Razor Tool

Today I carried on editing minor parts of the 2 minute opening, such as the way different scenes change and by doing this, I noticed that when one of my scenes changed, it was quite jumpy and ruined the flow of the film. However, I went back onto Adobe After Effects and managed to increase the length of the scene, so that it had a steady transition. Also, I realised that when the title appears during the opening, it stays on screen for no more than a second. To make it longer, I used the razor tool on Final Cut Pro and clicked just before the title appears, and just after, and right-clicked on it. I was then given the option to change the time length and I chose to increase the length by 50%. This means that the title now stays on screen for a lot longer, which is what I wanted.

Scene Reverse

For the last scene of my two minute opening I needed the actor to open his eyes, as he had finished having his flashback. However, I realised that the ending scene that I had was not as good as I had first thought and was too short, so I found a good scene, where the actor closes his eyes, and reversed it, so that he opens his eyes, rather than closes them. To do this I right clicked on the timeline in Adobe After Effects and clicked on Time Reverse (not exact name) and this changed the order of the scene, so that it was how I wanted it. The first time I tried this I accidentally clicked on the soundtrack bar, in the timeline, and the music was reversed, instead of the actual scene, but I soon corrected this error.  

Soundtrack Change

As I was watching the opening part of the film, with the titles and smoke effect, I realised that the music did not really fit the entrance and theme that I was hoping to create so I decided to change it. Luckily for me, I had 4-5 other music scores on my pendrive, which I had previously listened to and thought were quite good, so I simply deleted the current soundtrack and replaced it with a much darker sounding score, that really fits in with the opening titles. I now believe that the music has really added to the somber effect that I was hoping to create.

Titles and Smoke

Today I decided that the titles in my opening were not as good as they could be and that there was something lacking. As a result of this, I decided to add a smoke effect, that appears when the names of the actors in the film appear. I chose the type of smoke that I thought suited the film, since it is about the aftermath of a battle, I chose a smouldering-smokey effect as to give the impression that something has been burning for a while. Once I had done this, I placed the smoke over the titles and watched it as it rose from the bottom of the screen and past the actors names. However, I noticed that the smoke effect was a little bit too fast for the intro and did not suit the slow-somber music, so i decided to slow the smoke effect. This was done by stretching out the smoke layer and as a result, the smoke was a lot slower the next time I watched the titles.

Evaluation

Today i started to evaluate my 2 minute opening. I started by looking at the type of audience that the film is aimed at and the kind of social groups that are represented in the film.

Media Hut

These are some pictures of the media room in which i have been making my film:

Best Mac in the room (my one)

This is the equipment that i used to film my opening:

• Tripod
• Mini Tripod
• HD Camera
• Flip Camera
• Sound Recording Device (white thing)

(Not shown is the mini boom pole)

Problem Solved

Today I managed to render the scene that was not working. This was done by rendering the scene on Final Cut Pro rather than on Adobe After Effects. This means that all the scenes that I need for the film have been rendered and put together in Final Cut Pro. Also, because one of my scenes has a shell exploding in it, I needed to have the screeching sound of the shell as it hurtled towards the ground, yet unfortunately there were no sound effects that included the screeching. However, I simply found a sound effect for a kettle boiling (whistling) and took the whistling noise and put it in before the explosion of the shell. By doing this, I have acheived the sound that I was looking for.