In The Red Opening Sequence finished version

Above is the final completed version of our opening sequence!

Problems uploading our opening sequence and evaluation

There was difficulty uploading our footage because the files were too big. As they were very large it took a long time to upload and the server kept cutting out. We are going to have to compress the files, which takes ages.

Compromise.

Having debated about the music for a lengthy period of time, we as a group have decided that we want to  have one final version of the film, not two separate ones. This means compromising over the soundtrack. Now we have all stopped being stubborn and accepted other peoples view point the soundtrack is much better!

Problems with evaluation

As we tried to film our evaluation, there were disturbances beyond our control because we had to film in a stairwell. People making noise opening doors and going up and down the stairs made it difficult. We had to cut those disturbed parts out and put edits in where the question changed. To edit this we used final cut.

Fitting in S.E.A Productions and ADMILNA INC

After the disaster on Adobe Flash, we incorperated S.E.A Productions in a much simpler fashion. We had the writing in a large blue font on a black background and used a .... cut to make it appear like water. We also added a dripping sound to the background. As far as incorperating ADMILNA INC we used a black background, again, with red writing and simply wrote "in association with admilna inc", it appears after some of the footage of the central character. This idea was taken from the film Mean Machine. After watching simlar films we noted that they're credits were very simple so not to take away from the narrative and we tried to immitate them.

In Association with...

Having watched a lot of similar style films we decided another production line needed to be added in the credits, most of the films we watched had "in association with" on them. So we thought we would do the same and ADMILNA INC was born :)

Change in Soundtrack

Due to disagreements within the group, we made two versions of the soundtrack on garage band. On one version there are sounds of traffic in the background and one without. There are different piano sounds in both of the versions at the start of the sequence.

S.E.A Productions

We wanted to create an animation in Adobe Flash to appear to show S.E.A Productions, at the begining of the opening sequence. We wanted to have it under the sea and appear to '"swim" across the screen with oxygen bubbles coming out of it. We tried to do it but everytime we thought we had finished it we weren't happy with it. In the end we had to settle for the fact that we were trying to be to complicated and we had bigger things to sort out, like our rubbish credits!

More credit editing!

We still were not satisfied with the credits. Above is another example of the way we tried to include credits.

Problems with our soundtrack

Unfortunately, today we discovered that we cannot use our sound track due to copy right infringements. We are currently looking for another soundtrack to use instead, we're looking for the same kind of music but by an unsigned artist.

Average Scores

During the showcase the class were told to rate our film out of 10 on editing, sound, camerawork, control of narrative, characters and whether or not they would watch it all. The average scores were as followed:

Editing: 7.1/10
Sound: 6.7/10
Camerawork: 7.4/10
Control of narrative: 7.2/10
Characters: 8/10
Would you watch it all?: 7.4/10

Feedback from Miss...

Miss Thrasher gave us alot of compliments for our film and also gave us things to fix. Below is the sheet she filled in and the comments that she made

The Showcase.

As we were the first to complete our film, or at least be near to completing it we had a "show case" whereby we showed the class our film and they critiqued it. On the whole it went well, but we realised our credits still needed a lot of work and that the sound needed to be edited as some of it was inaudible. The main issue that was raised was the sound not being as good as it could be. The film was good, but not great yet.

Our most helpful Feedback

Although nearly all of the feedback from our class was helpful, we decided to post our best comments that gave the most constructive criticism. Below shows their comments:

Editing and the first "finished" film

Below is our first draft of the film completed with sound.

Editing Process Continued

Having watched through our product we noted that several shots needed to be cut to make the sequences flow better. Just by shortening the shots slightly we took nearly a minute off of our opening sequence.

Editing Process

Editing was surprisingly easier than we had first thought it would be. We had well over 2 hours worth of footage which needed to be filtered down into the most suited and most effective shots. We filmed much of the footage from 4 or 5 different angles and shots on purpose, because we were not entirely sure what would look best and figured it is better to hace to much to play with when editing than not enough. When editing we realised that in order to depict a realistic film we had to stick to traditional cuts and edits and not use the exciting more elaborate ones as they would make the extract seem unrealistic. 

Changes from the story board

The film stuck to the story board, for the most part. However after getting to the location we saw an oppertunity to enahnce the story. The original story board did not include the betting shop as in hindsight we hadn't really thought about the story after the opening sequence. We then came up with the idea that the central character had a money problem and this was portrayed with the camera at first so it appeared that he had a gambling problem. This also meant we had a reason for the gangsters to appear, the small twist was that he doesn't have a gambling problem, he owes a gangster money and the gambling was his last hope of getting it back. Consequently we had the idea of the central characters girlfriend being abducted by the gangsters as we figured it would seem realistic and we also decided as a group we like films where the action happens immediately. The changes made the film opening more exciting, more realistic, easier to relate to and also added more connotations of the action genre; a damsel in distress.

Filming!

We decided to film on 23/02/2011, we had also decided that we wanted to film the entire opening sequence in one evening, not to do it in sections as it would make it easier to edit the whole sequence together. We were filming where Adam lives so we didn't need to obtain much permission in order to film. However, we wanted part of our film to be in a betting shop- William Hill, but due to us being under 18 we were not allowed on the premisses, let alone allowed to film. This was only a minor hiccup that we dealt with by filming Adam walking in the the shop and walking out of it and we agreed to use a dissolve cut when editing to make it appear time had passed. Filming went relatively smoothly with no major incidents that prevented us from getting the footage that we wanted. There were a few times when filming that we didn't realise there was mirrors in the shots and it was possible to see the camera in the shots. We dealt with this by re shooting, this was a somewhat irritating set back but not a major one. The filming took longer than we had anticipated but by the end of it we all felt as if we had enough footage to be able to put together an opening sequence which reflected the hard work we put into planing and filming it.

Where did our film get inspiration from?

There is no single film which as a group we based our film idea on. There are a varity of different films of the same genre which we considered whilst deciding the final idea for the opening sequence. We had decided that our opening sequence was not one set genre but many, it was a combination of UK drama and action. The films we considered ranged from the £600,000 Kidulthood/Adulthood; because of the fact that its a UK drama and the film's are aimed at a similar target audience, to multi million dollar blockbuster Taken, primarily for the infamous phone call scene and that one of the central characters gets kidnapped in our opening sequence. We looked at a lot of UK based films to gain inspiration for the credits, one film we looked at in particular was Football Factory, even though the films have entirely diverse plots, they're both drama/action films and we wanted to have a sense of authentisity by means of representing UK drama appropriately.