Winding Up

Below is the link for the evaluation blog. All you need to do is to click on it :-


Evaluation

These are two of the titles we made:-

Video 1

Video 2

Linking the Genre

On our way to developing our product and finalizing it, it seemed incomplete to just conclude it without looking up on other similar products before this (which are professional of course).

http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/0092-The_Dreamers

This is the first opening title of another film relating to our genre, which is Drama. The opening title is sleek and simple with a consistent pan movement downwards from an iron building, which most probably is the Eiffel tower. What is important here is that the titles have been made elegant due to the iconic tower and the font they have used to name people. Except for that, the font which states "The Dreamers" also denotes simple behavior with no resemblance to anything thrilling or slashing. 

http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00125-Taking_Chance

This is the second opening title which was quite interesting to observe than the previous one. Brilliant color contrast, brilliant yet simple effects have been used in this title. It starts by fading titles while on the background layer, the viewer can observer a paper on which something is being written in black ink. The sequence continues with the same theme, but shots in different angles and as well as different properties. The font has been kept simple and most importantly, soft rhythmic music is being played in the background which establishes a connection with the title sequence and helps the audience in interpreting more of the movie. This is where the critical part comes in, no matter how technically fancy the title is, it can not predetermine meanings without the appropriate sound. 

Another set of tools

Basically, I missed something really important in my last post. Here it is.


A set of softwares that we made use of while we were in the process of post production. 


-Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects (Non-linear video editing and motion effects softwares).


-Adobe illustrator and Adobe Photoshop (Respectively, vector and raster graphic designing softwares)


-Sony Vegas Pro (A multi purpose software specialized to be used for sound).


-Xilisoft Video converter.


-Garage Band (A Macintosh based software designed for multiple purposes, used for sound composition).

Conclusively

Here are some of the things which were professionally necessary. 

The Shooting Schedule :- 

01:00:00 PM	:00	Reach at my house.
	:15	Set up the equipment and the props in the room.
	:30	-
	:45	-
02:00:00 PM	:00	Finalizing the mise-en-sene.
	:15	-
	:30	-
	:45	-
03:00:00 PM	:00	-
	:15	-
	:30	Set up the camera and the tripod.
	:45	-
04:00:00 PM	:00	Begin Shooting.
	:15	(Target for the first scene) Alarm clock scene.
	:30	Shower scene commences.
	:45	End scene (mirror scene).
05:00:00 PM	:00	-
	:15	Break
	:30	-
	:45	-
06:00:00 PM	:00	-
	:15	Flash back shots (computer scene)
	:30	Flash back shot (Fired from the job scene)
	:45	Rechecking and taking spare shots just in case. Ending the shoot.

Then we also made a table for the things we bought extra for the shoot. This would hardly be any close to being professional but what we thought was that professionalism has no starting point and no ending point. To be professional, we just have to think like professionals.

Serial No.	Item	Price (Rs.)	Rate	Purpose	Total Cost (Price x Rate)
1	Mini DV Tape	300	2	The base recording tool for our film.	600
2	DVD-R	100	1	To keep a backup for the footage we import.	100
3	Copies of questionnaires	2	250	This was in order for us to conduct our survey on hands.	500
				Total Cost	1200

Reaching the end

Apart from the normal (usual) sources I could dig for my information, I found a book from one of the scrap sellers which is The Home Video Handbook by Stuart Dollin. This book is quite old but yet, somehow useful for beginner film makers and for those who have just stepped into the world of filming and media. 


As this book is old, it has some old basic conventions of how media came into being and then how technology improved covering many aspects of digital film making through a camcorder and also describes the functionality of these things. Much about the old VHS recording system and how sound was then added into the sequence and etc etc. Something which people like me can extract from this book for their benefit is that it tells us how can we improve the sound quality for our video while recording and camera techniques that are close to professional film making. In fact, this book also suggests timings that are good for shooting (such as afternoon is the worst time for shooting because you have very deep shadows) and many more things as well. Truly speaking, this is a great book regarding film making and video production and if anyone has access to this book they should definitely peek inside it.

Location Shots of The Final Film

Here are some of the location shots I tried to capture for the new film and hopefully will give the viewer an understanding of the location from many aspects.


Location 1

Location 2

Actually, I was also experimenting with focus and related camcorder functions in order to check how will the settings affect the quality of the footage. 

In the pictures below, I tried switching between the different white balancing options. I observed that these options also acted as 'tints' to the footage. Luckily, this helped me derive out all the extra light which was disturbing the footage.

Here is how we proceed to the film. We have got 2 story boards, in which both of them are made by us but with certain time intervals and we made it in pairs. What we will do is that we will combine these story boards.

A presage of Achievements

After a long period of confusion and turmoil, we finally reached on our conclusion to create a questionnaire for the audience survey. The survey consists of a total of 7 questions in which almost every question is close-ended and has limited choices. This is because of us limiting ourselves to a specific genre, namely Drama. Hopefully, this survey is to give us a good amount of quantitative data that we can use in order to establish a strong point in our film. Apart from that we have shared the official link on Facebook, which increases the chances of maximum replies. Something really amazing about media is definitely it's link with secondary socialization methods. The final results of the survey would be posted in a day or two. Here is the image of the survey link we finalized and we already got 29 responses, courtesy : Facebook. The 7 questions are :-


- Do you like Drama ?


- What gender would you like to see portraying the main role ?


- Do you like to watch melodrama films ?

- What do you think is the most important part of the film ?


- Should the opening of a drama film include dialogue ?


- What type of mood does a drama film create ?

The 'pre-production' questions are written below :- 

- Did you enjoy the film ?

- Do you want to watch the rest of the movie ?

- Did the film represent the genre Drama ?

- Did the film create enigma or suspense ?

- Did the scenes have connection ?

With their results :-

Here is something else.

This is the link of the preliminary video I worked for. This is not applicable at present because, as earlier posts mention, one of our teammate dropped out of the subject for some of his personal reason and therefore it brought me to a block. So I handed over this video to my only teammate, who is Mohsin Hussein Zubeiri and after that I started working with a group of teammates I actually enjoy working with. The video was shot and edited by me, while Mohsin added the soundtrack, which is basically a song by Linkin Park he gives away without the fear of copyrights.

Secondly, me and my teammate were assigned to design something for a literature festival being held some days ahead and here is what we originally came up with.

This image simply consists of an image I found on the internet and saved, while I had to download the font and I even had to generate some of the parts in 'Nastaliq' (The Native Urdu/Arabic Font). Really, media today heavily depends on the technologies that derive from ideas. For example, the Nastaliq was generated by the 'Character Map' software found ready in almost every version of the famous operating system Windows. Secondly, with just a few clicks you get a bloom of ideas and techniques to make your product strong. Nothing much fancy has been done in this image except for the English font named 'Birth of a Hero' and some blending.

This image might not seem what it looks like. It actually involved more technicality than the previous one. The paper was basically transformed in 3D (which can be quite obvious).

We used the conventional Adobe Photoshop for this purpose. This helped me learn more of how technology helps media and also how expectations regarding representations are set. For example, the ink pot and the feather along with the textured rugged paper is what will make the audience expect that the subject is related to something old, valued and antique, which is literature. What we find difficult to do on a paper, we find easy to do by computing. More over, this just keeps spreading.

Hopefully, the film would be finalized on Friday and some of the shots will be available on the post (just for a sneak peak into the drama title) on the next day.

Art Evaluation and Our trip in time

As our teacher had promised, we made a brief visit to Mohatta Palace, a well known art museum where anyone can easily find tremendous yet amazing and inspiring art creations. Therefore, we went there and we were given a quick task to analyze any one of the art pieces we think are the best. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the museum and this makes me blank about how the art 'actually' was. Therefore, right now I just have these questions answered.


The artist's name is Mehreen Murtaza and the name of the art itself is (which is basically a collage) Anthology of comic snippets series: The architect. 


Questions and their answers :


Q-What is my first response to the work?


A- I was at first confused of what was the initiative behind such an art as it was politically controversial and critical too, but then I realized it is a perspective of what artist is trying to define.


Q-What is the title? Does it help illuminate the work?


A-The title was Anthology of comic snippets series: The architect. To me, the title has almost truly illuminated the work. 


Q-What do the clothing, furnishing, accessories (swords, clock, etc) and facial expressions contribute to the settings personality?


A-This question is rather a limited one and may not apply to this sort of an art, as it was a collage. Although well designed, this collage did not really consist of any special accessories or furnishings.


Q-What is the focus of the composition?


A-The focus of the composition is towards history, defining it from a biased view. The composition relates to one of the most well known personalities of the region and the society and as well as some of the actions occurred either by that personality or through that personality.


Q-What is the purpose of this piece?


A-According to how I perceive this art, the purpose of this art is to highlight a misunderstanding which some parts of the society do not realize yet or maybe, just to highlight the misunderstanding.


Q-What is the medium? Does the medium have significance?


A-The medium was basically a type of photo paper. It has no significance.


Q-what effect does color have?


A-Again, this questionnaire itself is based on a perspective, therefore, on me the color played a great impact. Primarily because it was based on history, which they inner grey scale scheme supported with and secondly, the red scheme for the stage curtains made a huge impact on what I can perceive from the art.


Q-Is the size of this piece important?


A-The size of the piece may not be considered important as far as things are clearly visible. This is due to the fact that primarily, this piece reflects history and probably one of the major events in history. There is nothing unique about this image, except that it is entirely a different version defining what has been described in books.

Logo Creation

Initially, it is very important to explain why did I create a logo for the team. Logo simply adds up more passion and interest in the study of Media and makes me more determined towards my work for the OCR. This is because having a logo means having some sort of recognition in one way or the other, depending on how we perceive it. Therefore, for me, logo was necessary for the team and myself too.


Below mentioned are phases I went through to create this logo, unfortunately, I could not save the images with that great amount of detail. 

This was the basic shape I created on a vector graphics designing software namely, Adobe Illustrator using simple a simple pen and some rulers and guides. After that I copied these shapes and rotated two of them on +90 degrees and -90 degrees having copied, while one on a 180 degree rotation having copied. Which made it into a shape like this.

After that I drew 4 circles on each corner space available, with a simple preset drawing tool, the circle name being eclipse.

This is the basic shape of the logo which I had. After that, I filled these shapes with different gradients, although, the colors I had in mind are different than what was the result of these gradients, where gradients proving to be better.

The shape visible above is just the basic logo, remember, the basic version. I might try explaining why I chose the colors I have chosen for the blending gradients. Generally, dark colors usually symbolize seriousness and deep thinking while light colors symbolize creativity and vividness. This seemed a perfect combination for the team and they also like it. From here onwards emerges some basic/advanced software functionality featuring primitive additions and subtractions. As shown below.

Here, I simply drew a small circle and copied it on the other larger circles on the corners. After that, from the pathfinder panel, I intersected these small circles from the larger ones which as a result produced a slightly different and a more attracting shape.

This looks better. Now the logo is almost complete. Basically, it is still a bit dry and for that, I thought I should additionally apply a filter and so I started searching for a good filter to apply, where I saved the images of 4 of the filters I found better. 

This completes the logo being made. I am still working on how to improve the appearance of the logo, making it more appealing for our media product and I hope to have it completed by the time we finish our video production. 

Additionally, this logo has been made in such a way that this can be used in motion effects for the video, most probably on Adobe After Effects. 

The Preliminary Poster ; Remastered

This is the poster made out of the same photo the team took just after the shoot. Not much has been omitted in this poster, except that I added a more vivid heading, with a funky sort of a font, representing something other than seriousness. I added extra elements, just to make it look like it's a poster relating to a film. Also, I made blur the rest of the photo except for the characters themselves to emphasize on the characters.

When certain things don't work out.

It is not rare watching your idea not working out due to some conditions, the same happened with our team. We worked with enthusiasm, not noticing how absurd our ideas were becoming, especially in terms of practical execution. What I mean to say here is that I learned a new lesson. While making a film, you have to keep in mind 2 perspectives, the possibilities and the realities. Possibilities are always endless, but realities cut down those possibilities. 

What actually blew the whole planning away was the lack of sensibility in our senses. Yes, I need to be really honest here. We were not sensible, somebody, somewhere made some mistake, which led to the crash of the whole planning and we have to do it again. 

I consider this good, because when you fail, you try even harder. I could not execute my idea, now I would not dare try thinking something as absurd as the previous idea. Also, there's another important thing. No matter how excited you get planning your film (as far as the story and the plot is concerned), it is always important to 'note' everything down in order to make it a little bit serious. Of course, it is human nature to think, reflect and portray, but in things like these, you have to make sure you are not doing so many mistakes, because it takes a lot of time to recover those mistakes. For instance, we were excited about our story, but there was nothing practical about the story it self and I, from the beginning, had an idea of where were about to get, but it's good that the whole team feels the same way.

Institutions ; A Vital Organ

Institutions are basically firms which distribute films. The institution I have chosen for analysis is :- 

Dimension Films 

This firm formerly belonged to Bob Weinstein's firm namely Miramax Films but currently it is a part of The Weinstein Company. The firm's parent company changed to the new one on October 1' 2005.

Films made and distributed solely by Dimension Films are :-

Bad Santa (2003) 

The Crow: Salvation (2000) 

Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995) 

Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996) 

Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror (1998) 

Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return (1999) 

Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001) 

Cursed (2005) 

Darkness (2002) 

Dracula 2000 (2000) 

Dracula II: Ascension (2003) 

Dracula III: Legacy (2005) 

From Dusk till Dawn (with Miramax Films) (1996) 

From Dusk till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999) 

From Dusk till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (2000) 

Equilibrium (2002) 

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) 

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) 

Halloween: Resurrection (2002) 

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth (1992) 

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) 

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) 

Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002) 

Hellraiser: Deader (2005) 

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) 

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)

Mimic 

Mimic 2 

Mimic 3: Sentinel 

Mother's Boys (1994)

My Boss's Daughter (2003) 

The Prophecy (1995) 

The Prophecy II (1998) 

The Prophecy 3: The Ascent (2000) 

The Prophecy: Uprising (2005) 

Scary Movie (2000) 

Scary Movie 2 (2001) 

Scary Movie 3 (2003) 

Scream (1996) 

Scream 2 (1997) 

Scream 3 (2000) 

Sin City (2005) 

Spy Kids (2001) 

Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (2001) 

Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003) 

The i Inside (2003) 

Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) 

The Faculty (1998) 

Venom (2005)

Automaton Transfusion (2006) 

Buried Alive (2007) 

DOA: Dead or Alive (2007) 

Feast (2006) 

Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds (2008) 

Feast 3: The Happy Finish (2009) 

Grindhouse (2007) 

Planet Terror (2007) 

Death Proof (2007)

Halloween II (2009) 

Piranha 3-D (2010) 

The Promotion (2007) 

Pulse (2006) 

The Road (2009)

Scream 4 (2011)

Youth in Revolt (2010)

Dimension films mostly distributes films associated mostly with the genres such as Family, Comedy, Parody and action/adventure. The audience being targeted by this institute mostly revolves around the teenage group, mid aged, and eve children but some of their movies are rated R.

The regions of distribution covers almost the whole globe but it has it's mass coverage in the U.S.A., as it is an American Firm.

Treatment for the Upcoming film.

Treatment

The movie starts with an establishing shot of a school. Followed by a long shot of the main corridor. The alien teacher is a psychic who gets visions. When he goes inside his classroom, he keeps slamming into the wall until someone guides him. Inside the class we see Celine Dion outside window singing my hear will go on and the teacher taking attendance. When coming across Celine Dion he says three times 'she is no more'.

Harry is confused but shrugs off and starts looking at ugly Betty who tries to   dif out food stuck in her teeth.

Later, when Celine walks out of the room an all time serial killer (dressed in black hood and holding a dagger) kidnaps Celine Dion.
Next day the news comes that Celine Dion was found dead in school parking lot. Harry gets even more confused.

Ugly Betty hearing about Celine's death starts crying loudly that she is a wall flower and no one notices her. On that Harry appears to become more suspicious.

A scene when Harry sits next to (any character) during lunch hour
Harry : There is something wrong!
Malay : (silent) looks at Harry.
Harry : Believe me. The teacher acted strange. Don't you think?
Malay : (shrugs) Harry : I can smell it. How did Celine vanish after he said she is no more? That means he has a vision just like that girl in Final Destination.
While Harry is thinking, the mummy drops his lunch starts chasing a girl.

He looks at his magic ball and finds the serial killer doing something stupid and then looking at Betty's picture. Harry immediately rushes to help her.

Betty is tied up when harry dramatically enters the room. 
Harry : Stop! Before i do something you will regret! (killer stops)
Betty suddenly starts laughing hysterically. Harry and the killer look at her strangely. 
Betty: I just got a joke cousin told me yesterday. Anyway, oh Harry! Thank God you saved me! Kill him. He caught me while i was taking a bath. 
Harry making a face: did you? I am so sorry.
Serial killer (shudders) yeah. so am I! (Betty offended.) Kill him will you. He also called you a confused man who cannot decide between Cho and Ginny. 
Harry now offended : Oh now you are so dead.
Serial killer : Oh no! (white light of magic from the wand than the name of the movie.