Project 4 Reflection- Try Me

Edit by Adobe Premiere and After Effects

Background Music source from audioblocks.com

Effect Sound source from freesound.com

Affordance: Proximity

Based on previous two iterations (Iteration 1; Iteration 2), I decided to use a small comedy as my final project. For expressing affordance-proximity, I create a story that two characters chasing each other and getting closer and closer. The robbery idea came from the part of “Philip Bloom, Barbie Camera Challenge” and I learnt a lot from this video.

Before the shooting, I finished my storyboard as below.

I prepared a Selfie stick for positions I cannot reach such as traffic light in short film. I chose the alpaca head for the robber instead of  black wool headgear that is used in the film. Because wool headgear is not cheap, I used the Mascot head I designed for an event. The alpaca one is more comedic and friend than bank robber headgear, which makes the robber does not look serious. And for this reason, film name was changed from “Catch me” to “Try me” (a great suggestion from a media professional friend. It represents the “Just kidding” and “You can’t catch me” personality that is naughty.) The weapon of the robber was also changed from real scissors to plastic cake knife. This change is the reason why actress didn’t realized that it is a deliberate robbery, which is the essence of this comedy. I followed the 9-grids style I used before. I followed the concept I used in iteration 1 which two character’s movement is sequent. The pattern of characters’ movement is one footage moving to another. I also add the “slot machine” idea used in my iteration 2 sketch. It add more entertainments in it. I like this design. As the genre of my video is comedy, this design makes it much more funny and naughty.

Challenges in production

• The available time of actors was limited. I have reserved two afternoons of Saturday for filming. Both of these two days are filmed in evening and sunset time. And for this reason, I separate filming time to day time and night time, and I separated the shoot location to interior and exterior. There was a scene which two characters were running to two opposite directions after leave the building which was shot at night. I utilize the light from two lamps and fixing levels of grain reduction, brightness, contrast and saturation for making views believe those scenes were shot at cloudy days instead of night. There is another similar turning scene which is the scene that girl run down stairs outside. Both of these scene were made at day time but changed to night. The fast spinning clock in the video represent the time lapses, which explained that the chasing lasted from afternoon to night.
• Because it is mobile phone filming, selfie stick is a useful tool. For shooting traffic light, I cannot stand far away and zoom in the camera. Therefore, I used the selfie stick to catch the turning of traffic lights. And I can use selfie stick to easily make lower angle for catching the movements of characters’ feet. Two scenes of two characters crossing road can be displayed in a same screen and connected, but they can also be shot at different time. This is one of benefits of split screen. Different scenes can displayed at same time at same.
• All footages are made by one phone. By clever scene changing, editing, split screen, muting most ambience sound of my footage and only remain needed sound, add happy background music, it can combine scenes that happened in different time and places appear into one whole scene, which makes the story coherent and it is displayed in a reasonable tempo.

Feedbacks of the draft and the modification

After finishing the first editing of my whole short film, I have exhibited it to professor, which I have gained several great feedback. I have improved it while I writing this blog.

• The scene at the beginning that is about story of girl and robber is too long. Because these two scenes are shot separately, I miscalculate the time of expressing that the robber grabbed the doll and the girl finally realized the robbery and start chasing. I only counted the time duration of one scene but forgot the other one. Thus, the story is told one by one instead of synchronously. It is mistake of concept of time duration. Now I have made some changes. I add some seconds of Robber’s laughing to increase its duration. I also modified the background sound effect. I deleted some unnecessary parts and accelerated some movement for connecting two scenes
• The previous background songs are short. Therefore, some part of music implied that the story is ending soon which is only the ending of this song instead of the video. When the next scene is on screen and song is end or the screen is fade out but song is still playing, audiences are confused and mislead. For solving that, I add fade out transition for background songs and add some video transitions too.
• At the first draft, there is no visual effect of hitting phone screen. I thought it is reasonable. However, after receiving feedbacks from friends and teachers, I found that they do not understand why robber fainted at last. All focuses of audiences are concentrating on someplace else, which they do not notice robber hit his head on something then fall down and faint. Although I add sound effects, audiences still do not realize the reason of the robber’s faint. Thus, I modified the images. By accelerating the speed, put the robber on full screen and adding visual effect of robber hitting the camera and crash the screen, audiences finally can notice the accident happened on robber.

Reference:

DigitailRev 2013, Philip Bloom, Barbie Camera Challenge, viewed 3 May 2015, <https://youtu.be/9VS3C183G8g>

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