Monday, December 14, 2020

CONSTRUCTION: FILMING NEWS

 In order to present realism in our film, we decided to incorporate a news report into the beginnings of our trailer, utilising the green screen that we had available to us. The green screen allowed us to be able to remove the background behind the target actor, which would in turn let us drop a background of a news room to make it look like they were in a news room.

In order to achieve the highest quality green screen footage we could, we had lights pointing towards the green screen to help us to isolate the shadows that were cast initially on the back ground. The green screen was very successful, and the subject was very cleanly cut using the Ultra Key in Adobe Premiere Pro. During the shooting of the green screen, we also utilised a studio microphone in order for us to capture the highest quality sound for each of the clips we filmed. We then had to sync the audio for each clap, which was much easier as we clapped before the filming of each scene. This gave us a marker in the post-production suite which meant we could match the audio wave forms of each of the clips in order to make sure that the sound file was in time with the video files.








Monday, December 7, 2020

PLANNING: SOCIAL ISSUES

 Using Pinterest, I devised a range of boards to visually represent my brainstorming and thought processes into choices made in the film. This includes the characters and their costuming and the codes and conventions of horror/thriller films and how we will both conform to them and break them. The creature fits out codes and conventions as we attempted to make it appear shrouded and ghostly, with paranormal things happening when the creature is present in the trailer. Our soldier characters conform to the stereotypes of the genre as we costumed them to wear tan clothing and very military-resembling costumes in order to portray the realism of the scene. 

In terms of locations, we generally chose derelict and poorly kept buildings to do our filming in. These abandoned style of building we thought that it would add to the unsettling feeling to the film and make the suspense and the fear of the film exponentially better. The derelict buildings also allowed us to experiment with new camera shots to help portray the idea that the operatives are being watched by something. 

Our film covers social issues as well as stereotypes. One of the main issues we cover in our trailer is the issue of military veterans struggling to reintegrate into society after a traumatic war experience. As they are perpetually exposed to war and bloodshed, it easily becomes normalised to them and a normal day can be a very unnerving experience for veterans. There are also those veterans who feel alienated, and outcast by their own family and dread the thought of coming home from the battle. We will tackle this topic by showing our veteran has a loving family at home, and the experiences he once had with them, but also how his views have changed and he no longer feels the same way he did. On top of this idea, the other veteran will have the social issue of the fear of the unknown, as technology in society has built up a culture where everyone needs to know everything that's happening in the world.