Soundtrack Progress

We have decided to scrap the idea of using Liar Liar in our trailer. As we have progressed along making our trailer, it has become less of a light hearted film. Also, we want the audience to feel sorry for Georgia, and we both felt that the previous choice of song would make it seem too happy, and give the impression that she might have a bit of an easy life. We have been thinking more about our choice of soundtrack, and have been going through our iTunes and finding songs which might be acceptable if we could find karaoke versions. Here are some of the contenders:




We have firmed the idea of using the Kick Ass soundtrack, so these songs would be coming at the beginning of our trailer.

Ideas for different shoots.

After we had done our first draft of our teaser trailer, our focus group had some different points which we felt needed addressing. One of them was that we didn't include enough variety in our shots. I can agree with this to some level because there are only a few that we use, however, we do use some different ones, such as a high angled shot, panning shot and over the shoulder shots. We do also take shots from different heights to show a depth in our filming. For example, I went up to the top of the crane 180 feet high to do an establishing shot, and we also did some shooting from the top of the building. However, we decided that we would look at some more film trailers for our genre and take two shots from two trailers each that we liked and incorporate them into our trailer.

Taylers first choice was one of the shots from the new Spiderman movie trailer. She especially liked this shot: 

We tried to think of different ways that we could capture this movement, because we do not have the equipment that the Hollywood directors have to capture this complex shot. We thought about attatching the camera to a rope swing, along with me, and swinging across a local park and creating a movement shot like this. However, on the date we were due to do the filming, we discovered that the rope swing we had been planning on using had been vandalized, so we had to think of an alternative. I suddenly realised that I had trip planned to Go Ape.   

Go Ape is a tree top adventure which enables you to go swinging through the trees attatched to harnesses. There are several zip wires which you can swing for miles along the the forest with great views. I thought that this would be perfect for our trailer, as it is high up, and it could also be a point of view shot from the Topaz Spectors eyes. I took my camera to Go Ape and did some filming as I was riding along one of the Zip Wires. Where I went here in the New Forest there are six different zip wires of varying lengths and heights. I took videos from about three of the zip wires and also took some images just to show where abouts I was and the environment in which I filmed in. I did not have to create any sort of risk assesment for this activity as it had all been done by the company. At all times while we were above the ground I was wearing a harness which was attatched to a wire above me.We also underwent a rigorous training programme to ensure we were safe at all times.

Here are some of the establishing shots of the location where I was filming:

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The locational idea also meant that we could draw inspiration from one of the first tracking shots that existed, which was created in the 1981 film 'The Evil Dead'. Although this movie is of a completely different movie genre to our trailer, it revolutionised the tracking through trees shot as it was one of the first two use it, and it is now being used throughout the filming industry. 

Focus Group

We had a focus group of 6 people who had varied ages throughout our target audience of 15-18 year olds. We asked them to review our second draft of our movie, which can be seen here. This is what each of them said that we could work on to improve our next version.

Liam Wraxton - 15

"The characters need to be introduced, especially the superheroes, as we never actually learn what they are called."      

Henry George - 16

Thomas Hobbs - 18

 "Some of the transitions didn't help to move the story forward, they were too snappy. You should also work on making the cuts smoother, like when Topaz Spectre kicks the door down "







"The ending shot wasn't strong enough to create a lasting impression, and you should think about including some credits. However, I really liked the opening sequence."

Eloise de Carvalho - 15

"The order of shots in the trailer were jumbled up too much and didn't create a flowing sequence that was understandable. There were also some large gaps in the plot and unnecessary repition."

Bella McCrimmon - 18

"You need to include some strong background music, maybe you should consider narration or text to help the audience understand the story, I know it would of helped me."

Paige Farrell - 17

"Some of the shots dragged on a bit, it would of been better if the pace was increased by cutting shots sooner"

Second Draft

We have kept the opening sentence the same from the first draft of our teaser trailer. We have changed the school shots because we felt that the canteen shot had too many distractions in it to be succesful. We also really like how the scene enforces the fact that Georgia is a very lonely character. We also sped it up a bit to fasten the pace of the narration. This then cuts to some shots where she is returning home from a hard day at school. We had to reshoot these as we used too much zooming in our original filming. We also had to include some different shot angles as both of our teachers thought they weren't varied enough. One of my favourites is the shot from below the steps as Bella walks down them into the camera. We reshot all of the first shoots with the same ideas in mind as the first shootings. Tayler came up with an idea of placing the camera inside the box and watching Bella's facial expressions as she opens the box and is shocked by the cape inside. We have changed from the mask to the cape, because we felt that the mask idea was not strong enough to carry on with the theme. We then did a variety of different angled shots of Bella opening the package, which we could then chop and change further on. Finally, we did lots of reshoots of Bella pulling the cape across her, which I will then edit on After Effects to make her turn invisible.

We are next going to show this to our focus group this draft, to get their perspective of it and to see what we could introduce for the next step.

Soundtrack ideas

We decided from the beginning that we wanted a soundtrack which would accompany the action appropriately at all times. Because of this we knew that we would have to create our own soundtrack with different songs merged together. There were many things that we knew we wanted to do straight away:

- Use a variety of songs
- Use different songs with a wide range of tempos, textures and rhythms.
- Not use any really popular songs
- Make smooth transitions
- Make sure that they accompany the action and help to pace the story

We began searching for some songs that we could use in our trailer. We didn't want to use any songs  are in the charts at the moment as we both feel that if someone recognised the song then it might distract them from watching the actual trailer. One of the first songs that we thought of, was this song, which is Never Shout Never's - Liar Liar. We liked the instrumental part of this song at 0:22 right up until 0:31. We thought that this music would demonstrate how our trailer is supposed to be a light hearted movie, but with a bit of a serious twist nearer the end. This music would be used for the beginning part before she discovers her superpowers.





We have also thought about using the sound score from the hit movie Kick Ass as well. We are going to use the bit where Hit Girl rescuse Big Daddy, as we feel we could use this near the end of the trailer when all of the action is happening, as this would accompany it well.



We won't be using all of this music in our soundtrack, as it is 4 minutes long, however we can cut little snippets of it that we like.

Invisibility Cloak Me

Sunshine Radio

I am a volunteer at the local hospital radio which is located in St Marys Hospital in Newport. I have volunteered here for 2 years now after undergoing a training regime, and now have my own one hour show every Monday. We decided that it would be a good idea for us to record our narration here, as the audio would be of high quality.

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We took Henry and Bella there with us, as we had decided that Henry would do the narration for us (He also plays the part of The Infinitive) and we thought it would be a good idea for Bella to join us in case there were any last minute changes to the script. The script was planned as follows:

Gerorgia Murphy was an ordinary girl
Invisible to the world
Until, everything changed.
Bella McCrimmon is, Topaz Spectre
Henry George, as the Infinitive
Coming Soon.

The whole recording process was fairly simple. We used the attatched microphone to do the recording,which we turned up and down with the red fader that you can see in the last slide. We recorded all of the transcript on to a minidisk, which was then changed to CD format by my station manager. He split all of our recordings up to two seperate clips, one for what he believed was the correct recording, and one for us messing around and giggling. Here is the mp3 of us doing the proper recordings: Overall I think that our recording was very succesful.However, a comment was made by my station manager that we were probably speaking a little too close to the microphone, as it seems a bit crackly. If we had time we could redo the recordings, but I think these are ample.

Audience Theory

Uses and Gratifications:

The Uses and Gratifications theory suggests that people will go to the cinema because they hope to be either, informed, entertained, or they will go if they believe they will be able to identify with any issues in the target film. Topaz Spectre is an action/adventure superhero movie, which means that it is very unlikely that it will be informative at all, and there are no big issues addressed which people would be able to identify with, as superheroes don't exist, so it is mainly entertainment fuelled. Hopefully, when the audience watches our film, they will be entertained by it, and so they will have recieved gratification with what they have viewed, making the viewer active. This theory can be taken to a new level, by thinking it too far. For example, if I were to go and watch many more films, and become very reliable on the information supplied, it would take away my independance and make me less of an active view, and make me passive, meaning the Media is controlling what I believe in.

Most films are aimed at a passive audience, which means that whoever is watching the film doesn't really look in to a deeper meaning of the movie, and doesn't understand why certain decisions have been made for the trailer. If I were to go and watch a movie as a Media student I would watch it actively, as I have a better knowledge of film and would be looking in to why decisions were made to include certain shots and audio features. Another reason why the audience would be more passive, is because they wouldn't have much life experience from what is going on on screen. They may be able to empathise with Georgia Murphy, when she feels rejected from school, however they wouldn't know what it is like to develop a superpower. Hopefully, my film will inspire the audience that superheroes could actually exist, as it may give them some optimistic feelings towards these possibilities. This could link in to the Hypodermic Needle Theory, which suggests that what people see, they believe. I hope that our trailer could encourage the audience to look at life differently, in a place where superheroes and these kind of 'magical experiences' could exist.

Our deadlines

Me and Tayler decided from the beginning that we were going to move our deadline before Christmas so that we would get our main task done before then, and during the last 2 months of the project we would simply have to do our ancillary tasks and finish little bits on our trailer to make it of a higher quality. As you can see on the calenders at the beginning of most of the posts on my blog, we have stuck to the deadlines and dates we made for completition of parts of our trailer. This is what we have completed so far:

• Filmed approximatley twelve hours of footage
• Made 2 attempts of 'Georgia Murphy' becoming invisible
• Created some attempts of explosions
• Become more advanced in After Effects
• Created a title sequence
• Recorded a narration soundtrack
• Decided on our sound score
• Created a rough draft
• Posted some of our work to YouTube for feedback
• Created a survey
• Research

We have done most of this in just over one and a half months as we began this project mid way through October. However, by creatign our first draft we have both agreed that we do not have enough footage. So during the Christmas Holidays we are going to work on the post production and editing of the shots that we have so far. We are going to also continue teaching ourselves After Effects as it is a very complex program that we have had many problems with [LINK] Afterwards we will be filming the finishing scenes for our trailer and then begin the work on the Ancillary task. I am pleased that we did move our deadline forward because it means that we have done the main brunt of our work before Christmas, so that as long with the work for our other subjects, which are all very coursework heavy, we don't have to worry about filming. Also, where we did a lot of our filming before December/November, it wasn't getting dark so early in the afternoon.