Rough Copy: Grifter

Grifter (Rough)

Editing: Day Five

Today was the last day we had before we had to have a rough copy of the opening sequence. I was feeling pretty positive as we had covered a lot in the lesson's we had had and were on course to finish on time. All we had to day was bring together the soundtrack, institution animation and edited footage. It may sound like a lot of work but it is relatively simple. Othman got to get the background colour on and adding the text, I finished of the soundtrack and Ja'van went in search for a suitable soundtrack for the institution animation. 

However as with these things we did encounter some problems. After exporting the video we began to see shadows and patches on filming that needed touch ups that would take more time. On the better side we completed the institution animation and all but finished the soundtrack however, it was likely we were going to have to make it longer to suit the titles we were adding in. So all in all the day promised much and we got much out of it, however we did not manage to finish the whole “rough edit” as planned. 

“Whatever it takes to finish things, finish. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished.”
― Neil Gaiman

Editing: Day Four

Today was more basic. After finishing the text I sent it to Othman so that he could add it to the opening and get an understanding of their placement.

After finishing with the text I started again with the sound and learnt that it would be better to edit the sound with an application called “audacity” due to the depth I could go into when editing it.

Also after talking as a group about the anchor image from last lesson, we collectively felt that the institution animation would look both more slick and professional with the image. So we added it with the descent movement. It didn't take as long as we thought it would and below is what the finished animation looks like.

"If you do not believe you can do it then you have no chance at all."
Arsene Wenger

Editing: Day Three

Day 3 was yet again another step forward as we finally seemed to get to grips with our roles and managed to finish more as a result. Othman had been editing with the footage through final cut express and had inverted the colours, making the characters know black and coloured. This allowed us to have a preview of what the final edited footage would look like, which was important. We also managed to integrate our Saul Bass inspired animated lines into the edit. From this we had assistance and learnt that we could use a slug and crop and shape it into a bar that we could then key-frame to move both down and up.

I took to managing the text for the opening sequence. For this I used photoshop and created a list of credits we were to have in opening. After knowing the exact text we would use, creating it was a simple matter of typing the credits and adding the desired blending options to them, for example drop shadow and colour. The hardest part was selecting the colour we would use for the text. Initially we decided to use black, but then realised that both the characters and slug bars were black and the text would therefore not stand out. I then decide to look at the “iPod advert” that we had learnt was quite similar to our own opening and viewed the text they had chosen. They had used white text on their backgrounds and we felt that this was the best option for our text. We felt that the colour was bold enough to be seen on the background and also smart.



Finally to Ja'van who had the task of creating the institution opening and logo. We collectively decided that we wanted to have the title of institution “Anchor Films” on the animation and a ocean background (in relation to the anchor), we also wanted to add a descending anchor image but were halted as our teacher thought that it would take to long to do and was unnecessary, however the thought still lingered in our minds. We had a decision to make on our hands.  

“You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”
― Michelle Obama

Editing: Day Two

Today we managed to get quite a lot done with the editing, but learnt that the soundtrack that we wanted to use was too short to match our opening. This presented another problem and meant that we would have to somehow extend the soundtrack. We also learnt how to create an institution logo animation in after effects. Nothing complicated something simple.

“There Are Two Typos Of People In This World: Those Who Can Edit And Those Who Can’t”
― Jarod Kintz

Editing: Day One

Today we started editing our footage. We also assigned roles for who would be doing what for the majority of the editing. The editing of the footage would be largely done by Othman Abdul Ghani. Graphics and Animation in relation to the institution logo,e.c.t, would be covered by Ja'van Kinghorn and Text and Sound would be covered by me. Although we had given each other roles, we were in no way relying on one person to completely do each task, but instead we would work more collaboratively, looking over each others shoulders and making sure that they could get all the support they needed.

Although i was used to using Photoshop (where we would edit the text) and Final Cut Pro (for editing), i had never personally edited sound and this presented a challenge on its on, Finding a program/software that was easiest and best to do the sound on was hard enough.

“Happiness is not the absence of problems; it's the ability to deal with them.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

Filming: Day Three

Today drew the close to the ending of our filming, something i was somewhat surprised about. I expected the filming to take much longer than it did, but i am in no way disappointed that we were so quick to finish. I think it showed both strong cohesion between the group and the skills that we as a group excelled in.

This time as soon as the lesson started, we began filming. We were therefore much quicker when it came to actually filming the footage. At the end of the previous lesson, we marked on the floor where we had positioned the camera, so that today it would be a simple case of placing the camera at the markings, rather than struggling to place the camera. This allowed us to keep the flow and continuity of the filming. The finer details of clothes, fortunately enough, were not an issue as when editing the footage we were going to colour out the people.

We again made slight adjustments to the script, but only slight ones. Such as changing the direction in which the characters came in.



So today marked the end of our filming and in general i am very happy with the footage we caught and how we worked as a team.

“Ends are not bad things, they just mean that something else is about to begin.”
― C. JoyBell C.

Itunes Advert:Eureka

You would think that after all the research and editing that we have done that we would realize that the large majority of iTunes adverts are almost exactly alike to what we are trying to create, in terms of the super-bad opening effect which involves colours and the use of a green screen. If not for our teacher almost jokingly relating our opening to that of the iTunes adverts we would have never known the great similarities between them and our opening sequence idea.

This was a large boost and really helped us as it meant we had even more videos to look at and could learn, make comparisons and take ideas from the adverts.

“Eureka .. Eureka!”
― Hergé

Filming: Day Two

The second day was more productive in terms of filming. Having booked the room the previous day we were given the time and space to get a large majority of our filming done. Although we were delayed in our filming as a result of another group pleading to use the room, we still managed to get a large chunk of our filming done. We firstly unveiled the green screen (right) and began setting up the area in order to prepare for our filming.

As we prepared to film we realized that the green screen was slightly smaller than anticipated. This meant we going to have to modify our opening to suit the scene. We firstly decided that we weren't going to be able to film the full long shot that we had planned and decided to use a mid long shot instead. We then also realized that weren't going to be able to pan up into an open area when showing some titles, so we instead zoomed into an open area.

After this realization we all gathered the props and costumes we had brought so that we could get “suited and booted” ready for shooting.



We then prepared the camera by zooming in to the appropriate shot and setting up the white balance. As soon as this camera preparation was down we were ready to start shooting. In the lesson we managed to shoot about half the footage we needed, resulting a very productive session.  





“It is always the start that requires the greatest effort.” 
― James Cash Penney

Filming: Day One

As we planned to film on the first day we stumbled upon our first problem, one we as a group have learnt from. As we went towards the room in which we were going to film we found that another group had already booked it. Unfortunately this meant we would be unable to get any filming done that day and would have to settle for filming the next day. This was because in order to film we would need the green screen and didn’t want to use the portable one as it was too small and we wanted to keep continuity in our filming.  So after learning from our mistakes, we booked both the room and the cameras for the following days, in order to ensure that we would have all the time and equipment to film in future and avoid a scenario like this one again.

So instead of filming we took the opportunity to look for a royalty free soundtrack that we could use to complement our opening sequence. As we had not filmed anything nor finished filming, we could only grasp a rough idea of what we wanted the soundtrack to be like and where editing the sound needed to be made. As a group we felt that the best style of music for the opening would be fast paced jazz. This was based on the research we had done on other crime fiction film openings and the music’s relation to our opening. We used the website ‘incompetch.com’ because we felt it had the best range of music and was an easy website to both search and download music from.  After looking for a while we came upon three possible choices for our soundtrack. After finding our three choices we reached the end of the lesson and although the day had not gone as planned we had found that we made a lot of progress in the making of our film opening.  

Storyboard