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Ross Morrison 1748 

Claremont Fan Court School 64680

I worked with Casey Drewett 1723

Our brief was to make an opening sequence for a film. We decided to title our production 'The Fugitive'. The Fugitive is a crime/thriller. It highlights the effects that human trafficking has on the police, public and traffickers themselves. We have included credits in our opening sequence. This is to highlight characters that will be focused on throughout the film. 

Camera work- For all of our shots I operated the camera. I directed the actors as to where I felt that scene would work best. However, not all of the shots were my ideas I also had input from actors and group members.  

Editing- I took the main role of editing our production.This involved watching through all of the shots to find the ones that would work best before editing them together with the right audio to make our production look professional. Casey created the joint ident for RFM FILMS and ALEXANDER PRODUCTIONS. 

Directing- Before we shot any scenes, Casey scouted various locations which we could film at. He took numerous photos of the locations and we discussed which we felt would be best for our production.  These locations were necessary for our film as we felt that they were right for the jobs, ages and storylines of each character. For the most part I took the lead when directing, although Casey had some and input when he was in or out of shot. 

FINAL PRODUCT

The opening to our film has been uploaded to YouTube and can be found on  The Fugitive Official channel.

CONSTRUCTION: EDITING

When we started editing we decided that we would use iMovie to edit our production. Although this was not the only editing software we used during production, for example we used FinalCutPro when green screening a CCTV camera frame. We also had to add a number of voiceovers, sound recordings, transitions and the music underscore which were all edited and manipulated in iMovie. 




The image above shows the beginning of our film opening, this shows our two company idents. The green bar that you can see is the opening to our underscore (downloaded from Premium beats). Throughout our production we had to change the music so that it would work in sync with our visuals and other voiceovers. We made the dialogue louder than the music so the audience can understand what is going on whilst still being able to hear the underscore. When editing the dialogue we dubbed it so that the audio was louder and clearer. We recorded the dialogue using voice memos on an iPhone as it provided a clear sound and it was easy to airdrop the recordings to the iMac which we were working on. 



The image above shows the CCTV camera effect. There are four green bars which are a sound effect of a camera zooming in on the Associate as he is observed in the form of a long shot. We decided that the original sound effect of the camera zooming in was too loud and distracted the audience from what the main focus of the scene was (the introduction of a new character) so we reduced the volume of the sound effect to make it more appropriate.

CONSTRUCTION: FILM IDENT

Image of the film ident being created in iMovie

Most film companies have an ident which is shown before the film begins. This is usually a  combination of words and visuals that creates an eye catching, funny or play on words to make it memorable for the audience so that they can easily identify this companies work in the future. 

RFM FILMS and ALEXANDER PRODUCTIONS are branded as two sophisticated modern companies. The visual image of a green star provides a clean, stream lined . The star has connotations of stage and screen and the colour green is associated with moving forward. Below is our ident.

CONSTRUCTION: BBFC CERTIFICATE

As our film/film opening is a British film we created a BBFC certificate which shows the age rating for our film. We went on the BBFC website and we looked at the requirements that make a film age rating 15. The list below shows these requirements.

Age rating 15

• Dangerous behaviour - Dangerous behaviour (for example, suicide, self-harming and asphyxiation) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Whether the depiction of easily accessible weapons is acceptable will depend on factors such as realism, context and setting.
• Discrimination - The work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour, although there may be racist, homophobic or other discriminatory themes and language.
• Language - There may be strong language. Very strong language may be permitted, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency within the work as a whole and any special contextual justification.
• Nudity - There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context. Sexual nudity may be permitted but strong detail is likely to be brief or presented in a comic context.
• Sex - Sexual activity may be portrayed, but usually without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour. Repeated very strong references, particularly those using pornographic language, are unlikely to be acceptable. Works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal are unacceptable.
• Sexual violence and sexual threat - There may be strong verbal references to sexual violence but any depiction of the stronger forms of sexual violence, including rape, must not be detailed or prolonged. A strong and sustained focus on sexual threat is unacceptable.
• Threat and horror - There may be strong threat and horror. A sustained focus on sadistic threat is unlikely to be acceptable.
• Violence - Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic violence is also unlikely to be acceptable. 

From this list we created our own BBFC certificate which stated the age ratings and what subjects will be shown in our film (which is strong nudity, violence and language).

CONSTRUCTION: SOUND

For the sound we used Premium Beat to find a suitable underscore for our production.  As there is such a wide variety of music we could have used we decided to narrow our search by filtering the music to the genre of our film which is thriller/crime. After listening to a number of backing tracks which were either too fast or too slow for our production eventually we choose to use a piece called 'Independence' as this was the best fit for our film.

There are a number of different voiceovers in our production. We used Voice Memos on an iPhone to record Ollie speaking the news report. The iPhone enabled us to get a clearer quality of audio which I felt sounded more professional and would make our final production have a professional sound quality. We also used the recording feature on iMovie as this allowed us to record dialogue and time it so that the words were synced to the actors mouth movements.

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

Photos from the two days of Filming in London

Filming in London: Due to a number of factors (actors availability) we had limited time to film our production. We filmed over the course of two days (18th & 25th January) around London as we wanted the film to be set in a major city with noticeable locations. With our filming taking place in central London we had to deal with a number of factors including issues with transport such as trains having limited service or being cancelled, the time it would take to walk between locations to film and times required for breaks and lunch. Although we were limited on time due to our actors commitments it gave us time to think about how we wanted the actors to act in certain shots.



Hardest shot to film: As we wanted to film in noticeable locations it meant that they would be busy with the public and tourists. The hardest scene to film was a scene in Piccadilly Circus. This was due to the amount of traffic and the amount of people in that location who would stop in front of one of our actors to take a pictures of the iconic location that we were filming in. It took us numerous attempts (15) to get the right shot for the scene. This was due to the fact that we had to wait for breaks in the traffic so that the associate (Jake) could walk across the road whilst the female detective (Evie) followed a few paces behind him. Whilst editing I realised that we could create a transition as the female detective (Evie) walks behind a member of the public.

This photo was taken from the shot which we used in our production of the female detective walking across the road 

CONSTRUCTION: WEBSITE

To help us understand the distribution methods of films we looked at how recent films had marketed themselves. In the age of social media we decided to create a website as this is one of the most common ways in which film companies distribute their products. The website includes information about our film including an outline of the plot, information about the actors, photographs taken during filming, posters, videos and contact details. Our website included inks to our social media pages (Instagram and Twitter account).

In creating three posters we were able to start to understand how to make posters be visually appealing to our target audience.  We created an establishing poster of a truck depot which allows audiences to have a sneak peek into what is to come in the film. The second poster is an individual poster and we did this because many distributors of films create posters that only feature the main character, who is usually played by a big actor/actress. An example of this would be for the film Ad Astra, which had three individual posters, which all had Brad Pitt in them. The third poster is the final poster for the film and it focuses on all the main characters. 

CONSTRUCTION: FEEDBACK

Shots: During the editing for the film opening, we asked for feedback from our peers. We had very positive feedback in respect to the ident and the voice over reporting, people said that they liked this because it looked and sounded professional. However, we also received some very constructive feedback, mainly concerning our shots. One of the comments was that in Shot 2, as it is a long shot introducing another character, we could make the frame look as though it is a CCTV camera. We searched on YouTube for a green screen that would enable this effect. We looked at a number of different effects before we found the CCTV effect that suited our frame. 

Sound: At the end of our sequence we decided to add sound to a shot of an object dropping into the river. This was because we wanted to make the audience feel like what they were watching on screen was actually going on in real life. After a number of ideas of how we would make the sound, we decided that dropping a coin into a large sink which was filled with water might work. We used Voice Memos on an iPhone to record the sound. After adding the sound to the clip we came to the conclusion that this did not sound professional. A peer also watched the clip and agreed that we did not need the sound. We removed the sound from the production. 

CONSTRUCTION: SOCIAL MEDIA

We decided to make a social media page for our film on a number of different popular social media platforms to help us distribute our film. The social media platforms we decided to use were Twitter and Instagram, this was because they are popular amongst people aged 15-35 (our target audience). Currently most film, music and news companies use these two platforms to distribute their products.  Film companies usually release a teaser trailer, individual poster or an establishing poster. After this the main trailer and poster are released. We decided that we would release the establishing poster first before releasing an individual poster subsequently followed by the main poster.