Thriller Opening!

Here we are,

The final product is here - after strenuous hours in the editing suite, clipping files, attaching text to motion track nodes, adjusting the pitch in our music - we finally have our finished product.

None of this would be possible without my team mate and mate Alex Hunter and a friend of ours Amy Heald, who came and helped us when we needed her. Thanks to you guys we have a thriller opening! Enjoy:

Thriller Opening - Bloopers & Reflection

Hey,




So we took some time to combine some of our outtakes which we thought were quite - it's not aimed towards anything in terms of a higher grade but definitely something I can include in my blog.










As you can see we had a lot of fun creating our thriller opening - we learnt a lot about our skills and our capabilities in terms of directing and acting when we made this opening.


I realised that my ideas when combined with Alex's can be great! I realised that how much trust I can place in my team and that not everything has to be done exactly the way we envisioned - improvising proved to work as some of our final shots are improvised moments. I also came to see that my abilities behind the camera are better than I thought; some ideas which I thought were alright came out to look really cool on the big screen. I'll expand more on my experiences during the evaluation.

Production Status #4

Hey,

With the production deadline closing fast, Alex and I have been working non-stop to get our thriller opening ready. We feel it's gone really well and we love what it looks like so far. We've almost finished adding the final touches to the production, with my job being titles, I'm just about finished: Here you can see one of the thriller's very first scenes, with our actor Amy laying in bed reading, with the title appearing on the wall, in 3d, behind her.

 As you can see, the main part of editing is over - the putting together of all the clips; what remains is the final touches with filters, music, transitions & much more. For now, these snapshots are a current work-in-progress in terms of titling. This one is the opening title that we see in the opening, showing our company's logo and name: Twin Gun Entertainment.



But as a team, Alex and I are very confident that we'll finish the editing and meet the required deadline. Some problems I did encounter was the actual creating of the titles - tutorials I watched offered little help to complete beginners, as there were features I had no idea how to use which extended tasks to well beyond what I was able of managing. So I taught myself, with several hours of returning to the media room, & familiarised myself with the basics of after effects. Which camera tracking, media encoding, exporting and many effects. Although the road was treacherous, I am glad that I taught myself these skills as I can carry them with me ready for next year's project.

Production Status #3

Hey,

So, the filming is almost completed - Alex and I made a short video to explain how things have been going. Enjoy!

Production Status #2

Hello again!

Right, so filming is almost done - even though we made no official shooting schedule in writing, we organised ourselves to get the filming done by the weekend. Some small problems we encountered was the fact that we hadn't exactly thought in depth about our flashback scenes; we didn't know what we wanted to do. So after some collaborating we came up with something. And it looks great!

We can't wait to get editing and see our product all together. We're really excited about it, we hope & pray that it'll look as good as we imagined it. The location shots we took towards the beginning of planning really helped out in our ideas in what we wanted to bring to the screen. Both Alex and I feel our chemistry has really helped move this project forward, and we believe it's a good direction that we're heading towards!

The plan was to get the majority of our nighttime filming done first as 

those scenes weren't very big nor did they take up most of what we were planning to shoot. In this behind-the-scenes shot, we're doing our daytime filming which required a lot of moving up and down, changing of costume and improvisation. However like I mentioned previously, our location shots & our storyboard was always brought out to remind us of what we're trying to capture within each shot. Having said that, there were times where we came up with something brand new which wasn't included in the storyboard, but we felt it was necessary in the spur of the moment. There weren't problems but more beneficiaries, as several shots in the final opening are a product of new ideas whilst on-set. 

   
(The crew deciding our
     next shot and scene)

I'll be posting again very soon with more production phases & statuses as our production gets into full throttle. 

      

 (Fortunately any problems we 

encountered were put behind us) 

Production Status #1

Hey,

So at the moment we've yet to start filming, however Alex & I feel confident enough that we know exactly what we need and upon finishing our shooting schedule we'll get cracking on - there are some tasks we do still need to complete: We hope to do the first stage of our audience task where we pitch our ideas to our target audience, this week. I also need to record myself explaining in detail a summary of some theorist ideas and comment on how I plan to incorporate 'Binary Oppositions' & 'Narrative Code' in our production. For that last task I will have to collaborate with Alex so we are both on the same page.

The deadline is approaching and we need to make sure we've allocated enough time for editing as well. It can be done!

We've decided that for the editing phase, Alex will produce the music & I shall work on the titles. Alex has taken a look at some titling in movies & I have gotten to work on familiarising myself with what titles to include and how to use after effects.