RESEARCH: GREEN SCREEN

In todays lesson, in order to research different ways of creating environments in film, we were shown how to create green screen and implement it into our film. We learnt how to set up a green screen using a green piece of cloth attatched to a black frame. It is used to take one image or video of a person and transform it against the green screen so it appears that the character is in another location via a pre taken photo.
This works by using two layers, the front (or top) layer being used for the primary filming of the character and the second layer used for the background image (similar to layering in photoshop). The app Green Screen by Do Ink is used to combine the two seperate images into one by layering, meaning that it is easy to access and easy to use. The finished video will be in 1080p.

PLANNING: MAGAZINE COVER

In order to create my magazine cover, I have been researching a varity of well known film magazines to gain an idea of the magazine cover conventions that I must use for my film magazine. I decided that my Film Magazine will be entitled Shoot!. The reason I chose this name was to convey the term widely used for practical filming. My Magazine Cover is heavily inspired by various Entertainment Weekly magazine covers, primarily its August 2006 cover featuring Hugh Laurie in character as Gregory House in the main image. My magazine cover will feature the protagonist (PI Andrews) in the main image with a gun in his hand, looking towards the camera and taking up most of the space on the cover.


In order to construct my magazine cover, I will carry out a photoshoot to attain the main image against a white background so that it is easy to photoshop other images onto it. As most magazine covers use a Rule of Three when it comes to main colours, I will do the same, with my three colours being blue, white and yellow. I decided that my magazine cover will also feature genre conventions such as direct address, a tagline and additional information about the film.

CONSTRUCTION: MAKING PROPS

For our genre of film, verisimilitude is vital. We needed to have props that looked very convincing and mysterious, such as blood covered possessions that belonged to the cult. The most significant of these was an old foreign market stamp that we painted over with crimson in a patchy texture in order to emulate blood. this makes an important part of a shot in the trailer in which PI Andrews finds the mysterious object covered in blood, which gives clues to the investigation.

It ultimately enabled the film to look much more professional due to constructing our own props, and it flowed greatly in the scene in which it features rather than looking out of place.

CONSTRUCTION: COLOUR CORRECTION

As part of the editing for our film, we found it necessary to colour correct parts of the film to make it look more realistic. the prime example of this was in using colour correction to change the colour of the nozzle of our prop gun from red to black. To achieve this in FinalCut Pro, we created a shape mask around the tip of the gun using an eyedrops to get the correct colour, increasing the softness and reducing the vibrancy and saturation of the tip to create the grey/black tip of the gun. This was extremely beneficial as it enabled us to transform an obviously fake looking prop into something that looked far more realistic, thus enhancing the realism of the film.