Final cut of passion of a bleeding rose

The final cut of our film is now here and contains elements changed from the rough cut.

• Due to the loss of raw footage of the ident, we could not change the original. However we all felt that it worked much better at the top left corner as it resembled computer coding.
• We faded the music in at the beginning of the titles, more smoothly.
• We reshot the clock to remove the shakey cam.
• After closely observing the original mirror shots, and then researching this effect from the film Face/Off , we felt that the mirror scene wasn't acurate enough in the framing, and we also added an effect which makes the shot look entirely different. Like in Face/Off it shows adam's mind in a state of confusion e.t.c. See 3.10 for mirror scene.

• We changed the music at 1.54 and turned it's volume down, we also cut out the OTT breathing shot.
• We did a complete overhaul on the next scene, changing the lighting, adjusting the contrast in final cut, make the storyline much easier to follow and added a sound bridge rather than the simple shots of chris and rose talking. The simplification of this scene totally changed the film, the shakey camera also is not present anymore.
• At 3.03 we got rid of the original sound effects of footsteps but instead increased the volume of the track which made a totally realistic sound.
• We decieded to keep the out of focus POV shot at 3.34, the reason behind this was because it show's Chris's haziness and confusion, also the regret for what he has done, blur's his vision which prevents him from working.
• We altered the contrast of the garden scene at 4.17 onwards to compliment the natural lighting of the outdoors.
• We did deliberately knock the camera when Rose dies, this shows an imbalance has been caused at the shake represents an earthquake, and the destruction of a relationship.
• We altered the brightness of the scene where adam crushes the rose so it is much more eaily seen.
• We again changed the freeze frame by altering the brightness so it is much more easily seen.
• We also added the credits at the end to apply to traditional film conventions.

Passion of a bleeding rose: Rough cut

Here is the rough cut for passion of a bleeding rose short film, of which me and my film crew have created.  I posted the film on social networking site Facebook, and asked for feedback as well as the feedback given from Mr Hood and various other people.

• Is the Binary Production ident best placed in the top left corner of the screen? Great ident though.
• After ident, music starts a little abruptly.
• Love the style of the titles, but I would like to see them fade or cross-fade rather than 'snap' shut. That would maintain the romantic feel of the titles and the romantic pace I think.
• Good choice of font for the titles; very floristy (is that even a word?)
• I didn't have time to read all of the individual titles; they go too quick. I know you are over on time, but you need to consider this (you may decide to dismiss this observation, but at least consider it).
• Camera isn't steady on the clock shot.
• Out of focus POV shot works well, but I think it needs to come into focus sooner. Perhaps accompany the out of focus stuff with a yawn so the meaning is clear to the viewer.
• Camera moves a little between the 'getting dressed' jump shots. Watch the mirror frame! Find some real examples in real films of this effect and research it.
• Good MOA as Adam leaves the bathroom.
• Chopping of music and OTT breathing effect doesn't work at 1.54. Easily solved.
• Who kicks the tripod just as Adam opens the bedroom door?
• Also, the changes in colour between the 'sleeping mom' shot and 'door opening' shot are a little distracting (sleeping mom looks like night vision lens).
• Kitchen scene a little too dark maybe. Camera struggling to focus.
• Ambient sound 'kicks' in at 2.42.
• Adam blocks mom's dialogue at 2.48. Perhaps an angle change was required (perhaps a close-up of mom's face when saying the dialogue).
• Unrealistic footsteps at 3.03; out of time with Adam's movement.
• Why is he still walking on gravel when first arriving at work? And why don't the footsteps fade as he moves away from the camera (the viewer)?
• Window and computer shots are out of focus. Are they meant to be? If so, why?
• Great shot at 3.48; the camera is the computer monitor!
• Love the zoom into the phone picture; very moving.
• Very professional crane shot of mom in the garden. Shame about the 'judder' at the end!
• Watch for changes in ambient sound when you change angle (for example, at 4.18).
• Dodgy lighting when looking up at mom picking the flower. You need to light from below to prevent her being in shadow. Contrasts too much with other shots in the scene.
• Better lighting at 4.36 (still shot from below though). Did the sun go in or something?
• Maybe we need some music or sound effect during the 'collapsing scene'. Something to represent the approaching doom of a near-death experience?
• Camera knock at 4.46 when mom collapses. Not deliberate is it?
• I think you need to show Adam finding mom collapsed so that the narrative makes complete sense. Then you can show him smelling and tossing the rose. (Don't know how this helps with the time issues though; you're already over time).
• Sudden ambient sound change at 5.41 is really distracting.
• Focussing issues at around 5.52.
• Love the freeze frame at the end. Shame it's so dark though.
• What about the credits?
• I think your issues here are to do with lighting and sound. Is it vital that these scenes are at night? Would they not work just as well in the daytime? That would solve many of your issues. Sound issues can be sorted with overdubs (including ambient sound). Also, some focussing issues connected to lighting. One of two shots require a more steady hand or the use of a tripod.
• I think a re-edit, with some rearranging of scenes/shots, would allow you to present the same story in less time. Would also give you plenty to evaluate!
• Some excellent stuff here, but occasional basic errors (including the fact there are no credits, lighting issues and it is significantly over the time limit) means that you will be slaughtered on the marking. Consequently, I'm not going to suggest a mark for the film in its current form; how would that be helpful? I'm going to wait until you've turned this highly creative idea and rough cut into a masterpiece!
• Seriously, you have the ingredients for a top film here, but you need to be more 'fussy' in the execution of the camerawork.

We will address these issues immediately when we create our final cut. I found the rough cut an important part of the process of filming because it allows room for improvement during the final film creation process.

The filming process

Here I have commented on the filming process, keeping track of our film construction process.

19/01/2012- Everyone present bar Sam Beckett.
Based upon a rough shooting schedule we decided to film the outdoor shots, with Rose's death. For this we needed the camera crane, and due to some set-up issues we were delayed 30 mins.We then began to shoot establishing shots and basic crane shots, we had to immediately re-shoot certain clips because of judder and shaky camera. However we persevered and managed to complete the shooting by 5:30. We also had some high angle and low angle shots, and thanks to my mum's acting we had excellent scene.

21/01/2012- Only myself present.
Only a few shots were taken today, due to lack of equipment, and crew. However we managed to film several bits and pieces, a low angle shot, high angle, shot reverse shot and tracking dolly shot. Filming finished at 11:00am.

1/02/2012- Everyone present bar Demi Alcock.
I set up the scene placing a chair, desk, laptop and whiteboard to make it look like an office. We did several panning shots, however problems with the camera focusing  delayed us by 10 minuets. We chose to do an interesting camera shot of Adam looking at his computer but from the computers perspective. The entire shoot took 2 hours. The main problems we faced were focusing issues and continuity issues, we resolved these by sitting down addressing the camera problems and sorting them out, and we had to re-shoot some of the clips to avoid continuity errors.

7/02/2012- Only Tom Fisher and myself present.
We used the Ramada hotel for the walking to work shots, this was relatively easy panning and no problems arose, we completed it in 2 takes. The next area to shoot was at my house. We obeyed the shooting schedule and started in the bedroom, Chris waking up scene. I come up with idea of blurring the lens by going slightly out of focus, to show Chris being tired. We then continued to shoot in the bathroom, with an interesting mirror shot, which was hard to shoot but eventually after several takes we got a perfect clip of Chris getting changed without any continuity issues or similar problems, we finished at around 6:00pm.

Passion of a bleeding rose animatic

An animatic is required and key to the filming process, here is ours, it will allow us to remind ourselves if anything we have missed during film, it is an animated rough of our film, in major blockbusters it is a fully animated sequence and contains the basic music of the film SFX, e.t.c.


Our contains the storyboard without description cut and chopped into a final sequence using final cut.

Storyboard for passion of a bleeding rose

This is our storyboard for our film, it will help give us an idea what scenes will ideally look like, what shots will be used, frame positioning and gives us an overview document during filming. Although it is not closely followed it does give us a rough guide on what shot is when and what we will have to during the filming of that shot.
Binary Productions Storyboard

Final script for passion of a bleeding rose

Although our film is a short and a trend for a short isn't to contain much dialogue, however challenging this convention was an interesting idea and thought that it provides a storyline with depth and a better more easily focussed plot to our target audience.
Script POBR

Research into our film's genre

The original idea for our groups film was a thriller, this was because of our advanced knowledge of genre from AS media studies. We wanted it to be psychological and cerebral, a film which was action based but made you think, immediately we decided on researching films of this sub genre.

The butterfly effect was just one of these films. Its cerebral message of chaos theory made the audience think and we took several ideas and conventions from this film.

• We liked the whole parallel universe idea and thought that it would place the psychological idea nicely in our film.
• The entire trailer seems to be action packed and much like a chase.
• The music score is typically thriller.

We didn't end up taking all the thriller conventions, because it just wouldn't suit the plot of the film but we did take the parallel universe idea and made it a major part of our production.

Donnie Darko was once again another cerebral film, although not technically a thriller it still contained many conventions of one and was important to us nonetheless.

• The thriller convention of the knife, which we used in our AS film, was a good idea.
• The psychiatrist element would also be a good plot for a protagonist Chris to encounter.
• The use of sound bridges was also something that our film could have.
• The theme of fire was also nice and shows insanity of Donnie Darko.

Once again we didn't take many of the conventions or ideas of this film rather challenged them, we decided that the knife was so typical in a thriller so we decided on scrapping it and replacing the knife with an unusual weapon, wulfurin which is poisonous and after research into euthanasia we chose that to be our weapon, which is extremely unorthodox.

We also decided that we didn't want our lead protagonist (chris) to be seen as mentally unstable but confused, and mentally exhausted about looking after his mother once again deciding against the whole psychiatrist element.

After much review of our treatment we thought adult drama or 'kitchen-sink drama' seemed a more appropriate genre for our film.

The plot is very realistic and is a genre typical to england, the themes are relativity similar to our film's and that is mainly it, the conventions are from psychological thrillers though.

Shooting schedule

Here is our shooting schedule required for filming, it gives us an idea when we can film, sadly due to debbie's illness and various other hurdles we couldn't keep to it all the time.

Shooting Schedule Binary Productions

Costume, cast and props.

In our film based upon the character of rose, we chose Debbie sweet to play her, due to her knowledge on the character and illness and her looks/features suited the role perfectly. The character 'chris' was some-what harder to cast due to lack of interest when we were looking for actors, and the person best suited for the role dropped out on us, chris was meant to have dark hair and wear smart workwear. So we went to a back up plan and chose an actor who was interested in the role, and he was good at playing the character too.

Rose will be wearing a blue dressing gown, slippers, an oxygen mask, and she will have messy bed hair. We chose this because we want to present her illness to the audience, as soon as she is on camera she immediately can be seen as ill.

Chris will wear a white shirt with black pinstripes, tie, black trousers, smart shoes and a messenger bag, to show he is going to work.

The main props in our film are the dinner tray, cups, sugar, milk, laptop, folder and papers. But there are 3 significant props, the rose, which is the inanimate symbol of 'rose's character, keep calm and carry on which is a prominent prop as it is symbolic of chris's thoughts, and the phone which shows a picture of rose, and makes chris feel regret and remorse.

Location research

When filming it important to research the locations you will use, although in most major blockbusters many scenes are staged and don't rely on weather conditions, acts of nature e.t.c. And also it is used to perfect the scenes. Shorts on the other hand, due to usually a small budget would rather shoot on location, due to cost effectiveness and the chance factor that lighting may be perfect for the scene e.t.c.

The American television show 'Lost' used the beaches of Hawaii and then staged scenes for a large majority of the series, due to an extremely large budget it could afford these areas. This compared to the 'blair witch project' which had a very small budget, it was all shot on location, in a forest.

We decided to use my house for filming, this was due to my house containing necassery props e.g. Oxygen machine and set requirements such as a large garden containing flowers. Sadly i cannot upload the images required due to technology fault.

Film Treatment first and final draft

This our first and final draft of our treatment for our short film, 'Passion Of A Bleeding Rose'. Our treatment contains, a full storyline and information which we help guide us throughout the development of our film.

A passion of a bleeding Rose film treatment

Workflow for film construction

Here is a workflow for the contructuion of our film which includes what order we will take to create our masterpiece!
Binary Productions Workflow

MY GROUP!

Hello, my group this year consists of Samuel Beckett who is our movie director. We decided this because he has an excellent command and awesome ideas on how the movie should run its course and finally he understands what an audience wants to see.

Sam B A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

Tom Fisher, who will be scriptwriter and storyboarding, this is because his ideas are extraordinary and is very good at presenting his ideas.

Tom A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

Demi Alcock, will be costume and artistic director, due to her excelling in dramatic theatre and her knowledge of stage e.t.c.



And finally, I, Josh Clarke will be chief editor/lighting/sound in post-production. I felt i should take up this role because of my knowledge of mac's and final cut editing software.

Josh A2 Treatment Pitch from Gavin Hood on Vimeo.

We have several ideas in mind which will be posted shortly.

A basic storyboard to accompany my treatment for film.

Passion of a Bleeding Rose-1

A film treatment for the passion of a bleeding rose

A Film Treatment for Passion of a Bleeding Rose

My film ideas

Over the summer I have contemplated several film ideas, from party related movies to murder, however I hit a writers block when developing my ideas. So to counteract this I took note of current events in the news and documentaries that could be adapted and changed to create a short film. They are as follows.

London riots. (troubled youth)
Libya crisis (conflict)
Women that kill (murder and psychological problems)
Stalkers.
Global warming.
Global economy.

My first Idea was about a down on his luck banker contemplating suicide, however I felt this may be too dark and too emotional and seeing as though It's still too hot to touch.

I deceided to go with the stalker idea. But challenging the convention of a male stalker who harasses the woman, I changed it to a female stalker. I did this because I felt a woman could portray more anger and emotional issues and can actually be much scarier than the male counterparts.

Chanllenging Conventions.

Having a female stalker than a male.

Inciting fear without any weapons.

Powerless male.

The change of roles from the impenetrable untouchable male to weak degraded male.

The sympathy to the villain, in this case the stalker.

Advanced Camera techniques to put to use in A2

Crane shot- Typically a camera on a crane, although it is quite common to be attached to poles and boom arms this is much cheaper than being placed on a crane, and is much easier to maneuver but at the cost of reach. They are most commonly used during emotional and end scenes. They are not just used in films but are now used in sports, in boxing arenas e.t.c.

An example of a crane shot is in Richard Attenboroughs Oh! what a lovely war, in an emotional end sequence there is a shot of single grave and the crane is pulled backwards to reveal many identical ones.



Camera panning- basically, the horizontal movement or rotation of a video camera it is used in almost every film created and can be combined with several other techniques such as zooming to emphasize or de-emphasize a subject.

Tracking- Using a dolly (a small wheel vehicle with a tripod included on top, attached to a track) they are often used in running sequences and car chases. the shot itself has to be perpendicular to the camera lens axis. it provides a sense of realistic motion. the table below shows example of human motion at different speeds, including camera frames.

	Miles per hour	Feet per second	Number of Frames to move 10 feet at 30 fps
Casual stroll	2	2.9	102
Average walk	3	4.4	68
Brisk walk	4	5.9	51
Average jog	6	8.8	34
Average run	8	11.7	26
All out sprint	12	17.6	17
Car	30	44	7

Zoom- Zoom lenses on cameras allow cinematographers to give close up shots of subjects without moving the camera, however using this technique you submit clarity, definition and focus. However it can be used to create a very interesting effect known as the 'vertigo' effect. To create this shot you must synchronize the movement of the subject with the zoom so that the subject is always the same size but the background changes. Here is an example of the technique used in alfred hitchcock's vertigo.

First post: learning and experience

Hello again blogger! From studying AS media last year I learnt a variety of things such as camera techniques, for example panning, tracking, field of view and 3 point lighting techniques. I also learnt how to write a script and a treatment, for a feature length film, I have also become very capable using post production editing suites, final cut, livetype, adobe Photoshop and soundtrack pro on Apple iMac.
The most valuable skill however was time management, learning how to manage filming time to editing time and create the final film within two weeks.

This year I am going to provide triple the effort especially with my blogging and it's technique, this is why I am going to post during the holiday we have off to practice and hone my skills.