Colour Correcting (Opening Sequence)

When editing my Opening Sequence I realised that I would need to edit the colour of the shots, this was because the lighting in the market was bright making the scene colourful and happy. This didn't coincide with the theme and genre of my film which is meant to be dark and drama full. To make them coincide I decided to edit the colour. There were many choices on how to edit the clip and I wanted to make sure that each rush I used had the same colour effects otherwise it would make the film look disjointed and wouldn't run smoothly. I used the colour weal as this made it easier to choose the exact colour grades I wanted. It also made it easier to match the colours to each rush. As sometimes the lighting was different when putting the already colour graded fonts on it looked different on each rush. However editing them my self meant that this didn't happen. It also made my film look more professional as the colour grading was less obvious. When choosing what kind of colours I would use I first changed the saturation of the rushes to be less bright and more grey, this already had a more powerful effect as it set up the genre of the film as quite dark and scary. I then used the colour weal to give the rushes a more red feeling as this gave quite a harsh heat but went well with the saturation I chose as it added to the drama of the film and matched the genre better then no colour correcting.

Music Choice (Opening Sequence)

Music choosing:

I had a number of different tracks that I could of used in my opening sequence, each of them had a running theme in them as they were all middle eastern. I thought that using a middle eastern track would be more effective then a normal piece of tense music as it would add to the fact that it is set in Turkey. In each of the pieces of music that I found they each build in tension which would be perfect for my opening sequence as that is what i wanted and having a piece of music that mirrored this would add to the effect of it. The first piece of music I found had chimes in the beginning like in the piece of music I chose for mien. I really liked this effect at the beginning as it sounded like a market with all the trinkets clinking together. However this piece of music was too strong at the beginning and overpowering when the first part of my opening sequence was meant to be less tense. The second piece of music that I found was a MIRAGE piece. This I found was too dramatic as the tension was evident strongly from the beginning. Even though it would be perfect for the tension it didn't seem to work with mien. The third piece of music I found was a hip hop middle eastern piece which built tension but sounded more individual and when attached to my opening sequence it wasn't tense when I needed it to be. The one I settled on was perfect and even had a powerful ending with a woman's voice.

Music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIog_7ME_Lw extremely tense

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBXbIRgE0TQ  tense

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2cM6-caIRw hip hop

Music I used:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKAvItpF6h0

Issues On Shoot (Opening Sequence)

When shooting my opening sequence I came across a number of problems. The first kind of problem I had was when I was watching the footage over I realised that there was a lot of background noise, but not just from the people at the market, but from the friends I went there with. As I filmed a lot of the things I saw in the market the friends I was with were with me and their conversations could be heard in the background which meant that i had to cancel the sound out in those shots and take the sound from other clips to replace them if I needed sound. Another time this came up was when friends called for me to come when i was filming, so I had to fix this in the same way. Another problem was the characters messing around which took time away from doing serious filming work and was very distracting when I was trying to get a certain part done. This could of been because they got board quickly when i had to keep retaking things. Finally, I had the problem of obstacles I had on set. Like a dog lying down the path from the market to the van where the kidnapping would take place.

Another set of problems were the people in the market. They probably weren't use to someone filming them so a number of times I had people waving at the camera or looking directly at it which gave away the point that the camera wasn't meant to be there in the scene and is just recalling the events. There was even a time when a person came right up to the camera as I was filming a conversation of Lucy and a haggler which meant I missed the whole exchange.

There was also the problems of the actors. Like in the parents conversation the first take I took was the mother coming in and asking if he had seen the husband, she ran on to the set and started talking but no sound came out of her mouth as she thought she was lip sinking to a voice I had prerecorded. This distracted the other actor and showed that I hadn't properly told her what she was doing. We then had to redo the scene and make sure she understood what she was saying. Another problem I had when shooting this scene was when I was doing close ups of the characters speaking to get a different angle I found it amusing and would laugh or move the camera too fast.

The last problem I had was when filming the kidnap scene. This provided much amusement to us and the others around who weren't part of the 'crew'. It took about four shots to get the scene as either the actors, or me, would start to laugh. As everyone who was in my opening sequence knew each other when filming it was very funny especially when they would snatch Lucy. The first time we filmed the scene Lucy didn't know there was going to be a second guy so laughed and stumbled which made everyone laugh. On another take the dog that was creating an obstacle before came onto set and stood in the middle for a while, no one wanted to touch it as it was a stray. It took a few times but eventually we got the scene.

The Problems from Kinvara Boorman on Vimeo.