Practical

Film Title - Possessionem 

Possessionem is the latin word for 'possession'. I wanted to call my film possession but using the latin spelling. My reasoning for this is because the latin language has connotations and historical connections to religion. Although the first Bible was written in Hebrew, it gained its mass following through it being translated into latin. I wanted the title to have some connection and foreshadowing to the narrative's religious imagery and felt having this chosen language enhanced the overall theme of religion, to the audience.

Production - Film

The footage and shots below describe in detail the production process of my film and how I captured my shots, scenes, and prepared for them too. Documenting my production process will help me understand both the improvements that could have been made, as well as the parts that went well and what skills I should continue when in future projects. Overall, I am quite happy with how my filming process went and the believe directional improvements could have been made by me as my actor sometimes struggled with understanding the movements meaning and emotional expression. However, I know faults and issues will occur due to it being the first short film I have directed before. This project as a whole has allowed me to challenge myself in both pre production and production, but I am very glad I got to do this as it has taught me more about how to approach the role of a director and the responsibilities it brings. 

 Production - Day of Shoot

On the production day, the first thing I had to do was order my technical equipment. The technical equipment I used was a grip stabiliser, camera and a small LED light (as seen in the image below). I borrowed all of this equipment from my college and pre booked it in advance to take it home and shoot my film with it over the weekend. 

The next thing I had to do was prepare my location. I gathered the bath bombs I used so that when I needed them for shooting they were already on location ready. I also cleaned and cleared my location so that there was enough space for myself, my actor and friend (grip holder) to move and film in location. The image below is of the bath bomb prepping. 

The images below are the equipment set up on location. This was important and vital to filming as I needed to be prepared so that my team and I could film as I only had two hours until my grip handler had to leave set. I wanted to film as much as could given the time I had.  

I used a tripod to hold the small LED light up, this was needed as I had to have light projected onto the section of the location where we filmed, so that the lighting was good and allowed the scene to be shot in better quality. Lighting was super important as I wanted the black and white contrast in my film to be very provident and good lighting would help create this effect.  

 The image below shows the specific positioning and direction that there LED light was faced to. I had to project the light so that it lit up in the direction of where I was filming. The lighting was very important for my film as it will be coloured in black and white in the post production process. I needed the lighting to be bright in order for the coloring to look clear and not grainy.

The next step of my production process was preparing my prosthetic hand. I had to place the prosthetic onto the grip and go through he rehearsed stages of its positioning and movement with my grip handler to be extra prepared. 

Once I finished preparing my prosthetic hand for filming, I found the natural light that came through the window of the location too bright and blinding for my actor. In order to fix this, as I  thought this issue may occur due to shooting in daylight. I used a thin sheet and pinned it around the window to reduce the amount of sunlight coming through the location. 

Once I fixed the lighting issue, I then ran the bath for my actor. To avoid health and safety issues I had my actor check the temperature of the bath water, incase it was too hot or cold for her skin. 

Next it was onto shooting the film. I directed and shot my film with the help of my actor and grip handler. The overall duration of filming was around four hours. The main issue that occurred when filming was the battery level on my camera. As I had borrowed the equipment, I was only given one battery to use and did not have a spare. This issue has taught me that next time I should be more prepared when using tech nail equipment as it made me me rush through the last shots I filmed. 

Post Production

First Draft

The video below is my first edited draft of my film. I liked how the demon visual effects looked in this draft, however when I am editing the final draft I would like the black and white filter to be more enhanced to highlight the shadows in the shots. I will also add next time add the smoke visual effect. For this draft I wanted to mainly test the demon visual effect on my footage first as it was the effect I felt least confident in creating. To conclude, I would also next time like to add foley sounds to give a more atmospheric sound to the film. I am overall quite happy with how the shots turned out I just need to add and tweak some of the visuals of this draft.

Second Draft 

For this draft, I added foley sounds and an atmos track which sharpened the audio. I also enhanced the darkness of the colour grading to give a more ominous effect. For the final draft, I will make the last shot in motion (these two drafts have freeze framed the end) as I feel it looked poorly edited and the motioned shot will form a more realistic visual too. I will also add the picture frame visual effect onto my final draft. To conclude, I will then ask for feedback from my supervisor and adjust any issues. Once I have had my final draft reviewed I will have finished my mini final major project.

Feedback from Peer on Second Draft 

The peer feedback I received told me that I should try edit shot three without the fade in. They felt the fade in did not work smoothly as a transition between the scenes. I was also told that the gas I used needed to be more realistic and that I should try recording my own foley sound of the gasp. I was also told by my peer that they liked my second shot and felt it added to the film's tension. 

The videos below are audios I added after editing my first draft. These audios helped me give a more atmospheric sound to my film and helped me increase the tension in the scenes too. 

Atmos track: Underwater bath sound 

Wildtrack: Suspense Atmos Music 

Foley sound effect: Female Gasp of Fear 

Foley sound effect: Match being lit

Narration Dialogue//Music from Youtube//Music I created on GarageBand:

Shot Logging 

I have created a shot log to help me edit when I'm in the post production process of my film. Logging my shots helps me evaluate the best and worst shots, so that I can determine what shots I want to us in my film. In total I took around 70 shots and will be only using six in total. I have uploaded all my footage onto google drive and shot logged each video (as seen below). The shot log consists of the shot type, whether it is a video or audio and whether the video is overall good or bad quality. This was useful as I can now edit my footage, gathering only the footage I believe is the best quality. This helps me narrow down my best scenes and will speed up my post production process.

Final Draft - Editing Process

The next stage of my post production process is cutting my shots together to see which fit best. To do this I need to decide whether the movement, lighting and framing work smoothly together. 

The first step I had to do in post production was import my footage to edit and evaluate what shots I will use and exclude. I imported the shot logged shots as they have the video quality of the shots listed.

The next step I have to do was layer and cut the shots I liked from my footage. To do this I used the layered my chosen shots in order (like a stairway) and trimmed their duration to fit the 30 second time rate. 

Using the tracking mask tool that I learned how to use from my research, I masked the opening shot into the photo frame shot. This was difficult as I had to re scale the opening shot to fit inside the picture frame image. Once I zoomed into the picture frame, the image inside I freeze framed so that I could have it play in motion once it covered full frame. 

Once I ordered my scene and created my picture frame visual effect, I added the colouring to my footage. I used a black and white colouring, to create this I looked back upon my research and went through the tutorial on how to colour grade. I added the same amount of saturation and hue to each scene to keep a consistent colouring throughout my film.

After I colour graded my scenes, I then started making my other visual effects. The first one I created was the smokey shadows in the water.  To remember how to create this visual effect I reflected upon my research on how to use overlays, then I followed the steps and I masked around my actor and had the smoke cover the water surroundings of her in the scene.

Once I finished creating this visual effect I then went on to create the fire demonic eye visual effect. To do this I followed my research on how to mask in motion and reflected upon the tutorial I created for myself, previously on my research page. The tutorial guided me through the steps I had practised and reminded me of how to track in motion frame by frame and showed me how to use the 'soft light' overlay on my fire footage. Once I masked the right eye, I then copied the same step and created the demonic eye visual on the left eye.

Next, I had to import my music and add the atmos track, wild track and foley. This was challenging as I had to set the music to certain points of the footage so that it fitted with the scene so that it successfully created the ominous and intense horror effect I wanted to capture.

To conclude, this was the final step of my finalising my final drafted film. I overall thoroughly enjoyed the process as it has taught me a lot about filmmaking as a whole, both pre production, production and post production. I least enjoyed the pre production of my film due to the technical difficulties I faced. However, this is a huge learning curve for me and I do not regret making these mistakes as they will prepare for future projects and help me improve as a filmmaker.  I enjoyed the production and post production of making this film as it allowed me to be creative with my ideas and gave me freedom as to what I wanted my film to have in it and what ways I wanted to tell my narrative.

Feedback from Teacher on Final Draft

 The feedback I received from my teacher was to add stabiliser to my scenes so that they are less shaky. To do this, I researched how I can stabilise footage on After Effects. After researching this visual effect, I added the skills and effects I learned how to do from this research onto my research page. I was also advised by my teacher to shorten the timing of shot three in my film as he felt it could be trimmed he also thought I could change the duration of the second shot, by having the black liquid spur out quickly at the end. After receiving this feedback, I trimmed the third shot and used a time remap to speed the last part of shot two. 

To conclude, I found this feedback very useful as it helped sharpen the editing of my film and allowed me to explore a new visual effect skill (stabiliser) on After Effects.

Possessionem - Final Cut

The video below is my final edited short film. I am overall quite happy with how it turned out and believe the visual and special effects successfully enhanced the horror genre of the film. I am also happy that I reached the deadline for when my film needed to be finished. Although there are some tweaks I would like to make, such as the tracking opening shot. However I was unable to change this due to editing difficulties and scale sizes of my layered footage. 

To know whether my film will be successful I have uploaded it publicly on Youtube so that I can receive feedback from the public on my film. This feedback will help me know how I can improve as a filmmaker on future projects.