A few sites that have inspired me.

Here are a few websites that i find very inspiring.

The first website that i would like to talk about is, http://www.texelate.co.uk/.
This website has a very clean feel, its not to cluttered, the colours used in the website such as the header, are only colours used in photographs on the main page of the website, wich both in turn complement each other.
Another thing i like about this website is the fact that the designer has made the header and footer really dark, grey/black, while keeping the main part of the website as a very pale blue and white, i think the big contrast in colours work well together and help the website look really sleek and clean.

The second website i would like to talk about is called http://www.spoongraphics.co.uk/.

The header of this website is relatively similar to the previous website, however this website uses a light brown colour scheme, and in turn uses less colours on this website, i think this works even better and helps the website look clean and clear. 

 The last website that i am going to talk about is http://rawkes.com.

I personally prefer websites that have the navigation bar a little lower than right at the top of the page, with the navigation bar been closer to the content itself, it is less time and effort the user has to put in to navigate to where they want to go.

Film

The target audience I have chosen for my film trailer is 15-25 year olds. I have chosen this age range as statistics show that people ages between 15 and 25 attend the cinema more than any other ages person. Another reason for having 15-25 year olds as my target audience is that I am in this age range and therefore it is easier for me to gather research from people in this age range.

If my film were to have a certificate it would be a 15.

There are many sites that offer free high quality sound effects that I can use for my project, I also came across websites that sold very high quality sound effects, I kept this in mind for any other film making projects I were to do in the future that had a bigger budget.

On our first shoot the sound turnde out to be to loud and slightly distorted, and thus was unuseable, this was due to the microphone been turned up, once we had realized this mistake we decided to replay each scene on set to check the sound and lighting was usable to avoid making this mistake again. After I had finished my film I showed it to many people in my group to try and get some feedback, I got a good response from everybody, and the only negative comment I got was that some people found it difficult to hear what the actors were saying, so I then decided to go back to my edit and chance all of the sound levels, so it was loud enough for the viewer to hear without the sound becoming to distorted.

Another problem we came across was the fact that the microphone wasnt picking up sounds in the distance, for example when the car is driving around, i came up with the idea to record sound from outside the car window to pick up the sound of the engine, which turned out quite well. We can then put some of this sound over other clips to enchance the car noise.

During our shoots we have had many problems with lighting, due to the location of our shoot been on top of a car park, we have no access to a power supply, this means we are very limited when it comes to lighting. to overcome this problem I  came up with the idea of using a cars headlights, and using a reflector to soften it, this turned out to work really well.

To create spot lights or highlight something i found out that the portable LED light box's work really well, these can also be used with the reflectors to soften the light.

Sound effects in my film

There are many points in my film that i am going to incorpriate sound effects, these include;

1. Using a 'ping' sound when the golf ball is been hit
2. Using possible tire squeeling sound for when the car is comming up the ramp, and when the car comes to a holt.
3. Using the sound of empty beer cans hitting the pavment when the girl is getting out of the car.
4. Using the sound of running water when the man is urinating in the stairwell.

I feel using these sound effects will really add to the film and make it sound more realistic.

Sound Problems

On our first shoot the sound turnde out to be to loud and slightly distorted, and thus was unuseable, this was due to the microphone been turned up, once we had realized this mistake we decided to replay each scene on set to check the sound and lighting was usable to avoid making this mistake again.
Another problem we came across was the fact that the microphone wasnt picking up sounds in the distance, for example when the car is driving around, i came up with the idea to record sound from outside the car window to pick up the sound of the engine, which turned out quite well. We can then put some of this sound over other clips to enchance the car noise.

Lighting problems

During our shoots we have had many problems with lighting, due to the location of our shoot been on top of a car park, we have no access to a power supply, this means we are very limited when it comes to lighting. to overcome this problem we came up with the idea of using a cars headlights, and using a reflector to soften it, this turned out to work really well.
To create spot lights or highlight somthing i found out that the portable LED light box's work really well, these can also be used with the reflectors to soften the light.

Ralph McQuarrie

For those of you who dont know, one of my all time favorite artist Ralph McQuarrie, the man that helped George Lucas bring Stars Wars to the big screen, has died aged 82. 

He created the look of characters including Darth Vader, Chewbacca and R2-D2 and C-3PO aswell as the Storm Troopers and the light Saber. 

He also worked on the original Battlestar Galactica TV series and Steven Spielberg films E.T. and Cocoon, for which he won an Oscar.

For those of you who do not know much about him i highly suggest you check out his website, and work. 

http://www.ralphmcquarrie.com/

Ralph McQuarrie June 13, 1929 – March 3, 2012.

R.I.P

Opening scene

I have started to look at films that open up with a voice over. The first movie i looked at was the movie

"21." The film is a fact-based story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings. However it is the opening scene that i am most instrested in, the movie opens with a voice over of the main character before fading out into music and the opening credits.

The film American Beauty also uses a voice over at the start of the film, however this voice over is rather different, as it is narrated by the main character, who reveals that he is dead at the start of the film, i thought doing this was very risky, as you would think that telling somebody the end to a story at the start would ruin the film for them, however this dosnt, it makes you want to watch it more to find out what happened and what events led up to the main characters death.

Train Spotting is one of my favourite films of all time, it is about a character called Renton who is deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene and tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influences of friends. This voice over gives us a really good idea about Rentons personality and his attitude towards life and drugs, so while we havnt even seen more than 2 minutes of the film, we almost feel like we know Renton.

Rocknrolla has a another similar voice over to train spotting, again this film is about a young man who enjoys many taboos and this opening voice over helps give us an idea what he is like.

Opening Scenes

So i have started my DP2 film project.
A good beginning credit sequence is really all it takes for me to like a movie. That seems like a really stupid thing to say – but when you think about it, while not all good movies have creative credits, almost all creative credits belong to good movies. It shows that the filmmakers actually cared enough to do something meaningful with their title sequence as opposed to just throwing out some stock effect… After all, the beginning credits are the opening number to a film – the handshake – and if it doesn’t make you excited about what you’re about to watch then there really isn’t a point is there? 
So i have decided to post my personal favorite opening credit sequences.. 

The first film that comes to mind if Vertigo, while not one of my favorite films, the opening sequence to this film is instantly recognisable.  

You know you’re about to watch a suspenseful film when the opening title takes like a minute to fully appear. What I love about it is that we all know what the title is, we knew it when we decided to watch the movie – and yet it still teases us line by line. I know this is silly, but every time I see it I forget about the last two lines that appear in the E and the A – it surprises me every time because to me the title seems complete enough for my satisfaction, and also I have the memory of a tin can. I wanted to remind people of this title sequence mostly because it’s showed up again pretty recently in the trailer for Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s sort-of-not-really-but-close prequel to Alien. I think it was the inclusion of this title effect that really, really set me over the edge when I first saw that trailer.

Final Animation Movie

Evaluation of my animation.

I didn’t know what to expect when I looked at the brief for the first time, but I instantly knew that I would want to design the lair of a super hero rather than a super villain, super villains always tend to be a lot more exciting and are always very controversial, the fact that a super villain does not have any rules or regulations, means that they can do much more than a super hero, I thought this would also mean they might have a more exciting lair, as they may have things in the lair that a super hero might not, such as weapons to a certain degree.

So I knew I wanted a super villain, and after watching hell boy recently I loved the idea of having a Nazi scientist that was part machine in the present day, so hell boy was a massive influence on me, however I found the actual characteristic of the villain in hell boy rather dull, he just looked like a normal member of the SS with a grey mask on, which wasn’t for me, I wanted my villain to literally scream ‘evil’ so I began looking around for more influences, probably one of my favourite character designs of all time was to be general grievous from star wars, he was also one a man, or some sort of living creature, that’s life was now been supported by machine, however I felt his design was not right for this project, he looked to futuristic, and to ‘droid’ like, so then I finally came across some batman animation from 1992, and I loved the design that mr freeze had, and I knew I wanted my super villain to look like this version of mr freeze.

As for my lair, I knew I wanted this to be set in the present day, or near future, so that I could incorporate modern technology, such as the submarine and helicopter, however this wouldn’t tie in to my Nazi scientist if it were any normal lair, so I decided to have my lair built deep underground with access only by helicopter via the helicopter pad, or the submarine dock inside the lair. I had many great and wild plans for my lair, however I have never used 3ds max before, and when I actually came down to start making my lair, I was finding it extremely difficult to even make a wall, so I soon realised some of my ideas weren’t going to be possible at this stage of my course, however now that I have finished dp2, I can look back at my initial ideas and think how I could perhaps do some of them now that I have a moderate understanding of the huge program. I was finding it very difficult to learn the program at first, and was getting extremely frustrated as I knew what I wanted my lair to look like, but I just didn’t know how to get there, however using the tutorials on the NOW and on YouTube, they helped me understand the basics of the program and I am now able to carry myself thru the program and start to learn it at a more in-depth level.