Music and Sound

What music and sounds are included within films?

Soundtracks are included in many films, as the music becomes recognisable to the audience and could be a main selling point. Children's films, particularly Disney films tend to have a soundtrack such as, The Lion King and Beauty and The Beast. 


Soundtracks add effect to films and build anticipation, making films more pleasurable for an audience to view. Other than children's films, dramas tend to use a certain type of music that attracts the audience and supports the storyline of the film. Popular soundtracks include the Brave heart and Lord of the rings, which are films that have action within them.




Soundtracks are non-diegetic music used within films. Music will be used in our own 5 minute film as it will add effect to the situations within our film such as the dramatic ending and upsetting parts where Destiny is shown to have no money. Most films use all 4 different sound/music techniques including: Ambient sounds, non-diegetic, diegetic, soundtracks.

Ambient sounds are sounds which are naturally within the setting used in the film such as birds tweeting, wind and rain. Rain is used within The Notebook as an ambient sound because it is a sound that matches the surroundings of the film.

Non Diegetic sound is where the sound is put into the film during production. This can be a Voice Overs, sound track or fake ambient sounds.

Diegetic sounds are sounds that are already in the film. These can be natural ambient sounds, dialogue and music that is being played in the film. This includes sound bridges during conversations.

 

 

 

Viral Advertising

Viral advertising

Viral advertising is a modern way in which films can be publicised and become familiar to their audience. There are many ways in which viral advertising can be used is through adverts, websites and videos. Different films go through extremes to advertise their new, upcoming films. A good example of this is batman, where a newspaper was created which was two sided. One side was a normal looking paper made by "Gothem news paper company" but the other side was made by the Mimes who are evil. This spin of a news paper advertises Batman well as people can get involved in the storyline and gives the audience a sense of reality.


An idea for our viral advert, would be a television advert that is similar to those that are already existing as real money lenders such as Wonga. These adverts all use the same techniques including close ups and voice overs. These voice overs add effect to the close up as these are usually just used to show facial expressions of people before they have lent the money and after. This is simple and would be easy for us to do in our own advertisement.

Furthermore, money lenders adverts are usually optimistic about lending money and portray it in a positive way instead of letting the audience know they are getting themselves in debt. They act as though the company works to suit the client and that they are in charge of the amount of money they lend and how long they have to pay it back. These adverts can be fairly long, but we plan to use this advertisement within our actual 5 minute film, so we would have to make it a little shorter.

Diary Update

 

Diary Update

 

 

Today we filmed and edited our viral advert, this was mostly facial expressions as we are going to do a voice over. We looked into existing adverts for money lenders and noticed that most of them have voice overs to make what they are saying stand out.

 

Once we finished filming, we imported the footage onto the computer and continued to edit the scene between the loan shark and Destiny. During this editing we realised that the 180 degree line wasn't always followed and the focus sometimes altered. This means we have to re film, however the original person who played the loan shark is no longer available. Therefore, we have now arranged another man to come in and film with us.

 

 

 

 

So far we have filmed Destiny, waking up and calling the loan shark arranging a meet up. This filming went well, however there is still more filming for the bedroom scene to be filmed.

After filming the loan shark scene and realising we had forgotten about the 180 degree line, we have made sure we have considered all the rules of filming during this session.

Making Video Look More Like Film

Making video look more like film

Video looks different from film. Film looks softer partly because the slower frame rate and the lack of interlacing. Interlacing means that video is actually 60 fields per second (a field being either every odd or even line of a whole screen, i.e. half). Both of these make movement on video look clearer and sort of strobe-like (less movement 'blur') than on film.

Film also looks softer because it has a much greater range of contrast and color. Video looks harsher (more contrasting and starker, more primary-ish colors). In our film, we want a move film-like effect rather than a video. There are certain effects you can use to achieve a more film look. These are the basic things you can do to solve this problem, not just on final cut express but on other editing software. 

Color Correct
First, get all the shots in a scene to look the same. If the white balance was wrong, the colour tone may have to be adjusted. Otherwise, fine-tune the exposure on each individual shot. Now, develop a look for the scene. Nest the entire scene into one clip and experiment with filters to see what looks good. This stage is another license to get creative. It doesn’t have to look exactly how it was shot. For example, add some green to give the scene a sickly, institutional look. Experiment with “curves” or “gamma.” The advanced will adjust the colour channels separately. 

Desaturate Colours 
Some people think reducing the colour intensity makes video look more like film. It is a look. I have used it before, but I don’t use it in every situation. Many video editing applications have a “desaturate” filter. Experiment de- and over-saturating the image. Again, the more advanced colourist will adjust each colour separately.

Crush Blacks
For whatever reason, video cameras don’t record the dark areas as black as they should (a contrast problem). Nest the scene and make the blacks blacker. This is done in the colour corrector (Final Cut Pro and Avid) by reducing the lows or with a filter called “Levels” by increasing the black input. Experiment with settings until happy.

Blur the Highlights
This is a trait of some films. The very bright areas of the frame are blurry and almost bleed into the areas directly surrounding them. Duplicate the nested scene and put it on an upper video layer, perfectly aligned with the original. Add a small Gaussian blur (2-5), reduce the opacity to 3-10%, and change the composite mode to Screen.

Add Grain
Most video editors have a “noise generator” of sorts. Generate some noise that is coloured and randomly changing (under it’s settings). Put this in the timeline above the scene. Reduce opacity and experiment with composite mode (multiply might be good for this). Keep the opacity low–a little goes a long way. I should note that I almost never use this anymore because I don’t like film grain anymore than I like a video look.

Widescreen
Dramatic media, whether on TV or in a movie theater, is often presented in widescreen. This is another thing that helps convince an audience that your movie is more than just a home video. On video, add those annoying black bars on the top and bottom of the screen by putting a black colour slug on an upper video layer and add an inverted 4-point garbage matte filter. This is better than applying the "widescreen" filter because this way you can adjust headroom on the clips. If you plan on doing this, shoot accordingly–try taping black bars onto the on set video monitor.

De-Interlace
The above 6 suggestions dealt with the look of film. This attempts to make the motion more cinematic. Video is 60 interlaced fields. Film is 24 frames per second. We can take video to 30 frames progressive (sort of). Most video editing software has a de-interlace filter. Unfortunately, it cuts the vertical resolution in half. Here’s how you can maintain more of the resolution. Duplicate a nested scene onto an upper video layer perfectly aligned with the original. On the lower layer, apply the “de-interlace” filter with even fields. On the upper layer, apply the “de-interlace” filter with odd fields and reduce the opacity to 50%. If you notice jagged edges, you may consider reducing the opacity to 30-50%. If you shot with the camera in 'movie mode' this step is not needed.

Maybe people have their own ways of making video look more like film using final cut express...

Editing process for our viral advert

Editing Process

For our media project we have used viral advertising for a money loaning company for the Loan Shark. This advert is good because it works as a believable advert for money loaning however, the audience will research the loan company and this will create a marketing buzz.

To start with we imported the footage of our film to final cut. We have used 3 different shots and edited them continuously. We followed the sequence of an advert for "Quick Quid" where the advert starts with someone who is struggling, then they easily get the loan, then they are happy.

However, because our advert is for a twisted money loaning company we needed to make it look a little scary. So we used a shark to come along and eat the text. This makes the advert look more professional and goes with the theme of the loan shark. We did this by layering the shark over the top of the film and key framing the shark and text.

On the quick quid advert there is a logo in the top corner. So we used photo shop to create a logo for the loan shark. 

 Also on the "Quick Quid" advert there is a voice over that talks though the steps and how easy it is. We have used a zoom recorder for this.

Due to a new idea we have decided to swap the actors in the Loan advert because the main character Destiny played by Maddison Brown is in the Loan advert. So the new idea was to put the advert on the film and have Destiny watch it but she would then be watching herself. So we are re-shotting 3 scenes and swapping them on the final cut.

Making Film Look Less Like Video

Some short films shot in HD become too shiny for a real film affect. One part of this relates to the Frames per second. Also we can put a colour filter on the edited film to make it less shiny.