Typography change

Today we finished our title sequence. We changed our font to 'Messenger Pigeon' as we felt that Morsal wasn't working as it was too chunky. Our new font is also similar to the font in Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, it is more elegant than our previous fonts (Shorelines and Morsal).

Editing 6

Yesterday, me and Oliver continued to edit. We added more titles and edited the colour to make the  sequence have more yellow and warm tones, this helps to create the Wes Anderson style that our title sequence was inspired by. We moved the text around to see where we felt it fitted the best, we also decided not use motion. After analysing other Wes Anderson title sequences we noticed that the text flashes up and then just disappears, there isn't movement in the text, instead its cleverly lined up within the frame and therefore has relevance and doesn't look out of place. We managed to re-create this in Final Cut Pro.

Editing 5

Me and Oliver continued to edit today as Laine and Fiona were on a trip. We edited the colour scheme and created warm, yellow undertones of a similar style to Wes Anderson's work. We also continued to use the blade tool to cut and trim some scenes and create some more jump-cuts. We are going to stay behind tomorrow to add the last few titles in motion and then hopefully our title sequence will be finished and we can make a start on our evaluation.

Editing 4

In todays lesson we continued to edit, we fixed up some of the shots by using stabiliser and cut some more of the shots down, specifically the opening scene with the record player. We also added some more titles and started to colour edit some of the shots to make them brighter and more vibrant, which was one of the comments mentioned in the feedback sheets. Myself and my group hope to have finished our title sequence by Wednesday and then we will start on our evaluation, we decided as a group that we would answer some of the questions together and some individually, the group answers we will need to do before Easter half term next week.

Final viewing

In todays lesson we had our second and last viewing of our title sequence to the class in order to receive feedback, so we can make the final changes to our sequence. Our feedback was much better this time round, unlike the previous feedback we received for our last title sequence. Our title sequence still isn't finished, we need to use motion to make our typography move differently and are still considering whether we like the black and white photos of young Tom Hanks and Rachel McAdams, we liked the idea as it would give more narrative and add character, but we are unsure whether it fits in or not.

Feedback Sheets 2

                                     These are the feedback sheets we received from today.

Editing 3

Today we added the soundtrack to our title sequence and some foley sound with the record player, we added the scratching effect make it more intense and realistic, below is just an example of the sound we used. We were also considering adding other sounds similar but we want our soundtrack to remain loud and intense throughout the title sequence. Me and Oliver also decided to add flashing images of the stills of our mise-en-scene, for instances the old black and white photographs of Tom Hanks and Rachel McAdams, our main stars, randomly in-between shots and the titles of their names. We need to add some more and ask for feedback if other people think it works well and explains more of our narrative.

Editing 2

Today we continued to edit. We managed to add more typography to our sequence so it flows and fits into our shots without looking out of place and random. We had to jump-cut some of our footage in order to make it more quirky and give more narrative whilst still keeping it interesting. Our group is hopeful that we will be finished come our deadline.

Editing 1

After looking back at all of our footage and deciding as a group we were pleased with it we started to edit in Final Cut Pro X. Myself and Oliver are the main editors however everyone in my group has a input and contribute their individual ideas. We have our chosen typography that are mention in older posts however today we picked the official colour for our typography, we chose a deep mustard yellow colour as inspired by Wes Anderson. We plan to decide tomorrow whether we will use Motion for our typography edits or not. Today we chose the best footage of each scenes and jump edited some as well as decreasing or increasing the pace of some of the footage in order to fit the pace of our soundtrack. Our deadline for the second screening of our title sequence is the March the 22nd, so we plan to stay behind and try to finish as much as we can by then.

Production Log 4

Filming Day 4	Camerawork	Weather	Location
2:00 to 3:00	box scene - Birdseye view	sun with clouds	living room
3:00 to 4:00	tea scene- Birdseye view	sun with clouds	kitchen
4:15	finish filming

We put the box and the props on the floor and used a tri-pod to film above it in order to still achieve the Birdseye view. We also tried to adapt and add some different scenes in order to make the narrative and genre clear. Due to it starting to get dark around 5:00 we decide to film the tea scene before the box scene, we also ran over and didn't finish filming until 5:00.

Production Log 3

Filming Day 3	Camerawork	Weather	Location
2:00 to 3:00	record player (opening shot)- try close up and Birdseye view	sunny	living room
3:00 to 3:30	Oliver walking past painting	sunny	dining room
4:15	finish filming	started to get dark

We have to film at certain times to ensure the lighting is accurate, so we have to stop filing at 4:00 as it was already getting dark. We decided to use a close up shot of a record player that belongs to Fiona, we hope the close up will draw focus to the details of the record player and make the overall experience more intense. We decided to use this scene to our advantage and use it to introduce our soundtrack, below is a still of the record player we used.

Production Log 2

Filming Day 2	Camerawork	Weather	Location
10:00 to 10:40 am	stairs	clouds	stair way
10:40 to 11:00 am	Close up paintings	clouds	stair way
11:00 to 11:30 am	Oliver walking across painting	clouds	dining room
11:30 am	Finish filming

Today we me and my group started to re-film after the feedback from our class and looking back on our previously filmed footage ourselves. We changed our filming location and decided to film the whole of our title sequence at Laine's nan house, we done this because we felt it would help our footage blend together better and help establish the narrative. We also changed the idea of our title sequence and decided to include a character, Oliver took this on by taking  the role of either the son or grandson on. Below is some of the footage and outtakes we showed to the class for our first viewing. Due to the weather we were unable to film Oliver walking across the painting as we rely on natural lighting, we will have to film this next time.

Response To Feedback

After watching the first edit with the class and receiving feedback, myself and the rest of my group decided that we needed to change our ideas and techniques of filming and that we will definitely have to re-film previous footage. A big change we decided to make is to adapt the way we portray the narrative in our title sequence, as some comments were made about our narrative being unclear. Taking this into consideration we decided that instead of having the title sequence from our main characters point of view the film would be from the grandson or the sons perspective, this will make our title sequence more realistic and make more sense overall as we could not find an elderly man to play our original role. This change will allow us to add more shots and include more character in our title sequence which would help make the narrative clearer and our overall title sequence more visually appealing. 

We also discussed adding a wider variations of shots, for example a close up of our main character doing up their bowtie, a close up of making a cup of tea and of them setting up the record player. Me, Oliver and Fiona talked about the soundtrack, we are unsure if we are going to use foley sound, such as the kettle boiling, to make the overall sequence more intense or to use a relaxing upbeat soundtrack to make it flow nicely. 

We found this task very useful as we are now aware of what we have to improve and what we have to change as a whole in order to make our title sequence more appealing.

Feedback Sheets 1

Mise-en-scene

Fiona collected many props as part of the mise-en-scene that are perfect for our title sequence. Fiona collected photos of Tom Hanks off the internet and edited them so they were black and white, this made them look older and more realistic and reflected our main character. The wedding ring represents his wife engagement ring as this is a key part of the narrative, the box has a vintage effect that will tie in with our theme. The toys are also more traditional toys such as marbles and wooden figures, this will help establish the timeframe. We also collected a vinyl, record player and cassette player's, we plan to use these in our title sequence. We plan to add and expand to this selection as the props in the wooden box is the main aspect of our title sequence.

Mise-en-scene

Casting For Our Film

For casting we decided to use Rachael McAdams to play Walters wife, Nancy. She has played similar roles in the past that are set in the same timeframe as our film such as the notebook where she was a classic 1940s/50s wife.










We chose James Marsden to play Walters son, he has also played many main roles in romance films, there are lots of elements of emotions in our film and we felt he would be a good addition to our cast.










We chose Wes Anderson to be our director, our title sequence is heavily inspired by him and his use of warm/yellow colours and vintage, unique style.

Tom Hanks will be our main A list star, we chose him due to his huge success with films such as Forrest Gump along with many other successful, influential films in our genre.

Film Information

The budget for our film, Life Goes On, will be in the expected region of $80 million, this is also a similar budget of films that are closely related to ours. It will have a genre of a drama and the narrative will be a similar style to Forrest Gump, and a similar feel good factor to Goodwill Hunting. Our production company will be Paramount pictures whom will also distribute the film, this is to do with their vertical integration structure.
Life Goes On will be released in America first in the late weeks of November, this will ensure that our film will be in time for the Oscars in the following year and should avoid the clashing with christmas and fantasy films.

Pitch

We had to create a pitch for our film, it had to include the title of our film, narrative, film information, audience profile, cast and the pitch itself.

Production Log 1

Filming Day 1	Camerawork	Weather	Location
10:00 to 10:40 am	Spin shot	Sunny	Living room
10:40 to 11:00 am	Close up of props	Sunny	Living room (carpet)
11:00 to 11:30 am	Close up of Oliver	Sunny	Living room (wallpaper)
11:30 am	Finish filming

Although already filmed some test footage we started to film officially. We worked well as a group and all contributed in ideas. These are some stills of us filming our spin shot in the front room, we plan to edit the shot to incorporate the credits into the background.