Second Final Cut- After Improvements

Below is our next cut after the improvements had been completed:


In Wednesdays lessons we showed our teacher this version of our opening. When watching it, it definitely does flow a lot better than what our last cut did.
Here is the feedback we got:

• Flows a lot better
• An extremely pleased with it overall
• Lengthen the title' The Game' for another second so that it can be read.
• Make the alarm in the opening scene come in a little quicker before the actors start running onto the screen as here it started just a little bit before.

These improvements are now going to be made to our opening to make sure that we have produced a high quality opening which is to the best of all of our abilities.

Feedback from Teachers

In yesterdays lesson myelf and Amy watched title sequence. After the improvements from the first cut had been made I am happy with the overall outcome. After watching it we asked our teachers to watch it to see if there was anything else we could do to improve it before our final deadline.
Below is the first final draft of what they was watched:



Here are the comments in which were given to us for what we could do to improve it and also what worked well:

• Take out the pictures at the beginning- Now that we have changed around the order of the sequence the pictures not really link in with the rest of it now.
• Add in more of Daniels ( Cafe Rouge and Chelsea's scenes.- This will allow for more inter-cutting to take place between Chelsea and Daniel
• During the title sequence the titles needs to come on in a different order:- Before the game was at the end of the titles and the actors names were before this. Here is how we should display it:
• Canterbury Productions Presents,
• An AJA Production
• The Game
• The music transition from the titles to the next scene is to slow. It almost sounds as if there should be something more as the music carries on. This needs to be adjusted so that the music fades out quicker.
• From the beginning after the photos to the title sequence it flows well.
• The sound effect  founds out as the character is still running away. This is good as we didn't just stop it as soon as the ran out of the building.
• We feel as if we should adjust the level of voice in the MI5 scene to continur with the continuity throughout. Here as some of this was from a re shoot the tone in her voice is slightly different.
• The varied shots within the MI5 scene was good.

From this feedback it has helped us to realise things that we didn't realise before. When the idea of taking out the images was suggested we first weren't to sure about it but now when watching through the sequence it has become clear that it does not flow like the rest of the sequence does.  This is one area which needs to be sorted. This has allowed for chnges to be made that were storyboarded from the very begginning which we never thought we would change.  From watching it from the first time until now it has become much easier to see the areas in which we could improve upon. Before our final deadline we are going to take these comments into consideration to make sure that we can improve upon it to allow us to produce a good title sequence.

Music

When looking for music we have had some trouble in trying to find a piece of music that would suit our sequence best. When had searched on the Internet to see if we could find something and we also went on Garageband on the macs to see if we could create something that would work better. However we still couldn't find something that would fit in with the sequence.
As we couldn't find a piece of music we asked our teacher if he could play some music that he thinks would be suited. This enabled us to get a better understanding of the music that they would be expecting to here. This then allowed for us to look for some music of the some sort.
After looking on the internet and not being able to find something we looked on our teachers iTunes where we found a piece of music called Moby- Extreme Ways. This piece of music suits our title sequence and also suit the genre of our opening.

Below is think to the music in which we have used.






As this is copyright music we can only use 20 seconds of it.

Reshoot- 22/03/2012

Today we reshoot our MI5 scene. In this reshoot we were focusing on getting some close ups of our female actor. This was decided upon from the feedback that we got back from our teachers and also once we had looked back over the footage we realised where we could improve it after hearing the comments from the teachers.
However we came across some difficulties with the time we wanted to reshoot and also the lighting within the room. When we shot this scene before the room that we used was available. Although when going back today we found out that this room was not and we had to use another room. This wasn't so much of a big issue as we were focusing on close ups and not the tracking shots. We were able to use this room though as we just needed to have the whiteboard in the background so that we could have the picture of our male character projected onto that.
Another problem that we faced was with the lighting in this room. To minimise the amount of light coming in the room we shut the blinds likewise with the other room we had used previously. However when shutting the blinds only one of them would actually shut fully. There was also light coming in from the top of the left hand corner in the room where there are some windows at the top of the ceiling. We could not do anything about these. However to get around most of th problem we covered all windows with black paper. This did effect the lighting in our footage as it was a bright day, we couldn't have done anything to produce the impact of this. When watching this footage once we had filmed it we still thought that it was too bright. This is when we decided that we would need to edit this in the software of Premiere Pro.

Having said all of this, we did actually get all of the footage that we wanted and we were also able to get some extra shots within the time that we had just incase some of the shots can not be used due to light conditions. Overall, I do believe that this was a successful reshoot as we were able to get the footage that we needed and hopefully now we will not need to reshoot anything else from this scene after we have watched the footage back.

Teachers Feedback from our first rough cut

On Thursday, we showed our first rough cut to Mr Ford and Mr Michie. From this discussion we have now realised what we need to do before our final deadline to make sure that we can get the best grade as possible.

 Here is the rought cut and the feedback below:

• Re shoot our cafe rouge scene. Here we need to re shoot this scene because of the sound in the background and also the weather conditions on that day. From looking at our first rough cut, you can tell that is was windy that day as our actor hair is moving. Here we need to re shoot this to make sure that this does not happen again. However this isn't a major problem which wouldn't effect our overall grade as much as some of the other problems.
• We need to add in some sound over our title sequence. From watching the rough cut back, it doesn't work without sound. However we could not find any music which was appropriate before the deadline so we decided not to add any in as this wouldn't have made it any better.
• Another idea which was said was having the last scene at the start of our opening and then have the photographs at the end. I am not to sure about this idea.
• In our last scene we have our two male actors running out of a building. Here when the brief case is thrown to and from, our teachers noticed that the emotions on there faces might portray a comic effect. This is not what we were hoping to create. We do not think that within the amount of time we have got left that we will be able to re shoot this.
• The beginning title for 'AJA Productions' has a magnifying glass scroll across the screen to make the words stand when it scrolls across them. This is going to fast at the moment and needs to be slowed down to make sure that it can be read properly and also so that the magnifying glass can move across the screen more than once. This would also look better from an audiences point on view.
• The title sequence with the blue print is too fast. This needs to be slowed down to allow for the names to be read clearly before the next name appears on the screen. By this being slowed down it will mean that the effect will be able to be seen much easier as well.
• In between our images and our last image of MI5 we have a cross dissolve which takes us into the opening scene. Here when watching our rough cut the teachers found it hard to see this and said that it needs to be slowed down as this is way to fast.

From our teachers feedback it has bought to our attention all of the errors that we have made and what we could do to improve to make sure that our final cut is a higher standard. Most of these errors are small issues but will impact on the whole effect of our opening title sequence. From reading back through the teachers feedback, we do still have a lot of work to do until the final deadline. For example some of the scenes we are considering re-shooting as we are thinking about using different angles to see if we can get more of variety of shot incorporated. This will hopefully help us to improve our title sequence. Overall myself and my group have taken these comments on board and are going to rethink of how we can rearrange our title sequence to make sure that it flows properly.

Choosing a Name For Our Opening Title Sequence

The stage in the development process in which we decided to do was to choose a name for our opening title sequence. When choosing our name for our title sequence we found it hard to choose before we had created our first initial storyboard. Once we had created our initial storyboard it became much easier as we could relate it back to this as we then had our idea drawn out down on paper.

Above is the image of the names we came up with. These names were all based around the idea. When looking at these name ideas we had to decided between too. The two that we were unsure between was 'Chance' or 'The Game'. These two names were original and related to our opening title sequence. The name 'Chance' came from the crown jewels being stolen and the male character taking 'a chance'. The second name ' The Game' came from the whole general theme. However before deciding our overall name we came up with two more idea. One called 'The Job' and one called 'Dice'. However on reflection of these ideas they did not suit our opening nor did they sound appropriate. We decided as a group that 'The Game' fits in with our title sequence much better and also fits in with the genre.