Two Minute Opening

This is the link to my two minute opening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-pTbM8nl5s

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The character in my film is the one on the left, who is sitting on the fallen tree, and the character on the left is Major Richard Winters, played by Damian Lewis in Band of Brothers.

The similarities between these two characters are that they are both from the same division, the 101st Airborne, and are dressed in the same clothing.

However, the outfit that my character is wearing is that of a paratrooper from D-Day and the outfit that Major Winters is wearing is that of a paratrooper from Operation Market Garden, the invasion of Holland in September 1944. This explains why the colour is slightly different.

The roles that the two characters play are also very different, as my character is a private yet Major Winters is a major, which means that their roles and the way in which they act are different.

The morality that can be seen in the two minute opening is good versus evil because the American Paratroopers are the bringers of freedom and goodness and the Germans  they are fighting are the upholders of tyranny and evil.

The Paratroopers run through the system of trenches and foxholes to reach their destination

A machine gun team opens up with their 30.Caliber machine gun

The Paratroopers hold their positions in a gruelling fight for survival

Evaluation

Today I have been carrying on with the evaluation of the two minute opening and have started to film the director's commentary. I have also exported the film so that I can upload it onto YouTube as the quality on blogger is not up to scratch, and I will upload it later.

Finished!!

 Today I managed to adjust some minor parts of the title sequence and as a result of this I have finished editing the 2 minute opening. I will now start evaluating the film and will upload the opening soon .

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.