Production Day 3 - Paper work, Editing Script

The majority of the paper work was written by Jackson and the script was written by Tom. Tom wrote the script out a few times and re-arranged some parts so that they made sense. At one point Tom changed the script completely because we all agreed that it didn't make sense and it wouldn't of fitted in with the ideas we had come up with.

Production Day 2 - Green Screen Test Footage.

Today we did some test footage in the green room, but shortly after doing this we decided we wasnt going to use the green room anymore because we thought it would be too complicated to do as we don't have complete knowledge on how to use the green screen effect so we thought it would be best to do something and make it easier so that in the long run our short will look someway professional.

Production Day 1 - Planning

Today we did our plan for the trapped video. we came up with some ideas for where we could film and what props to use. We decided to use the black room in the media studio for this we'll need permission from the site team. We also are planning to use behind the stage which we'll also need to ask permission for.

Costume Sheet

In this session Jake did the costume sheet but we found that a red hoodie would not work so we changed it to black. and tom will be wearing a fairly formal shirt and slim black jeans. jackson and me will be wearing a black hoodie and black shoes.

Prop Sheet

In this session me and the group decided that we had to figure out what props we need to use. we decided we needed a Machete, toy gun, office chair, cigarettes and a black sack to cover up the victim's face with. This had to be done so that like in the costume sheet we would know what we needed and be prepared for filming so it would make sense and not miss anything. Anything new will be added to the sheet.

Trapped title concept sheet

We had a few ideas for our title. We spent a fair while on artofthetitle.com and we like the 'Zombieland' titles so in a sense we based it slightly around that with the scattered titles and the falling apart main title. The majority of the title was designed and drawn by Tom and a little bit was drawn by me. We aim to create this title in Photoshop.

Locations

Last lesson Tom, Jackson and I went out and took some photos of the locations we will hopefully be filming in. Today I uploaded the photos to my mac and in photoshop I made a collage for ever individual location. In order to film in certain locations we will need to send an email to the sit manager and ask permission to use the locations we want to use for our trapped short film.

Story Board Ideas

In wednesdays lesson Tom, Jackson and I came up with a storyboard of some of our ideas for our short film. Unfortunately Jake wasn't in but we managed to do it with out him. Some of our ideas came from the Saw films (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7). I personally have a lot of knowledge of these films due to watching them about 5 times each.

Trapped Mood Board

In one of last weeks lessons I finished my Trapped Mood Board, i got all my pictures from google and then went into photoshop. In photoshop i edited the pictures together and made a title using the text tool. I made sure all the images were on different layers and then uploaded my image to flickr.

Trapped Target Audience Member

In this session we were asked to use photoshop to make a target audience image of the sort of things that people that would watch our short would be associated with. And then after completing the image in photoshop we had to upload the image to flickr. 

The target audience member likes to listen to metal bands such as Bring Me The Horizon, Asking Alexandria, The Devil Wears Prada and Of Mice And Men also they like to watch films such as Saw, The Exorcist and Scary Movie. The brands the member would wear/use are Drop Dead, Iron Fist, Apple, Etnies, River Island and Dickies and finally they would use the internet to do online shopping, facebook and youtube.

Find Your Tribe Session

In Fridays lesson we did a questionnaire type thing on a website called 'findyoutribe.com' i found this fairly fun to do and i was looking forward to the end result. When i found out my result i was not happy with it but on the whole the process of the questions was quite good and i enjoyed it :) 

Trapped Planning Blog Post

This is our planning for our 'Trapped' short film. We came up with 3 ideas. One idea was a zombie type thing, where a man is physically trapped in a dead end of an alley and he gets eaten by zombies, the other two ideas where to do with a man being held somewhere and being tortured. We all decided that it would be good to do a man being taken and tortured. We all came together to get this idea and there was no arguments about it it was a straight yes from all of us.

Tom, Jackson and I during planning.

Rosie Ball's Visit

Yesterday ex Long Road student Rosie Ball came to our class to talk to us about her gaming competition. In the competition she had to make a game and the game was called Tick Tock Toys, i thought it was pretty cool it was quite fun to play. Rosie spoke about a lot of things leaving me with no questions to ask.

Horror Mood Board

Today in media we had to find pictures of things to do with horror, so i went onto google and found a few pictures and then put them onto photoshop to put them all together and made a mood board. For the header of the mood board i used the Zombie holocaust font and then added and red outer to my green font.

Final Cut New York Title Sequence

Today's was back in final cut. In this session i had put my garage band song onto final cut and fit it with my video. I found that the song was too long, so i cut the end of the song so it fitted perfectly with my video. After adding my song and cutting it to suite i had to add my title (Production Company name) which is called 'Fire Bird Productions' to the start of the sequence so that people know its my project. Also i add titles on the clips like actors names and producers names the little 'film roll icon' with an 'A' in it and i had click it then click text then text again. Then i wrote what i needed to write then dragged it down onto the timeline of the sequence. I also used the fade in fade out tool on the pieces of text to fit properly with the sequence.I then used the motion tool which is a rhombus symbol. I found the motion tool difficult but i had a bit of help from Alex and Steve and then i was on my way. After doing all that i uploaded my finished New York sequence to Vimeo and to do this i had to export the file and decompress it for a higher quality. it took about ten minutes to upload the video but it was soon uploaded and im very proud of what i produced.

New York Garageband Soundtrack Session

For this session we had to import our New York Sequence from final cut into garage band so that we could put a song in the background. We had to make the song from the song samples in garage band. I originally put together a lot of jazz drum pieces, but then i found a little jazz type piece that was thirty nine seconds long and in my opinion it was perfect for my sequence. After this we had to put the song into final cut and then put the song to the video.

New York Final Cut Editing Session

In this lesson we were given about 20 odd images of New York, including a picture of the Statue Of Liberty. In Final Cut we had to put some of the images together using 'fade - ins' and 'fade - outs' the cutting tool and other photo transitions. At first i found it fairly difficult but after about half hour i found it fairly easy. The lesson seem to be well untill i forget to save my project and my laptop deleted it. But i then re did and made it a lot better and i am proud of what i produced.

Logo Ident Production Session

After writing down some ideas we had to incorporate them into photoshop and put the logo together. for my logo i have a bird in a fire, and the name of my media production company is fire bird productions. after doing this we had to use final cut to make a gif of our logo.

1) the problem i had most with photoshop was when resizing photos i kept forgetting to press the enter key to return so i kept getting annoyed with it.
2) ...
3) i like my logo because its different to anything i have ever seen before.

Media Production Company Logo Planning Session

for the fourth task we were all given cartridge paper to draw and brainstorm some ideas for a name and logo for a media production company. i wrote and drew some ideas that i liked and thought would be good.

Logo Research Session

for the third task i had to find, research and draw two logos of my own choice in detail. for the first logo i chose drop dead clothing and for the second i chose world wildlife fund. i chose these logos because i find them interesting and they have something to do with the companies they belong to. after i found the two logos i wrote a little bit of information about them and annotated the pictures i drew of them. after this i had to say what relevance the logo had with the name of the company. for the example the wwf logo is of a panda and one of the wwf's main priorities is to look after the welfare of pandas, this gives you a clear indication of what the companies about.

Photoshop Skills Session 1: Club Flyer Task

The second task i did this week was designing a club flyer, and the idea was to incorporate two different pictures into each other using photoshop. i started off by finding a background image of an exploding planet on google, i then did a screen grab to get the image of the planet onto my desktop. then i dragged the image of the planet onto photoshop as a layer with a plain white background. after dragging the planet picture onto photoshop i then found a picture of oli sykes and skrillex on google, and again i used screen grab  to get the picture onto my desktop then onto photoshop. the picture had extra bits i did not want so i used the lasso tool to cut around oli and skrillex, cutting out the background. after this i dragged the cut out image of oli and skrillex onto the image of the planet using a different layer. to complete the image i added a border in the styles menu. lastly i added information to the flyer using the text tool. i used the bend tool to arch the title of the flyer.  i had a consistent font through out but with different colours. after i did this i, like the image of oli and skrillex i added a border to all the writing.

Photoshop Skills session 1: Earth & Eye Exercise

Within this exercise I was asked to complete a series of tasks that had a positive end result. First of all I had to go to "Flickr" and download and image of the eye and the earth. As I came to discover the earth was not the correct size to fit the eye. So I opened up Photoshop and re sized the image of the earth while the image of the eye was in a different layer so they didn't collide into one another while I was re scaling them. I was not happy with the image of the earth as it was not acceptable for an eye as it had such a busy background. So I used the magnetic lasso tool to select the outside of the earth, I then inverted it so I was able to delete everything except the image of the earth which I wanted. This tool enabled me to helpfully select exactly what I wanted in a quick and easy process. After I had completed this I then went on to the transparency of the eye and the earth. I had to try and match both of them up as they had two different levels of transparency within them. I played with the levels to try and make them look exact, as I came to realise this was easier said than done and at the end result my eye was a lot brighter than the earth.