20th April 2018
Today, we completed the narration for our film. The narration was spoken by our teacher, who watched the film as he read the script so that we could accurately time the narration to fit perfectly. To do this without noise interruption, we had to export the film to a MacBook which we could bring to another room so that we could have peace and quiet without the noise of classmates. This allowed us to have a much clearer audio.
I wasn't present for the recording of the narration as I was off school sick, but I received feedback from my team members about the narration process and I listened through to the recorded narration to ensure that it was perfect for our film.
Friday, 20 April 2018
Thursday, 19 April 2018
Magazine Review
Our group had the task of writing three different film reviews four our film. To do this well, we each analysed a bunch of film reviews from various websites. I decided to analyse the review for the film "Ghost Stories" from the Empire Magazine. In my analysis, I read through the entire review and jotted down the basic structure of the review, which would heavily assist me whilst writing my own. This would act as a basic guideline for writing the review, roughly taking a paragraph for each section.
I also added some social media links into the end of the review, to increase promotion of the film - which I discuss more in my evaluation.
My film review:
On the off chance that there are fans of films surrounding the topics of awkwardness, dating, murder and blood, well, this film may be the one for you. 'Last Dates' begins just like a dating show, consisting of our first serial killer, Bobby, played by Cormac (Dwyer), who butchers his victims, and our second, Poppy, played by Beth (Hamill), who has a slight taste for poisoning. Their awkward yet joyful date quickly takes a downward spiral into becoming a murderous crime scene. I guess the date was just so wonderful, that it was to die for.
Based on the British TV show 'First Dates', 'Last Dates' takes this concept, flips it around, adds a a couple deaths and voila, the film was born. Two cruel characters looking for love ending up on a deadly date with one another could never end well, who could've expected that two serial killers would end up killing, well, each other? There are tons of obvious ways that this story could go, however, the plot written by Shearer, McKegney and Hamill, takes very few of them. The film is howlingly funny with its ludicrously sarcastic humour throughout, which is a the complete opposite of what we would expect from two strange, yet lethal characters.
Hilariously funny, the audience are practically in stitches throughout watching the characters attend their uneasy first date. However, this quickly changes from being side splittingly amusing to a tragic downfall. The interesting yet unexpected plot twist (although the murders were foreshadowed, how could we not see it coming?) draws the audience in and leaves them wanting more as they indulge into the bizarre lives of these murderous criminals.
Shearer, McKegney and Hamill did a great job on this film, certainly reviving themselves from their not-so-successful film, "The Secret", which premiered last June. I think we can all agree that getting themselves back into producing comedic films was a life saver for their careers and the diminishing mockumentary genre. Make time to take yourself out and see this film - it'll truly take you out of the world of stress we all live in and let you indulge in the crazy lives of two serial killers. You'll be dying with laughter.
The final review:
I also added some social media links into the end of the review, to increase promotion of the film - which I discuss more in my evaluation.
My film review:
On the off chance that there are fans of films surrounding the topics of awkwardness, dating, murder and blood, well, this film may be the one for you. 'Last Dates' begins just like a dating show, consisting of our first serial killer, Bobby, played by Cormac (Dwyer), who butchers his victims, and our second, Poppy, played by Beth (Hamill), who has a slight taste for poisoning. Their awkward yet joyful date quickly takes a downward spiral into becoming a murderous crime scene. I guess the date was just so wonderful, that it was to die for.
Based on the British TV show 'First Dates', 'Last Dates' takes this concept, flips it around, adds a a couple deaths and voila, the film was born. Two cruel characters looking for love ending up on a deadly date with one another could never end well, who could've expected that two serial killers would end up killing, well, each other? There are tons of obvious ways that this story could go, however, the plot written by Shearer, McKegney and Hamill, takes very few of them. The film is howlingly funny with its ludicrously sarcastic humour throughout, which is a the complete opposite of what we would expect from two strange, yet lethal characters.
Hilariously funny, the audience are practically in stitches throughout watching the characters attend their uneasy first date. However, this quickly changes from being side splittingly amusing to a tragic downfall. The interesting yet unexpected plot twist (although the murders were foreshadowed, how could we not see it coming?) draws the audience in and leaves them wanting more as they indulge into the bizarre lives of these murderous criminals.
Shearer, McKegney and Hamill did a great job on this film, certainly reviving themselves from their not-so-successful film, "The Secret", which premiered last June. I think we can all agree that getting themselves back into producing comedic films was a life saver for their careers and the diminishing mockumentary genre. Make time to take yourself out and see this film - it'll truly take you out of the world of stress we all live in and let you indulge in the crazy lives of two serial killers. You'll be dying with laughter.
The final review:
Updated Choosing Music
Today, we inserted the track that we found for our final scene into the film. Eimir went searching for a track last night and found one on a website called Smart Sound. The track that we used was called 'Americana'.
The track has a very sad and melodramatic vibe to it, making it perfect for the scene. After lots of searching, we couldn't find any tracks that had the creepy jazzy feeling to them that actually fit the scene, so we changed the idea to have more of a depressing/sad feel.
The only issue with the track was that it had a man saying the words "Smart Sound" roughly every 15 seconds in the track, to trademark the track even though it's royalty free. Because of this, we had to blade the track in 4 different areas and split the sound so we could allow the music to match up again, without it being obvious that we cut parts of the track out. This took some time, but it was manageable as we used the fade in and fade out effect a lot to make this flow better.
Wednesday, 18 April 2018
Making the Credits
Wednesday 18th April
Today, we created the credits for the film. Instead of placing opening credits like we did in our film last year, we decided to place rolling credits on the final shot of the poison bottle. We placed the rolling credits on the side of the shot which looks very dark, almost black, and coloured the credits in white and the font as Times New Roman, which stood out exceedingly well against the dark area of the shot. We decided on rolling credits as we felt that they look very simple and plain, which is what we wanted for the ending of the film because the ending has so much going on in it.
In the credits, we named the actors/actresses we had and their roles in order of importance in the film. We then placed our own names and our generic roles in the production of the film, including production, editing, directing and casting. We also credited ourselves for coming up with the plot idea, and credited Eimir for mainly scripting the film.
Once the final shot fades out, it fades to an ending title screen which displays text saying "Last Dates" once again, but this time, the text is a shade of red and in the font Sketch Block and the text appeared by itself on a black background this time. This text is in the size 168.0
Today, we created the credits for the film. Instead of placing opening credits like we did in our film last year, we decided to place rolling credits on the final shot of the poison bottle. We placed the rolling credits on the side of the shot which looks very dark, almost black, and coloured the credits in white and the font as Times New Roman, which stood out exceedingly well against the dark area of the shot. We decided on rolling credits as we felt that they look very simple and plain, which is what we wanted for the ending of the film because the ending has so much going on in it.
In the credits, we named the actors/actresses we had and their roles in order of importance in the film. We then placed our own names and our generic roles in the production of the film, including production, editing, directing and casting. We also credited ourselves for coming up with the plot idea, and credited Eimir for mainly scripting the film.
Once the final shot fades out, it fades to an ending title screen which displays text saying "Last Dates" once again, but this time, the text is a shade of red and in the font Sketch Block and the text appeared by itself on a black background this time. This text is in the size 168.0
Tuesday, 17 April 2018
Making the Title Screen
Tuesday 17th April
Today, we created the title screen for our film. Firstly, we brainstormed ideas of what we wanted the title screen to include. This was easy enough as we all seemed to be on the same page due to the fact that we were focusing on a title screen for a dating show, so we already had pre-conceived ideas of what these title screens should look like from watching shows such as First Dates or The Undateables. We wanted to make a title screen really similar to these, pretty simple but effective - usually animated.
We noticed that Final Cut Pro didn't offer us the animated widgets that we wanted to use in our title screen, so we went searching for some animations that we could download for free. We came across a website called Stupid Raisins, which allowed you to download packs of animations for Final Cut Pro. We downloaded a pack called Sign Pop & Template Pop which contained a number of random widgets, but most importantly, it included a widget which looks like a folder which a heart on it - which perfectly fit our film. We decided to add this to a title screen with a white background. The title screen we chose had a black box image placed on it which we couldn't delete, so we placed the animated image on top of that. We also changed the text to say "Last Dates" and changed the font to Al Bayan and the size to 72.0. We also altered the colour of the font to a pink/peach shade, and changed the colour of the animated folder to be the same colour as the font, making it look more professional and nice to look at.
We then added some effects to make it a little more interesting, so we added the effect Bokeh Random which allowed the title screen to look as if it had some flashing lights flowing across it, but you could only see this effect on the text because the background was white, which left a nice effect. The animation also flew in on the title screen and flies out of the title screen, going to a black screen then transitioning to the next scene as the music ends.
We're really happy with our title screen, and think it looks really professional, and as if it was made for a real dating show.
Today, we created the title screen for our film. Firstly, we brainstormed ideas of what we wanted the title screen to include. This was easy enough as we all seemed to be on the same page due to the fact that we were focusing on a title screen for a dating show, so we already had pre-conceived ideas of what these title screens should look like from watching shows such as First Dates or The Undateables. We wanted to make a title screen really similar to these, pretty simple but effective - usually animated.
We noticed that Final Cut Pro didn't offer us the animated widgets that we wanted to use in our title screen, so we went searching for some animations that we could download for free. We came across a website called Stupid Raisins, which allowed you to download packs of animations for Final Cut Pro. We downloaded a pack called Sign Pop & Template Pop which contained a number of random widgets, but most importantly, it included a widget which looks like a folder which a heart on it - which perfectly fit our film. We decided to add this to a title screen with a white background. The title screen we chose had a black box image placed on it which we couldn't delete, so we placed the animated image on top of that. We also changed the text to say "Last Dates" and changed the font to Al Bayan and the size to 72.0. We also altered the colour of the font to a pink/peach shade, and changed the colour of the animated folder to be the same colour as the font, making it look more professional and nice to look at.
We then added some effects to make it a little more interesting, so we added the effect Bokeh Random which allowed the title screen to look as if it had some flashing lights flowing across it, but you could only see this effect on the text because the background was white, which left a nice effect. The animation also flew in on the title screen and flies out of the title screen, going to a black screen then transitioning to the next scene as the music ends.
We're really happy with our title screen, and think it looks really professional, and as if it was made for a real dating show.
Friday, 13 April 2018
Choosing Music
13th April 2018
Today we were researching music for the beginning and end of our film. We needed some light hearted and upbeat music generally consisting of instruments like a piano rather than acoustic guitar. We decided to search for this sort of music because it is very common in dating shows and documentaries, so we figured that it would perfectly fit our film as it is a mockumentary mimicking a dating show.
We searched for snippets of this sort of music on a few websites that supplied royalty free music, as we're not able to use music that is copyrighted which made it much more difficult to search for music that will fit.
The websites we have used to search for music so far have been:
- http://www.purple-planet.com/
- https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/cinematic
- https://www.hooksounds.com/
After searching through multiple categories of music types such as calm, upbeat, jazz etc. and listening to roughly over 60 snippets, we decided on a track called 'Winter Wonder' from Purple Planet.
As for the music at the end of the film during the choking scene and the credits rolling, we have not yet found something that is royalty free and fits the scene how we want it to. Ideally, we're looking for something similar to Patsy Cline's "She's Got You", however it is very difficult to find a track like it with lyrics without it being copyrighted.
Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Changing the Brightness on shots
10th April 2018
Today, I focused on editing the brightness and saturation of some of the shots in our film to make the shots match better with the shots on either side of them, and match the theme of the film better. This also allowed me to make shots more clear and easier on the eye of the audience.
Below are a number of shots which I have edited the brightness/saturation of:
This shot needed lots of work to it because the lighting is so dark in the shot and also has a very warm hue, which we didn't really want because the shots on either side of it were more cool toned and lit very brightly. To alter this, I played around with the highlights and midtones to make it a little bit brighter, and I altered the saturation to make it a little less warm toned. All of the details are included in the screenshots:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Below are a number of other shots which I have adjusted the brightness and saturation of, and the details of the brightness/saturation changes are included in the screenshots:
Today, I focused on editing the brightness and saturation of some of the shots in our film to make the shots match better with the shots on either side of them, and match the theme of the film better. This also allowed me to make shots more clear and easier on the eye of the audience.
Below are a number of shots which I have edited the brightness/saturation of:
This shot needed lots of work to it because the lighting is so dark in the shot and also has a very warm hue, which we didn't really want because the shots on either side of it were more cool toned and lit very brightly. To alter this, I played around with the highlights and midtones to make it a little bit brighter, and I altered the saturation to make it a little less warm toned. All of the details are included in the screenshots:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Below are a number of other shots which I have adjusted the brightness and saturation of, and the details of the brightness/saturation changes are included in the screenshots:
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