Red Riding Hood Final Cut

This is our final cut for our OTS. I am actually very happy with it turned out. The only difference between this version and our third draft is that it has an included our final studio ident. We've mixed noir and neo-noir typical conventions to fit with the original story of Red Riding Hood.

Here is a link to my evaluation: http://jackpacullum.wix.com/mediaas2016jcullum

Target audiences

Fabian's post : http://fharrisonasmedia2016.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/red-riding-hood-target-audience.html

Wil's post : http://wallenasmediaproductionschs2016.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/audience.html
http://wallenasmediaproductionschs2016.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/audience.html

Above you can find both Wil and Fabian's blogs about our target audience. From these two posts I can learn and do agree with that our primary audience are predominately left-wing males between the ages of 20-35 due to the age of our cast. Our OTS fits in well with these audience types due to our use of typical conventions for both noir and neo-noir.

Red Riding Hood Draft #3

Above is our third draft of Red Riding Hood, and hopefully the final draft. All we need to add now is the actual studio ident. 

Differences between this draft and draft #2 may not be very clear, but there were several changes between the drafts. I removed one shot and took out all the placeholders present in the previous draft, except from the studio ident placeholder.

I also adjusted the volume of the soundtrack and the dialogue, as many people who completed our survey told us that it could be hard to hear at times. I lowered the soundtrack and raised the dialogue. Also with the use of audio effects I was able to reduce the fuzz and static that was present with the original draft's sound. 

As you can see we finally have our title card. It's an animation found on Final Cut Pro that is supposed to represent ink spreading. I adjusted the colour, contrast and font to create a title card that worked well with our OTS. I also applied the 'noire' visual affect on top of it to improve the lighting of the colours. 

Finally I also removed several titles as our first viewers said that it distracted them from what the actual OTS itself. Therefore I have cut the titles to a minimum, only featuring the most important roles.

Final Cut Pro

To edit our OTS I used final cut pro. While the software can be slow at times it has been very helpful when it came to editing. The software allowed me to edit our OTS frame by frame when needed, add sound and edit the different levels and I could organise all our footage to make the whole editing process easier.

Final cut pro

Our OTS's editing.

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Exposure levels that I edited to create the correct lighting.

All of our footage ordered chronologically. Yellow borders signify which part of the clips were used.

Different transitions we could use. We predominately used Cross Dissolve and Fade To Color.

Different text effects available to use. We used Ink and edited the saturation and colours to create our title card.

Final Cut Pro also provides access to Itunes which makes the sound and music editing process much smoother.

Filming in North Walsham

The video above shows what went into the final take of the opening scene for out OTS. I think it was important to make videos like this because it helps us reflect later on what we can improve on but also at the time of filming it helps remind us what we're aiming to create.

Feedback from our survey

So we got several responses back from our draft and survey. Overall they were very positive, especially liking the narrative, the camera work and the soundtrack. However it has become clear to improve our OTS we can sound level as narration is hard to hear and we can improve the ending as it seems very rushed.

To improve, I as editor am going to adjust the sound levels of the whole OTS. Wil has re-recored the scene's dialogue at the end so that can be dubbed over. Below is evidence of the responses.

Roles in our group

I think that coming to the end of our coursework that it's important that as a group we all acknowledge our different roles.

Fabian's blog can be found here http://fharrisonasmedia2016.blogspot.co.uk/

Fabian has co-directed and filmed the OTS. He has just about forty posts, but those I have found most important are the following.

• Any Location Planning blog, as it was helpful to be able to look back at the videos for when we were evaluation or when deciding on how to move forward with our OTS.
• His Age Rating (BBFC) Blog.
• His Audience Analysis post.

Wil's blog can be found here http://wallenasmediaproductionschs2016.blogspot.co.uk/

Wil has taken on several roles, such as composing the soundtrack and finding all of our props. The Wil has around fifty blogs, but the ones I have found most important are the following.

• Any posts explaining about his soundtracks he created. Me and Wil have had to work together to make sure that we both has a couple of songs that we both felt worked well with our OTS, and his posts helped me understand what he was trying to achieve.
• Wil has made a couple posts about different types of props and what we needed for our OTS. These were helpful because we had to know what props we were going to able to get and those we would be unable to get.
• Wil also completed a character profile for each character which was extremely helpful in making sure we portrayed our characters completely 

Evidence of online sharing

Much like our communication, we've setup a system where we can access any group members work from our google drive. We have a group folder and individual folders. It has been very helpful when it comes to assembling the OTS, certainly for me as I've had to edit a lot of said stuff together.

Evidence below.

Group Communication

Communication is key when it comes to a media production. As a group you have to make that you have the same ideas and are creating items that compliment each other. Our group has to meet up outside of school and create work outside of school, and to do this  efficiently we created a group chat on Facebook so we could communicate with each other whenever needed.

Here are some screenshots showing our groupchat.

In reflection, I do believe that the groupchat has been massively important to the running of our production. It's helped us organise days to work and keep everyone updated on what we're all doing, so it certainly has been of great importance these past few months. 

Survey and Audience feed back!

With the release of our third draft, we've started to ask what people think. I created a survey and have sent it to just over twenty people now. I am going to send it to as many people as possible. On Friday I will update this blog with the responses received.  Below you can see how I advertised our draft.

Here is the questionnaire itself.


Create your own user feedback survey

Editing our final drafts

I have just finished editing our third draft, which can be found in the video below. I still need to add Foley (Wil is currently taking care of this.) and adjust a few things. If you've watched it, please take our survey if you can! https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/JXVFRH2

Editing the footage has not been easy. I adjusted the light of all the shots, making them all black and white and the exposure to make sure that the lighting looks suitable for each individual shot. When it came to making the match being the only thing coloured, it took about two hours. In the screenshot below you can see all the frames in yellow. In total there are just over 160.

To complete this effect I had to use the technique I learnt called the Pleasantvile effect. I source the tutorial in an earlier blog post going by the same name as the effect. To do this I had to go on to each frame, (Each one,  all 160ish.) and then apply a filter onto the match flame, to make sure only the flame was coloured. Due to the unpredictably of a flame I had to do this for each frame. The first photo below is one of the simpler flames. Under that I've shown one of the more difficult flames, which required a bit more attention.

Overall I am quite happy with our third final cut. It certainly needs improving, certainly the ending scene. Adding the Foley should be simple, and the title card is almost finished. Fabian should have finished the studio ident by friday also. 

Filimg the confrontation scene

We just spent the last two hours filming one our most crucial scenes, the confrontation scene. It took rather longer than what I expected and was a bit more difficult than originally believed.

We did manage to get all the footage that we wanted in our time slot, however I feel that we could of possibly gotten more footage if we were more prepared. Our actors were not fully informed of what they needed to do so it took time to get them ready. However I am happy with the footage that we took and we manage to keep to the time schedule. We did make the mistake of using herbal cigarettes for authenticity, which worked well, however he did accidentally end up smoking out the studio. 

Me and Fabian directed the scene, Fabian did film and I did also act. Wil took the photos in this blog post but he was also helping with setting up props and helping the production run smoother. 

 Reflective Comment: In reflection, we should of definitely thought through what we were doing with the herbal cigarettes much more, We also could of briefed our three actors beforehand to help production move along smoother.

Red Riding Hood Script Draft 3 And planning for final two weeks.

So we now have two weeks to finish up our final OTS. I will not line I am a little worried about if we are going to meet this deadline and if we do if I'll be happy with the work produced.

We have this week to film all our footage, and then next week to edit it all together and show a test audience, and add anything else needed.

Script

I've had to re-write the script a third time to improve it and to cut down on certain scenes so we can film everything.

The biggest change between draft 2 and draft 3 is the removal of the nightmare sequence, which would be the first scene. I have decided to remove this from the script due to time restraints, and that it didn't really fit the noire structure. I have replaced it with a smaller flashback instead, echoing what the nightmare sequence would of shown.

Planning

Planning has been one of the things that as a group, we have stumbled with. We would plan but never enough and we never had any back up plans, which has lead to us being left short with time. To combat this happening again I've planned out everything that needs to be done by the end of next week.

This Thursday (4th) we're going to film our confrontation scene and flashback scene. We need to get these done Thursday as these are crucial to the story and if we don't get them done by the end of the week the whole editing process gets delayed too.

On Friday (5th) We will hopefully be filming our final scene, which is when the Lumberjack meets Red Riding Hood. Once this is done we should have all of our footage completed. 

As editor, I would like to have a first draft completed by the end of Monday (8th) This would mean that we can show it to the class on Tuesday (9th) and get feeback, which would then mean I can make the final edit on Wednesday. (10th)

This gives us two days extra to fix any problems we may has a group.

Also, just to clarify, here are the roles of everyone in the group.

Jack

Co-Director

Script Writer

Editor

Casting Director

Fabian

Co-Director

Location Manager

Director of Cinematography 

Camera Man

Lead Technician (Lighting and Equipment)

Wil

Soundtrack composer

Costume Manager

Prop Manager

Aerial footage 

Director of Foley