Final Draft

Here, you will find the final draft of Kin, below this post, my evalutation posts and then the rest of my journey through constructing an opening sequence. 

I hope you enjoy viewing the development of knowledge I experienced throughout the creation of this blog and the research, planning and construction that went into creating the thriller opening sequence for Kin.

Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

General

• We were able to used a microphone to re-record lost sound using some friends in our class as the voice actors. This was of course very lucky which is lesson in itself to be more prepared, more so than you think.
• Saving work has definitely improved since that's a skill in its own right... Although I never experienced any major loss of work, Blogger's frequent crashes terrified me into saving all work.
• Deadlines have to be met and so they do outside of coursework in other lessons. I learned over time to work more efficiently and to not leave things to the last minute, although as I am writing this, I understand that I still have yet to improve upon that.

Adobe Premiere Pro CC

The editing software which Ed and I mainly used was Adobe Premiere Pro CC and I had both negative and positive experiences with it.

Positive:

• I very much appreciated the 'auto-save' feature and the back up/ version files it stored as I had once foolishly deleted everything we had done during the insertion of audio during the final edit.
• The different windows allowed Ed and I to access controls quickly, and once learned, we were able to work quicker also. 
• Although not necessarily effective, the colour controls allowed Ed and I to improve the appearance of weather continuity in our first draft.
• Ed and I were able to rotate the video and enlarge it in a way which made the footage less wonky

Negatives:

• It was very difficult to get used to as we were producing something that was longer than anything I have ever produced on Premier Pro, certain controls aren't always where I wanted them to be and windows sometimes miss-behaved.

Below, you may find a screenshot you will have seen earlier in my blog and certain aspects of it are analysed. These are linked to the tools which I personally found rather useful and had to learn the uses of.

(If you are finding it difficult to read, please click on the image to enlarge and press the 'x' on the top right corner to close when done)

Adobe Audition CC

Audition CC is also an editing software, but for sound. Ed and I discovered it when we used the 'edit sound in audition' feature found in premier if we right clicked on a track. 

Positives:

• It was extremely comforting to know that this was a professional software which was able to remove excess sound which the camera picked up.
• The feature opened easily, saved automatically and even imported the new, edited audio to the project in premier automatically. Once controls were learned, the interface was rather easy to use.

Negatives:

• I found it very difficult to find controls as the layout is rather annoying, though I understand that one can adjust that (I dared not touch anything but what the YouTube tutorials suggested)
• Some features did not function correctly such as the removal of background sound, however, it is probably down to my own personal inexperience with the product.

I have not provided an annotated screenshot for this software as I have done for the above because I did not use many tools at all aside from the 'razor' feature also available in Premiere Pro, and the 'cut' feature where I cut the background sounds out from the made audio. 

In the beginning, I also struggled with the view of the software as it did not resemble those in the YouTube videos, however, a quick Google search quickly told me that I must use the top options bar to select the option to see the 'spectral frequency display' which is the orange coloured track such as the image I found on the left. Though the image on the left is not a screenshot of mine, it looks very similar to what editing I was doing during the construction of the opening sequence.

Adobe Photoshop CC

Photoshop was only really used when constructing the 'production company' logo for our opening sequence. I already knew how to use this software so I didn't really learn anything new. An example of when I used this can be found in this blog post. The use of specific tools etc are circled!

Process

YouTube

I used YouTube to share many of my videos including the drafts so I can include them in my blog.

Positives:

• Later editing the content that I uploaded to YouTube made me more confident that anything I produce doesn't necessarily have to be perfect as I can edit it to an extent. 
• I became slightly more comfortable with producing videos of myself speaking. I myself am not a very confident person in front of the camera, and knowing that the content is going online is an anxious concept so I found it rather difficult to speak.

Negatives:

• The upload time takes a significant amount of time, and sometimes videos don't upload at all if anything is accidentally disturbed. I learned that it is important to just upload the videos in one go and keep the upload tabs open, even if the 'publish' button has been clicked.

Blogger

Blogger was the main platform we used to blog our progress and throughout the course I have learned to use it efficiently, however, I did find that I had both negative and positive experiences with it.

Positives:

• The HTML code editor is very useful as I can manually edit aspects of a post. Due to previous experience with HTML, I am able to adjust size of components, colours of text etc manually which I found rather useful as controls don't always work.
• Uploading to YouTube and inserting a video is very very easy thanks to the share links available on almost everything on the internet. 
• Uploading images also became easier over time.

Negatives:

• Blogger was generally just a very irritating application to lose. I do have very little patience and a short attention span, therefore I found that I quickly lost motivation to produce content on Blogger and went onto procrastinate.

I learned that switching browsers from Internet Explorer, to Google Chrome made the whole experience of using Blogger much more enjoyable and I think that I improved in my blogging process. 

Filming

Microphone

The microphone luckily recorded sound very well and although at first Ed and I had trouble getting started and set up, we quickly had everything sorted, however, we did have some difficulty getting started and setting up. We used a INSERT MICROPHONE MAKE THING AND PICTURE

Tripod

A Velbon 700 tripod was used for the filming process.

Positives:

• I was able to easily adjust the height when I filmed long shots and Ed also adjusted the height when he was filming the two shot of the Tonys by using the winding feature just under the foot. 

Negatives:

• The tripod's top half was wound too tight and thus when the handle was let go, it began to tilt so some footage was wonky (granted, my mistake for not checking when I was shooting).

Camera

We used a Canon 700D to shoot our opening sequence and the setting made it easy for us to do so. Since the settings were on automatic, the focus was easy to adjust and there was no need to correct the lighting colour etc, which I am rather useless at since I am used to a different camera, however, Practically, the camera either didn't pick up sound as well as we'd hoped, or it picked up the sound we didn't want better than anything else

Question 5

Audience research from CsengeNemeti

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Question 3

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Foreigners

Below I originally inserted a video in order to explain the factors concerning foreigners around film in general, however, it was called to my attention by my teacher as advice, that I should narrow down my research and evaluation area to the genre specific to thrillers, therefore, anything highlighted yellow, as well as the video, is a previous version of what I explained in the updated image found below. 

The youth 

The way we chose to represent the youth through costumes (with examples):

Men

A social group which I did not mention in any of the videos were men. This is because the representations video for this would likely be too long, so I am going to present this information using the platform 'Tagul' after which I will explain all the different aspects of it.

I used a website (link provided) called Media Smarts to collect a little bit more information on the stereotypes concerning men. The page that I found listed 'the common stereotypes of men in media' so I created a word cloud from it to quickly condense the overwhelming information (which I found rather useful as I can now see the words that are most used associated with the characters of 'men').

Men specifically in the thriller genre:

Hannibal Lecture

Men in the thriller genre are often either a protagonist or an antagonist (examples include Silence of the Lambs by Jonathan Demme (1991) where Hannibal Lecture is the antagonist and Nosferatu by F.W. Mornau (1922) where Hutter is the protagonist). 

Hutter

In this way, Ed and I kept to these conventions since the characters considered to be the antagonists by the audience is the two Tonys and the protagonist is Ivan, they're all of the male gender. In fact, though we haven't cast female characters, when there is mention of one, Ivan's mother, it is in the form of a sexual innuendo which the two Tonys laugh at suggesting that there had been an earlier inside joke formed between them. 

Tippi Hedren

Sexualising women and crudely joking about their physical appearance is a common occurrence when stereotyping men. An example can be found in The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock, released in 1963 wherein the opening sequence, as Tippi Hedren is entering the pet shop, someone, likely a man, whistled in her direction in a way which resembled a 'cat call' to show expression of their sexual attraction toward her. 

Men and their appearance in the thriller genre:

Additionally, Ed and I chose to represent the men in our thriller opening sequence in relation to their age (that is where 'The Youth' video connects), however, an obvious aspect which I chose not to talk about in the video, was the representation of 'middle aged men', especially those affiliated with an antagonistic role. I've mentioned before that, men are common to sexualise women in a thriller film, and therefore, Ed and I have kept to that convention of representation, however, I've not mentioned the way they are physically presented. 

Tony B and Tony A

To the left, you may see a screenshot of the two Tonys in character and below, this picture annotated. To zoom in, just click on the image and then the 'x' when done!

Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Conventions for the Thriller Genre

Conventions for Thriller Opening Sequences

       

Opening sequence conventions from CsengeNemeti

Titles in opening sequences:

Opening sequence titles tend to be coloured white and fade on and off the screen so to not distract the audience from the scene being shown. The white colouration also allows the titles to be seen, but not look overpoweringly bright or tacky. I saw that a student made this mistake, colouring his titles a teal colour as shown below:

Ed and I kept to the convention of using white titles which flash on and off with a simple font so to not distract the audience. We also did not contain all of the credits which we had originally planned to. This was because Ed suggested (and I agreed) that too many titles would take away from the opening sequence. They were excessive, and all that was necessary, were the studios, production company, directors and a few actors, as demonstrated in Silence of the Lambs in which minimal titles are shown.

Final Draft

Editing

24/01/2017

As you can see on the right, Ed and I continued to struggle with adjusting the sound to make it more bearable and easier to understand. 

I searched for a YouTube tutorial to help me understand how to adjust volume and background noise. This however, was only successful to an extent and unfortunately, we ran out of time to further the improvements. We will have to revisit this at a later date to update the next draft.

A suggestion has been that we should just re-record the sound, however, we will have to have different voice actors to the actors present in the opening sequence which means that the sound may not match the qualities of the actors. 

Third Draft

Editing

23/01/2017

Ed and I spent much of today  fixing the sound as far as possible as it did not match up in  specific locations. I spent the first hour and a half refining anything Ed did not do in the previous edit. This included:

Reading through the list that I made in the previous post, and finishing the English Subtitles as well as re-ordering some captions and where they came in.

I also replaced the 'tracks' shot with one that included more trees as well as a richer colour as Ed and I both agreed that the previous 'tracks shot' was in too blue a colouration.

Sound

I've decided to make yet another post on sound because sound seems to play such an important role in creating an atmosphere in a thriller, something which I personally do not think our opening sequence possesses. To help this, I gathered some sound clips that can be used in various ways. For an example, a crescendo can be used for when Tony B takes out the phone from his pocket which could build a suspense in the audience over whether the item is perhaps a weapon, or indeed a phone.

Second Draft

Although this post is entitled 'Final Edit', Ed and I plan on improving our opening sequence further tomorrow. I am rather thankful as the opening sequence is only available due to Ed's major part in the editing process as a result of me taking leave for illness, however, we both exchanged words via mobile phone which allowed us to collaborate to some extent. What we have is below:

I am aware that there are many improvements which could be made, therefore, we will make them tomorrow on Monday. The following are the points which I gathered.

1. Establishing shot is slowed down
2. 'A' is not centre
3. Second shot is slowed down and in bad colour
4. Credits are too big
5. The long shot which I took is wonky
6. 'Kin' is not centre
7. There is a freeze frame when Ed stops
8. The two shot which I took is also wonky
9. Music cuts off at right time but there's a big change in sound
10. Shot order in the middle part is rather odd
11. Fist shot is too long
12. There isn't any interesting sound in the background at this point
13. Sound in the dialogue exchange should be fixed
14. Could there be a sound bridge from 'Some time later'?
15. MAKE ALL CREDITS SMALLER, perhaps align them with certain objects

Voice Recording

It became my task to record my own father's dialogue for the voice message which his character (Ivan's father) leaves for Ivan. The results are as follows:

As you may notice, My father actually decided to improvise a few of his lines to make the grammar and language fit into his role. Below is the improvised script my father helped to produce as his knowledge of the Hungarian language is far better than my own:

"Édes fiam, a te kezedbe adom az életem munkáját, olyan dolgok miatt amikrȍl nem beszélhetek. Így hát a munkát neked kell befejzni, úgy ahogy jónak látod, rád van bízva! Itt hagyom neked rá a pénzt az ágyam alatt a bȍröndben. A falban megtalálod a dobozt is. De ami a legfontosabb, mostantól te vagy a bandának a feje. Végeztem! Fiam csak még annyit, szeretnék büszke lenni rád."

Despite the Hungarian changing, the English is very much the same, therefore, when Ed and I insert the translation for this speech, we will keep the original one which I had originally written the script for.

Editing

17/01/2017

During this session of editing, Ed and I were trying to perfect visual mistakes we made. We will move onto sound during the next editing session since we thought that the visuals were probably the most important aspect to get correct the first time.

Filming

14/01/2017

This filming day went particularly well because Ed and I knew exactly what we were doing due to our improvement in terms of organisation. Our two actors were also very helpful in making the filming experience as quick as possible so we actually finished two hours before the intended time, including any other necessary re-films to have perfect weather continuity in this piece. 

As well as this, Ed and I made sure to take several variations of each shot (sometimes up to six so that any camera mistakes are eliminated and we are able to cut frames together if need be. Below is a picture of our filming.

Ed filming the scene where Tony B takes out the
phone from his pocket.

The History of Thrillers

To maintain a focus on the thriller genre before Ed and I complete the filming tomorrow, I decided to create a quick research post about the history and nature of thrillers. I produced a presentation here on a website called Padlet:

Final Script

This is the final script for the main action which I took responsibility for TYPING UP while we both  worked together to improve what Ed initially constructed as a skeleton script. Just click on the link to visit the website to see the flip book which I created using a PDF version of the word document on which the script was written, and a software called 'Flipping Book'.

https://online.flippingbook.com/view/61045

Alternatively, you can read the script below if the link above does not function correctly:

*You must note, that the edits and cuts were not included as Ed and I still have yet to figure those out and when it comes to filming, it will rather be a question of what suits the actors role than any planned edit.*

‘KIN’

BY

EDWARD BARKER/ CSENGE NEMETI

FADE IN:

EXT. SIDINGS – DAY

Large, urban area with jarring imagery of nature and industrial, processed elements.

IVAN approaches the two hooded figures – TONY A and TONY B

IVAN

(Shifty and awkwardly laughs
in an attempt to make light of the
subject) Fancy seeing you two here

The characters experience an awkward silence here and thus IVAN moves on to explaining the character’s roles etc.

- INTERCUT TONY A BIO –

IVAN

TONY A likes killing people and
is essentially a hit
man, but rather the hit or miss
sort.

- CUT TO SIDINGS SCENE –

IVAN

So... I guess you work for me now?

TONY B

No, we worked for your dad. (Puts
 emphasis on ‘worked’) Except I don’t
know if you noticed, but your dad’s
not around anymore.

- INTERCUT TONY B BIO –

IVAN

TONY B, well he also likes to
kill, but there’s a difference
in the fact that he’s not trigger
happy.

- CUT TO SIDINGS SCENE –

IVAN

Well I figured, with dad gone...
I’m the new head?

TONY B

Well you figured wrong kid...

TONY A

(Interrupting TONY B)Just go back
home to that mum of yours.
(Both snigger and laugh at the
implied sexual innuendo)How is
she now a days anyway?

IVAN

(addressing TONY B)... What did
you call me here for TONY?

TONY B

This (throws mobile phone).

TONY A

He told us to give it to you
in case he was ever... busy.

TONY B

He said to check your voice-
mail.

TONY A

Run along kid.

- STRAIGHT CUT TO VOICEMAIL SCENE -

Updated Storyboard

Storyboard 2

Ed and I have discussed the plans for a new and updated storyboard so that this time during filming, we will be able to keep to it in a more thorough and more accurate fashion. I drew up the storyboard using a software called 'Gimp' (very similar to 'Photoshop') and a graphics tablet, while Ed and I discussed what the captions should be. We came out with this outcome at the time of positing:

As you can probably conclude yourself, drawing up the storyboard digitally means that we are able to make quick fixes, move windows around and generally edit anything we don't like or want to change. This means that, in order to keep a clean and ordered storyboard, we don't have to re-draw it every time while we continue to develop it.

Skeleton Script

*AS ED ORIGINALLY WROTE IN HIS BLOG (credit to Ed for this post):

"Below is the 'skeleton script' Ed created for our opening sequence for 'Kin'. He initially made this script to serve as a basic idea of what the dialogue should resemble and how the characters in the scene should be portrayed. Ed and I later analysed the script in order to identify any improvements that could be made. On the picture below you can notice the prurple annotations Ed and I added to improve the script."

I will type up the improved script in a fashion which resembles a professionally written one. This will be included in an up-coming post.

Actors (New)

Ed and I decided to recruit new actors to play Tony A and Tony B. They are ideal as their appearances match the profile which Ed and I are looking for; middle aged, stern looking. We need a significant looking age gap between Ivan and his peers as to create the correct affect of tension between the ages.

Update

20/12/2016

Today is the day which we break up for our Christmas holidays therefore, Ed and I thought it ideal to film in this period. Due to the nature of holidays, our new cast members will not be working and therefore we will be able to re-shoot any necessary scenes in our opening sequence. Furthermore, the holidays will allow me personally to update and refine any information available on my blog posts, as well as continue to do further research. 

Ed and I have booked a camera to use over the holidays last Friday, so I am able to pick it up today. As of yet, we have not allocated a specific time for re-filming any parts of our opening sequence, however, we will be due to do this in the upcoming week. Furthermore, we will be able to edit as soon as we get back to school and on the two inset days before lessons resume as we'll likely be in school anyway due to resits of mocks. 

To-Do for next Draft

Here I provided a 'to-do' list I created with 'Wunderlist', an online application that can be downloaded onto the phone also which will come in handy as Ed and I is able to cross off the list as we go along with filming to ensure that everything that is needed for our final edit is filmed. 

This is a mistake which we made previously that due to poor organisation on my behalf, I didn't bring the storyboard which would've been useful as a reminder as to what shots are needed for our first draft of the opening sequence. An easy to read list is provided below:

Second Draft

☐ Make long shot of Ed walking in shorter but NOT sped up

☐ Re-size titles

☐ Move all titles to the bottom left

☐ Re-film wobbly CLOSE UP of Ed

☐ Film more close-ups

☐ Create dialogue

☐ Cut down the walking through paths

☐ Cast older actors