the weirdest feeling that I was being watched and then the pastor just scared me because I forgot my bible in church haha”. “Omg that must have been so weird”. “I know, I felt really…” (ahhhhh scream) Audio Bridge  “Casey! Casey are you there? Casey!”	Extreme-close-up on her bible and cross fading into the same extreme close-up when she is in church. Creating an establishing shot of the church to show the calm environment she is in. Focusing on her lips and her silent prayers. Mid-shot when she get’s up to walk out of church. Going back to the establishing shot of the church as she leaves it. Point-of-view shot with hand-held footage from the killer’s perspective to show that he is observing her wherever she goes. Over-the-shoulder shot, when the pastor puts his hand on her shoulder. An extreme close-up on her face to show how scared she got, when someone put his hand on her shoulder. Shot, reverse shot between her and the pastor while they exchange the small dialogue. Mid-shot when she takes her phone out and looks relieved. Dials a number. Extreme close-up on her phone. While she talks into it, there is a focus pull, putting her into shallow focus and the killer sneaking up behind her into deep focus. Bag is pulled over her head and cuts to black.	Location: The church at Limpertsberg in Luxembourg Props: Bible Pastor Phone Bag Costume: Killer’s costume with all the black clothes and his mask, which is finally revealed.	Girl jumping when the pastor puts his hand on her shoulder. Screaming when a bag is put over her head.