Au Nom Du Peuple - Final

I've finally finished my short film! Overall I'm very happy with the outcome. One of my biggest strengths is the use of different colour palettes. Especially compared to my work last year, the colours I've use are much more consistent. Furthermore, where I didn't put much thought into colour palettes last year, in this film the colours look much more to a professional standard. I feel like I've moved a lot closer to having my own artistic style.

I'm proud of the film I've made, after many storyline revisions, my narrative finally tells the message I wanted to provide. When I had originally drafted my narrative, there wasn't much of a point to the story. I think by having the main characters involved in a terror attack it reinforced media stereotypes rather than reduce them. Instead, my story is now framed around the destructive effects of mass media.

After showing others my film, I've received positive feedback. Moreover they understand the deeper message. It's also been nice to hear that others have noticed the little details that I've used and to appreciate the hard work that I've put in.

I've made the YouTube video public for anyone to watch and added a lot of tags to increase its potential at being viewed. I would also like to upload it to Vimeo, as this platform seems to be more for filmmakers. However I would either need to convert my video into a smaller file size, or upgrade my account to the Premium version. If I did this I could submit my film to other websites which host short films, such as Short of the Week.

Recording Additional Sounds

Today I recorded a few more sounds that I needed to add to my film.

The video above shows me in the sound studios, using the microphone and Adobe Audition. This sound effect will be used in Scene 2, when Alecia taps on the bridge.

I also recorded a few more sounds:

• Footsteps on carpet
• Alecia gasping
• Alecia whimpering
• Manon grunting

Week 11: Progress

Strengths

• I'm happy with the pacing of the opening scene and think it flows well with the music
• I've added another sound effect of wind to the opening to further connote the emptiness in the city

Need to improve:

• Change the colour of the subtitles as it's hard to read at times
• Add more sound effects during the third scene

Scene 3 amendments

Made changes to some of the backgrounds which were in a low resolution.

Improved the news sequence with the explosion

I followed this tutorial:

• I really liked the look of the explosion in this tutorial. However like many others it required me to download the following plugin: http://www.redgiant.com/products/trapcode-suite/resources/
• I could not afford to buy the plugin ($399!!!), so I got the free trial
• I skipped the first half of the tutorial, as my explosion was not coming out of a visible bomb

• After creating my own explosions I added these to my already existing composition
• I think these look much more effective that the shape layer I used before
• My only issue is that I believe because I used a free trial it appeared to have a large red X on the layer
• I managed to mask over the red X for the most part, but it is still slightly visible
• Hopefully this won't be too noticeable, as I still think the overall effect looks good

Week 11: Scheduling

I've created a schedule for this week in order to plan my time. I'm hoping to get most of the components for this module nearly finished by the end of the week, so that I can start working on my other module next week. I've split up my tasks into different days so hopefully I should be able to get everything done.

Week 11: Tutorials

Workshop

• 00:38 - brochure pic
• More bounce on book kick
• Eyes going across and then hold
• Faster head tilt Alecia
• Move Marine's hand faster

Practical

• Timing on actions - walk cycles can be shorter etc

Title ideas:

Most people, including Paul, suggested that I give my piece a French title, therefore I tried to come up with something..

Easter week 2: Progress

This week I have been working solidly on production. I've put together the rest of scene two and added to scene 3. I still need to finish the conclusion.

Inspiration:

Process:

• I took inspiration from different newspapers I'd seen online
• I used the image trace to embed real pictures onto the cover of the papers
• I used photoshop to replicate the newspapers

Where I am now:

Strengths:

• I'm much happier with the narrative and I think it makes sense
• Although I haven't added much sound I think what I have so far works pretty well

Need to improve:

• Add titles to the beginning - could use wind sounds
• 00:31 - improve Manon's walk
• 00:33 - amend background colour
• 00:35 needs to be a shot in between
• 01:01 fix Manon's weird arm
• Add backgrounds (blue screens)
• 02:32 Fix animation of  explosion
• Add another shot to the ending