Mirror Image

WHOOPEE!! It's finished! =)

Preliminary Studies Final Edition - This is it

For this preliminary task we decided to do a comedy which is dedicated to Michael Jackson. As this was our first movie, we noticed many strengths and weaknesses to our movie.
To start, our main strength is that it was entertaining and fits the comedy genre which was what we were aiming for. We did this well with the soundtrack and the storyline being comedic. The soundtrack was particularly difficult to make however, Disha and Gemma worked hard to create the soundtrack and put it in time with our movie.
With different camera shots we were able to portray the feelings and emotions of the characters and the mise en scene helps the audience to understand and empathize with the characters. Focusing on the costumes was important so that the audience would understand who the character was and using a very recognisable soundtrack at the end helps the audiences to relate and to find the the preliminary more entertaining. As Michael Jackson is a very iconic person it was easy for us to put the costumes together and make it suitable for the audience.
Some of the weaknesses that are included in our movie were a few minor continuity errors as the camera was not in the correct position and therefore changing the angles leading the audience to be confused. There were several moments when the camera jumped positions and this made it look unprofessional and flow less.
If we were to redo this preliminary studies, then we would re shoot and we would use different shots and we would edit better and making sure we re shoot parts more than once. This would give us a better variety of shots to use and we would be more creative with our shots.

Film Poster

For our film poster we came up with the idea of having a camera as the focal point as this is a significant prop in our film. we also had the idea of contrasting light with dark and created a flash to go against the black background.
The title of the film "Mirror Image" appears twice on the film poster. In its first form it is clear and the audience is able to read it clearly, its second for is that of the first but mirrored/reflected. This is a play on the word "mirror", and also the "R's" in the word are mirrored.
The tag line on the poster is "Mirror, Mirror On The Wall Why My Daughter Of Them All?"
This is taken from the childish film Snow White, we wanted a childish element throughout the film to represent the innocence and the unawareness of being watched.
Overall we think the poster is appealing to our audience and has a thriller feel to it, therefore it advertises it in the correct way and looks professional.

By Gemma and Disha

Editing

The editing and the creation of the film was created in final cut. This is where we put all the videos which are created together and create one movie. It is broken into many differnet videos and creates a sequence. These sequences put together create the movie. We had to create two movies because the first movie was not good enough. In final cut this is where we discovered mistakes which were created during filming. However, together we worked together to create our movie. As we put the videos together, we had to cut parts out for it to run smoothly and had to put it together so that there were no jumps or moments when the audience became confused or when they felt that something moved to fast. The shots being put together to create the right atmosphere for our genre was our problem which meant trhat we had to re plan and change our movie. This was because when we put our clips together, the atmosphere didn't work well so this meant that when we re filmed we had to create the right atmosphere; we also had to re film because we couldn't have any continunity errors. After we filmed we had to put the film back together. After we had some new experience, we were short for time so this meant we had to work hard and focus. As we had experience this time we knew what shots worked together better to create a atmosphere for the audience. We knew that the audience had to feel creeped out to feel how the man felt. So overall we put our shot clips together and we edited and put together throughout several lessons.

Filming- Final Film

MIRROR IMAGE...FIRST SHOOT

The first of our shoots took place over the space of two weeks. We had used time in lessons and also put aside much of our free time on weekends and out of lessons to ensure we had time to film all the necessary parts and get the film completed in the allocated time.
We made sure that we planned out everything that was going to be filmed on the days that we had the camera. We didn't encounter any problems throughout the shoots and all the sessions ran smoothly. We had to attempt some different filming methods, such as standing on the playground swings, in order for us to film the required scene. It was fun to experiment with alternative ways of filming as none of us had tried them before.
The scene with dialogue involved us filming the scene twice as we needed to get it from two different angles in order to make the 180 degree shot work successfully.

MIRROR IMAGE...SECOND SHOOT

As we only had one morning to re-shoot, we had to work quickly and make sure the film was the exact way that we wanted it to be. This was fairly straight-forward as from assessing where we first went wrong, we were able to see what we should do and what we shouldn't do. Much of the dialogue was cut out the second time round as it took up quite a lot of time in the first rough cut and caused us to go over our two minute limit.

Soundtrack - Final Film

MIRROR IMAGE...FIRST SHOOT

We researched and watched different thriller film openings and listened to the types of soundtracks they used in there films, to give us an idea of the what the many ways we could have ours. For example, some have only digetic sounds while others have non digetic sounds.

We then listened to the sounds available to us on Garage Band but we also went on the internet and viewed sounds from free internet sites. Like for our preliminary task, we made a note of the sounds we thought would be of use to us so when the film was done it wouldn't take long to identify the final sounds we wanted.

When the editing was done the final cuts length was to long and was over the maximum time our film could be. We tried to cut bits out but we soon were left with just dialogue so decided to shoot again.

MIRROR IMAGE...SECOND SHOOT

For our second and final shoot Gemma and Myself could concentrate more on the production of the film, because we had already done some research on types of thriller soundtracks and the new film we would be shooting had the same storyline as our first, only we shot it differently so it would be within the time limit.

We had to put the sounds together without the film being fully edited. But using what was done and completed, we took down the timings of the different shots and made a note of the effect we wanted that specific shot to have so we would get the right sounds with the right piece of film.

We began with a simple heart-beat for the first 7 seconds of the track, with the next 24 seconds having only digetic sounds as this part contained dialogue. For the next 2 or 3 shots we chose the sounds we felt were appropriate but when we listened through it all there were too many sounds and too many changes. So we decided to make it a little simpler, we kept the right mood and gave the right atmosphere but used less sounds.

There are points in the film we want to emphasise so we put it smaller sounds on top of the soundtrack where these points did occur, for example we put in a sharp eerie sound when the "Figure" and Amber walk past each other (just as Amber walks though the playground gate), we managed to get the sound in perfect time for this and when we listened through gave that point a more eerie feel; which is what we wanted.

Vinuri, who was the camera woman and was helping edit the film made a soundtrack while the rest of the group was away on a school trip. The track she made was brilliant and fit with the theme of the rest of the music and went well the last few shots, which is where we put it. This completed the rough cut of the soundtrack.

Because the track and film opening where on separate computers we played both together to see if the timing where correct, we had worked hard to try and get them correct making many notes and cutting and trimming sounds so luckily for us it was all in time first time round. The only change we made was to make certain sounds quieter and louder using the control panel in Garage Band to what we felt fit the visuals better. We transferred the track from one computer to the other using a USB stick, rendered the track and put it together with the film. We watched it through as a group to see what everything sounded like together, we decided to add in some sound transitions to the soundtrack to make some parts smoother and give the track a better feel.