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.

Sunshine radio

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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.

First Draft

This is the first draft of our teaser trailer for the film 'Topaz Spectre'. This was constructed on Windows Movie Maker, and the editing was done with After Effects. At this point there isn't any audio in our movie, because we hadn't decided on any soundtrack.

It starts off with a panning shot of the surrounding area, which was taken in a crane.This then fades in to the title sequence for our production company. The filming then begins with a shot which is taken in the canteen, with 'Georgia' sat on her own, eating. The shot is panning, and shows a lot of movement from other people in the canteen, which distracts from the protagonist and makes her a lot less visible. However, we did make sure she stood out a little by making her wear what would be considered as 'her own clothes' which was the outfit that we had planned from the beginning. It then cuts to a shot of the star sat on her own in a classroom, which once again enforces that she isn't very popular at school. In this shot we used a lot of zoom, which afterwards we were advised against, as it doesn't look professional. Also, the next shot, you can see a young boy walk directly at the camera which ruins it slightly, and also we use the zoom again. I really like the scene where the dinner lady cleans up around Georgia as it shows that she isn't really noticed by anyone. However, once again, and as the next few shots also display, we have overused the zoom in this draft of the trailer, which is definatly something we need to improve upon. We both really like the next few sequence of shots, of her coming in to the house, and we have decided that we would like to re film them, without the use of zoom! The invisibility sequence is something that I am quite proud of, as someone who is new to After Effects. We did this by making the layer with Georgia in opaque when we wanted her to become invisible, and doing the opposite when we wanted her to reappear. We also then added a distortion map to the layers, which made them distort as she disappeared. We made this a lot more difficult for ourselves by using a mirror for her to become invisible from, as it meant we had to make her vanish twice. I placed this invisibility sequence online for some feedback, and one of the main things that was commented on is how she was invisible for much too long, so this is something we will change next time round. The next few shots were originally intended to be very fast and snappy, however this is something that we didn't really achieve with Movie Maker. One of the ideas for working on it now is for us to speed up the clips, to make them seem more speedy. We then go to the shots on top of a car park. Once again we use a lot of zoom, but I think we could cut the zoom out rather than refilm. The next shot of 'The Infinitive' walking through a doorway is my favourite shot so far. I really like how the wind is blowing through his cape as it creates quite an eerie effect. The next few shots work quite well, however we may change the order and transitions. I like the rest of the trailer all the way up to the final shot of the explosion, as this was made when I was just playing around with After Effects and it just looks fake. I don't know whether we will improve on the editing of this shot or just remove it completley.

Firestone Shots

The opening shot of this sequence is a suspense building shot because it fades out from|dark into the characters running at each other. This is my favourite shot because I like how it begins quite blurry and dark, so you can't really see what is going on, but then you can see the suspense between the two main characters as the face each other. I also like how they run together, because we could cut it off just as they would hit each other which would leave the audience hanging on how the scene could end. We then took some over the shoulder shots of the characters running at each other, which was using a variety of shots. We had some issues with this shooting because by the time we got round to doing it the clocks had already gone forward, and the earliest we could go was straight after school at half three ish, which meant it was already getting dark. However, I think we managed to survive quite well given the circumstances. The next few shots are a variety of Bella teaching Henry how to do the stage combat, with it looking effective for our trailer. You can hear the dialogue of Bella teaching Henry throughout this shoot, and also Tayler and I giving our feedback on how it looks. I really like the shot where the camera is positioned underneath Bella as she pushes Henry against a wall. I like the light seeping through from the trees as it lights the whole scene up in quite a dramatic manner. The next few is a variety of punching shots, but you can see that the light is fading drastically as they progress. We came up with the idea of shooting Bella punch Henry from behind him, so as to include a bigger variety of shots. Following on from this, we thought about shooting from below, which I think was a brilliant idea, because once again, it lights up the scene differently. The last shot was of Henry pushing Bella to the floor of the forest, but once again, the light was almost completely gone by this point, so we will have to lighten it up in post production.

Problems and solutions:
- The light was very limited, so we will have to sort it out in post production, or film again on a day when we can make it earlier.
- Sometimes you can't really see anything on the costumes, so we painted over them to help with visibility.
- There was a chance that Bella or Henry might get injured by the stage combat going wrong, so we ensured we did practise shots and made sure that both of them were fully trained to help prevent this. We also removed any dangerous items that were lying around to help to further prevent injuries.
- Finally, because we were in a forest, the ground wasn't completley stable to hold uip our tripod. To help make it sturdy we took a platform made of a plank of wood with us, which help to make sure the shots were straight.

Title Sequence

We decided we wanted to make our own title sequence for our Why Fronts Production company, to make everything our own original material. We did some researching on YouTube and the internet in which we found some templates and tutorials in making one. We did some editing on After Effects and after a while we made a sequence that we were quite proud of.

We showed this to both of our teachers and recieved some feedback which we decided we would work on. The most thought provoking feedback was after we had shown this to one of our teachers, the first thing he replied with was 'So your film is a comedy genre then?'. This worried us quite a lot, as our film was not intended to be funny at all. So we decided to play with the colour schemes a little, and make the background darker to reflect the genre. We changed the background to black, and this was the finishing result: