Reflection

Our EDL is now on my blog, the props list has been email and i reposted the dialogue (because Bec said we needed it) even though that wasn't apart of the group task - i had done that for my treatment. I hope you find everything on my blog and remember to give me a good mark. I worked too hard on this whole thing, i'm even still doing it now- when i'm in America and the term has finished!

Dialogue - Slightly Modified in Film

Nurse Rose - “Hello Fiona, you gave us quite a scare, I presume you didn’t know that you were allergic to those flowers. You are perfectly fine now and when you feel ready you are welcome to leave. Sorry I’m not here to explain everything to you properly; I had to run a very important errand. Kind Regards, Nurse Rose.”

Councilor Jane - “Fiona, you have to understand that what you have described to me, isn’t true. You really have to come to terms with that, if not, you will never get better.”

Councilor Jane - “I don’t hear any screaming, I am taking this as a good sign. Fiona, this is your dog, you have had it since you were little… Fiona he isn’t dead, you have created that memory yourself, he was never dead. The sooner you can accept these facts, the sooner you’ll improve. I’ll leave him with you for a while.”

Fiona – “Dear Fiona, you have talked to me about the memory that you hold of yourself fainting and ending up in a hospital bed after smelling a flower. This is the flower you told me you were allergic to. I asked all your doctors and they grantee that you weren’t and still aren’t allergic to any flowers. They also told me there isn’t a hospital like you described and there isn’t a single registered nurse, in Queensland, by the name of Rose. If you don’t believe me, smell the flower. You must let these memories go, they are causing you pain. Accept the truth and move on. It’s the only way out of this facility for you. From Councilor Jane”

Fiona – “If a flower I was once severely allergic to, now fails to affect me at all, perhaps I’m invincible. I have always enjoyed having wind in my face, today I have decided to learn how to fly. I only wish to offer Councilor Jane some advice; you should have locked the door to the roof.”

Props List

The props list was in table form and could not be copied across to my blog.
I have emailed it to you..
Thanks,

EDL

File/Clip Name


New2

HaS01

Op01

Op02

Op03

Op05

EZS01

Op06

EZT02

EZS04

grave

Sand02

Chap01

Chap02

Chap03

FS01

FS04

FS12

FS11

HS02

HS03

HS10

HS13

HS14

GOOD

CJS01

GOOD

DOG01

DOG03

DOG09

DOG07

DS01

DS03

DS02

DS03

DS02

DS03

SS01

SS03

SS04

SS04

SS05

SS07

SS06

SS09

SS12

End01

Genre Specific Elements

My film is a drama, i had once thought of making it a thriller but changed my mind. I wanted to make a film that really exploited its genre and with a thriller i knew i wouldn't have been able to do that quite as effectively. There are a couple twists in my movie which lean themselves to the thriller genre, such as when she discovers her dog is actually alive. I love the ending of my movie, it really confirms the dramatic ness of the story.  My music also helps create an effective dramatic basis to my film.

Transitions and Speical Effects

The only real special effect that i added was on the sandwich scene. Ts involved layering the footage, finding at start position that matched Claudia up, then the second layer changed the opacity. This enabled the people walking past to have a ghosted effect. I have put different filters on various scenes; however these don' t count as special effects. I have used transitions to hopefully make it clearer what memories are real, which are fake and what aren't memories at all. I have use cross dissolves as my primary transition, though have mixed i up by having the transitions dissolve to black o white, depending on the next scene. the white looks really effective, and he black looks more normal <-- as in seen more commonly. The white and black transitions are genre specific elements, creating a more suspenseful atmosphere.

Biggest Mistake

The largest mistake i have constantly made throughout this whole movie is that i haven't reflected enough. I don't purposefully not reflect rather i just forget to. This is a bad habit I've had from the beginning. Nevertheless, when i reflect i write larger reflections to make up for it. I hope i don't get marked done for not having an abundance of reflects, i think the time and effort i have put into all my assessments makes up for it.

Sandwich Scene Effect

Up until the start of this week, i still had no effect on the sandwich scene but i decided it was extremely necessary for me to have the effect on it. Initially it was Mr Andrews who came up with the specific idea of the effect; however it came form my idea of lots of people pass her yet she is never noticed. I opened up Finalcut again, as i also wanted to put in credits, and i sought Mr Andrews advice on how to do it. the end result is really quite effective, the people look like ghosts, perhaps implying they were never really there, maybe Fiona just thinks that if people were there, they would ignore her, and as she is ghosted as well maybe she doesn't see herself as a whole just fragmented, which all comes back to her being not mentally stable. So all worked out well from the sandwich scene effect.

What I Could Have Done Better With My Sound

Some transitions between loops could have been created/changed to sound a lot better than they did. Most where acceptable but one or two, I could never get quite right; however I gave it my best shot. I’m not the most musical person around so the sound was a little difficult in that regards. Nonetheless, garage band was created for people who have no musical ability, so that made my life a little easier. I could always hear if something sounded wrong, but I didn’t always know exactly how to change it straight away as I might if I were more musical, I just kept playing with it, changing loops and transition until it sounded better. The biggest thing I could have done better is that I could have finished it quicker in general, instead of wasting the couple of lessons I did at the beginning. With those extra couple of lesson I could have been less stressed at the end, had more help to develop and better my final sound track. So time management is something I still need to do better. With using Finalcut I learnt how to do things more effectively, this I tried to apply to garage band; however it wasn’t until later on that I got to doing things more efficiently.

Sound Ideas That Never Worked Out

I would have loved a heart rate monitor flat line sound, but it is a bit slack to assume Mr Andrews would drop everything to create one from scratch, so even though I requested it I didn’t hold my breath and created a ending that I could included it in but would be equally good without it. At one stage I thought perhaps I could have her breathing being the a undertone to the movie, as in each memory would have a different pace of breath depending on the emotion evicted by Fiona in each memory. This might have made the movie better, though more than likely it would have just confused the viewer as I’m not sure if I could have portrayed the meaning of the breathing clear enough.

Sound Process

The process of creating the sound track for the movie was a lot more stressful than what the Finalcut section was. The music isn’t about right or wrong conventions, or wether it looks good, it is about creating something to enhance your film, to add understanding, and emotion that soundless movies can’t. To make a soundtrack well, is to truly understand your characters and what your film is about. I believe I have done this extremely well, mostly because this is my story so know one is to know it better than myself. I could easily spend another week or two on my garage band truly perfecting it, but the standard it was when I handed it in is satisfying.

Film Ending

When I wrote the story I had in written it in that she dies I the end. However, it wasn’t until we actually started filming that I decided she should jump off the roof. I knew we couldn’t actually film her doing this, so we brainstormed and came up with that we will just film her running up the stairs. Once at the top Rebecca wanted to finish the shot by her walking through the door onto the roof, back facing the camera. I rejected this idea and thought it would be best if we then stood on the roof ourselves and shot Claudia when she stepped through the door. I told Claudia to have a solemn look on her face, to be at peace. Claudia did this better than I could have imagined. For me, Fiona committing suicide wasn’t purely because she was a lonely, depressive mental patient but that she could no longer keep battling with these memories, that is was her way of letting it all go. I thought the ending is happy in a way, her finding her peace, moving on to a better life. To symbolise this more I had suspenseful music playing whilst she ran up the stairs; however, was on the roof made her peaceful, reoccurring piano loop play, fading it into when her name tag is taken away.

Submitting Reflection

I have only just submitted my final version 100%completed into the drop box on the multimedia drive. It was due yesterday by 4pm but due to my stress levels and abrupt change of film length in garage band, I could not submitted by 4. I then tried to convert everything when I was in prep but for so reason it wouldn’t work, I had been told not to compress the file, so I didn’t. I tried exporting my sound out of Garage Band three times in three different ways that I could think of but yet none of them would work in final cut. I decided to leave it until today as we had creative to ask Mr Andrews to go through it step by step with me. He had already done this in class, I listened, but as he said everyone has to do it differently, because everyone did things in different ways. Anyway, its done now and only slightly late.