Entry #12: Serious Sounds

Mood: Cooperative

Hey! Today, Srishti and I decided to edit the intruder scenes together, since they are mostly completed. I thought it would be best if we made these decisions together because the film needs to match both of our visions, which are luckily in sync (thank goodness we work so well together)! 

After doing the usual trimming, splitting, cutting, and adding of clips, we shifted our focus to sound. A lot of the sounds of footsteps, opening of doors, etc. were evident in the footage, so the addition of any sound effects and foley will be left to a minimum; we will only add effects is they seem necessary to convey the purpose of the scene.

Then, we had a small issue with the transition of sounds. Filming at night, we had a large amount of ambient sounds such as crickets chirping and airplanes flying overhead; however, these sounds were not consistent through every shot. As a result, the transition from one intruder scene to another was not as smooth as we hoped because the sound changes were noticeably abrupt. To remedy this, we played with the sound levels and tried detaching the audio and moving it around, seeing if we could make everything cohesive. Greatly to our benefit, it sounds a lot more natural now that we've edited it (how ironic...). 

With that taken care of, we looked at the music that we found a while back from YouTube's audio library (check it out here if you need a refresher). The first song, Chase Pulse Faster, was intended for the intruder scenes. Originally, we added the song to the beginning of the intruder scenes, but it was way too intense for the introduction of the character. Srishti and I burst into a fit of laughter at how ridiculous it sounded while the intruder was just sitting in the car because it was unnecessary at that point. Instead, we added the song to later footage, where the intruder enters the house and is on a mission. In order to make the background music less overwhelming, we lowered the sound level to about 30%. I'm excited about how good it sounds because I'm not very skilled when it comes to sound editing.

When we begin editing the scenes with the girls, we will consider adding another song that we found. I will update once that happens!


"Audio Library." YouTube. Google, n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. 
     <https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music>. 

Chase Pulse Faster by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100384

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Entry #11: Scripting with Srish

Mood: Talkative

Hey there! I'm in a great mood seeing as Srishti and I have begun working on our script. It's such an exciting thing because it looks so professional! Creating dialogue is a lot more difficult than I had ever thought it to be; it takes tons of creativity to produce dialogue that flows, sounds natural, and accurately represents the character speaking. I have taken all of these aspects into consideration when writing the voice for two of the characters, since I have to convey, through dialogue, the personalities and traits of these characters.

We have only scripted the parts for the two girls, Grace and Lindsay, since the intruder has no dialogue and almost all of those scenes are completed. All of these lines are subject to modification, of course, because if a scene does not look or sound natural as we're filming, then it has to be altered. Again, this is all trial and error for us, as we've never done this type of project before. 

We timed the lines for the two female characters, and they took about one minute. That's a little nerve-wracking considering the intruder's scenes take up 1 minute and 17 seconds, and our limit is 2 minutes. We're going to have to see how everything plays out once it is all filmed, edited, and arranged. 

Behold, our first draft of the script for the Grace and Lindsay scenes. Look how professional it is! :D

Entry #10: Real Remedies

Mood: Productive

Hey! Today, Srishti and I talked about all of the problems we were having with the footage, editing, etc, and we are on the same page. I'm so happy that we can both see where improvements need to be made with our work!

Dark, Blurry Footage:
Much to my relief, the footage that was too dark and blurry was actually only that way after being transferred from one platform to another. The scenes that I had in my iMovie library were not the original shots; instead, they were edited together by Srishti and sent to me as a whole. This is where the quality of the shots lessened. Now, I have all of the individual scenes so that I can edit the greater-quality footage.

Irrelevant Scenes:
Srishti and I reviewed some of these scenes together, and we agreed that we needed to rescript and reshoot them. They are supposed to establish that the main character and her partner are working on a project, both girls completely oblivious that there is an intruder in the house. However, we could not capture a natural and realistic depiction of this, and it does not come across well. The girls are supposed to be intelligent, but they come across as ditzy and foolish. We are hoping to redo the scenes this Saturday and edit diligently throughout the weekend.

Scripting:
Through my 17 years of living, I have never once written a script that is meant to convey a tone and set a foundation for characters that will be seen throughout the film. Although our film opening will only show a portion of our film idea, it is still important that it establishes what needs to be known for what would be the rest of the film. I'm actually extremely nervous to start scripting since I don't know much about how to do it and how to do it well. In order to get some tips on this topic, I used this website, which was really helpful in explaining the kinds of information that should be included in our script and how it is best formatted. I'll be sure to update soon about how the scripting process is going.

"How to Write a Script." WikiHow. WikiHow, n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.
     <http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Script>.

Entry #9: An Accolade for Animating

Mood: Mixed Up

Hey! This is going to be a shorter post as I'm in the middle of a few tasks for this project and do not have a ton of things to update about. I still have to wait a few days to discuss all of the project's problems with my partner; until then, there's not a whole much that I can work with.

Creating the Film Title:
As I have previously mentioned, the name of our film is Borderline. I posted an entry that showed a few of the title animations I was playing with on Keynote, which is what I ended up using for this new graphic:

The neon green background is there so that when I import the clip to iMovie, I can click "green screen/blue screen" and make the background transparent. Therefore, the title will be shown directly on some of the footage shot by Srishti and I. So far, this is one of the best animations I have created, but I'm still working on finding new graphic design websites to play around with. 

Placement of the Film Title:
Our next order of business is figuring out where the title should be revealed in the film opening. Since the editing isn't going very well, we still have no clue where the title would be the most impactful. Determining where to show the title is vital to the tone of our opening, so I'm hoping we can get it right. If we put it in the beginning, I feel like a creepy mood would be set early on which is good for the suspense. On the other hand, I feel like putting Borderline at the end of the opening, after the intruder has left the object in the house, can leave the viewer wanting to continue the film.

I should be updating my blog in a few days with news about how the editing is going and the official graphic for Borderline.

Entry #8: Intro Info

Mood: Determined

Hey! Today's outlook is pretty positive since I'm researching and learning, some of my favorite things to do (honestly, no sarcasm here. I'm a teenager that actually enjoys learning)! I'm trying to figure out which elements should be included in the introductory credits to a film, since it is something that we will need to include in our opening.

According to this Wikipedia page, there are several typical components in the opening credits of a film. Since the integrity of this database is often questioned, I decided to check the information myself. So far, my best luck has been in studying examples of drama films such as those listed below:

In Se7en's film opening, I copied down the sequence of credits and made a note of what each name was representing. The opening credits are for the people who had the biggest influence on the development of the film such as the director, producers, actors, editors, and designers (both set and costume).

I also did this with the opening credits for Memento, a thriller/mystery film. I found that many of the components included in Se7en's opening also appeared in this opening sequence.

After researching and going through the above examples, I have narrowed down the credits to some of the most relevant elements: crediting the actors, directors, editors, and studio.

Laura Boland. “Memento (2000) - Opening Scene” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 25 Nov 2014. Web. 26 March 2016.

Vaslav Tchitcherine. “Se7en | opening credits | 720p” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 18 Nov 2011. Web. 26 March 2016.

Wikipedia contributors. "Opening credits." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 10 Mar. 2016. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.