R.E.D Evaluation and research

So the production process for my Slender film has come to an end for the R.E.D project but I will be continuing the film to see it finished afterwards. In this project, I challenged myself at directing other crew and actors, as I’m known for being a one man army when it comes to making films. I already had a completed script that I made about a year ago for last Halloween. The film never happened because of my fear of directing.

Everyone has different methods of directing, but I think it all comes down to being confident enough to order people around with clear intention without getting on their nerves too much. I wouldn’t say that my challenge for directing can be overcome by reading into other directors tips and tricks, because I’m not them and every director is different. To assist with my directing skills, I’ve been reading ‘Film Directing Fundementals: See Your Film Before Shooting’ by Nicholas Proferes (Proferes, NP, 2008. Film Directing Fundamentals: See Your Film Before Shooting. 3rd ed. England: Focal Press).

I’ve learnt from this book many tips on directing. Here’s a summary of what the book has taught me on directing actors in it’s chapter called ‘Directing Actors on the Set’:

Early on, film the easier scenes such as drive-ups and so on. As you get to the tougher scenes, shoot the most difficult parts and/or the shots that ‘you can’t live without’ early in the day to make sure you don’t run out of time or actors energy. Make sure the actors know their marks and the parameters of the frame they have to work in. Position yourself as close to the camera lenses as possible so that you will see the scene from the same angle as the camera sees it. Make sure the actors keep going until the director announces “Cut!” unless the camera operator or sound person calls “Cut!” for technical reasons. Do not ask for another take from an actor without giving them a new piece of specific direction. If a take is being done because the previous take was ruined by a technical problem, let the actor know it was’t their fault. Remind actors precisely where they are in the story and where they just came from. When the camera is rolling, stay in the moment and never take your eyes off of the action. Keep asking yourself, Do I believe him? Is she interesting? Never ignore your gut feeling that is telling you something is wrong – Figure out what it is.

In addition to all of this, while directing crew around, it’s important that everyone keeps in mind that “Everything that goes
into making a fi lm should pass through the prism of the director’s vision.” (Page 134)

This project for me is a personal challenge to take it upon myself to achieve what my initial goal was when I joined the college, to be a director.

My first step for acquiring actors for the film was to go onto a casting call website. I chose Star-Now to find my actor. In the end, I got 10 replies. Here is the add:

http://www.starnow.co.uk/Casting-Calls/Actors-wanted/Short-film/actor_desired_for_first_scene_of_horror_film.htm

When I met the actor who I chose, we went to the location and filmed the scene on the bench in no more than an hour. He was surprised at how quickly we completed it and was impressed with the edit. I went back another day just to re-film a few reaction shots of my face. The downside to this scene was that I was also working the camera as well as directing and acting, so while the shots are in focus, some of them are far too over exposed. I tried my best to adjust these shots as much as possible in post-production.

Because I’m so used to working alone, I usually write my scripts on Notepad in quite an unprofessional manner. Because I’m working with other actors and crew, I rewrote the script in a traditional and professionally looking way that’s easy to understand.

The following scene involves a phone-call. I directed Guy to be the person on the other end of the phone. It took no longer than five minutes to direct him for that scene.

The last shot of the film is a slider panning shot of me walking in a dark alley. This was going to be a scene to test my abilities to direct crew. I took a cameraman with me but we encountered many problems from dead batteries, to incorrect kit given to us, to people refusing to move from the alley for about two hours.

This entire scene will be re-filmed as the footage is too dark, and the slider wasn’t handed to me with all the correct equipment, hence the shaky pan. Aside from all that, I had to abandon filming because of a threat of a parking ticket on my car.

In post-production, I made a decision to manually adjust the pixel aspect ratio to a more letterbox and cinematic view. This gives me great leniency to shots that need to be adjusted slightly higher or lower for the subject to be more centrally placed.

The title sequence of the word ”SLENDER” which then evolves to reveal a drawing of Slenderman was created on a Bamboo digital drawing pad. It is in the style of the pages that are present throughout the film.

Overall I’m happy with the outcome of the film so far and I look forward to continuing its production.

Imagined sympathetic viewers

The first sympathetic viewer could be a 15 year old male from the UK who has just played the game and is interested in checking out the film to see how much it’s like the game. He could also be rooting for Slenderman himself, hoping to see the protagonist get killed to make up for all the times he’s died on the game himself.

The second viewer could be a 20 year old female from America. She could be rooting for the protagonist, maybe she finds him attractive. My Youtube analytics claims that I have a slightly greater female audience in America.

The third viewer could be a 30 year old male from the UK. He hasn’t played Slender before, nor does he know much about the character, he is simply watching the film for the sake of a good film. He is sympathetic to the protagonist because like himself, he knows nothing of Slenderman.

R.E.D Project Film | SLENDER

R.E.D Project Proposal

For my R.E.D project, I wish to explore an area of filmmaking that I’ve always been quite timid of. While I like to think my expertise lie in editing/post production, as well as a jack of all trades on my films that only star myself, I’ve always been quite intimidated of directing other people. My initial goal four years ago was to become a director, but I soon realized that I can’t order people around, or have much luck finding actors who are willing to find their way to the location of the scene of their own accord and accept the fact that I can’t pay them, and even then they have to put up with my obsessiveness of filming the same shots over and over to ensure the best outcome possible.

My self challenge for this project is to actually direct a film, full of other actors and more than just one on one conversation – though that will be included. Another thing I’ve always wanted to do is to make a horror movie and play with tension and suspense. With halloween coming up, and inevitably this film unfortunetaly being finished after it, I think this is the perfect chance to combine the both and try to create something good!

I went ahead and created the first scene of this film where I already demonstrate my ability to direct an actor. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show off my abilities as a camera man while I’m also an actor, as a lot of the scene is over exposed.

Epilogue

So I’ve handed in an export of my film in it’s current-ish state. After trying for two days straight to render the whole thing at its current stage in development, I had to resort to creating the film that I handed in by combining previous exports mixed with the latest audio track.

It’s by no way finished but represents how thing’s are going. I just recently finished creating a building exploding at the end of the segment that I handed in, but not a single computer or mac will render this film in less than about 15 hours.

In the video that I handed in, I had to rush it because of the rendering problems that I mentioned. There are quite bad audio sync and volume issues and the dynamic background in the first fighting scene. I shall put on my blog a more improved version of this video once I find a NASA computer to export it on.

 

 

 

Professional placement

After failing to get any responses from these guys..

I jumped on board with the River Tamar Project as a graphics design editor. My role is detailed in the presentation slide I made below..

Powerpoint presentation

The River Tamar project is a film festival lasting between the 12th of September and the 12th of October. After a few meetings with the clients for this project, our entire crew have assigned our job roles and a work schedule. Below is the crew list.

Producers: Josh Adams & Jake Bench

Concept & Storyboards: James Baker

 

1st Unit 

Director: Josh Adams

DoP: Tom Cross

Sound – Lydia Atkinson

 

2nd Unit

Director: Katy Larcombe

DoP: Richard Spozitos

Sound: Maddie Gill

 

Graphics: Ben Kennedy Day

Lead Editor: Richard Walker

Assistant Editor: Matt Pridham

As editors, it’s our job to wait on everyone else for the footage. Our deadline is the 10th of June, and we are currently begging that we aren’t left with just a day to edit.

They want a short trailer to be done by the 10th, but an extended version to be done later on.

I think this work will be beneficial for my CV and personal experience of being an editor in a professional environment, which is my passion, and working in a big crew and delivering for external deadlines.

 

Progress

So I’m aiming to finish editing tomorrow, after I’ve recorded all dialogue and edited it into the film. On thursday I’ll be spending the entire day rendering the film, and then handing it in on friday.

My initial plans of actually finishing the film haven’t been met, but I’m close. I’m happy with what I’ve achieved for my FMP and will give myself a long break before resuming and completing this film.

 

The day of the deadline!

So it’s the day of the deadline. I don’t have any more full weeks until college closes of editing. I have however been having trouble exporting my film. I set up the export at 1pm yesterday, and by 9pm, when I was being kicked out of college, it was only at 70% done. This film takes longer to export than I’m actually allowed an edit suite for. So I tried exporting it on my laptop through the night. That was hopeless – by morning it had done 2%. So I have 4 hours to render before the deadline, and it looks like I’ll be forced to pick a lower quality than 1080p, which is quite a painful decision for me.

Homage to my past

In this film, there are two main characters present: they are named; Ben of the Dark, and Ben of the Day (a convenient and easy extension of my actual name). These characters aren’t just creations I’ve come up with for this film, they’re been around since I was 16, and I was creating them in different ways even before that. I made a film completely by myself in the summer holidays connecting the end of school to my first year of college back in 2010, this film was later called Ben of the Dark. 

I admit that it’s premise isn’t ridiculously innovative or original, but it’s a film where I fight my inner darkness in a physical form. I released two parts to this film on Youtube, and was working on the third until my laptop at the time died and the film was unsavable and unfinishable. I believe I had completed scripts ready for about 6 parts. I still have the first few minutes of the third part, as well as a lot of scattered post-effect heavy shots which involve a lot of combat. Below is a short video I made that compares elements and attacks of the current state of my Versus film to the Ben of the Dark series.

Versus – Old VS New

So with this sequel to my first live action fighter film, there are many things I intended to improve on. The first film was made mostly on Sony Vegas, and After Effects was used briefly for lens flares and the tracking of them. The second film will be entirely Premiere and After Effects based.

The first film uses a picture from google as the background. The second film will use a fully animated background that I shot myself, as well as dynamic damage to it from the foreground action. The pace will also be increased.

Upon looking at gameplay of actual games of this genre, I’ve noticed that right before a hit is landed, everything freezes for about half a second or less.  This creates a very good sense of damage and I would like to include this in my film. I have already experimented with it but due to the quantity of hits, the pauses in video add up to too much audio lag. I will try and work a way around it.

I’ve also been looking back at the blog I created for the first film, to see if there’s anything else to improve on. Here is a link to it, it includes plenty of research and blogging:

http://bkdfmp.tumblr.com/

Versus progress

So following too many months of locking myself in an editing suite for 9 hour days, I feel like I’ve spent more time looking at a frozen screen than I have actually editing. But as of now, I’m happy with what I’ve made. I’ve been looking at other work on the internet that is similar to mine and comparing effects and styles. I’m now trying to find tutorials for greater After Effects effects that will make the video more flashy.

The sound levels are far too high but I’ve recently settled on a sound effect for the punches. The sound is actually edited differently for both characters.

I’m often finding errors within Premiere and AE that cause my progress to make one step forward, two steps back. Recently, days have been spent purely to recover errors that have occurred in the programs, usually regarding the many plug-ins.

I have a word file in the project folder that specifies certain effects or elements that are turned off during editing, which need to be turned back on for rendering. It’s impossible to edit with these elements/effects turned on.