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.

Post Production: Editing new sequence

Taking inspiration from Memento yet again, I've decided that my film opening is going to be presented as two different sequence of scenes interspersed during the film opening.

Instead of starting with the walking sequence as originally planned, the film opening is going to open with the indoor shots. The outdoor shots of stalking will serve as a flashback. Instead of the woman on the phone saying 'You have to come identify your son's body" she will be informing him about his death in the form of a story. This will serve as a narration.

This completely eliminates the use of sound that was recorded during the shoot and also the bad shots get filtered out.

I've done the basic compilation by trimming the clips at the source panel and importing them to the timeline where I have joined similarly trimmed clips together.

Post production: Editing

I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 for the compiling and editing of my film opening.

During editing I found a lot of mistakes in my project, mistakes that seemed to ruin the whole look of my film opening. Some might be able to ignore them but I just couldn't.

Some of the major problems were that the walking scenes were very shaky. Even warp stabiliser couldn't do a fine enough job on it. A lot of the outdoor clips had the background blown out. The dolly out of window shot was not only shaky but the reflection of the sun on the car combined with the warp stabiliser trying to stable the footage created a very bad effect. The clip started blurring.


Also another thing was that since I did not have a boom mic, the audio was being recorded from the DSLR's microphone itself and the quality of the sound was so bad and there was so much background noise. I tried lowering down its volume in audio control but it was of no use. The audio, and the shots I mentioned were completely unusable.


The only shots that were perfectly okay were the ones taken indoors.


I'm thinking of a way to work around this issue.

Production: shooting day 3

And here we are at the final day of the shoot. I spent the entire day on this shoot from 12 pm to 8 pm. This was the final shoot in real terms because my cousin's semester break was ending and he wouldnt be available after this.
From 12 to 1 pm I took the shots where the man walking out of his house is framed through the car's window. These shots took a lot of time as the house is on the main street and every two minutes a car would drive by and I had to stop the shooting.
Another reason why it took so long was because I had to dolly out of the window (meaning i had to walk backwards) I did not have a dolly or a stabiliser to help me take smooth shots. So I spent a lot of time retaking the shots.

After I got done with this, it was time for lunch and right after that we (my cousin, my uncle, and I) headed to Bahria Town to shoot the walking/following sequence. It's a 30-40 minute drive to Bahria town. I chose that place because its usually less crowded and has a lot better mis en scene than many places in my own city. Having a good location helped me concentrate more on the kinds of shots I was taking rather than improvising with things.

Since I went for the shooting in the afternoon even though I had to show evening in my film opening, I took the shots of my cousin walking in areas where there was shade so the bright sunlight is not as noticeable.

The aperture was set at 2.8 and ISO and shutter speed varied with the amount of light

I've taken more shots than I planned to take so lets hope it works out.

That concludes the production phase, now it's time to move on towards the editing!

Some of the shots I took today:

Production: Shooting day 2

I covered all the indoor shots in this shoot. The shooting went smoothly and I'm satisfied with it. Other than the indoor parts I also took some shots of the part where the young man gets stabbed. This particular sequence is very intense so I paid a lot of attention to it's execution. I took many retakes even when I got a good shot. I did this just to make sure that I had everything I needed because a reshoot is not a possibility.

For both the indoors and outdoors shoot, a canon 80D with a 50mm f/1.8 lens was used to allow more light in as both shoots were done in low lighting. I utilized 80D's face tracking feature for the part where he gets stabbed. If I try to focus manually, the camera shakes too much.

For the part where the medicine is revealed, I used a tripod so the camera doesnt move and I used 80D's touch-to-change-focus feature to change focus from the picture to the medicine.

Here are some of the shots I took today:

Production: Shooting day 1

Today was the first day of shooting. It was also more like a test shoot as it gave me an idea of what to expect. The shooting was done at Blue Area, Islamabad, near the Metro Bus Station around 5:30 pm as I had to show the late evening in my film opening. I took shots of of the young actor walking by the side of the road and the older actor following him.

A problem that I faced while shooting was that since it was a busy area, a lot of people kept walking in front of the camera even though they could've taken the other route. This caused a lot of shots to be unusable and I had to retake them multiple times. Doing so took a lot of time and I didnt get many shots as it turned dark really quickly.

For the next outdoor shoot which will be in Bahria Town, I'll go a little early so I'll have much more time to get things done.

Here are some of the shots I took today:

Research and planning: Location

For the indoors scenes, I plan on shooting at my uncle's house in the sector F-11. I'll be shooting the outdoor scenes in Bahria Town Phase IV around Arena as in my film opening, I need to show a busy area as well as a deserted one, and in Bahria Town, I can find both. I could do the shooting around my own city as well but I think Bahria Town offers a better misc-en-scene and I don't want to compromise on that.

Research and Planning: Props and equipments

For the hand-prints painting, I had to paint my hands in a way so they looked like that of a young boy. You can see in the picture that only half of them are painted to make the hand-print look smaller. I also sprayed the paper with water so the paper looks as if its very old.

My uncle has a cordless house phone in his house and for the purpose of this film opening I needed one with coiled chord so I took one from my house.

I personally selected the clothes my actors have to wear as its the director's job to be incharge of the creative process.

For the shooting I'll be using a Canon 80D with a 50mm lens, and a tripod.

Research and Planning: Cast

For this film opening task, I've decided to cast my cousin and my uncle. I made them act a scene out to see if they'd be able to perform well and I think they did a fine job!

Irtiza will be playing the role of the young man.

Irtiza Sohail

My uncle will be playing the role of the schizophrenic man.

Sohail Ahmed

Research and planning: Inspirations

I have an idea about what type of shots I want to take for the indoor scenes and for the ending of the film opening as I have the location in mind.  I have them all planned out.  I have planned to take the initial shots in a crowded area and then slowly lead them to a quiet street just to show that the older man has been stalking for a long time.

The opening shots of Make Happy by Bo Burnham are the kind of shots I'm planning to take for my film opening. Though I can't execute them just as well because I don't have the expensive equipment but I shall try my best with what I have. Here's the trailer for it where some of the walking shots are included: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE5WwlwJeDQ

For the stalking sequence I found a Film Opening on youtube made by a student.  I like the shots from 0:35-0:42 and I'll incorporate something similar in my film opening.

Research and planning: Storyboard etc

25 word pitch: A schizophrenic man struggles with his illness as he discovers that his son has been murdered and he himself is the culprit.


The scene is set for late in the evening. A young man is walking around town minding his own business. It's revealed that he is being followed by a much older man but he's unaware. The older man follows the young man into a quiet street and just when he is about to get in his car, the old man grabs him from behind and stabs him. The scene shifts to an elderly man sitting in his living room looking at a painting made by a very young boy. The writing on the painting reveals that its made by his son. A diegetic sound can be heard from a phone's receiver of a woman asking him to come identify his son's body. The man places the receiver back down and a medicine bottle comes in focus. The medicine is for Schizophrenia. The scene shifts to the man walking out of his house and getting in the car. As he closes the door, a blood stained hand-print can be seen on the door.

Storyboard: 

Storyboard animatic: