Research: Film Festival Submission

Kinematifest:

http://kinematifest.com/

Kinematifest not only exhibits films but involves guests speakers that instruct their trade and have open Q and As. Films are open for submission and we could enter this in good time before the deadline comes around.

New Zealand International Film Festival:

http://www.nziff.co.nz/submit-a-film/submission-guidelines/

Although NZIFF is international, we can submit our film through a link for exhibition. I feel this would be good as it takes our film to an international audience where art and culture would be considerably different. Thus having an entirely new viewpoint on what our film means to the audience that watches.

London Short Film Festival:

LSFF is a festival I have been aware of for some time now. They have been exhibiting short films from all around the country for 2018 submissions are now open. As the audience age range is open and this festival primarily accepts live action, it would be a suitable festival to enter.

Publicity poster design:

With the submission of our film, this is how we would design the poster. Emphasis on the colour red as it is the only dominant colour in the film. The protagonist's eyes look down on a transparent section of the painting of her child; like a mother watching over her child.

Post Production: Visual Component Time/Intensity Graphs

Whilst we had the narrative time/intensity graph drawn on paper in pre-production, I analysed our film through and identified which visual components followed a pattern that can be plotted on the  time against intensity graph:


Narrative:

 Colour:

 Tone:

Post Production: 2nd Rough Cut (Colour Graded)

With the help from my tutor Matt, the colour grading of our film was complete today. All that leaves is to add the sound which will take place in the next few days. The purpose of colour grading the raw film was to create the correct colour of the film but also to apply elements of the Pleasantville effect.

Whilst the dripping blood scene is too dark for the red to be vibrantly saturated, we were able to bring out the red by contrasting the tone and colour of the blood on the canvas. This really makes it stand out and is effective in drawing the audience's eye to it. Another way we added the Pleasantville effect to the film was actually making the protagonist more saturated than the environment around her.

 This initially wasn't our plan as we only wanted the blood to be saturated; however it proved to be effective in implying that the protagonist does not belong in the world around her and so she stands out from it literally by being saturated with colour.

Theory: Davinci Resolve Lynda.com Course

I've started the beginners course to the essentials of Davinci Resolve by Patrick Inhoffer. This is to expand my understanding of the programme to help me colour grade our film in post. But, it will also be an asset for future projects that require colour grading in Davinci; I will have gained the knowledge to do that from learning this now.

Post Production: Beginning Editing

Today was all about organising the footage and creating a rough cut so we could get a rough idea on what the rhythm of the film will be and where sound will need to be placed.

Post Production: Rough Cut and Analysis of Rhythm and Cuts

With the corrected film in our possession, we set about getting a rough cut put together as soon as possible. Although all out film was shot on Blackmagic, we were able to open the files in Premiere Pro to  put a rough cut together that would outline the rhythm of the film and where we needed to add cuts and place shots:

At this stage of post, rhythm and intensity were the most important factors to consider. At the start of the film, the cuts were close together making the intensity high which is what we want to create to throw the audience straight into the action in preparing them for the reveal later on. From this point, the rhythm and cuts of the film are placed in a more "routine fashion" to match the protagonist's performance of routinely arriving and setting up at her art studio. It also gradually lowers the intensity and gives the audience time to recover from the high intensity and the start without missing any key plot points in the film later on,

For the scene where the protagonist looks at the painting with a motherly affection, the cuts are more spcaed out and the takes are the longest in these shots. This is so that we can really bring out the emotion in the protagonist and let it linger for the audience to absorb; so that they can feel sympathy towards the protagonist.

Finally, in the scene where the police break in, the cuts become closer together to raise the heightening intensity. And where the protagonist grows faint, the cuts are fragmented and appear more exposed.  However, this  is done to briefly put the audience in the protagonist's state of deliriousness; in the sense that the cuts make it seem that the action of her stumbling to the ground is happening faster than it should; almost like the audience is blinking too much.

Production: Re-shoot

The re-shoot today proved to be a great success. We had anticipated for every problem that happened before and for problems that could have happened. Whilst we had one Blackmagic camera in operation, we had one on charge ready to use when the other died. We also did a thorough lighting test to ensure that this time round, the camera received enough light to reduce noise as much as possible. And to be sure that we had the correct settings on the camera and lighting, we opened Davinci on the laptop and opened test footage to view the scopes:

Scope from old film during test shoot

Scope of re-shoot film

Comparing the two, there is far more information on the scope for the re-shoot where the brightest parts reach to the mid tones. This reduced the noise greatly and will prove to be a far better task of colour grading in post due to the freedom to alter the colour and light settings without the worry of exposing noise.