Evaluation 4

Me and Alfie used a lot of technology to create our A2 short film 'Tempore Exitus'. Due to our genre (Sci fi) we had to be quite dependent on technology as we needed to create a lot of special effects and try and push the surreal element of Sci fi with things such as editing and the correct camera angles to make the effects look effective and most of all realistic. From the very start of creating the short film me and Alfie knew we wanted to concentrate on special effects and we knew we had to find the right technology before we started planning so in the planning stages we researched using Youtube. We used the popular video sharing site for researching into short films much like ours to get inspiration, also try and establish a complicated plotline which is interesting four our audience and also to try and work out how they did certain effects. Once we did this research on short films we knew what type of effects we wanted so we needed some help creating these, so again we researched into special effects such as super speed and time travel effects on Youtube to work out how to make our own special effects from scratch and this helped us a lot in making these as we now had our own unique effects with inspiration from other short films.


After this stage we planned the location shoots using google maps and with street view on there we established a great location spot we could use without even being there to decide and went out to film with one of our most vital pieces of technology in our short film which is of course the camera. We used my own personal camera which is a Nikon D3200 DSLR. We chose this camera because we did not have to rent it out from school and it has 1080p HD recording on the camera so it was perfect for our film. We also used a tripod with it to stabilize a lot of our footage which helped us achieve a smooth and sleek look to our film in the parts we needed the camera to be steady. We also used the tripod for some crane shots in which we raised the tripod in the air and recorded it midair to give the crane effect. In AS we both never really expanded on our creativity with the camera and in A2 we wanted to create some unique and interesting camera angles with this camera.

After shooting our footage it was then a matter of putting all of our clips together and putting them in a linear sequence. We did this by putting all of our clips into Adobe Premier Pro. Premier pro is an easy to use editing software which i used in AS so i feel like i was a lot more confident in using this in A2 as i gained a lot of experience with it in AS. We used this for adding filters also as we wanted a dark tone to each scene. I learnt how to add filters in AS but never really experimented with it but in A2 i feel like i had a lot more time to play around with filters and create the desired effect i wanted the short film to have.

After putting all of our clips in a linear sequence we found all clips which needed the special effects added into them. We simply took the clips from the raw footage we took and then in After effects we manipulated them such as: Charlotte being hit by the car or Katie's glowing hands. We then added them back into the linear sequence on Adobe premier pro by replacing that scene with the brand new edited scene as these two programs allowed us to go from one to the other with ease. In AS i never really did this as i focused on premiere pro a lot more and sometimes just threw edited clips into it and never re-edited them after as i did not know how to go back and forth from the two. I also used Adobe after effects to create our title sequence and titles as i found a way in the summer to animate text and create strange effects. Last year i simply used Livetype to create a basic text animation for our titles and title sequence.

I also used Garageband IOS on my ipad to create our soundtrack or the title sequence. In AS i just got copyright free music from Incompetech. However in A2 i wanted to step it up as i wanted to have a go at making my own from scratch soundtrack. Ideally i wanted to create all of the music in our short film but this was too much of a task for the amount we had to produce our film and edit it all within the deadline. So after compromising with time me and Alfie decided to simply create the title sequence soundtrack. As seen above there is the IOS version of Garageband in which i created separate instrumental tracks to form a tune for the title sequence. It took me several hours of experimenting with different instruments and tunes for each track but eventually me and Alfie decided on the final track to use for our titles. Another way i created something new was Photoshop in which i created the Ancillary products. In AS we didnt create ancillary products such as posters and magazines but Photoshop helped me create four posters for our film and magazine review pages with ease. I had no Photoshop knowledge in AS but after time in doing photography i have learnt the basic of Photoshop and a few handy tricks again using YouTube.