My evaluation of HIDE

I have created a small website for my evaluation of my opening title sequence.
 Should tell you all about:

• Audience and their attraction to the OTS.
• How i've improved in making media products.
• How the group im in have challenged and met forms and conventions.
• How our OTS represents particular social groups.
• What sort of media institution might distribute our OTS.

Just visit mevansevans26.wix.com/hide.

Assembly Video

Here's a video of me, Sam and James showing our OTS to a year 12 assembly. We were welcomed on to show and at the end got very good feed back from the question sheets we handed out. I was in charge of greeting everyone and standing at the front of the assembly, James was in charge of handing out question sheets even though unfortunately not everyone received a sheet. Sam had the job of filming the audience. Lights went out to add to the tension which is a positive although we used my camera which had a function of muting the sound while zooming, which i wasn't aware of until we filmed it all so unfortunately some of the sound was removed from the raw file. We roughly received 30 questionaries back.

Big focus group assembly from Matthew Evans on Vimeo.

Finish Noir OTS, welcome to...HIDE

Hide - Final OTS from James on Vimeo.

Focus group for improvement

Here's a link to James' post about our focus group. We had to show our video to the rest of the class to see how we were getting on and to see what we could improve on. I am proud of how well we're doing so far. It seemed like the rest of the class watching our video was a wake up call to them because many of the other groups have en-counted problems. From what we received back everyone enjoyed it, not everyone understood that Hyde and Jekyll where the same person and everyone preferred the credits with the lighter.

Behind the scenes of shoot 2

Behind the scenes from Matthew Evans on Vimeo.

Behind the behind the scenes...

Today i was editing for our finial shots and the last of the scenes where Hyde is included. For editing I used a trail version of 'AVS Video Editor'. Along with the positives with this software there have been so many drawbacks. As ive mentioned in a past post the problem i mainly have with using IMovie is the long wait to even add any footage into the editing space and so for me it could take roughly 2 hours to edit 15 minutes of clips but with the AVS trail its been super quick and pretty easy. But the main issue is that im dreading the end result as they have warned me after editing it all that they're going to advertise their product with their logo in the center of the video. It hasn't yet finished publishing but soon as it has i may upload it straight to vimeo and then on to this blog. With this last day of filming we all managed to film behind the scenes and film for the actual OTS.

Focus Group planning.

Today i've sent an email to the head of our year for permission to let our OTS be shown to a year 12 and 13 assembly. Here's a screen shot of the already sent email all edited and reviewed by the whole production group to make sure the email is well written.

Look from fresh eyes (Class Focus Group)

Here's a video showing the first time we ever shew our video to people who hadn't taken part in it.

Part one: Start of our OTS. Get a view of how complete we are so far.

Part two: Finished video and now about to show alternative credits.

Part three: Talks about what was enjoyed and what they would like us to change.

Feedback from Sam SheepDawg-OEight on Vimeo.

Our Focus group meeting.

On the 8th of Feb we had a focus group meeting and the whole of our group attended to show the OTS to our class and give out a couple of sheets just so it could spark something that they'd like to talk about or ask. We overall got great results and amazing feed back. Together as a groups we all came up with the question sheet which is very brief and is essentially just a rough coating of questions. 


Video Post here.

Facebook meeting.

Here's a link to James' post about the facebook group i created for our production. I believed it would help organise things as many people all over the world use facebook and it is generally accepted in social life.
But as expected we need to censor some information as it was a private group so we didn't share any unwanted information out into the outside world.

Creating the credits

Credits from Matthew Evans on Vimeo.

Today i made, filmed and edited a credits scene for my groups opening title sequence. We cant use it because it does not follow the same resolution and therefore ruins our continuity so far. I just draw on paper with a black thick pen and reversed me throwing paper across the screen.

 So instead we used the lighter scene as credits, with well timed entrances of our names and the names of the stars. Here's the video of the credits we have final agreed to use.
Final credit used for 'HIDE' from Matthew Evans on Vimeo.

Editing Issues

Over a multiple of occasions it has come apparent that there have been issues with editing, and that isn't a huge surprise as we are using shared servers with the rest of the school. Unfortunately some of the students in class have suffered to solve the problem but now we can edit faster then previously. But because of the problems me, James and Sam only saw it right that we spend a few lunch times to catch up on work that should be finished.



Foleying once again.

Here's a post from Sam showing what we created during our lunch times and a video.
We were attemting to recreate a sound similar to an actual gun shot sound using different bags (packets of air) and also slapping a ruler against a table. This was us using a marantz (photo shown) for the first time to get a high quality sound effect.

Video here.

Foleying "Recreating the Gunshot"

We filmed ourselves recreating the gunshot sound, it was just an experiment to see how well we could foley.

James' post here.

Filming of Yesterday

We began filming at Elm Hill but first met up in the castle mall which was arranged by mobile and facebook. Once we reached Elm Hill we encountered a few problems. For example vehicles coming through our filming and disturbing the sound quality. Plus we had many problems with scafolding and what seemed like road works. I got some behind the scenes and the fake blood looked like tomato sauce. Seemed like a beneficial night to our media studies course work.

Keyhole idea developed

In our story board we came up with an idea to have a keyhole shot so it would be at Alexis' room and then look through the keyhole and see Hyde on the otherside. We could create it as there was no keyhole for us to work with but James has developed the idea even with our problem.

Here's the post.

Music

Here's a link to James' post about him creating the music for our OTS.

Link here.

Editing behind the scenes.

Today I've uploaded the behind the scenes of our first recording day and its my first time editing on IMovie HD. I'm just getting to grips with editing so i can edit our final piece.

While trying to edit I've learnt some key presses to split the video clip. I've also had to censor a few points because some people may find it offensive if not, but I'm including it for humour at this point but its definitely up for change once the other members have seen it. One problem I've ran into is that trying to input video clips takes it's time and you have to be very patient. As you can see i have to wait a while but it doesn't seem like i have to wait all of the time indicated in this photo.

Results from survey

I created a survey to see how the students from my sixth form purchase they media whether it be online or in store and how they feel about the current state of HMV.

Here are the main things i've discovered with this survey:

• The media most purchased is 'music' compared to films and games.
• Most of the media is purchased online compared to instore.
• Device most used to purchase the media is 'PC/Laptop' compared to the second place mobile which i would count on most probably being an apple device. Third is Tablet and one person didn't purchase media online.
• About 2/3 of the people who completed the survey didn't care too much about HMV closing down.
• People didn't visit HMV about once a month and the rest didn't visit very often. Someone has never visited their before 
• Most people (more then 2/3) received 1-5 cd's or dvd's during 2012 christmas. Most expected they only got 1 or 2. We have the exception of two people received none.

The total surveys completed were 15.

Today on Photoshop.

I've been able to get my hide title screen accepted by the other member and been asked just to slightly change it so the backgrounds a little darker. I'll show you the original edit and then the new edit.

I still think i'll need to print off a survey about the title screen and see if our title is accepted compared to the standard noir title screens.
Possibly film the general public in the city of Norwich and get their ideas of our film in its unfinished state and ask them about their ideas and if it was a full film shown on the TV if they'd plan to see it and ask if they believe it's a opening title sequence or a trailer as thats a extremely important part of this project.

The BBFC?

It stands for the British Board of Film Classification.

Basically its a rating for what films are suitable for which age range.

For example the film E.T. is rated a 'U'.

And James Bond- Skyfall is a 12A.

You may wonder what does 'U' and '12A' mean?

Here's a list to tell you all the ratings and what they mean.

You can easily find this on the official BBFC website.

The age rating from the BBFC changes depending on the amount and type of graphical content. For example American Pie is rated a 15 because of the slight nudity involved during the film. But Sincity is rated 18 because of the nudity, gore, violence and drug references.   

HIDE Title screen creation

Today I've created two different title screen.

This is the first one where i was asked to write the name hide in a scratchy way and take a photo then inverse the colours.

Here's the original photo.

Afterwards I placed it in photoshop and now I've inversed the colours properly to the best of my ability.

We felt as a group that we didn't like the standard Noir style titles and since we are doing a homage of a gothic horror in a Noir style.

Here's a standard Noir styled titles.

 

I've also created this title completely off photoshop.

which i dont believe has as much of an effect as the previous one.

Art of Foleying

This is a video of a professional Foley artist called Gary Hecker.

Foleying is a simple process in which you recreate the sound effects of films. For example you can see Gary Hecker tapping objects repeatedly against sand to produce a similar sound you expect to see along with horse riding.

Filming Day

On the 2nd of January. Me, James, Sam and our actor (Joe) arrived at James' home.

Our main jobs of the evening:

James - Filming,
Sam - Lighting,

Matthew - Director and Behind the scenes.

start with was too bright so we had to move it further away, and with filming the Jekyll's letter scenes and Hyde's murder scenes we did not plan on making them different locations but if our shot does not show similarity we will include them in our opening title sequence.     We encountered many problems while filming and before. For example the lighting we used to
    I feel if we planned just a little longer we would not have encountered as many problems as we did.
    With the mugshot we used we found out that most of them printed abit too dark except Jackson's and Emily's as those shot we taken in a brightly lit room.
     Towards the end of shooting Sam's camera had ran out of charge and we had to use mine so there's a chance the resolution changes dramatically but we definitely do not have any behind the scenes at the end.

     On that day we completed all of Jekyll's shots so far as far as we are aware and Hyde's indoor scenes. We just need to film Hyde's last shots as he walks towards the home of Alexis before the murder.

Photo-shopping a mugshot

Photoshop from Matthew Evans on Vimeo.

Here's a video of me editing one of the mugshots shown in our opening title sequence.
Enjoy.