Family Omens- The Final Cut

This is the Final Cut of our film Family Omens.

Evaluation question 7

I feel like i have learnt a lot over my course of media and i feel like i have learnt so many new skills and gained so much knowledge on how films are made. In our preliminary i only knew that films needed a script storyboard filming and advertising. I now know there is a lot more effort that needs to go into a film to make it successful. In my preliminary task i created the storyboard roughly and felt satisfied with my storyboard. The storyboard had plenty of detail and i feel like this skill was then and from that i knew how to create my storyboard for this film. I learnt how to create brand new shots off the top of my head and how effective shots can be using low angle and high angle for representation. When filming the planning was slightly tweaked due to finding new opportunities for camera angles and framing to show different meanings to the characters.

The preliminary film was easily filmed and the shots were very quickly taken due to the portability of the flip camera. Whereas in our film this was much harder due to the camera being harder for maneuverability. On the flip side the better cameras meant so much better quality and it feels a lot more professional whilst also looking it. The setup was much simpler for a flip camera but the overall payoff of using a good camera is much more worth it i found. Better cameras meant the framing was easier to find and steady shots were easier to achieve. I feel like my camera skills have improved a lot and i find it easy to find good representational shots.

For my preliminary film me and Alfie used a lot special effects for no reason and didn't really link these effects to anything but comedy and now i feel as though the special effects i used on my film are much more meaningful as they show the supernatural element to our characters. I did start to learn in my preliminary film about cropping shots tight together to make the film flow. I feel like the shots in our preliminary film did flow together nicely but i feel that my actual film has a lot more dynamic transitions as it constantly cuts from one action piece to another. I achieved a lot of this by shortening the shots i had as much as i could to create a good fast paced chase scene atmosphere.

For our preliminary we used a lot of sound effects as for comedy purposes and they didn't have any meaning at all. I feel as though our new film uses sound in an effective way to keep up the tempo of the chase scene. The incidental music builds up the tension building the audiences with a tense atmosphere and this is what we wanted with our music. We also used sound effects to emphasise supernatural elements as we wanted to emphasise this key theme in our film so i think we successfully achieved this.

We achieved some really nice meaningful titles as they fit our theme perfectly and have a nice subtle animation to them to fit the genre. I feel like I've learnt how to apply meaning to the things i do in my film from my preliminary film. For my preliminary film we never included anything but a simple main title of the film so I've learnt that i need to add in the main cast ident and production team so in my film i did these in the conventional order. I also feel like i did improve my teamwork abilities as i didnt just get along with my team. I feel like i worked effectively by questioning my team and being questioned by them. This constantly made us change little things in our film to make it to the best of our ability.

Evaluation question 5

Evaluation question 6

Evaluation question 6 from jake150870

Evaluation question 4

The BBFC review a film and set the age rating on the film for people to know how old you need to be to view the film. The age classification of U is suitable for audiences four years and over. Violence would be a of a very mild tone briefly and no bad language unless mild bad language like damn or hell. PG stands for parental guidance. This means a it is suitable for general viewing but some scenes may be unsuitable for young children. Violence would not be shown in detail. 12A is where a child under the age of 12 cannot see the film in cinema without a parent. 12 is simply where it is released on dvd and it cannot be enforced for being accompanied by an adult. Aggressive use of swear words may be passed as a higher rating like 15 but some bad language is allowed. 15 no one under fifteen is allowed to see this movie and it contains some strong violence, frequent strong language, portrayals of sexual activity and strong verbal references to sex. An 18 is based for adults only (18+). No theme is prohibited unless material is illegal or potentially harmful.

Our film will be a 15 as our film as a whole will include scenes of torture and this is typically not allowed in 12 rated films. We also want to include fight scenes where they are shown in detail with a lot of gore. The themes would be fine in a 12 rated film but due to gore and torture we have rated it as a 15. Our film will appeal to people aged from around 16 to 21 as our film attracts young adults and older teens due to its supernatural key themes. This age group is most likely to enjoy this theme and in general the male gender would stereo typically find this more interesting due to gore and violence. This audience would have to be found in a niche audience spanning across the local area or the UK.

Evaluation question 3

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation question 1

Titles

We did our titles in order of the typical film style where you show the idents first and then the cast. We did our casting titles in the order of appearance and also importance as Ton is our main actor in the piece and then secondly Joe and of course then Laura. We then show all of the extra details of our film such as music and directed by throughout the first scene when Ton is being chased because this would have made the title sequence too long and boring so we added a new dynamic to them in a way which is typical to most films in which we overlaid them on our intro. At the end of the first scene we then show our main title of the film Family Omens to show the audience that we have finished the opening sequence and now going more into the film.

The main improvements

After some feedback from our target audience we were told that our film looks too much like a trailer and so to improve on this we added in some extra shots at the end after the titles. The titles were used to separate the main intro of the film which is fast paced and then after it introduced a much calmer environment. We did this because we wanted this introduction to be more like a typical film because not many films start with a fast paced intro and then keep on going fast paced immediately after. We wanted our intro to look like more of a proper film and by going by the general conventions of film i think we achieved this. We also were told that our film needed some extra titles so we also quickly added in titles throughout the intro. Also some of the chase shots were too long so we edited them down so it was much faster paced.

Black and white or colour decision

We had an idea to turn our film entirely black and white for effect so we decided to audience test this to see if the film is better in black and white or in colour. In our audience testing we decided to keep the film entirely colour. Sadly due to technical difficulties the audio clip cannot be transferred. Below are the processes we went through to get the black and white filter.

Target audience testing for titles.

Below is a video in which we asked our target audience to give their opinion on which font we should use for our titles chosen from five fonts. We agreed with both of their opinions and have decided to go for the supernatural font.

Fake blood making

To make fake blood i used red and green food colouring mixed with golden syrup to give the nice blood look but also i added water to give it a runnier consistency. I used around one third of syrup and two thirds of water. I gently dripped in red and green food colouring to make the right colour after stirring. I took inspiration from this video below to make my fake blood to apply to my character.

Update - Props and costume

We had a lot of changes during filming and decided to not use feathers to represent the angel as we found this too cheesy and not as effect as it could be in our film. We also got the costume exactly right and ended with this for the Angel and demon. For representation reasons we used pure black for demons and white and bright colours for angels to show the light and the dark. Joe is also wearing a demonic symbol necklace around his neck to add to this costume.

Editing - Light burst title

I created a simple effect in after effects by using the clip of Laura and Joe throwing Ton to the floor and adding the light burst effect to the image. I simply clicked on the effect and anchored the light burst to appear on Ton to appear as he is teleporting (falling to heaven) also it leads onto the titles. i intensified the light with keyframes to make it brighter and brighter really quickly to pure white. In this pure white image i added in my title of Family Omens and overlaid with the blending mode over a wine glass filled with water and drips of food colouring exploding inside to give a good blood flow effect to overlay the titles fitting our theme.

Editing - Super speed

To achieve a supernatural feel to my film i wanted to give these supernatural creatures a power in which humans do not so i made them both have super speed to show the incredible powers. To achieve the effect i went into after effects and took a screenshot of the body of the character as shown below and then cut the clip to the point where i want it to start and stop. I took a clean plate shot of the location and framing of the shot. i used this to create the background. I then masked the screenshot and set keyframes on after effects to allow the image to move from one side of the shot to the other. i made this moving of the clip really fast and used directional blur on the screenshot to give a super speed effect. I then got rid of the screenshot as it lined up to another shot with the same framing and made it look like he super speeds in and then stops mid way and runs normally.

Titles - Decision

Out of all of the title choices we had we have selected a few to target audience test which one we should choose out of these. Me and Laura both think the supernatural font is best but we are going to target audience test this.

Sound problems

We had many problems throughout our editing and found this difficult to accomplish a final film but one of our major problems was sound, as the voice of our actors were not picking up on the film so we tried to adjust the gain of the sound but this resulted in the voices having a really crackling and fuzzy noise over the clip. As shown above. To fix this we dropped the gain and raised the volume on the clips and now this has been fixed.

Updates post

We have made a load of changes to our film as we have went through the filming process. We have changed a lot of shots from the original storyboard as we found a lot more opportunities for shots when filming. We also didn't use reflectors to give good lighting on our actors as when we tried we did not see a difference so we decided to cut out this hassle.

Family Omens second cut

rough cut of film