Personalise

I finally personalised my blog, again, this time using all the original pictures we took during the course of working on our project. Personalizing my blog was an attempt on my part to become more familiar with Photoshop and also make my blog look more original. For the first layer I used an orange yellow colour for the background and used grain and patchwork texture from the effects tab in Photoshop. I then  increased the brightness and contrast as I felt that the orange yellow may be too dark. This is what the first layer of my background looked like. The size of the background is 1600 x 1200 pixels and the background is 100% opaque.

Then I merely blended all the scanned notes my team has made up till now and included the storyboard we did for the preliminary exercise. First I used the picture we took at Pyramid Studios of a ceiling covered with a magazine cutout. I covered the whole background with that picture and made it 75% opaque with the background in the second layer. Below are all the pictures I blended after this picture

 

This Picture was taken on the second day of the preliminary shooting when I was explaining to Schanza Khan( Principal) about the script. 

 

These pictures were taken when we were taking separate pictures for the poster in the chemistry lab. 

 

This picture was taken on the first day of shooting in the Lab when we were setting up the video cameras. 

Besides all the photographs above I used a photograph of this audio mixer that we took in the studio.I also used a group photo that I had posted on this blog earlier. Every layer was made 65% opaque with the layer below except for the first and the second layer. After merging all the pictures I saved the file in a JPEG format. This is what I came up wuith after bending everything:

After making my wallpaper I made a PNG image for the topic and the description. The font I used is Forte MT for the main title and description. I used a color stroke, inner glow and drop shadow on the main title. For the second title I only use a black font color and a red stroke. This is how my title looks like. 

From a suspense to a drama

Our third attempt at making a script did not go well. We found out that our other class fellows are doing suspense films as well and were afraid that all our projects might turn out too similar which we want to avoid. So now we are left with Drama or Comedy as genres. Today we came up with another idea where we can show comedy and drama. We can show the morning routine of a person who wakes up late and leaves his house. On the right is what we planned.

We will show a person who is woken up by either an alarm or by a phone call. For a comedy and drama we can show him dressing up hastily as if he is late for an appointment and we can emphasize on his apparent distress and his life going through a complicated phase by emphasizing on his messy house. He is also unable to locate his toiletries and other things he needs in order to get ready and they turn up in unlikely places which shows that he is in a habit of waking up late and is very disorganized and messy. 

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Above are the possible list of names we have come up with. The movie we want to make is a lighthearted comedy. By showing an ordinary routine and using a random but a very unexpected name, we want to define the character yet work up some anticipation in the audience. The list of characters, storyboard, treatment is yet to come as now we have to make sure that there are no flaws or any issues that might force us to abandon yet another project.

Work in vacations

For our winter vacations we planned on visiting Pyramid Studios, a post production studio owned by the advertising company Inter flow to see how movies, commercials and drams are shot and edited. We started visiting the studio on December 22, 2010. On the first day they arranged an orientation for us where we were shown around different rooms and were classified into groups. We were to spend three days in each department. In this way we were to experience the editing room, audio room, 3D graphics room and 2D graphics room and learn the basics of professional production and how it is organized- this will help us with our final project. My class mate Afia Lateef and I were assigned to the audio room but since the person in charge of audio was late coming to work that day we were temporarily sent to the 3D graphics room where we were introduced to  3D Max Studio software. We were taught the basics about operating that software. On our first day we were told that the key to mastering a software is to spend as much time as we can to experiment with different graphics and shapes.

A drastic change.

An inspiration of a suspense title that hits Fatmah is written below. This is somewhat like the story we first planned and  this story does exudes thrill and suspense and no doubt we will make an interesting topic. but than it will mean we will have to go back and start our research from the very beginning. However we will keep this synopsis in mind and modify it

Her idea in her words: 

Okay so here is an idea different from all what we have been discussing:
We are making an opening title so the first 3 minutes :


We can show a girl (a teenager) whose mouth is tapped with a white cloth and she can not open her mouth nor can she speak. We’ll show a close up of her face with her eyes closed (she is sleeping/or her eyes are just close), in dim natural light – showing evening time. Then suddenly a sound of footsteps will enter the room and she’ll be waken up by a man in mask and a wide shot will be shown, in which we’ll show an empty, dim lighted room and the girl was lying on the floor with her hands and feet tapped as well, the man who comes will angrily speak “Get up, it’s time for another recording that your father would like to see, who is getting late by every second in saving your useless life” she will be grabbed to the other room, her feet will be untied. The man takes her to another room where there is a chair and a camera on the tripod (wide shot) makes the girl sit on the chair. He turns on the camera and tells the girl to speak, the girl with scared, painful expression on her face begins to weep (close up shot) and says “Daddy please save me, they’ll kill me, please come and save me, I am scared, I want to come home, please” The man in the mask comes and puts a knife on her neck, and says “she does not have much time” (The camera here does not show the man’s face only a wide shot cutting the man’s head and only showing the girl) the film ends.


Appearances:


The Girl: she is wearing jeans, which are now very dirty, a T-Shirt or any top, which is also dirty and shred may be from a few places, her face is all messed up her hair are tangled and her face has dirt, black spots, bruises as well. This will represent that she has been kept a hostage for quite a few days.


The Man: The man is wearing dark colour clothes and a mask on his face with big boots, and has a scary Image.


The Room: the room will be a dark room, in which the window is the only source of light. We can shoot in a store room, or any empty class of our school, (A1-B) can be a good place.

How we made it simple for ourselves

Facebook is a social networking site, which is very common amongst the youth and adults nowadays.  And to stay in touch me and my group members made a group on Facebook where we can carry on with our group ideas and discussions instead of waiting for the next class. Discussing ideas via cell phone text messages also turned out to be inconvenient and so with Facebook we can also share useful links, ideas and pictures.

Another kind of technology we used for our media work!

Planning for our new opening title

We decided to take the opinions of our classfellows and the fact that most of hard work thus far has been for nothing, gracefully and immediately came back to high gear. This is a rough outline of what we did in class today. We now plan to make an opening title with a morning routine or a title where we will show a person tied up on a bed mysteriously. Here we will not give away very much about the story but let the anticipation build of what must have happened. We thought of making it a comedy where the boy will be tied up in his own bedroom and suddenly the alarm clock will go off following the ringing of his phone will comically struggle to free himself. 

Our idea is still in a rough stage and we might bring about some changes to this basic plot. 

A not so good option

After showing our treatment to the rest of the class and listening to their opinions, we realized that our storyline is more confusing than funny and it is not good enough. And eventually after a long group discussion and arguments we all came to the conclusion that we neither have enough resources nor enough time to make an opening title of a spoof. And even if we did then we wouldn't have a good comical or funny treatment and no one was so thrilled about making a golden raspberry award movie. However the research we have done so far is for a film in the comedy genre so maybe we can make a comedy or a drama or maybe at least try to include both elements in its opening title. Maybe we might even change our genre entirely. What we have to ensure is that we work step by step and plan our work well.