How Karma will include the conventions of a film opening

Karma will have the credits such as the director, producers, cast and crew in the conventional order.

 

The music will set the mood because it will have ambience.

 

The Location it was filmed has successfully lived up to the conventions of a thriller because Mercy was dreaming and the perfect scenario for that would be in a bedroom which my bedroom was used for that. Secondly, the park scene suited the past scene where young Mercy bullied young Ivory when they were young because the park is usually associated with young children and therefore corresponds to the plot.

 

The story/narrative is appropriate for the psychological sub-genre because the protagonist (Mercy) will  have somatic symptoms throughout the film.

The opening will help the audience understand briefly the protagonist's past with Ivory. Furthermore, it will raise questions because the audience will not understand who Alisha plays as, since she will only be noticed at the end. It 'hooks' the audience because the audience will want to know how it will be resolved.

 

Opinions on black and white or coloured flashback scene and group 7's solution

I have asked a few teachers and they have all said that thy prefer the flashback scene to be in black and white as it separates the past from the present. 

I have also asked students on their opinion and the majority have said that black and white would be better as well.

However, the decision is amongst the group and since half of us wanted it to be in black and white and the other half preferred it in colour. Alisha came up with a fantastic idea to combine black and white with colour. 

Everyone in my group thought that it was visually successful and suited the flashback scene because now it appears to be more dream-like. 

My third time editing

I also came back to edit on Friday the 1st of March from 12:15-17:00. Although, I came back to edit, I was editing my version of Karma because my group and I have democracy and therefore when the majority of the group agree on something that is what we all have to agree on. I decided to do my version of Karma and then later they will see if they like or agree that that is how Karma should be portrayed as. I think that the flashback scene (park scene where the bullies bully young Ivory) should be black and white so that the audience will understand straight from the beginning however my group think that it should be in colour because when editing they will brighten the lighting so that the audience could understand.

Photos of editing after pitch rough cut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My fourth time editing

For my fourth time editing, I came to workshop with Andreia and we experimented with different video transitions.
Our favourite one is the bright White flash between scenes simply because we thought it created a good dreamlike sense and also of flashbacks.
We also looked at our soundtrack influences and decided what tones of music would be best for each scene.
For the flashback we want to create a simple childlike melody but in a minor key so that it represents a loss of innocence.
We also think that for foley sounds we should have child voices with an echoey effect, listing words that Mercy remembers saying to Ivory when she was a bully.
The music we want to create for the Scene where Ivory is ripping up pictures is more dramatic and has less of a melody and more tense sounds.

My second and third time editing

On 27th and 28th Feb I came to workshop and carried on editing my groups film opening.

The footage had somehow got lost from the video drive ad so I unfortunately had to reload the filming from the memory card to the video drive. After I had done this I started cutting down some of the footage to make the opening shorter and this was also necessary because some of the scenes were too long, which dragged out the suspense for no reason. Also it was helpful for creating a sense of flashbacks.

I then began to experiment with different video filters on some of the scenes, at first I tried a blur on the scenes where Ivory is ripping up photos from her and Mercy's childhood, I thought this might make it clear to his audience that Mercy is dreaming this occurrence with it being blurry, however I thought that in case the audience thought we had not put our camera in focus when filming, rather than it being an effect used purposely, I would look for some other options just in case and see what the feedback after the rough cut said was the best. another option I looked at was black and white.

On the childhood scenes, I wanted to explore the video filters with changing the brightness to really bright in order to show that these scenes are flashbacks occurring in Mercy's dream. I think by making it brighter rather than using a black and white effect, this shows that we are not going back in the past, even though it is a flashback it is occurring in Mercy's dream which is in the present. Therefore it makes more sense to use bright lighting in my opinion.

My first editing

When I first started the editing on 25th Feb me and my group uploaded all of our footage we had taken when filming, on to our video drive and then on to Final cut Pro. There was so much footage to look through and to pick the best scenes for our final film opening.

When looking at the scenes, it was hard to choose the best scenes for good quality match cuts, because even though we want our opening to be dream like and not necessarily smooth flowing like a film, but more abstract and like fast flashing shots to show flashbacks, it is still important that the finished look is professional and of the best quality possible.

Once I had chosen the best footage for each scene I then put all the shots in the correct order and played the scene. On the first watch, there was lots of editing that needed to be done so I wrote down all the things I would need to do. Editing is especially important for my groups film opening because we want to create the look of flashbacks in a dream, to make our scenes look quite surreal and so it is clear to the audience what scenes are the present and what are the dream/ flashbacks.

Things to do for editing:

- Cut the footage down to 2 minutes as it is too long

- Add in video transitions between some of the scenes (bright white flashes...)

- Add video filters to change the brightness on the flashback scenes 

- Make sure the match cuts fit well 

- Add in credits

- Add in foley sounds

- Make a soundtrack

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