Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?



2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?



3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?



4.Who would be the audience for your media product?



5.How did you attract/address your audience?



6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?



7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? 

Audience Feedback

Audience Feedback

To gain some opinions on our piece, we asked a couple of our friends from school to watch the film and give some feedback, and some constructive criticism.

What, in particular, did you like about our film?

Our friends noted, in the questionnaire that I supplied them with, that they were impressed with the amount of attention we paid to small details. For example, the spray paint on the bus, during the drug deal scene. We didn't spray it ourselves, but they were impressed that we managed to find a location of this quality for the film. The paint reads "shoot 2 kill", and they thought that this was an effective use of foreshadowing. They also noted that we made good use of natural lighting. This is because during the drug deal scene, we managed to line up the sunlight with the shade for one of our long shots, highlighting that the film is a story with two clear sides of good and evil. They were also very happy with our location choices, and our decision to play homage to 'Odd Man Out' during the opening credits. Furthermore, they were very impressed with the acting. 

Do you have any criticisms of our film? If so, what?

They both noted that they thought the actors we got for the rookie police officer and the detective may have been a little young, considering they are in our year, while portraying cops in their mid 20s. Also, they thought that we should have had some more establishing shots, such as a couple of famous murals, or the peace wall. 

Are there any things you think we could have done to improve the film?

Both questionnaire participants felt that it probably would have been better for us to get older actors for the character of the rookie police officer, and that of the detective. However, we were unable to get actors of the appropriate age. They also thought that it may have been a good idea to film in black and white, to help add to the dark and gritty tone of the film, and especially considering the fact that it was bright during one of our scenes. However, they noted that this may have been for the best because, as previously mentioned, they thought that we made good use of the available natural lighting, with the sunlight and shade.

Our film, Undercover

Undercover

Watch in full 1080p to ensure that the audio syncs correctly (as well as ensuring the best video quality).

Post-Production

Softwares used

Adobe Photoshop - I had little experience with photoshop, however I needed to use it in order to edit the newspaper cover

Adobe After effects - I used after effects for the majority of the editing process as I already have some experience with it and I am relatively efficient in it

Adobe Audition -  I used audition whilst trying to remove background noise from the audio recorded as well as trying to boost the vocals. I was new to audition and wasn't very efficient with it, and it also didn't work very well in removing the wind sounds.

Adobe Premiere - I used premiere during the latter stages of the editing process in order to sync up the new dubbed audio with the original footage. I was new to the software however I found it easy to use and I managed to use it efficiently

Pre-Production

Photoshopping the Newspaper Cover

As we needed the newspaper as a prop in the film, it was necessary for us to edit and develop the newspaper cover prior to filming. To do this, I downloaded a picture of the front cover of a copy of the irish news and then removed all titles and unnecessary pictures. I then edited a picture of our rookie cop actor onto the cover and added a title alerting the reader to his death, using the font  Times New Roman Bold. I then enlarged the cover to the resolution of a real newspaper and made sure to use bicubic smoother in order to maintain a high-quality resolution when the cover was scaled up. We then brought a copy of the finished newspaper on a USB stick to a printer in our art department and had the cover printed onto newspaper paper, and then we wrapped it up in other newspaper sheets to make it look realistic.

Post-Production

Video

Sequencing and applying fades

The first and most tedious part of editing is sequencing all of the clips and layers  together. This involves a great deal of trimming and altering the position of layers in order for the film to run smoothly together and maintain continuity. I also applied a fading effect to some layers in order to ensure that layers transitioned into eachother smoothly.

Adding Titles

A basic yet crucial phase in the post-production process is adding titles and credits to the film, both at the beginning and ending. I used the font 'Eras Bold ITC' as I believe it had a thick cinematic look to it and made the film look more professional.

Applying filters and removing grain

After I sequenced the clips together, I then got to work on removing grain and noise from the footage in after effects. Some layers needed more grain removal from others, especially the pool scene due to it's dark lighting. I also needed to make a conscious effort not to remove too much noise as making the footage too smooth would make it look artificial. I then got to work on colour grading and applying filters using the adobe after effects plugin Magic Bullet Looks. I applied a cinematic filter to the establishing shots, and a warm, melancholy filter to the bar scene. I also altered the brightness and contrast of the establishing shots to make them look slightly gloomier. I then went on to apply a cinematic filter to the pool hall scene as well as increasing the colour vibrancy due to it's dim lighting. The greatest challenge however came about in applying a filter to the docks scene. This is due to the fact that although the day had been dark and gloomy about an hour previously, the sun had arisen and the day had gotten bright. As a result I needed to lower the brightness and alter the contrast, as well as adding a filter which accentuated black tones, dulled vibrant colours and made the footage seem gloomier overall.

Applying stabilizer 

I applied a stabilizer on a variety of clips of footage in order to remove some shakiness, however it proved to have almost no effect on the shakiness of the footage.

Time Remapping

I found that the panning shot that first introduces us to the drug dealer lacked consistency and the shot sped up and slowed down in different places. In order to stabilize this, I used time remapping and keyframing in order to make sure that the pan was roughly the same speed throughout and maintained consistency.

Audio

Altering audio volume

Due to the fact that the different layers and scenes were not of identical volume, I made an effort to reduce and amplify some of their audio in order balance it out. I also had to fade audio in and out to match the fading of the footage, as well as fading out or muting any external sounds such as laughter which I hadn't noticed while filming

Adding soundtrack and sound effects

For the soundtrack of the film, I chose moody melancholic jazz for the opening and ending scene, as well as ambient jazz for the dock scene. The music I used was independently made and copyright free, however I made sure to contact the artists to get their permission before I used their music. After downloading the music, I simply had to drag and drop it into the composition. As for the sound effects, I used freesounds.com to get download sound effects of ambiance, realistic pistol gunshots and a phone vibration before dragging it into the composition.

Applying telephone effect

In order to create the rather brief audio effect of giving the impression that the chief was speaking over the phone, I trimmed the clip of him speaking that I needed and opened it in adobe audition. Here I opened up an FFX equalizer and set the audio the telephone preset. This gave the audio the effect of sounding like it was coming from a mobile phone, adding reverb and slight echo while making it sound quite tinny.

Removing background noise and altering frequencies

Without a doubt the most difficult and time consuming part of the editing process was trying to remove the loud wind in the background of the docks scene. For this, I began by using adobe after effects' built in equalizer to try and remove the high and low wind frequencies while boosting the vocal frequencies, however this had very little effect. I then added a high/low pass to remove some of the low humming wind frequencies, however this gave the audio of the vocals quite a high tinny sound. I then closed after effects and opened the audio into adobe audition which I had no experience with whatsoever. Here I tried to edit the waveform of the file by selecting and cutting some low frequencies, however this damaged the dialogue audio as well. I opened up various equalizers and applied effects such vocal enhancers, before opening up adobe premiere and seeing if it's denoiser effect had any effect in reducing the background noise. While a lot of the wind sound was silenced, it was still clearly audible and the various effects used to lower it caused the original dialogue audio to sound tinny and somewhat distorted.

Overdubbing audio + adding ambiance

Due to the poor quality of the audio even after I edited it in Audition, I decided it'd be best just to retake the audio altogether. To do this I borrowed a mic from a friend and got Liam (drug dealer) and Matthew (rookie cop) to come back to my house to retake their dialogue. I then muted the audio of the original clip and synced the new audio together in Adobe Premiere before adding this new clip back into the After Effects composition and replacing the original footage. As the new footage is muted bar the dialogue, it is necessary to add some background ambiance which I downloaded from freesounds.

Jazz and Noir

The relationship between jazz and noir

Jazz has been an integral part of noir history, so we aimed to incorporate it into our film. In 1923, Caroll John Daly wrote Knights of the Open Palm. This was the first hardboiled crime story, and it touched off a world of crime fiction. That same year, trumpeter Louis Armstrong recorded for the first time, and that touched off a world as well. Although there is no direct connection, these two genres that began to reach the mainstream at the same time would be intermingled for decades to come. It was the 1951 Gothic southern psychodrama A Streetcar Named Desire that really truly introduced modern jazz to the big screen. Alex North's unique score broke serious ground. The dark, languorous compositions set the tone for Tennessee Williams' brutal and hedonistic masterpiece. Two years later The Wild One was released, a crime-noir film starring Marlon Brando as the archetypal Noir anti-hero. This movie along with many other noir films of the 50s further cemented the relationship between noir and jazz (often known as 'crime-jazz.) Despite the stylistic wars being waged in 50s jazz (dubbed 'The Golden Age of Jazz'), no single school prevailed in noir. Despite this, the different schools had more similarities than differences in their emergence in noir films as they all focused on the comm themes of sorrow, danger, sensuality and suspense. American journalist and ethnographer Stephen Powers lationship believes that the relationship between film noir and jazz also led to a liberation for African Americans in film. In the 1940s and 1950s, social activists campaigned for African Americans to appear in film as something other than caricatures. Film noir provided Hollywood with the perfect solution to this problem, as African Americans were given screentime in Salon Scenes, singing in nightclubs or playing jazz in the background in a bar. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Hazel Scott, all huge names at the time, could now perform in films without people objecting. 

How the Filming Process Went

How the Filming Process Went

We arrived in town around 9:00am to capture the establishing shots. Thankfully, we managed to film these successfully, with the desired weather forecast. We expected the day to be sunny, which would have hindered our filming schedule, forcing us either to reschedule or to fix this in the editing process. However, the morning was very cloudy and dreary, allowing us to capture the desired effect for our chosen genre, noir. We have filmed shots of the Belfast City Hall, The Crown Bar, Albert Clock, and multiple different locations around the Belfast docks. Belfast's many iconic locations have given us a multitude of options to use in the opening of our film.

The weather forecast had changed by the time we had to film our opening scene at the docks at around 11:00am. Since we needed to maintain a dark and dreary tone, we decided that this would need to be fixed during the editing process. To further this we got permission to film in an abandoned area beside Harland and Wolffe, which was a perfect location for the drug deal scene. As we needed to get to the bar at 12:00pm the filming was quite rushed, however both actors worked well under pressure.  The lighting was good and both characters had learnt their dialogue thoroughly and worked well together to provide a convincing performance. We experienced some difficulties with wind, however we will try and fix this in post-production. Coincidentally, we also noticed some very fitting graffiti at the location at which we were filming. The graffiti read 'NO RETREAT' and 'SHOOT TO KILL' - two very fitting themes to this dock scene.

We then went to meet another one of our actors for the next scene. The next scene we had to film took place inside the sunflower bar. We had to phone the bar several days prior to this, in order to gain permission for this, and they were happy to have us. We went to the bar as soon as it opened at 12:00pm so that we would not disturb customers later on. The bar were very helpful as well; keeping the music off and voluntarily supplying us with matches for the cigar. This scene also appeared to be a success, with the actor only requiring roughly 1-2 takes per shot.

We filmed the next scene a week later with another older actor. Although we filmed it a week after the rest of the footage, this pool hall scene coincides with the docks scene. We were filming in the Westway Snooker Hall. We contacted the pool hall a few days before we were to film, and we were allowed to film as soon as it opened at 10:00 am. Fionntan got one of his uncles to play the role of the police chief as he seemed to suit the role quite well. This scene did not take long to film, and it appeared to be a success, with the pool hall providing the perfect neo-noir setting.

Despite having filmed the footage, we decided that we needed to overdub the audio due to problems with wind. A week after the pool hall scene, I borrowed a mic from a friend and invited the actors from the dock scene back to my house to retake the audio in a quiet room. This went well, as both actors managed to capture their voices from the footage perfectly.

Plans for Sound Editing and Music Research

Soundtrack

For the soundtrack of the film, we will try and use moody jazz, very typical of noir films. We will try and use more melancholic jazz for the ending scene, as well as more ambient jazz for the docks scene.

Dialogue

Our film is going to rely heavily on dialogue and as a result we have to make extensive use of it during the phone call between the rookie cop and the chief and the encounter between the rookie cop and the drug dealer.

Overdubbing

In a worst case scenario in which background noise is too loud or the original audio recorded is of poor quality, it may be necessary to overdub the sound. To do this we will simply get our actors to record their lines again indoors in a quiet area and then place the new audio file over the original muted clip.

Ambient Sound

We may need to download and use some typical industrial ambiance and overlay it on the original footage in order to create some background noise

Diegetic Synchronous Sound

We will make use of a variety of diegetic and synchronous sounds, such as the drug dealer's footsteps, the striking of the snooker balls and the lighting of the match.

Sound Perspective

We will make use of sound perspective during the brief close-up noddy shot of the rookie cop while he's stressing out over the phonecall. We will edit the chiefs voice to sound echoed and distorted to mimic the sound of a mobile phone and also give the impression that the sound is at a distance from the rookie cop.

Sound Effects

We will make use of some sound effects in the post-production phase, for example adding in the sound of the chief's phone vibration and the sound of the gunshot.

Sound Mixing

If we encounter any problems with background noise such as wind, we may have to spend a while doing sound mixing using equalizers and different audio effects in order to alter frequencies.