Final Tweaks on the poster

 Looking at our final poster, we felt that the title was not big enough and this made the whole poster seem a bit lacking. Although there is not much space to make it any bigger we thought we could put parts of the title on different levels as this would also make it look more chaotic.

1) First of all, I made a duplicate copy of our poster so that we could make changes without losing the original poster in case it went wrong.

2) Then, I deleted the title so that I could insert it in again without it being in the way.

3) I opened the image of the title typography and then dragged each letter in individually.

4) I used the 'Free Transform' tool so that I could make it the right size for the space that was available.

5) Finally, I used the 'Rotate' tool to make some of the letters more wonky and twisted than the others as this made it look more delusional.

Evaluation

• The result of this makes the poster look much more dominant and noticeable.
• It also makes the genre come across more clearly as it looks more psychological.
• This also uses the space that we have available more effectively.

Montage editing

Finally, I completed the editing of the montage.
Within the montage, I used a variation of clips to interweave with the shots of the Victim being stalked, which we filmed specifically for the montage.

1)Firstly, we used old-fashioned documentary clips, which I found on youtube, downloaded and imported into Final Cut Pro. This proved to be a challenge because all the documentaries were on average 1 hour long, and so not only did they take a long time to download but finding the 1 second clip that we wanted proved difficult.



These old-fashioned clips are effective because they reinforce the psychological genre and the message about mental discrimination. They also have a very creepy, sinister feel to them, which helps us fit in with the conventions of our genre.


2) Secondly, I included News Clips which discussed mental illness. I downloaded many clips of various mentally ill criminals being either discussed in a studio or sentenced in court as I thought these would look official and also show the audience what the protagonist fears the most. I ended up using this clip of a woman in a new studio as this has an official, clinical feel.



3) Thirdly, I used actual footage of the protagonist having a mental breakdown to what's happening to her. These clips are important as they show the effects and symptoms of the mental illness.


4) Lastly, I decided to use more footage using the green screen so that I could give a surreal edge to the montage. Therefore, I created two clips- one of the protagonist screaming at the camera with an image of pills, distorted in the background. This conveys that her illness is overwhelming to her.


5) I also created a clip of the protagonist spinning round with her imaginary friend in the background, flashing in and out of view. This conveys that the friend is not actually real. I put a spinning background on this clip, and put the effects 'Bad TV' and 'Beach Bypass' to give a distorted, overwhelming feel to the clip.

6) I also made the montage tenser by cutting out some clips and and making others shorter. This makes the overall montage snappier and more dramatic, which leads up to the eventual climax well.

Layering the audio of the news-clips

Layering the audio of the news-clips

Step 1:

- First I detached the audio from the videos clips. 

- I then dragged them along so that they followed the news clip in the montage and made them overlap one another in certain areas which would make it sound overwhelming to the audience. 

Step 2:

-I also repeated a few words such as 'insanity' throughout to quicken the pace and suggest the instability of the protagonist's mind. 

Step 3:

- Once I had the layout sorted I then played around with the effects, adding distortions to the audio or making it sound demonic. 

- One effect I did was called 'monster' which made the audio sound much deeper than it actually was, another made the audio have an echo which I added onto the clip mentioning 'hallucinations.'

Evaluation:

- Although the tension doesn't build I feel it will sound much more effective with the cinematic bass sounds at every black slide and with the high tension music leading to the loft scene. 

- We are also considering adding a 'whooshing' sound at the end before the silence in order to signal to the audience the end of the climax. 

Inputting the sound into our trailer

Inputting the sound into our trailer

Now that we have been able to produce non diegetic sound to go alongside our trailer, all we have left to do is insert it into our trailer with the other non diegetic sound that we have already inserted. 

I started by aligning the new non diegetic sound up with the production company clip, in order to have the sound begin as the production company is shown on screen, this was it eases the audience into the narrative of the trailer with no sudden changes in the sound too early on in the trailer. However, I did encounter an issue when inputting the non diegetic sound of the piano melody into the trailer.

 Although I had made sure that the sound matched up to the exact timings of the trailer as I produced it, I did not trim the track of the "ear ringing noise" therefore it went on further than needed. To resolve this issue, I had to delete that individual track from the Logic Pro project, bounce the file and import it into our footage. From then, I had to import the "ear ringing noise" file into iMovie separately and adjust it by changing its fading options in accordance to the piano melody. 

I noticed that the ear ringing noise, once aligned to our footage, that it automatically lowered the volume of the non diegetic sound piano melody. To resolve this, I had to select the ear ringing noise track and unselect the ducking option, which enabled the dominant track to be automatically lowered in volume so new tracks could be heard. By doing this, it allowed the piano melody to dominate the trailer instead, which was what we were hoping for. 

At this stage of inputting the sound into our trailer,  I decided that the other non diegetic sounds that we had recorded prior to making the piano melody such as the whispers would extremely well with our piano melody. I dragged the whispers into place and then had to make sure that they did not dominate the sound entirely. We also thought it would be effective to add the sound of an old TV as it would help build suspense and add to the relevance  of the bad TV effect on our  green screen footage. 

Overall, adding the sound to our trailer has definitely heightened the effect of it. The sound for our trailer becomes the climax in terms of sound. We made sure we were able to build tension threough using sound effects such as 'swishing' noises and sinister sounding crashes. We applied each track carefully making sure that nothing overlapped the other causing extreme discomfort in the sound all together. We also had to make sure that the volumes of each track were fairly similar anbd worked well together, so we had to manually apply a fade out or fade in to certain tracks so the audio sounded together and not random and detached.

The montage scene is an example of how we manipulated audio of a video clip, in the sense that we layered and echoed certain dialogue such as "Schizophrenia" so the audeince to make a direct link to what our narrative entails. 

Lastly, we chose to use silence after the montage scene so the suspense and tension that we built through our montage is now being held by the audience so that way we can have them on the edge of their chairs. We decided to end our trailer with the scream from the antagonist in the loft and non diegetic sound as the title of our trailer flickers on the screen.

Creating the final title

Step 1 - I inserted out typography into final cut pro to begin with, and put it on a white background.

Step 2 - in order to make the text look distorted I applied the 'bad  tv' effect over the top and changed the amount so that the text was legible.

Step 3 - I then used the 'earthquake' effect over the top so that the image shuddered as well as got distorted. This meant that I could layer effects and create a more realistic and professional typography.

Step 4 - Then I divided up the footage using the blade tool and made some shorter clips 'negative' to display unease and to suggest the genre of the film. Once I had done that I added in transitions at the beginning and the end so the overall clip was much smoother and therefore more professional.

Step 5 - I then added in 'coming soon' after the fade and by using transitions such as cross dissolve and flash I managed to create a rather professional effect that would hopefully stay in people's minds.

Evaluation:

I feel this title portrays the genre we are going for and isn't too long so it doesn't take up much of our 60 second trailer. The flash at the end also leaves an imprint of 'coming soon' on the audience's eyes, this gives it a theatrical side. 

Unhinged sound

Unhinged sound

For our trailer, we now have to input all of our non diegetic sound onto our footage. Each scene of our footage uses different amounts of sound to build suspense up to the end of our trailer. To make the process of inputting the sound easier, we decided to produce and manipulate our choice in sounds using Logic Pro and then exporting then as mp3 files ready to attach to our footage. 

In order to do this, we had to figure out what kind of non diegetic sound would suit our trailer the best. This formed to be extremely difficult for us as our trailer explores many themes within it such as discrimination and privacy. We also wanted to make sure that the sound built up to the montage scene, by layering the audio of documentaries based around Schizophrenia onto each other. Therefore, we would have to keep the non diegetic sound up to the montage scene fairly simple in terms of the melody and dynamics. We decided that a simple piano melody that builds up to a climax would suit our trailer extremely well. 

To achieve the sound we were hoping for, I had to manipulate the music by watching our footage at the same time, to see what would fit the best where. This also opened up the opportunity to try various new sounds without it effecting our trailer whatsoever as the sound, in the screen shot on the left, is still being edited.
 To edit the sound, I used Logic Pro as it enabled me to manipulate each track independently of any others that I already had inserted into the project. For example, once I had recorded the simple piano melody for our library scene, I needed to layer over the sound of a high ringing noise to create a minute disequilibrium in the sound. However, once I inserted the high ringing noise, it was extremely loud in comparison to the piano melody which was our dominant sound. In order to adjust this, I had to open the mixer, select the track that I had placed the high ringing noise on and pull down the fader to just adjust its sound. 

Producing and editing the sound for the trailer alongside our footage helped incredibly! When looking through  our footage in relation to the sound, it was clear that another layer needed to be added, in order for the second title to be as effective as it can. Therefore, I decided to add a low rumbling bass sound to the sound, making sure that the places that the bass beat is played works, and fits in effectively to our trailer.

To make sure that the bass track that I had produced fell in all the right places, I double clicked on the tracks and was able to see exactly where all the sounds aligned together, as shown in the screen shot to the left. Once I aligned the sounds into the correct places in terms of the footage, the sound covers a large majority of our trailer. In order to complete the sound production of our trailer, all that it left to do is input the montage scene and sound.  This is what the sound composes of so far:

Altering the website background gif

After recently reviewing our website. and making our final improvements to it, it came to attention that the gif I had made for the background, making the imaginary friend flicker was moving too fast. After a while you notice the pattern and it was too frequent. Below you can see the original timeline in photoshop for the gif.

The original image, where the imaginary friend's face can be seen is in the bottom level of the timeline. As you can see, I have it repeating three times for an equal amount of time, while then being shown for a short burst at the end. The other image, where the imaginary friend is just a silhouette, was shown for a short burst three times, each showing was of equal length. At the end, it was shown twice very quickly, because I thought that it would catch the viewer's attention on the webpage. However, this was thought to be distracting.

Here you can see I have radically changed the timings for the two images. There is no regular length anymore, this makes it harder for the viewer to spot any kind of pattern and means that they will be less likely to know when the images are going to change. I have also made the imaginary friend's face disappear a lot less frequently, and when it does it is only for a short time. This means that the viewer may not even notice it missing, but when they do, it will give quite a spooky effect. 

I have now uploaded the final edited gif to our website, and think that it is better, because it is more unexpected and means that you cannot predict it. 

Typography for rest of website

The fonts on our website for general text, such as the reviews and menu need to be improved, because currently they do not fit or match our main typography used in the title or tag line.

I went through a series of fonts available on the Wix website and came up with the following options:

This is how our website looked to begin with, the font for the menu hadn't been changed at all, and the reviews had only been changed temporarily. Neither fitted with the font used for our typography and it looks very unprofessional. 

This was the first font I found as a possible option, called Amatic SC. I really like this font, and think that if you just look at the reviews it could work quite well on it's own. However, I do not think that it goes well enough with the rest of our typography, and I noticed at this stage that it is very difficult to read on top of our background image. You also have to have the font very large in order to read it clearly, which could cause issues with our website placement, especially when viewing it on other screens. 

This font is called Overlock, and gives quite a modern straight forward feel. This font looks quite professional, but it really doesn't match our typography at all, our typography looks quite old, whereas this font is so modern and looks unprofessional when grouped together. I decided we could not use this font. 

This font is called Museo Slab, and looks quite professional, while remaining quite clear to see on top of the background. Similarly to the Overlock font, it looks quite modern and although quite clear it doesn't fit with the rest of our typography. 

At this stage of my research process, I decided that none of the fonts looked their best on top of our background, because it was too hard to read in places, no matter what the size or boldness, and a white font colour is the only option we have. So I decided to make a big change to our positioning of the website, and place the reviews over the imaginary friend in our background, because even when the image changes, the reviews are still easy to read. 

I then used this font, called Chelsea Market, which I think looks quite effective, however it doesn't quite fit with our genre or the rest of our typography. What this font does do is act as a test for the placement of our reviews, on top of the imaginary friend, and as you can see, despite it not matching our typography very well, it is extremely clear to read and stands out a lot, allowing our protagonist to be seen clearly. 

I then decided to use the font Courier New, because simple is often actually very effective. I think it goes well with our typography, isn't distracting of our other content, and goes with our genre. It looks like it has been typed on a typewriter, which could relate to our genre and some of our scenes, perhaps the stalking scenes. It also doesn't look too modern, which fits quite well with our typography because it itself isn't very modern looking. 

I then went ahead and changed the rest of the typography to match and also added an element from our poster to the bottom right hand corner of the website. I also changed the video playing, to our media piece from last year, as it is a more accurate test until our trailer is complete. Finally I added our production company logo, a restricted warning and a 'Dolby Digital' logo to our website. 

Here is our finished website:

Changing the Green Screen Background

Looking back at the completed green screen footage, we decided that it did not look at realistic as we wanted. Therefore, I thought we should play around with the background and see if I could make it better. To begin with I wondered if I could make it look more realistic with the existing background. As the problem was with the lighting, I decided to change the lighting of the foreground image to make it match the background more smoothly.

1) I selected 'Colour Board' and then on the 'Exposure' tab I increased the highlights slightly and then decreased the midtones and the low-tones.

2) Then, I used the effect 'Day into Night' which makes the footage look more gloomy, matching the gloomy dark background more.

3) Then, I used the Keyer effect which allowed me to change the background of the footage. I imported the image of the cell, making sure the picture was of a high quality so it would not be blurry, as this would not look effective.

4) Finally, I played around with the Keyer effect, making it 'shrink' slightly so that there was not an obvious grey line surrounding the protagonist's outline.

This made the footage more realistic than previously, however I thought I would also try a different background to see if this was more successful. I took all the same steps, but used a different picture which had brighter lighting to suit the foreground more smoothly.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Evaluation

PROS

• The image conveys how she is trapped with her mental illness. The grim mise en scene and low-key lighting gives a creepy edge to the image, reinforcing the psychological genre.
• The image does not look completely realistic, which could be seen as a good thing as it reminds the audience that it all in her mind, and that she is not really in a padded cell/prison cell.

CONS

• The lighting still does not completely match the foreground. This is because in the background the lighting is seen on the right side and this is impossible to recreate in the foreground image.
• The background is not the same quality as the foreground footage. This is more obvious in Option 2 with the prison cell, which would have to be changed if we were to use it as it currently looks very unprofessional. This could be solved by finding a higher resolution photograph.
• Overall, I think this idea, although somewhat effective, is not to my liking as it looks only semi-realistic and so the audience cannot be sure whether it is supposed to be realistic but is failing or whether it's in the character's mind, which may be misleading.