Media editing: Transformational contrasts/ fonts/transitions

In this double lesson Mr Oswick said that we were allowed to continue working on our editing as we have found out that our first deadline is on the 30th March, with our final deadline being the 13th of May which understatedly is a brief period of time in which to complete our project. We started off the lesson by the deduction of all background sound, through the application of  volume clip volume  at - 00dB on our film frames, so we can finally begin to imput the usage of either recorded sound or founded sound next lesson if we either wish to do so or even have enough time to carry out this task. As well as this we could also introduce sounds in terms of background noises( environmental effects e.g. Wind) and characters( e.g. sound of the characters footsteps enhanced by asynchronous/ synchronization ). We also looked at Image control( containing Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation), Motion( Position, Scale and Rotation), Opacity ( Fade in and Fade out) as well as Balance ( Bypass and Balance ). What was intriguing was that there were so many possibilities that we could experiment with , so we adjucated that our first exploration would entail the use of Image Control to improve both the quality and contrast of our frames , to ensure it's not classified as bad filming . The easel scenes resulted in brightness levels of -2.4 with a contrast of 1425, hue of 0.0 and saturation of 1000 . Overall it emphasized the easel in a difinitive manner by giving an asthethic appearence as well as providing the enablement of easy veiwing . Initially in our sleeping frames we used -1.8 brightness, -107.7 contrast with default use of saturation and hue but it seemed quite importinate so we thought that -6.6 brightness alongside the same levels of contrast, making our film seem as though it is using higher quality definition . Next we experimented  on a slide which incooperated a quick flash of light, using brighness of -24.5 and a contrast of 200.0 which allowed the picture to become almost translucent  with saturation of 100.0 .This gave the effect of making the light seem blinding  and piercing, demonstrating perhaps a premonition of my loss of innocence. In the end we decided that a darker picture may look more frightening so we tried brightness of -22.4, contrast of -112.9 , neutral hue and saturation levels of 100.0 which almost gave the feel of a painting as though it was a depiction of altered reality . We really like this method , especially the way it enhanced certain features such as the darkness of my hair, really standing out against the black and white background. For the last 2 frames we used brightness of 36.7 as the previous image control usage proved to ( due to the natural lighting) be futile as it became a differnet hue to the others. However by imputting the number above it now fits the pattern and flows in synchronized rhythm. Moving on from contrasts, we looked at video effects to experiment with the use of text addition which we tried on a new slide. We were quite suprised as to the amount of options  available such as fonts, styles, shadow effects , colour properties ect  but we only had a quick look as we would go back later and check it out. For now however we needed to carry on making changes to the footage, so after further rendering we watched it again, as it is important to veiw your work incessantly due to problems which may occur such as frames being out of sync or violation of Match On Action. One particular frame which stood out was where I'm hunched over in the grass, my back facing the audience with Zoe crouched over in the distance . Interestingly enough the grass in this scene was darker in brightness in Zoe's section than mine to possibly portray the imbalnace as well as arising conflict between our two characters- Good and  Evil. At this point our total time came to 1 minute 50 seconds , so we carried on with task of deducting footage, that dosen't neccessarily flow within our piece. An example of this is where Zoe is marching which abruptly transcends into long regal strides which subverts against Match on action ,so we cut out the 1st section of the frame to see whether it would flow after this transformation. We realised that after watching it again, that it jumped back so in the end we decided to cut the frame out completely, ensuring that we only keep the best footage material.  Whilst we were relaying this I remembered that we needed to take pictures of the props, so Charley suggested that we could take screenshots, primarily starting with Zoe's cape, but i said we needed to have a colour version to give the examiner an idea of material and colour. However the group disagreedbut im sure annotations can work just as well- in the acual blog that is. We then found out that out of 100 marks, 60 were for the filming , which is quite worrying as everything has to be just right. Mr Oswick suggested to the class that if shots aren't right then we should reshoot them as we want to get the best grade possible, though im not sure if that can apply to us as we have put in so much work that it will be hard to relay everything we have done. Charley suggested that if we were to re - film that perhaps we could do the frame where Zoe is lurking in the grass behind me. So her basic idea was to subvert our traditional character placement , having me face the audience with Zoe behind me in the background . Mr Oswick then watched the film and when asked for critisms stated that he wasn't sure as to what was purposely filmed badly and what was just bad filming.. Needless to say this was disparaging feedback but essentially we haven't even applied transitions as such so once we have done this it should look better. Sir commented that we can use timelines to do this referring to the range of fade options using right click.In fact there was even an oppurtunity to use an ellision/ expansion of  time which could be used in conjunction with the synchronization of the control exercised between me and Zoe( being controlled as puppets). Referring back to the fades however we used a fade out in this particular frame, transcending into a fade in on the very last frame. In fact this proved the rigt descion to do as the transitions are much smoother now. We then magnified the timeline to see the pictures so we could continue the application and noticed that the sleeping scenes were still a real problem as the shots are so jumpy which may be a result of the usage of a handheld camera. Zoe said that perhaps we could elongate the scene to smooth over the jumpcuts though im not sure we can be able to do this but we can certainly give it try. She also thought of the ideal of using a shear or smear effect between each bedroom scene to show the laspe of time and predominatly just to show that i am sleeping. I also noted that we need to have the same font throughout where we chose a black and white italic block font, with 3d shadow although now thinking back on it i think films just use a stanford font and we dont want this just to look like an amatuer student film. Whilst we were here we changed the diresction of the shadow , looked at the ghost effect which again looked cool but not nesseraily standard procedure. Zoe also thought that we should alternate the alignment of font right than left and so on .