Film Opening + Evaluation questions

Film Opening

Evaluation

EVALUATION QUESTIONS: ANSWERS

FILM OPENING: FEEDBACK

Post Production: Credits and Titles

I kept the titles/credits of my film opening very simple and used the basic opacity control on them. The way that my film opening is, flashy titles would not look good with it. I used a pen tool to create keyframes and then adjusted them to create the desired effect.

Since this project is entirely made by me, I just added 'A film by Shiza Waseem' at the start and not the usual Director/producer etc credits.

I also added the names of the cast as they appear in the film opening.

Lastly, The film is called Oscillate because oscillate means to swing back and forth. This is to make a link with the main lead's (Schizophrenic man) ever changing personality, courtesy to his illness.

Post Production: Diegetic sound

The diegetic sound in the film opening is supposed to be coming from the Telephone's receiver. The purpose of this is to create a voice over which explains the story to both the schizophrenic character and to the audience alike.

Here's the transcript for the telephonic voice over:

"Sir? Sir can you hear me?"

"You reported that your son was missing two days ago on October 22nd at 8:20 pm."

"According to our sources he was last seen on the same day near Grand Avenue approx. around 7 pm"

"We believe that he was not alone"

"He was being followed by someone, someone was stalking his every move."

"I'm calling to inform you that we found your son this morning... near Abbey street. It's a muder case. He was stabbed repeatedly with a knife."

"The forensic reports just got back and it appears to have your finger prints on it."



I had my friend do the voice over. The sound was recorded with a Condenser microphone using Audacity. From there it was exported to premiere and added to the timeline.


To make it sound like its coming from a telephone, I applied the audio effect EQ on it. I checked all the boxes and played around with the levels a bit until I got the sound effect I wanted. I lowered the volume a bit so it doesn't overpower the background music as much.

Post Production: Non diegetic sound

Thriller films tend to use music that elevates the tension created by the visuals and I've been in search of something similar. I researched on different websites (soundcloud, sound bible, freesound, youtube) for a music that would fit with the scenes. I finally found a music on Youtube which starts off slow and then builds up. It does not build up too much either which is great because I don't want the music to overpower the voiceover.

Here's the link to the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoqMpJC0tZY&index=1&list=LLyUjpS3EK8Sju3DOtYhvHWg

This music is free to use as it says in the description.

The music does get very high towards the end so I trimmed it before it does so. I trimmed small sections of the song to create a loop at the very end so the tempo remains the same. Towards the end of the sequence I lowered the volume of the music and added the cinematic boom sound effect (downloaded from youtube) at the plot twist. I lowered the volume of the music so it does not stop abruptly but plays smoothly as if it's all part of the same music.

Post Production: Transitions and color grading

Now that the basic editing is done and the sequence is finalized, it's time to add some transitions and to color grade the project. I downloaded Jarle's presets 2.0 and Cinema style fx and imported them to Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

It's conventional to use white flashes when transitioning to a flashback. I found something much better in the Jarle's presets misc effects; bad tv reception. Its sort of a glitch and that coupled with the jump cuts in the flashback sequence is a great way of representing the man's mental state. He's schizophrenic so he also suffers from memory loss (Symptoms mentioned in previous posts) Chunks of his memories are missing.

I applied this effect by putting cuts at the beginning and the start of the clips. and also added cuts to the ending of the clip before it and a cut to the starting of the clip after it. This makes the transition look much professional.

For color grading the project I used the Cinema Style FX preset. I used the '1970 film' effect on the flashbacks to turn the colors brown and hazy. Hazy like the schizophrenic man's memories. I also decreased the saturation considerably. I chose these colors to represent his illness and also to make it obvious that it's a flashback as flashbacks usually have dull colours.

For the indoor scenes, I kept the colours warm. This is to show that at that point in time, he is just a father missing his son and he is innocent. The colours of the flashback create a contrast with it; it jumps from saturated and warm to unsaturated and somewhat cool. This is done to represent his split personality.