Evaluation

The Replacement Final Version

Some of the changes we made
We resolved the continuity error and steamlined the whole thing. We thought it the scene of George going about his daily activities was a bit irrelevent so got rid of most of it (it was a bit of a shame because we had some nice shots, notably the high angle shot and the long shot of George cycling away but we could use these in later hypothetical scenes like when he is going to leave the house to find the person being tortured). So we re-shot George wearing the correct clothes and changed the storyline a tiny bit. Another major improvement over the rough edit is we created a powerpoint to act as the operating system for the laptop so instead of showing the laptop and cutting to writing that is meant to be on the laptop, we could show it actually on it. We added credits and an opening title.

The Soundtrack
We decided not to use any of the original tracks created by our friend as he didn't have time to properly collaborate with us and we only had rough edits of the songs he made. Instead we used our original choice of tracks, I especially like how we Yasmin the Light to fit perfectly and compliment the scene from when he wakes up. It starts of just as a light orchestral backround noise as he wakes almost like the static-white noise you sometimes get when lying on a pillow, then the beat of the drums create a sense of foreshadowing, the guitar comes in time with George opening his bathroom door.

Influences
The films of David Lynch have influenced some of our choices. We welcomed background noise and tried to use songs that weren't too intrusive, though not quite the same level of constant white noise and murmers of the likes of Eraserhead. There was a sculpture that we couldn't move (can be seen at 1:03) that fits well with our surrealist-inspired piece.

Evaluation planning notes

Evaluation planning notes

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

*Technology has played an integral part in the production of our opening.
*We were provided with a video camera (the canon mini DV MD 235) from school, it used tape and we assumed it was an old piece of equipment so we tried using our phone cameras and a cheap digital video camera but it turns out that the camcorder supplied by school was actually the best in audio and video quality and had the smoothest zoom.
*We found it a bit hard to navigate at the start and it was annoying having to rewind rather than skip.
*So we learned that just because something is a little outdated, it doesnt mean it's obsolete.

*Computers and the internet played and integral role in the pre and post production of our piece.
*With the internet we could research anything we needed at the click of a button. We used youtube to analyse openings to other films, wikipedia for information. We used (cite free music site) for one of the tracks.
*We also had to keep blogs, I believe this was a new experience for all of us, but we found it much easier to organise as opposed to a coursework portfolio.
*We used iMovie to edit our opening, it is a rather user-friendly program and the simple things like cutting, fading and adding music were a cinch. Importing the video from our camcorder took a long time though
*And we had to make sure we exported the video in the right file type so that we could upload it to youtube.

Unfortunately our original idea for making a simple flash animation for our evaluation proved too time consuming, having to change the mouth frame-by-frame was the main issue. We will probably just have to record ourselves answering the questions.

Ideas on how to present our evaluation

We want to present the evaluation of our opening in a creative manner. We have considered creating a short animation for parts of our evaluation in the style of The Ricky Gervais Showand Spill.com (a film review website with flash animated presenters). We also want to create something along the lines of a director's commentry in which we talk about our opening in a small "box" at a corner of the video. These could be challenging to do so as a back up we could just do a casual inteview/ chat session evaluation like Schmoes Know (internet based film reviewers).

The Replacement with music by Bill Hundley

A friend who does a music course was interrested in making some music for our porject, we worked with him to make an original score to our opening. This is a rough edit with his music.

We like the first and last song, their subtle and eery-ness work well with the film. But it was hard to make song for the montage and seems a bit innapropriate. We will probably use either the first or last songs in our final cut.

Montage

We're going to use a montage of the protagonist's daily activities to give the audience an impression of who he is quickly and efficiently. We want to portray him as a standard teenage boy so that they can relate to him. Montages tend to use fast paced shots.

The Replacement

This is our first construction of our film opening. We already know that we are missing some requirements like a film studio. From our feed back from our classmates it is clear what needs to be done or re-done which was really helpful. We plan to have another filming session plus an extra research session to add in the bits and bobs we missed or need to be re-done. Overall we are happy with our progress and look forward to our next filming of our final draft.

Story Line 'The Replacement'

We all  agreed that we wanted a moral question added in our story apart from that we are very experimental with our story line as this is our first film opening and we don't have any experience into what people like. So when we finish our drafts we will ask what our audience likes and dislikes about the opening.

This is our basic Idea....

A 17 year old boy called Kevin finds himself in a dilemma when he is in a situation to choose whether to risk what very well could be his life to save his best friend. The moral question being 'would you risk your life for another?'. We hope to include the character Kevin finding a laptop or mobile phone which would somehow show and lead Kevin to his best friend being tortured and being asked the question. Also we would like to link the fact that Kevin is tortured therefore giving the assumption that he has replaced his best friend. But whether he has saved his best friend or escapes will not be revealed as its only a film opening. We plan to show this in a flashback so as the story unfolds the audience will begin to understand what the flashback is about.