Final Film

Below is our final product, 'Abduction'.

Combination of Ancillary material and Film Evaluation question

REVIEW

Below is the review for our film

POSTER

Below is the poster for our film

Audience Evaluation question

Below is a video answering the audience evaluation question, note: pause if you need to wish the response answers to the survey questions

Conventions Evaluation Question

Media Tecnology Evaluation Question

Making the Alien Noise

The hardest challenge we faced when filming 'Abduction' was convincing the audience of an alien prescene. We intially wanted to use stock footage of alien images to convince the audience of the alien lifeform. However this approach was extremely time consuming and the alien images looked out of place in the universe we had created and the sudden prescene of the footage was almost comically instead of frightening/omnious.

Due to our low budget and lack of skill with special effects we could not turn to CGI to conjuour up this alien without it looking amateurish and lacking the authenticity we desired. Eventually we turned to the philosphy of film makers like Steven Speilberg and Alfred Hitchcock which was 'Less is More'. Whilst making 'Jaws' Speilberg encountered a similiar problem to ours albeit on a much larger scale where he was unable to get the shark to function for the majority of the scenes. Instead of forcing bad special effects in he chose to simply allude to the prescene of the monster which was much more effective and eventually became iconic. Hitchcock referred to this phenomeon as 'The fear of the Unknown' by keeping the killer/monster hidden from the audience the tension is heightened and the viewer remains on edge.
We adhered to this convention by using filters and sound effects to allude to the prescene of the alien. We created the alien noise with hair dryer and audio feedback distortion. The alien audio in the phone call is also quite disturbing as the it mirrors what the audience first heard at the start. The use of a filter at the start gives the audience the impression that they are looking through the alien's vision and the visual distortion at the end indicates the protagonist is being abducted.

Inspiration for Film poster

For our media task we need to create a poster which advertises our film. Before we design the poster itself we decided to research different movie posters which feature aliens and posters about mentally unstable people.

Below is the movie posters which feature mentally unstable protagonists

Lighting and colour scheme

Adding filters and Colour Association 

During the edit of our film we became unsatisfied with some of the lighting in our film. Last year we discovered the importance of good lighting and colour scheme as we were able to take scenes shot in a modern landscape and transform it into an old fashioned noir time piece. So this time we wanted to further our knowledge of lighting and filters as we knew how vital they can to achieve the right tone for a scene.
In some of the scenes in our film we found that the artificial key lighting was too soft for what we wanted. Before we filmed we looked into how to portray a depressed and unhinged person. We also looked at many alien abduction style films. We found many films that focused on either of these subjects had a muted colour scheme/palette with dark/dry blues and greys being a primary feature.  Below are some examples of fitters and colour palettes we looked at to see if we could find inspiration for the filter we wanted to apply.

The fourth kind

Minority Report

Deep fried

We researched colour grading and discovered you could enhance or alter certain colours within a scene to bring out or dampen colours. We already had some experience with filters after our film 'Elegy for April' as we used a noir filter for the scenes to give our film a neo noir atheistic. So since we were already familiar with how to add a filter to scenes and our new knowledge on colour grading we were able to customise a filter for each scene that best fit with the visuals we wanted.  For example we decided for the tv scene at the beginning we would have a blue hue cast over the room to help further the downcast and depressed persona of the main protagonist.

For some scenes the filters we wanted to implement were too dark so we were able to adjust the saturation and contrast levels of each frame so we could still keep the filter we wanted instead of having to remove it entirely which we had to do last year with a filter we wanted to use but unfortunately made a few shots too dark to see.
As well as the filter we were able to format the exposure settings for the scene were our main character transitions from the dark room to the well lit room to enhance the feeling of disorientation and the juxtaposition between the two environments.

Through the use of filters we were able to not only make our film look more professional since we did not have access to elaborate lighting rigs due to our low budget but also to create the right atmosphere/mood for each scene.

Sound Configuration

Editing: Sound Design 

When it came to editing the sound for our film we needed to make sure everything was mastered and levelled properly. This meant adjusting the decibel level for every clip so it matched the rest of the film. Shots that were filmed closer to the microphone of the camera could be turned down and shots far away or outside could be turned up so the dialogue was not too quiet.

We were familiar with this feature last year for our outdoor scenes in 'Elegy for April' , however a feature we discovered was hum and background noise removal. This was useful for our outdoor scenes were there was some wind which distorted the audio a little. With this feature we were able to format the audio to make it sound crisp and clear.

Another thing we had to consider for our film was the audio transitions between different scenes.

To create a natural transition from one scene to another without a jarring cut in audio levels. We used the fade audio feature to make this transition as seamless as possible. This was effective when we did the time skips in our film where the timeline in our story jumped to the next month.

Assembling Footage

Editing

After we finished our final film shoot we gathered all the footage we had and processed/rendered it on final cut. We sorted through most of the outtakes and deleted them and then arranged all our essential shots onto the timeline in order.  We used the blade tool and timeline to arrange all our shots in the order we wanted.  We then formatted our footage so it was in a ratio that fit the screen without stretching or decreasing the quality of our footage.

We decided the best way to approach editing all the footage was to build the timeline up first by using a good take from each scene so it would be easier to format the scenes later if we wanted a different take for a particular scene. We did this by swapping out the shot we didn't want with the preferred shot from the library. After this we combined the shots from each film shoot and we were ready to edit the project.

Once everything was in place it was time to stabilise, add filters, crop and render shots. We had to stabilise shots in some shots when the camera is in motion the frames became skewed or rippled. In addition there was 2 shots were the camera jittered and instead of removing these shots altogether we were able to salvage them by stabilising them using the ken burns feature and the stablize feature on final cut. We discovered it worked by analysing the dominant camera motion of the scene and smoothing out the frames where the fragmented movement is. This was a much better feature than the one we used for last years project 'Elegy for April' where we just took individual frames and cropped/rotated them so the camera mistakes where hidden. On final cut there were also sliders we could use to tweak how much  motion correction we wanted for the shot. This was useful as some shots needed more correction than others and this feature allowed us to have minor correction on small motion errors and larger correction for more serious errors.

Filming day

Problems encountered

Over our two film shoots a major difficulty we faced was maintaining continuity. Since our filming took place over 2 days we had to make sure background details and mise en scene remained the same so audiences did not become confused. This meant our actors had to wear the same clothes and wear their hair in the same fashion as before.
For some scenes we needed to encorporate shots from both days of filming. A major challenge was ensuring the lighting remained constant and furniture was arranged in the same fashion as the first day we filmed on.
An example of how this organisation came into play was was when we filmed a scene where our main actor walked towards the door and did multiple takes before we realised that the curtains where in a slight different position in a shot we took previous. After we realised this mistake we kept a the scenes from our first shoot up on a laptop beside the camera so we could ensure continuity was preserved.
We also had to arrange smaller props like the alcohol bottles, the knife and laptop in the same places so that our audiences immersion would not be broken by noticing things out of place from shot to shot.

Another problem we faced when planning when to film was the weather. For both days we wanted to film when the sun was directly overhead and there was little clouds or rain. This is because we wanted good lighting on top of the articial lights we had already for the phone and walking to door scenes. We looked at weather reports for days where the sun was out without many clouds and checked with our actors schedule to make sure they were available on the days we wanted.

When filming we had to wait a while for some clouds to clear to get the glare we wanted from the sun when the main actor transitioned from the dark living room to the light room. On the second day of the shoot we filmed a scene outside with better lighting that was intially filmed inside. This is because there was less wind one the second day so recording audio was easier as it was not distorted by wind.

POSTER PLANNING/IDEAS

Below are some rough sketches for the poster to our film.  

In addition to these drawn pictures we used photoshop to design a poster using stock images from the internet.

Storyboard for new short film

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