TA DAAAA!

Well this is it. All in all it took us five weeks, running at a total of about 30 hours. That's ten hours work for each minute of video!

Planning took about 12hrs, story boarding, risk assessing, organizing the shooting schedule and delegating roles and responsibility. We were fortunate that there were only three of us involved, this kept the logistics simple and easy to arrange.

The quickest and easiest part was the filming itself. This made up about 2 hours (5.5 with makeup).
With no moving camera shots, tracking or focus changes, we only had to rehearse the on screen action.

The rest of the time was made up with editing and post production



We hope you have found this resource a useful teaching and learning aid, and look forward to your comments on our posts!

Dialogue

Sound

Wahoo! with the video done we can start recording sound effects and adding our soundtrack. Don't be afraid to layer up lots of sound on your first edit. You can always take away when you come to mixing.

Titles

Color Grading

When you are happy with your cuts, and any FX shots have been processed, you should send your project to Color. Secondary colour correction can add a 'feel' to your movie otherwise unobtainable.

We chose a Green tint for our mid tones, and lots of black, emulating movies such as Lord of the Rings, Sucker Punch, and the Matrix. By adding film grain, a vignette and black bars, we were able to give our movie more of a 'film' look.

From Camera

Processed FX shot

Processed in Color

FX Shot 2 - Hole Through Body

FX Shot 1 - Punch In The Face

Upload and First Cut

Its important that you make an initial basic edit of your film. This enables you to see how your shots relate to each other, and lets you determine the 'pace' of your edits. 

Its very important that your cuts happen not only when the action requires it but rhythmically so the viewer is comfortable enough to make sense of what they are seeing.

You can see from the video above that we added three shots to the front of our movie, establishing that we were late at work and things were taking ages (i feel like i spend half my life waiting for progress bars). We used fast cuts to grab the viewers attention - hopefully we will hold that attention for the whole 2 minutes!

Production Day 2

Thats a wrap people...

Actually they were chicken and bacon sandwiches (thanks Andy) but thats beside the point!

Thanks to our planning, we shot the whole sequence -with makeup, fx shots and spare background shots-   in about five and a half hours. Sticking to our storyboard and shooting schedule, we knew who and what needed to be where and when. We even added a few shots for luck!

So now the fun begins, about an hour of uploading footage before the real work starts - Post Production!

Production Day 1

Completing a Risk Assessment

Makeup Screen Test

Its a good idea before you start shooting to see your characters / makeup / costumes / effects on camera. What looks amazing to the eye can be completely missed by a cameras sensor,  colours and depth will also be perceived in a different way.

 You can see in the video how the 'pale' foundation colour glows white when filmed  under lighting, whereas the dark purple shadows make Ross face glow blue in natural light.

For the shoot we are going to stick to browns and greens, as we are filming both by a window and in a corridor, we don't want our zombies changing colour!

For a more natural effect we are going to 'speckle' the base skin tone using yellows and a little blue. For this we need a couple of tube makeups so we

can 'flick' them on with a brush.

Whilst the stipple sponge is great close up, you cant see the blown veins around ross eyes, so we may also use the brush technique for blood spatter.

The torn latex skin works well, but the edges need better feathering - a thicker coat of latex will allow this.

The blood was also good (and quite tasty!) but needs some form of chopped oats to add chewed flesh texture. 

All in all a good test, we know what we need to change and how we want the shots to look!

Producing a Recce Report

You'll need to download the 'recce report template' from Platform One.

Making a Hole - Screen test

Its like Halloween Art Attack!

Storyboard Pre Vis

Initial Idea & Storyboard

2min Opening Sequence

This blog is aimed at those of you who are lucky enough to have been given the task of creating a 2min opening movie sequence. By recording one ourselves, we hope to show you the process from initial ideas through to the final edit.

To keep things simple, we are filming the whole thing at Suffolk One, and taking on all the tasks ourselves.

We have enlisted Andy Culham from Foundation Learning to appear in our film, as he is just as geeky about movies as we are!

So the three of us will be planning, storyboarding, Risk assessing, Prop making, Acting, Filming, Editing, Audio recording.....

We hope you find this a useful resource, and look forward to seeing your own work!