Final filming: Hyde Scenes

At 5pm on Tuesday the 29th of January, We met up to film the scenes involving Hyde. We had scheduled this a couple of times before but due to snow and other complications, we had not been able to film. We needed the scene to be at night so we scheduled a time where it would be dark outside. The first complication we came across was the main cobbled area we wanted to use had all kinds of construction works happening. We did however find several other locations that were perfect for filming, They may not necessarily look like structures from the 40's but certainly look no later than that. We filmed several scenes of him walking which splits the Jekyll scenes up to make it more interesting, and also explains the murder a bit more. A scene we were forced to scrap was the first scene of the body with Hyde standing over it. We did however adapt the footage we got of it to imply a person on the edge of death looking up to see Hyde. This automatically identifies him as the Antagonist. Another issue we had was the fake blood. We had not checked how the blood looked beforehand and when we used it, we realized it was too light .

A scene which I am very proud of is the shadow scene, we had the idea of Hyde revealing the gun whilst we saw the shadow of him doing so. I believe this is one of the better shots we filmed if not the best and it helps with continuity quite a lot more as it explains the gun.

We had to improvise a lot of the locations for the shots that we filmed. Whilst e knew the actual location of the shots, We didn't plan where it would actually be, rather we had hoped we would find some good places that would look good and earlier than the 1940's.

All in all, I think the filming was excellent and we produced some quality results. We are in the process of final editing and these scenes really help it to flow and establish the enigma.

Planning the OTS

For the storyline of our film, we have chosen the concept storyline of Jekyll and Hyde.We have used this as it is not only an intriguing story but allows quite a lot of adaptation to make it film noir and stray completely from the original novel to produce an original take on a classic story.

We have only cast one actor so far, we have chosen Joseph Keeley for the part of Jekyll as he is a great voice actor and the sequence relies heavily on the monolugue.

Our Opening Title Sequence has gone through several series of changes mainly because of the problems with time and continuity.

So Far, the storyboard has been changed several times. First of all, we have changed Jekyll's location from a confessions room from a church to a desk in his study. This was due to the fact we would have had quite a hard time to obtain time to film in a confessions room. This would also have meant having to cast an older man to play a Priest which we wouldn't have bee able to cast properly.

We have changed the profession of Jekyll's character from Detective to a Journalism student to compensate for him looking as young as he is. This also means we have less issues with the costume.

The main adaptation was the monologue scene. This is the majority of Jekyll's camera time. We originally had him leaving a message on an answer phone to his lover. We later realized that there was no answer phone system in the 40's and we had to adapt it. He cannot reach her so writes a telegram instead. This was a huge faux pas on our part but we have made the adaptations in time

Focus Group

On the 8th of February, we presented our Opening title sequence to the rest of our media class. We also showed them an alternative style to produce the credits. We then left them with prompt questions and filmed them answering them as well as them leaving feedback and expressing concerns that they had. The video is found here:

   Feedback from Sam SheepDawg-OEight on Vimeo.

I am extremely happy with the way it was received by everyone and they didn't bring up any issues we weren't expecting. They were obviously interested and they said they would watch the whole film. We are in the process of distinguishing Hyde as we are putting his scenes in black and white and adding some distortion. There are other issues that we noticed but they didn't (e.g. synchronization of sound) and we are resolving them.

Music Piece

It has come to a point in our editing where we are considering adding the music to it, as the music has been a side note and not a concern so far, we had not written anything for it. We had always had the ideas for what we wanted it to sound like. We wanted a very jazzy, atmospheric piece with piano and jazz guitar.

The video shown below shows a piece of piano which is along the sorts of the desired music. However, it is too quick and flashy for what we want so we would produce the final piece as a more simple version of this with drums, guitar and bass guitar.



The music will have to be at least a minute and a half long to give something to work with for the majority of the sequence.

Our musical experience has been our advantage here, me and James play and own guitars, I can play bass and he plays piano. James also has experience with music software such as GarageBand so we can simulate the instruments we cannot play.

Editing

Amongst all the time in lessons we have had to edit, I have been coming to the mac suite in my lunchtimes with Matt and James. I have now spent an hour editing in my free periods and will be spending the next two hours editing as well. This will ensure we will have the rough edit ready for friday in which we present it to the rest of the media group. The main editing issue we have had has been audio. We have had issues with synchronizing the sound with the video. The main worry was the lighter scene which has three sound effects per cycle and it was out of time. Now the issue is sorted out and the video is in sync with the audio. We have also had trouble with the footsteps as Audacity's noise removal feature removes the footsteps as well as the wind so we may need to recreate the sound ourselves.

The lighter scene is where the actors names are shown

Another issue we have had is that currently, our title sequence extends our limit of two minutes. We have been deleting and shortening the clips to necessity which had made the scenes more interesting (the Phone and writing scenes for example).

Our full timeline lasts 2:05:11 in total

I have been editing the sound and adding titles and to my surprise, it has been relatively easy and I believe that with the others' help this lunchtime, I believe we could have a near finished piece by the end of today.

UPDATE 7th February:
We have shown Ms Moore (one of our media teachers) the OTS as far as we have got it. She had a few positive things to say about the video but also had some constructive criticism. She said it was not obvious enough who was who in the scenes and we needed to contrast it more. She also said that the lighting in the Jekyll scenes varied too much and it looked strange. There were also parts of silence in the voiceover that she picked up on and said that she thought they were there either on purpose or there was nothing to say. We realized that we could make the silence a lot shorter and we are now in the process of doing so. Another thing she said was the titles were an anticlimax and said it was a let down after the title 'Hide' and the lighter scene itself just to have plain titles in the corner but we explained they were only temporary, we showed her the idea Matthew recorded and she said that it looked a lot more creative. The credits Matthew filmed are found here:

http://asmediastudiesmatthewevans.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/creating-credits.html

She was concerned that although we have edited the sound a lot, the video editing and camera work was a bit simple. We showed her a scene we were going to put in featuring jump cuts and she liked it.

All in all, I am happy with the feedback we received as they are all small things that were either temporary or small things we could easily resolve.

Filming Day

On the 2nd of January, we all went to James's house as we had previously arranged. This is because the furniture of the living room is quite old, the room is spacious and we had complete control of the light. We all had separate roles according to necessity and strengths. I was in charge of lights as I owned a studio light and I have had experience with lighting before. James was in charge of camera operation as he had the most experience and he did most of the storyboard so he is most aware of the camera angles. Matt chose to direct the filming as he wanted to be in charge of what scenes we filmed as he was very focused on getting the job done properly.

Throughout the day, I was checking for any issues in the lighting in shot, too often was there too much light, then not enough. Through proper placement of the lights available to us, we were able to resolve these issues.

I believe we got a lot done in the hours we spent there. We worked well eliminating the scenes to film and filming them more than once as we wanted to play around with the areas open to interpretation left from the storyboard. This led to minor conflicts which were resolved quickly.

The actors were more than co-operative, Following exact instructions and more than happy to commit the time to us.

This doesn't mean the day went off with only minor issues. Problems came about that we needed to resolve quickly or it would seriously affect the filming.

The first problem we faced was the light. We couldn't have the studio light the way we had originally planned as it was too bright even with cover. I had to improvise and move it as far away as possible and  face the light the other way so it reflected most of the light away. This wasn't desirable but we achieved the effect we wanted.

Another problem was the room itself. Whilst there was a lot of furniture that suited the era of the 1940's, there was also a lot we had to move out of shot so it looked like a room in the 1940's.

The main problem however, was time. We had about four hours to set up, film and go. This put pressure on us and meant that the initial setup was quite stressful, especially when we had realised we hadn't thought of things (an Inkwell etc.). We did however combat these issues and we came out with solutions that fit the problem.

All in all, the filming day was a huge success as we filmed the majority of the sequence and we achieved some really nice shots.

Camerawork

We have recently talked about how we are going to film our OTS. We had some ideas when we created the storyboard but we had never considered it properly. We have decided to make it simple as this is typical in a lot of Noir films. It will feature close ups, mid shots, tilts and pans along with other simple yet effective camera angles. This means that the audience will not be daunted with strange angles as well as us being able to focus on the content and story within the camerawork. We may experiment with reverse tracking but we will not depend on it.

Fear of not following convention

For a while we have known the film (and particularly the sequence) was not going to follow typical Film Noir conventions. This was mainly because we had adapted a gothic horror story. This has become an increasing worry to us and we are now really concerned.

We were originally reassured by the fact we had kept to certain conventions. The conventions are as follows:

• We were using a black and white filter
• We were setting it in the original sequence
• The story and characters are very similar to the typical film noir (Anti-Hero, Femme Fatale). 
• We have experimented with Chiaroscuro 

The issues we have had so far:

• We haven't filmed it as a typical film noir (e.g. focus pulls)
• The title sequence itself doesn't boast much iconography apart from the handgun.

We have also had the issue of how the title of the film hide should come up in the sequence. The examples shown below are typical of titles in noir Films. We do not believe that the style would fit in with the tone of the film.

This is the sort of font we want for the title but we fear we will lose even more touch with  the conventions.

Presenting in Assembly

On the 4th of March, we presented our final OTS to our entire year group. James handed out questionnaires to students and Matt introduced our OTS and operated the computer while I filmed from upstairs on the balcony. We had no tripod so it is freehand and the lights were on for a few seconds. The video was rather dark and this interfered with the clarity of the film. The feedback we received was all very positive. The production meeting after the assembly that discusses the feedback we recieved can be found here:
http://asmediastudiesjamesivett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/production-meeting-focus-group.html

Big focus group assembly from Matthew Evans on Vimeo.

Final OTS

This is our final OTS and this is the version we showed our year in assembly.
Post on the assembly to follow
Hide - Final OTS from James on Vimeo.

Survey

James has used the online surveying tool 'Survey monkey' to create a survey for all that watch the OTS.  He has chosen questions that we needed to be answered from our general demographic as opposed to our media group (which we have already received feedback from). We will be using a shorter version for when we show our OTS to the entire year group in assembly on monday.
His post and survey can be found here:

http://asmediastudiesjamesivett.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/feedback-survey.html

Evaluation

For my evaluation, I used Prezi and embedded videos into it. Enjoy!

Behind the scenes: Filming Hyde's scenes

Matt has spent the majority of the filming time recording the happenings and planning that went into the filming days amongst filming and directing. This is the behind the scenes video of the second filming session where we filmed the majority of Hyde's scenes. My post on the day can be found here: http://asmediastudiessamshepherd.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/final-filming-hyde-scenes.html

There will be another video for the first filming day but there is much more that Matt will need to edit and he has faced many issues editing it. His post on editing the video as well as the actual video can be found here:
Behind the scenes from Matthew Evans on Vimeo.
http://asmediastudiesmatthewevans.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/behind-behind-scenes.html

Editing to near completion & Contrast between scenes

For the last week or so, the group have been coming up at lunchtime and during free periods to edit our Opening Title Sequence. We have been doing this either to sort out continued issues with synchronizing the wild-track (added sounds) to the video or to build on the feedback we had received from the focus group a few days ago. The feedback has helped us see the issues that we have overlooked. The main issue being that there is no clear distinction between Hyde and Jekyll beyond costume. We knew this would be rather difficult as we are using one actor and we haven't seen Hyde's face so it just looks like he is wearing a hat. W are currently experimenting with zoom blur and bump distortion to show that although it may be the same physical being, he has clearly undergone some mental transformation. We have also added black and white filters to all of Hyde's scenes. The plan was to make the whole film black and white but it seems a good idea and adds contrast to areas it was previously lacking. This still meant that the Jekyll scenes looked like it was a modern film which we had hoped to avoid. We used inspiration from the neo-noir TV Drama Red Riding which uses a sepia filter to make it feel old. We have used this effect for the scenes starring Jekyll. This makes it seems warm and makes it feel a lot less sinister compared to the Hyde scenes

An example of sepia effect.

Gunshot sound

Since we have no access or experience with a gun, it was obvious from the start that we were going to have to recreate the gunshot using the art of Foleying (displayed here: http://asmediastudiesmatthewevans.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/art-of-foleying.html). We started with a juice carton and a blown up crisp packet. We realised we wanted a different sound as it was too weak and therefore was scrapped. We hit a ruler against a desk and then added a lot of reverb to get a decent sound. We found it too artificial so we tried stamping on large air pockets which we were very happy with the result, the result is found in the video below.

Recreating the Gunshot from Sam SheepDawg-OEight on Vimeo.

Production meeting (29/01/13)

This time we recorded the meeting on video and had Ms Humpleby there for prompts as last time we got a bit distracted and the content wasn't great
Production meeting 18th January from Sam SheepDawg-OEight on Vimeo.

Hide title

As Matt is easily the best at creating and manipulating photos, he has created the title itself for out title 'hide'. After showing us the first draft and then making changes according to our feedback, he has made a really nice looking graphic that is being used in our OTS.
http://asmediastudiesmatthewevans.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/today-on-photoshop.html

OTS Story line

For the film we are creating the opening title sequence for is going to be an adaptation of the classic goth horror story of 'Jekyll and Hyde'. We believe however that we have made enough adaptations to the story to make it original.

We have kept true to a few key concepts and changed the rest of the story. We are still using some of the names in the story (i.e. Jekyll, Hyde, Richard.) We have kept true to Jekyll changing to Hyde spontaneously and that Hyde murders Jekyll's lover.

However, we have changed many things about the story:

• Jekyll is no longer a scientist, he is a journalism student.
• Richard Enfield (a distant cousin of Utterson's) was murdered before the film starts as opposed to him playing a key part in the narrative.
• Gabriel Utterson is not the primary narrative, it is shown through Jekyll's eyes with flashbacks and clips of Hyde.
• Jekyll is investigating these murders since a close friend (Richard Enfield) was murdered and he thinks he is the only one interested anymore
• Jekyll does not know that he is also Hyde until very late in the story.
• The murders committed by Hyde are completely different to the ones written in the novel.
• Alexis (Jekyll's lover) Is murdered at the beginning of the film, rather than midway through the novel.