EVALUATION - Robert Buler (QUESTION 8)

In this post, I will be looking back to my preliminary task, and find how my skills improved over the time. Also, I might compare some good  scenes from my final movie, with preliminary's poor recording/editing/soundtrack. I will demonstrate how did I get these skills and what changed since preliminary task. 

This is my preliminary task. I have created it with group 35. "The death".

This is my final movie - "Run to the past" created by myself.

BEGINNING

The first thing I spotted is the opening. It's awful. Or, even more specific - there is no opening. Each movie needs to be open - needs a good start to have good finish. This is not what we can find in my preliminary task, because the movie starts with girl opening the door (match cut), and I wouldn't be surprised if audience says "What the hell? when did I miss the opening?".

From my experience gained while creating the movie, I realised that the best type of shot for opening is the long one or establishing. Of course, It is very difficult to do the establishing without helicopter or standing on the building's roof. All what I did is standing still on my sofa:) However, calm and peaceful start of the movie is very effective, especially for action ones, because there is a huge change of tempo and speed which looks incredible.

SOUNDTRACK

For first 25 seconds there is absolute no soundtrack. Normally people do not realise that, but music is extremely important to keep audience... awake. Surely, if people would actually watch this movie, they would get bored after 20 seconds of silence. 

In my opening, you can see clearly hear the non-diagetic acoustic guitar music in the background, which makes the audience feel "welcome" in house where my actress stays at, but also might suggest peace and calmness. Also, I think that music played from acoustic instruments are the best soundtracks for openings. And it's difficult to say why... I just feel this way. Maybe, the reason why is that I have watched so many films with similar openings (e.g. Shining, Catch me if you can, Dexter), that now it feels like natural (normal?). 

ACTION - RUNNING

There is quite a significant difference between speed, action and movement when comparing my preliminary film with the final one. The prelim also has the running, however the editing is very poor and the number of shots is low. While making the prelim, I had no idea how to create the sense of action. Of course, I knew that changing speed is extremely important. 

Now, I know that important factor is the huge number of shots from different angles, as well as good soundtrack and editing. Before creating my movie while half term, I watched few favorite movies e.g. "Matrix" and "Lords of the ring" to get the idea how to create action and suspense. Why these movies? I found the editing very powerful in both of them, and I was concentrated on successful speed changing and match cuts. 

SKILL OF PLANNING

I also gained the skill of planning my editing. Before I've actually started to record my movie, I knew how it's going to look like after editing. Of course, not everything went as I hoped, but most of my tasks were successfully completed on a good standard. When I've started the AS media course, or  even while doing the preliminary task, I had absolutely no sense/imagination and vision. I really think that it is the most important  skill I've learned, because this "imagination" is something that every good director/editor/camera men needs to have on a highest standard.

I am pretty sure that this can be obtained by doing more research about how to create the movie, but also listening to words of fantastics directors, like Hitchcock. In addition, watching great movies but paying more attention to editing/soundtrack instead of storyline is very important. Before doing AS media, I was watching the movies with more passion and being more interested in what's going on, instead of "how was it created?", "why was it created?". You've ruined my life! :))

MATCHING THE SOUNDS

While doing prelim with group 35, I wasn't really paying attention to music and sounds. I thought that keeping the original ones is fine, and didn't see the point of muting the sound and pasting the ones obtained from Soundtrack pro. Now, I know that I couldn't be more wrong! As you can see in prelim, the sounds were pasted very poorly, some of them do not match, and some of them are out of place. Me and my group ruined the film because of that, but well... at least I've learned something from it. 

Now, I know that muting the film is very important because we can get rid of any background noises, especially the ones we do not want (like camera operator's sneezing... :)). Also, by pasting the new ones, we gain more quality sound and we also can increase/decrease the volume if needed for special editing. While watching my movie, you can also spot few mistakes, but I the idea is that I was able to increase the volume of e.g. car passing by or footsteps, and decrease the soundtrack.

I did realise that while editing the "007 James Bond" clips. I was shocked how it is possible that the sound while Bond was fighting was fully pasted from programs like Soundtrack Pro. There was so many of them... Astonishing! And even that I am not the kind of person who is interested in sound editing, I payed much more attention. Now, I know that sound editor needs to have extremely good skills, good imagination and lots of patience while listening to millions of sound clips... 

EVALUATION - Robert Buler (QUESTION 3)

In this question, I will image my audience. In more detail, I will say what do they like, how old are they, what are their interests and hobbies etc...


Male: Mariusz, 34, Manager of pharmacy factory. Mariusz is a hard working and successful member of pharmacy factory, where he manages the costs and fill up the needs of painkillers etc. He has a Doctor degree completed on a high standard. Mariusz is on a long time relationship with a women. He doesn't have a laptop or iPod, however he enjoys speed and action. He adores fast cars, especially sport ones like Bugatti Veyron. On every weekend, he goes to cinema and watches new movies that look interesting on advertisments, however he prefer the action ones. He listens to rock music everyday after work.

Sample of his favorite song:

Female: Anna, 27, restourant supervisor. Anna is a relationship that just have started. She has old, but still with great performance laptop to watch newest movies on internet. Anna loves traveling and being out-of-reach. SHe enjoys her life. She is also a student on university studying ecology. Her favorite music type is Jazz, however she still likes to listen to old hip hop.

She likes to buy clothes from clearances, but she doesn't wear skirts. She prefers to wear normal trousers with blouse. She likes running and yoga, however she also tries to pass driving licence test.

Sample of her favorite song:

As you can see, my audience might not be only teenagers. From what I know, young people and especially girls prefer to watch films like Hannah Montana etc... Boys instead prefer a lot of action and brutal scenes, mostly the 18+ ones :)... My movie contains no death or killing, but just an action, so teenagers 15-19 could get bored.

I am sure that adults and older people could get interested. Of course, they are also watching 18+ films, but their "needs" for death is much lower. This is why they might get interested in drama/action - thriller like the one I've just did. 

EVALUATION - Robert Buler (QUESTION 2)

Of course, as I was working on my own and away on England, I couldn't really work with real actors:) However, my little movie star did her best to help me! and I am really thankful. At least, she is still teenager and luckily for me, be character in movie was also. I will be now showing and comparing my character in movie to today's world and stereotypes.

As long as I know, women as mostly descibed as weak but beauty gender. Everything what has flowers, hearts, butterflys or even anything pink-ish is for girls. They normally wear skirts and high boots, or shirts with neckline. This is exactly how I image a teen girl nowdays. Of course, there are some girls that want to be more like man, mostly called "feminists" (with a full respect to them... or not really :) ). They normally want to be equall to guys, so that they wear jeans trousers with even shirts with ties.

If I can describe my character, she is more like the "feminits" type. She didn't really dress up like a teen girl who wants to show some body to boys, and make them whistle when she goes by. No! My characted dress up in trousers and a "double t-shirt". And of course brown-ish house slippers. Doesn't look like normal girl, isn't she?

To compare her with a girl from "He loves me, he loves me not", we can see a HUGE difference. Lovely, sweet and loveable girl. Skirt, smile and hearts everywhere. Flower shop. All of these things and objects can describe her as lovely and perfect girl, but very weak. She might've never been un-loved, and always needs someone for help. This is absolute opposite of my girl character. The outfit, and empty house can suggest that she is an independent girl, who can handle every situation on her own. She might be lonely, without family and friends to support, but she never gives up.

From her run, we can realise that losing is not what she wants. Never give up! Speed, action! RUN! Not pinky and lovely, adorable girl who is lost without her guardian.

EVALUATION - Robert Buler (Q4-5)

Every student from C&I media department have created very low budget opening title sequence in their own style. In my opinion, we can do quite a lot of things to distribute and promote our movie, however I don't think that any of these title sequences can get to real "cinema world". Well, at least we can attract some audience and still try to have some fun!

One way of promoting and also one of the most successful is "Social Network". Everyday, millions of people use social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Youtube or different kinds of blogs. It is extremely easy ot advertise anything, but especially on blogs as I mentioned before. All what we need to do is create a post with information about the movie, some features etc. and get a help from your friends/family to promote it. It's very importnat to make the post interesting, so people actually want to read it and become interested. Also, we can put there some videos e.g. trailers or back-stage scenes. It's better to upload movie to youtube, because then people can see our profile and check what's going on. The same thing is with Facebook - we can create profile and give more information up to date, and also talk with fans. 

On Bernard's lesson, he has shown us an example of fantastic independent movie called "My name is Jerry". From what I know, they have promoted themselves just by Social Networks! We can find their Youtube, Facebook and MySpace profiles, but when the movie became more popular, they've also created website. In interesting fact is that "My name is Jerry" has 1007 likes on Facebook, and 102,187 views on youtube! Impressive!

( http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Name-is-Jerry/14595826033

 http://www.youtube.com/user/MyNameIsJerryMovie

http://www.mynameisjerry.com/ )

It is very important to find the special type of audience which will be interested in the kind of movie, e.g. special type of humor, or suspense movies. Producers, like me, should be finding these people and send the trials to them. Another great idea is to send a CD with all the thrialers and information to a local newspaper, like Guardian and with some luck, they might be interested in publishing the movie and give a review. Some people have a section with Social Networking stuff, and it's a good way to become famous!

One of my friends did get a fantastic idea with a festivals of low budget movies. The idea is to organise the event and invite everyone who wants to show the movie to audience. Everyone can give their opinion and it's also easy way to get more ideas. By getting new friends out there, people might combine their movies and become a team, creating one fantastic movie and hopefully get money out of it!

I actually don't see a reason why not to do any of these points. Of course, some of them take time and organisation skills, but I am sure that even I can do it. The thing is, I should work on my movie first and then talk to other people from my college to get their help. I, by myself can create a fan page, all types of social networking profiles etc., but it still might not be enough! Only the best can survive!

EVALUATION - What have I learned about technologies (q7)

In this question I will be describing technologies I have used during recording or editing my film. I will show how was it useful to my product and why did I choose them.

www.Google.co.uk

• Website called google is a fantastic search engine. This website helped me with searching any relevant information that I have used during my course.  E.g. I wanted to find some tutorial about how to use LiveType. Easy! Just typed "tutorial livetype" and google found thousands of other websites that I might be interested in.  Also, by pressing "Images" on main page, I can search for pictures only - very important during creating the post on blogger.

www.Youtube.com

• Website called Youtube is incredible website used worldwide to find or upload any video! Youtube has thousands of millions visitors everyday. Many people - like me - are listening for music. On youtube people are promoting their music for free and are getting more fans. However, during this course, I was using youtube very frequently, because each tutorial, each thriller or each trailer is uploaded there. It is amazing how much I have learned from tutorials! It's amazing source of information!

www.Blogger.com

• Blogger is a huge website used by million of people. Some people are using it to say their thoughts, others to describe e.g electrical products or new features, and others to share people what they did today. I was using blogger to show my preparation, doing and editing of my film. It is a good way to show people how to people what I did because instead of saying, I can also show pictures or upload videos. And this is what I've done!

Final Cut Pro

• FInal cut pro is a great programme to edit movies. In this programme I was able to inport my clips from camera, render them easily and edit. It is fantastic! Huge amount of different effects that I can apply to my clips e.g. fading, shading, change colours. Some of these featured I did use, however I wasn't even able to look at each individually because it would take me ages! Also, I was cutting the clips to make them shorter and move them to work with others and create different types of shots, like match cut. Then, after completing work on Final cut pro, I exported it to program called Soundtrack Pro.

Soundtrack Pro

• Soundtrack pro is a program to edit the sountracks or add music. Very complicated and difficult programme to use, but when I get used to it, I was able to do fantastic things! From 12GB of different soundtracks, I was able to put each sound and make it cooperate with the movie. I was able to increse or decrease the volume of sound. After finishing, I did export movie to Final cut pro once again. 

LiveType

• Livetype is a well reviewed programme to create title sequences to movies. Thanks to it. we have an option to add title sequences pretty easily and with great animation. I did use it to create my title sequences and title to my film. All what I did was import the movie, then type the title and choose different effects. I did use some features like jumping letters or amazing font created by editors. Then, I moved them and chosen where they were meant to lay on my movie. After finishing, I exported the letters to FCP format and upload them over there. At last, I was able to render the movie once again and export as final editing.

Handbrake

• When my movie was completed, all what I had to do is upload on my blogger. However, the movie was in a format of over 100MB size. It is way too much to upload on blogger and it would take ages! In that case,  I needed to change format. Handbrake is a programme I used. Thank to it, I have chosen my movie and pressed "MP4 format". When it finished, I was able to send my movie anywhere, and the size of it was 4.5MB! It is amazing! Of course, the quality decreased, but anyone was still able to see movie quite clearly. I did use it for my final edit, but rough cut and preliminary film as well. 

Other technologies

• Camera - I have used my camera to create the clips for my final cut pro. I think that camera is the best way of entertainment, because whatever you do can be seen again and again. And this is what I did. I recorded different scenes with my star and having amazing time during that. After all, I was able to send it to final cut pro and start editing.

• iMac - These are the fantastic computers with amazing perfomance and reliability. Some say that there were created for media. It is easy to learn how to use it, and when you become expert, you can feel like GOD during editing! I have used them all the time during editing and posting my blogs. I was able to inport and export my clips and many other stuff from the hard drives that I was obtained. 

EVALUATION - Robert Buler (QUESTION 1)

In this post I will be comparing some shots from my title sequence opening to other media products created by professionals. More exactly, I will show and describe in what ways my opening movie use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products. 

Firstly, I will talk about the opening. From my point of view, it was very calm on the beginning, and then BANG - the movie starts. Quite a lot of different shots, angles and effects are involved to create the action. The movie I can think of with the similar beginning can be "The Stepfather". At first, very calm, not really knowing what is going on, and then bang! speed, action, tense, effects. This is really what happened in my title sequence opening.

The only difference could be that The stepfather has much longer introduction and time for titles to appear. However, the speed, action and the tempo is quite similar, and I must say that I didn't really think about it before. But I am glad that I happened this way, because the effect is stunning (at least on Stepfather :))

_______________________________________________________________________________



My titles are pretty effective, stylish, bald and eye-catching, however I did not mention a lot of names and the order of appearing really is different to other movies. However, what I've done was on purpose. I don't want my audience to keep steering on names and what have they done. I made it simple.

The title appearing list is short (Stars -> Editing -> Music -> Director -> Movie title) and the movie I can compare with is "What lies beneath".  The movie starts with the distributor, then a production company and the titles. THAT'S IT!

I think that I've made a better job, kind of developed their idea because it is important to say the names that are the most important and who have done the most job. And these are the people I have included.

However, the style and the effect of appearing is more likely to be from "The taking of pelham 123". They have used some great editing. However, I think that the titles appearing are too small and placed in bad positions, and I think that my titles can challenge them. I have placed black/blue titles in places where these can be easily seen, and and the size of letters is big and bald enough to be read without magnifying glass and the lighter.


_______________________________________________________________________________


The opening I have chosen was very calm, instead of "big bang!". I used it to make the audience feel the quiet and calmness. First 20 secs or so were almost still. And then suddenly the alarm goes off and BANG! I think it was preety effective, because there is a fast change of speed and tempo that works fantastically. To create that, I needed two different types of soundtracks. One calm, acuistic, and the other one fast.

The movie called "He loves me, he loves me not" has something to do with that. They have used almost still pictures or single shots, and then when she goes on the bike, everything gain the tempo and speed. Great use of editing!


_______________________________________________________________________________


I must admit that I didn't really introduced my character as I should. All what have I done is showing the audience that the character is in hurry, and that the speed represent encourage. Movie "He loves me, he loves me not" shows in few minutes that she is in love, and she tends to be calm, quiet and "sweet". I don't really think that I can challenge this film, however some people should recognise her unstability and some problem with her.


_______________________________________________________________________________


In my movie I didn't really give people much information at the start, however it was on purpose. I have seen in some film the scene that some guy ran for few minutes with titles on the top. I cannot really remeber what was the title, but he was running in some competition. He did ran just like her. He run for winning, and she ran somewhere very important and - from the clock seen few times - we could guess that time was important factor. I think that I have developed this idea in some way, because I also added lots of architecture and much more different shot types and angles. Simply created the action.

EDIT: I found the name of the movie: "Marathon Man". Here I give you a trailer.

_______________________________________________________________________________


Girls are often described as weaker/ slower gender. More flowers, hearts and love. Less speed and man-activities. This is a huge difference between my movie and "he loves me, he loves me not". In my movie, the actress is on her own, lonely in a huge city and runs all the way by her own. However, in "he loves me, he loves me not" the acresss is described as a lovely and sweet person from the beginning, as we can see from the flower shop and all the hearts. Absolute difference. My character is more independent from the beginning, and the other one sends the flower to her boyfriend from the top of the movie. This might show that my actress doesn't need a man and can handle everything by herself.

_______________________________________________________________________________


There is one feature in my opening that can absolutely challenge any movie. Locations. I have shown huge amount of different types of architecture, old tramway, city from close ups to extremely long shots. And the movie I can compete with is the "Panic room". However, in my opinion its much different! OF course, I used many long shots and even the same type for title, but the architecture is different. New York has houdreds of huge sky-reachers. My movie has some big buildings, but most of them are old and not-in-so-much-technology. Great 1800's or older building shows that the movie was made in East European country, because it's where most building stand right now.

I did use some close ups on buildings, and this is the difference. They didn't use that to put huge titles over the screen. I used some close ups to show more accuratelly how building look and how let some audience be fascinted by the view.