Green Screen Tutorials

After researching how to use and light a green screen effectively I decided that I would achieve a better outcome by shooting my film on location as green screen is not 100% reliable.

Camera Angles Research and Examples

In watching these three videos I have become more aware of what camera shots are most effective during particular scenes to create different modes of address and atmospheric impacts.

Call Sheet: Scene 2

Call Sheet

Shooting Day No.   1

Call Time          13:15

Date               29/10/15

Scene & Shot	Location	Cast	Script Pages
2 Wide Shot, OSS, Shot Reverse Shot, Extreme Close up	Costa Café, South Woodham	Liam (Wil) Ashley (Tom)	2
2 POV	Costa Café, South Woodham	Liam (Wil) Ashley (Tom)	3
2 Two Shot/Wide Angle	Costa Café, South Woodham	Liam (Wil) Ashley (Tom)	3
2Shot Reverse Shot	Costa Café, South Woodham	Liam (Wil) Ashley (Tom)	3
2 OSS	Costa Café, South Woodham	Liam (Wil) Ashley (Tom)	4
2 POV	Costa Café, South Woodham	Liam (Wil) Ashley (Tom)	6
2 POV	Costa Café, South Woodham	Liam (Wil) Ashley (Tom)	6
2 Close Up	Costa Café, South Woodham	Liam (Wil) Ashley (Tom)	6

Cast	Character		Costume & Make-up
Liam	Wil		Regular Jeans, t-shirt and shoes, hair slightly scruffy.  Clothes must look worn with some creases and slightly dirty. (character has been chased and fought)
Ashley	Tom Eliot		Black trousers, black leather shoes, white shirt tucked in to trousers, tie, and possible waist coat or collared blazer. Hair styled perfectly:
Props		Photo Opportunities
Tom- Watch/pocket watch		Over shoulder shot of Tom/Wil in reaction to particular lines. Wide angle shot of Tom and Wil at table.

Call Sheet: Scene 1

Call Sheet

Shooting Day No.   3

Call Time          15:45

Date               03/11/15

Scene & Shot	Location	Cast	Script Pages
1 Tracking, Arc, POV (High angle)	S Block Corridor	Ashley (Non-diegetic, Tom) Sam (Campbell) Extras	1
1 POV, Midshot, Tracking shot (phone)	S Block Corridor	Ashley (Non-diegetic, Tom) Sam (Campbell) Extras	1
1 Medium longshot, Zoom, Eyeline Match, Zoom	Bradwell Power Plant	Ashley (Tom) Sam (Campbell) Extras	2

Cast	Character	Costume & Make-up
Sam	Campbell	Black trousers, shirt and plain t-shirt, slightly scruffy when worn, shirt half tucked.  No make-up, hair slightly scruffy. (Any Shoes, preferably black)
Ashley	Tom Eliot	Black trousers, black leather shoes, white shirt tucked in to trousers, loosened tie, possible waist coat.  Hair neat and slicked, some parts slightly independent from the main body of hair.
Extras	Dead town’s people	White shirts/t-shirts, black/grey trousers. Hair and make-up to be done as though your characters have been through a big blood bath and are all now lying on the floor with clothes also covered in ‘blood’. (Any Shoes, preferably black)
Props			Photo Opportunities
Sam- Mobile Phone, weapon (bat/axe/gun) Tom- Mobile Phone, watch/pocket watch			Full length shot of Campbell walking amongst the dead bodies down the corridor, in front and/or behind.

Magazine Front Cover Drafts

From my research of existing magazine covers of my genre I combined the use of the poster image from the MYM magazine featuring Maze Runner.  I then placed my cover lines on both sides of the feature article photo, I got this feature from the EMPIRE magazine, featuring Cowboys & Aliens. the contents of the magazine are placed at the bottom, this is similar to the way they are displayed on the TOTAL FILM magazine, featuring Tron. There will be a puff running across the top of the magazine cover, this is the same technique used on the other three magazine covers that I have analyzed.

This magazine cover design was made to be less busy than the one above, I chose to do this as there are different connotations of the feature article photo.  I kept the idea of having the cover lines in columns, as it was on the EMPIRE magazine, however this time I chose to move it to the left so that it did not obstruct my feature article photo.  the placement of the feature article headline is off center, I have used the MYM magazine as a reference for this decision.  The contents of the rest of the magazine will be in a text box at the bottom of the page, this idea was based on the MYM magazine cover, however I will be writing the contents in the same style as that of the TOTAL FILM magazine, the contents are written as short recognizable names, of films and actors.

The placement of the masthead and puff has been based on the composition of the MYM magazine cover.  The other elements of this magazine cover have been mainly depicted from the MYM magazine cover.  The feature article photo is very important for telling the story of the Lexicon trailer in this magazine cover, this image will be a freeze frame of Lilie's character and those who have died in 'Broken Hill'.

Poster Drafts

I designed this poster to have a level of depth, the scene will be created and captured during filming. The masthead will be written in a simple, bold, linear font.  The font will be a graduated blue colour, in relation to the typical electric blue seen in other Sci-Fi films.  The mystery of this poster is create through the depth and the relation between the woman in the foreground and the town in the background, the silhouette is also a technique I will use to create the mood of the poster.  There will be a plug written as a small line underneath the heading, this is where I will state that the film is based on the book 'Lexicon'.  The authors name will be stated at the bottom of the page as another plug, along with the tagline and some information about the trailer; release date and actors.

In this poster I have looked at the Minority Report style by using an extreme close up of an eye as the feature image, on top of this I will layer images of action within the trailer so that the images look like reflections on the eye, I am hoping to gain a very mysterious effect, and will also be using the electric blue for the iris of the eye by changing the hue saturation. The heading and tagline will be written below the image whilst the additional information will be written to the right, as it is a landscape poster.

On the last draft of my poster I have chosen to use an image that will be posed specifically for it's use, the two above will be candid and taken from the trailer itself.  The idea is to have my three main characters standing in a triangle, with their names below them.  The masthead will be written above, along with the tagline, I would like to make my background look like a stormy mise-en-scene using continuous words of different colours and gradients.  Other information of the film will be written at the bottom of the page.

Creating Synergy Between My Media Products

In order to create brand synergy between my products I will use the same fonts for all of my media products, for example the title for Lexicon will be copied for all three products, I will then use the same fonts for other text.

The colour schemes will be continuous throughout, this will be based upon the research I conducted on the conventions of the sci-fi genre; electric blue.

I will also use the layering technique to build the images on the digital print products, I will also be taking in to consideration the foreground, midground and background of a shot, this is known as the depth of field.

I will also make the main character familiar between all of my media products.

Trial and Error- Background Audio Levels

I filmed several clips of Scene 2 in Costa Coffee, I did this on a Thursday evening at around 5:30PM, I did this because of the warm lighting within the cafe and because there would be less customers as the cafe closed soon after.  The setting of the scene was perfect for the mise-en-scene I wanted as the two characters are sat in the far corner where they could not be overheard. The few customers in the cafe were quite loud and appeared louder on the video than my two actors, as well as this the staff were packing away for closing so I had audio of cutlery, murmurs, shouting and visuals of the staff working behind the actors.

I tried to overcome the background noise problem by importing the audio of the video onto Audacity software, when I imported the video onto the software the wave frequencies were very distorted, instead of the dialogue being spoken white noise had replaced it, this was unexplained, when I listened to the audio all that could be heard was the 'clinks' of cutlery separated with long intervals of white noise. 

Unfortunately after experimenting with different setting I was still unable to correct this error.  In order to over come this problem I will have to film in a different location, the dialogue will be much clearer, I will be able to record some audio from a coffee shop and lay the dialogue over the top of this audio.  In doing this I will be able to focus on the dialogue whilst still having the atmosphere.


In order to film this scene in better quality I could give the actors a small microphone each to capture the dialogue more clearly, I could also talk to the manager at Costa and ask for permission to film after opening hours for 30 minutes; now that my actors have worked in the space and are familiar with the scene and their scripts, I have also now had practice with the camera so the filming time should be quicker and more rehearsed.