Completed Film Opening

Preliminary Task

Evaluation

All of our group's evaluations, filed under our names, can be found here.

Production: Editing (Finished Opening)

Wik finished opening the editing and asked for audience feedback. The opening needed slight tweaks. Instead of creating a whole new edit, though, we decided to tweak the one we already had.

Before doing anything else with the footage I already had,
I researched how to stabilise shots (since some of the shots
we had, due to the tripod breaking during the first day of
filming, were extremely unstable). 

This sequence of shots, after consideration, looked not up
to the standard we expected - so instead, I only decided to use the
actual dripping shot, stabilising it so it would looks smooth
(in the meantime I also colour coded the clips, so it was easier to
distinguish between the 'workshop' and the 'murder scene' scenes)

More stabilisation - that shot was actually filmed with the
use of a tripod, but the warp stabiliser made it look
much smoother and pleasant (additionally, I started to align
the footage with the music markers).

Turned out it is impossible to apply both the stabiliser and the
speed change onto one clip, so I decided to stabilise it in a
separate sequence, export it, use the exported footage and
apply speed change over it. 

That clip also required some stabilising, but Premiere Pro
found it very hard to render footage properly in a long sequence,
so I created a new sequence and then stabilised it. 

Ater managing the first part of the opening (before the quick
audio markers began) I moved on to these clips (I changed
the order of the sequence in the process, so it fitted the
music better) - using them, even with the fast markers
meant slowing them down majorly (which was not actually
a very big problem after finding the optimum speed).

Stabilising that one particular clip was the most painful
procedure of all - the shot itself was extremely hard to film
and without prober equipment it was very hard to do what we have planned.
So I had to cut it pretty soon, so the jump isn't too 'aggressive'
and use the right stabilisation method so it doesn't warp it too unnaturally.

After many, many trials, I have finally managed to make it
look as good as it possibly could and exported it for further use.

After some scaling issues, I sped up the clip so it fits the music
markers (and cut it slightly more, so the little jump of the footage
is not as noticeable).

The actual changes to the footage did not want
to show up in After Effects so I had to
keep switching between Premiere Pro and
After Effects to actually see what I was doing. 

Then I moved on to the 'foam' footage - the clip I used for
the rough edit suddenly stopped working, so I had
to revisit After Effects (which, obviously, did not
want to cooperate): thankfully I took enough screenshots
of the rough edit process that the colour picking
wasn't a major issue (After Effects itself was). 

Eventually, I finally got around to aligning the footage properly:
turned out we did not film enough to fill in the whole of the pre-planned
audio clip, but that was not a major problem (I also got rid of the 'title
sequence' since it did not look as good as we wanted it to). 

Meanwhile Immy has finished most of the titles for the film,
so I was able to see how they'd look when placed over the footage. 

Then I decided to care of the sudden transition between the logo
and the actual beginning of the opening - the 'dip to black'
transition was the closest to our original idea, so I decided to use it!

I also ended up adding two more 'Pluton Productions' gifs at
the beginning, since the whole group agreed upon the fact it
looked way better that way. 

At that point, the audio clip broke around 15 times since
I started editing (every time I had to go back to the original project
and copy it over), so I finally made the smart decision of going
back to the Danse Macabre project and simply exporting it (and
then just aligning it with the marked audio clip in the opening project). 

It ended up looking like this and made my life
much, much easier. 

For each title I have created a separate photoshop file,
so it'd be easier to add them to the sequence individually. 

The whole group approved the un-titled footage, so I
decided to finally start adding the titles in! It didn't look
good when they just suddenly appear, so I decided to use the
cross dissolve transition on every one of them. 

I renamed every single clip (+ further colour coded them), so
it'd be easier to manipulate them if there was a need for that. 

Before placing any more titles I went back to the dancing
on the street clip and played around with flipping it and reversing
the speed etc. so it'd look better when shown
right after the previous clip. 

For most of the title placement process I toggle locked
the actual video footage and the audio so I couldn't accidentally
move it around, delete it or change its duration
(learned that the hard way).

Immy has also made the title of the film (and 'Pluton Production
Presents'), so I could put them over the footage (after the actual
clip of the light-box didn't look very good). 

Since the silence before the start of 'Danse Macabre'
didn't feel good, I decided to extract the audio from one of the
clips (during the filming, Emma was breathing through the gas
mask into the camera to simulate the killer's heavy breaths).

Two clips were too short so I had to add another one in, using
a slight crossfade in-between them, so the audio sounds smoother. 

I put the acid burn sound with the main title appearing at
the end (yet with Danse Macabre still playing under it, so
it doesn't sound that 'aggressive' (also, I had to make the acid
burn sound much quieter since the original clip was VERY loud). 

Emma has found a good sound effect to put
at the end of the opening (since we
didn't have enough footage the music had to be
cut earlier and we wanted to make it sound better).

My last correction was changing all of the titles' sizes to have the
same width to height ratio, so they look proportional. 

After adjusting the size ratios of the titles, I finally exported the
(what I thought at that time) finished opening into a MOV file.

  







   

Above is the rough edit; we thought we were finished, but after hearing professional feedback and rewatch, there were two issues that had to be addressed:

• the credits were too large to be broadcast on a cinema screen, and so we had to make them smaller
• the title screen needed to be moved, as it looked unprofessional and too much like a movie trailer at the end of the opening. However, we weren't happy with the title in general, and so decided to remove it completely.

After receiving feedback I went back to the sequence and
deleted the 'TOXIC' from the end, moving the 'Acid Burn'
audio clip and the faded music onto the last bit of footage -
it actually works much nicer with that particular clip!

I also went back to the beginning of the opening and together as
a group we decided to place the title of the film at that particular
moment - we thought it looked good and since it's the killer's
back, it also seemed appropriate! I also changed the sizes of the
titles (and the positioning of 'Pluton Productions'). 

After making sure all of the title ratios are the same, I exported
the corrected opening into the final version. This time, after
checking with Mr. Henton, we were sure the opening was
as good as it could possibly get.

Below is the very final version of our film opening:

Production: Editing (Rough Edit)

Before anything else (and even before the filming started), we have  cut
the music clip to our liking and put the markers on selected bars to
align the footage later on in the editing process.

You can see the marker at the point where the audio clip
was supposed to start playing. 

Here, all of the footage (excluding the final title)
 was simply cut and put in the correct order
(without touching any nuisances such as speed, stabilisation
or colour correction).

Since I wanted to have the pipette shot reverse, so here I just
made sure there is such a possibility! 

After consulting, I decided to add the Pluton Productions logo
before the actual opening began. 

I decided to reverse the second clip, so the footage looped
just like the original gif.

Using the gif twice seemed too rushed, so after consultation
I decided to put if in four times and bring the speed
down to 80%. 

I toggle locked the video footage and deleted all of the
unwanted audio clips, so the chosen audio
clip was clear and not disturbed by other sounds. 

I finally got around to duplicating and reversing the pipette
shot (later increasing its speed to 200% as well + adding the
audio clip to the sequence). 

  

This shot (which we used toothpaste for) was great, but the
resemblance to the previous one was not the best - so I
decided to colour correct the toothpaste. However, Premiere Pro
did not allow me to change the area of colour correction; so I had
to learn how to use After Effects to an acceptable standard. 

After Effects was... eventful to say at least, but I finally figured
out how to manage masks and adjustment layers, resulting in
nicely colour corrected toothpaste drip.

A little side comparison of the
original clip and the one
undergoing colour correction. 

Since all of the other clips from the street scene had
blue lighting, I decided to adjust the colour balance
of that clip so it matched the rest.

Colour correcting that bit of footage
(and the one with the flask, but unfortunately that's the only one
I do not seem to have screenshots of)  was the last thing I
have done before exporting the rough edit in order to
get audience feedback. 

 

Above is the rough edit of Toxic, uploaded to Youtube. The music continues beyond the end of the clip, but this will be cropped down later.

We asked for audience feedback, and this is what we were given;

• We needed to slow down the transition between the Pluton Productions logo and the first shot.
• A sound effect was necessary before the start of Danse Macabre, as the transition from silence to music was too sudden.
• The shot of the victim with 'foam' spilling from his mouth was described as "uncomfortably long".
• Obviously, we need to match the footage to the music!

Our group's opinion was that the ending could also use some improvement, as we felt it was too sudden and not to the standard of the rest of the footage. We are experimenting with ways to make this work, but we may remove it altogether, as expert feedback has informed us that the logo at the end makes it appear more like a trailer than a film opening.

The feedback we were given was useful. Even though Wik was already planning on fixing these aspects in her second edit, we found it important to hear multiple opinions from people who hadn't seen the production process, and see which flaws were mentioned the most frequently.

Production: The Making of Toxic

This video is a visual documentation of the filming process of our two-minute opening.

Planning: Filming Schedule