Red Cape

Tierra’s post

ASSIGNMENT FOUR.

I must admit that when I chose this studio, I chose it because of Blink-182’s song ‘All The Small Things’  but I’m very relieved and grateful that I made such an impulse decision like that when I picked this studio because it turned out to be the main reason as to why this semester was one of the best decisions of my uni life so far. The studio guidelines states this studio is about “the learning of filmmaking inspired by prompts and guided with constraints.” By filming and editing short video clips every week or so, I have gathered this new found knowledge of the technical aspect of media as before coming into this course, I was only familiar with editing and the preproduction stage of the creative process but never the technicality of it. I believe this studio has widened my passion for media and has made me realise what my strengths and weaknesses are and that was by constantly doing diverse projects that focused on specific things, helping me figure it out.

Because of the frequent small video projects we had to make and edit, it allowed me to learn and develop so much as a media practitioner and has made me more interested and passionate about this course. One of the many things I learned is lighting; I’ve never had any experience with setting up lights before but because of this studio, I now know about 3 point lighting and the importance of light set up. I found being a part of ‘the red cape’ group very rewarding even though there were some unseen setbacks but despite of this I’ve gained a lot of experience and knowledge from all those weeks of trial and error and really loved this studio and everything that I gained along with it.

 

REFLECTION.

week eight // pre-production discussions

This week the groups were assigned for our final short film project. I was assigned into a group along with Aaaron, Emily, Grace, Natalie and Wang. Before our class, we went through each others scripts and decided which one we should do for our assignment based on our creative interests and creative idea flows. We decided to go with Wang’s two line script and started to plan the pre-production. We decided to name our group ‘the red cape’ so it was fitting for the superhero film we would be making. When plotting our pre-production, we assigned ourselves roles for the production stages. I decided to be in charge of sound design as i’m used to being behind the producing side of things and wanted to challenge myself into doing something i’m not confident in, which is why I decided to try out sound.

Between our first class on Monday and our next class on Thursday, we’ve been location scouting to find all the necessary locations we need for Wangs script, which include a rooftop, a building (for establishing shot), an escalator and a stairwell. While discussing Wang’s script, we decided that a hallway scene should be added into the script to establish the friend’s motive of following the superhero to the rooftop. We also started discussing potential actors and Wang and Natalie said that they both have friends that may be potentials and have contacted them all the information regarding the dates, times and script.

We also decided to change the ending to leave the ending more ambiguous. Similar to the final scene below of Birdman.

By leaving a more ambiguous ending helps create a more interesting engagement for the audience. Not only that but it makes our job easier as SFX can be hard to master especially when the time frame is so limited and nobody in our group is well acquainted with special effects (although in the future I would love to try SFX as I think it’s a beneficial skill to have) so we decided that by having the friend look up at the sky after the superhero “takes off” is the best way to portray that she is flying, just like Emma Stone’s character does in the clip above. The music in this scene has also inspired me on what music we should be using. The music they used is fast and has a lot of drum elements, which is something we should take in consideration when collecting music for our edits.

 

week nine // presenting ideas + location scouting

 

We found a lot of potential locations for our film and have contacted the owners regarding whether or not we are allowed to shoot there. We have already contacted the owner of the costume store ‘party and you’ and he has allowed us to film there. The only problem is that when contacting the owner of one of the parking lots we found and loved, he said that he was gonna charge us more than  $100 per hour so we had to decline and find another location for the rooftop scene.

     

We found a potential rooftop, stairs and hallway scene at the Greenco Rmit parking lot. We have gotten in touch with the owners and have talked to security in regards to our safety and whether we are allowed to use their property for our film. They have allowed us to film their which is astounding for us because we knock out three location in one. (rooftop, elevator and stairs) this will make filming day a lot easier as we only have to move between two locations and it makes it better that they are close together meaning it’s possible to only have one day of filming.

Today we presented our ideas and developments for our final film “The Red Cape” to Paul, Cass and Giana. I was in charge of the sound/music slide and discussed the sound effects we would need to use, such as: hovering sounds, elevator noises, cape noises etc. As well as the music we were interested in using which were a lot of cinematic, upbeat, dramatic soundtracks.

We gotta a lot of helpful feedback from our presentation like how we should cast a female superhero instead of a male superhero. A lot of the feedback we got helped us as a group understand where we should be taking this project and how we should be implementing the advice we were given into our final edits/product.

 

week ten // finalising production

We had a lot of trouble with casting as we didn’t post on starnow earlier and Natalie’s friend couldn’t make it to the shooting day, therefore Natalie had to bring another one of her friends as a backup. Other than that, there were no other predicaments during our pre-production.

 

In discussion of what costumes we want the actors to wear for their characters, we wanted the superhero to be wearing bright, flamboyant colours for the superhero costume and for what the character is wearing before she changes. We decided to go with light blue/white washed jeans with a tie dye shirt for the superhero’s clothes and we bought a superhero halloween outfit for her to change into with the primary colours red, blue and yellow which is common in superhero costumes.

For the friend, we thought it would be best to contrast the superhero and the friend so more dull grey and black clothes for her so that it wouldn’t grab any attention away from the superhero but also emphasise son how different the two characters are.

Script w/ no dialogue 

 

Final script

 

 

When we presented our ideas, one of the advice we were given was about whether or not the dialogue at the end was mandatory. We decided to draft two different scripts to see which one we liked more; a script without dialogue and a script without the last two lines.  We decided that the script without the last two lines was fitting for the ambiguous ending we were aiming for and without the dialogue it seems more dramatic and dark when we were trying to achieve a more comedic vibe, therefore we used the latter script for our final.

 

week eleven // filming

     

 

Filming went very well. We had a little issue with time but that was all resolved. The first shoot was successful but we will probably have to reshoot a few scenes as we missed out on some really interesting shots, like the hovering scene for example could be improved. In order to achieve the dolly effect in the running scene, we made our own dolly with a trolly and some weights to hold the camera down that we borrowed from the techs and it worked out really well.

week twelve. //filming reshoots + editing

We reshot most of the scenes listed above and they were very useful when editing as a lot of the reshoots were establishing shots or aesthetically pleasing shots that made my edit much more professional looking. Unfortunately Natalie’s friend couldn’t make it to the reshoot therefore we couldn’t reshoot the stairwell scene at rmit and could only shoot scenes with Nikita, who played the superhero.

 

my final edit.

For my edit, I focused a lot on music and picked three different songs to use; one for the running scene, one for the stairwell scene and one for the flight scene. I wanted to focus on the different effects that music can portray in cinema and how it can aid in the plot or storyline of a film. In terms of colour grading, I heightened the contrast a lot to match that superhero effect to make the colours pop and more attention-seeking. The stairwell scene was cut to create a comedic effect, which is why the music cuts out when the stairs are shown but cut it to also emphasise how the superhero is in her own world (theme music playing, hovering/flying) while the friend is living in reality (no music, using stairs.)

WEEK 12 EDITING ASSIGNMENT.

// colour grading

For the first grade, I wanted to go for a very comic book superhero  grade and I achieved this by overexposing and increasing the contrast so that the colours would stand out.I also decreased the whites and the blacks so that the red can really pop. The saturation was also heightened to create that comic effect.

I tried to experiment with the masking and tracking colour grade effect in the second grade. By increasing the contrast and using vignette to create that circular shadow on the borders helps emphasise on the character in the middle and makes them the centre of attention. It also highlights the characters emotions without having to zoom in on their expressions.

Grade three was my attempt at trying to make this into an emotional scene. If this was taken out of context from the rest of the film, I wanted it to come off as a scene from a drama and therefore wanted to achieve a dramatic cinematic feel with this grade. I did this by lowering the temperature so that there was a blue tinge in the background as well as lowering the exposure and shadows and increasing the blacks to create that gloomy effect.

// edit one

For my first edit, I wanted to make sure that  the audience knew that the superhero actually had powers by establishing her hovering. I did that by adding fan sound effects and adding a scene of her feet hanging above the ground, implying to the audience that she is hovering. This furthers her character development and wont make the audience confused when she finally takes off at the end.  I also wanted to establish the friend character by using a close up shot of her face to convey her emotions. The music I chose was very fitting for this scene as it’s uplifting tempo matches well with the superhero vibe we are going for.

 

// edit two

For my second edit, I focused on little is more and only used three scenes and one sound (the music) in order to convey the importance of establishing shots. Here it’s not that noticeable that the superhero is flying because no shots of her feet hovering therefore making the ending more ambiguous as it doesn’t establish that the superhero can actually fly from the beginning.  This edit also doesn’t establish the characters emotions as well as the first edit because of the lack of close ups or over the shoulder shots from the superhero’s point of view.

 

COLLABORATION.

I always liked working in groups because it makes me procrastinate less and work harder because you have other people who will reap the consequences if you mess up. So, I always end up pushing myself when I do team work which ends up helping me obtain beer results and challenge myself in new ways. Another reason why I like working with groups is because everyone is different and have their own strengths and I can always learn new things and improve on my weaknesses when I work around people with knowledge in different categories. For example, I’m not that familiar with tech but being in the group helped me understand a lot of new features that I was unfamiliar with before. I also get to understand a lot of the different ways people think creatively and express their ideas individually. I tend to get my creative flow from music but others may obtain their inspiration from movies or images and that’s always something fascinating to hear. Although there were a lot of the times when it was hard following up on team members, it all got resolved eventually and we ended up making something that we are all proud of.

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