Evaluation video (Preparation)

Becoming increasingly interested in the different ways in which I could present my evaluation. Be it in a normal word document, straight forward but a bit boring and doesn't show off my potential skills. Be it in a presentation, but then on what? Powerpoint?! I don't think so, deserve something more extravagant. Video presentation then, just showing me nothing else? Well that was my original idea, but then I decided to get a bit more ambitious. I thought, why not go one more step and try something I've never tried before? Green Screening! Always wanted to, never got round to it. Now seems as good as ever.
I looked around for a green screen to actually film on. I researched the various gradients of green that would be ideal. I found that it doesn't really matter as long as its a constant gradient throughout the shot without any variations as this can cause errors to occur. With this in mind, I trawled the internet in search of a suitable screen. Many youtube videos told me that normal felt from your local fabrics store would do the trick. However, this being Norfolk there are no fabric shops which would sell me the necessary amount for a reasonable price or quality. So I looked online and found a "professional" green screen which I could buy to use.

My Green screen. 1.8x2.8m 

Having settled on the screen, I then needed to find some suitable software which could carry out a green screen effect. I knew imovie would do it but when I tried it out it seemed to infantile to achieve it to the level of quality I wanted it. So I continued to look. I also knew Motion 5 would do it, but I knew very little about the software itself, so before buying it, I did some research into the programme. I found this rather handy video which explained a lot to me about the abilities of Motion:

Having been convinced by the video on Motions abilities to complete green screening, I went ahead and bought it.

Now all I needed to do I to decide how to present the video. I looked around at other film interviews and found this:

Looking at others similar to this, I found in all of them the front cover of the film or at the very least the title of the film would be shown up behind the people involved in the interview. I decided that this would be how I could use my green screen. I would use it to flash up perhaps parts of the film behind me but also maybe the cover of my film (pretending that it had been fully completed).

Sound

Reflecting back on the process of how I would do the sound for the platform scene at the very beginning of my video, I looked at many different avenues for which I could sort it out.

The problem with the audio captured by the camera when we were recording was that there was too much white noise captured from the background. It meant the audio for this section of the film would not be suitable and so I needed to find a way around the problem.

I thought about going and recording the sound on a different day on the platform with a better microphone and audio software, however I did not have the necessary equipment compatible to do this.
I then considered using a preset sound file on my video editing software to use instead. Having imported it into the video however, I found the file was way to 'busy' to be suited for the empty platform shown in the video and looked weird to my eye, hearing so many voices and goings on with nothing happening in the video, meaning this file was unsuitable also.
I then decided to completely mute the diegetic sound on the video as nothing was suitable and could not be replaced. Instead, I decided to record my own music piece to place over the top of the video, which I later decided to continue onto the rest of the video. I recorded it using Midi devices and the final product can be heard on the video.






Screen shot of Midi recording, using Garageband on Mac. 
Total tracks: 6

Comments and Feedback

Ok, so now I have completed my video which shall appear on this blog shortly, it is now time to begin to evaluate it:

Having completed my video, I decided to post it up on my Facebook account for my friends and family to see and comment on. After two days, it received over 34 likes and 11 comments.
In all the comments however, there were no posts about how to improve it. Many of the comments were simply praise, with no areas for improvement. This leads me to believe that to the 'untrained' eye that the video is as good as it can be. They all understood what the video was about, the flashback to some point in her past was clear and that she has been taken over by the number Pi by the Evil Professor Hawk.
For the people who knew the people featured, they all thought the casting of both Rory and Fionna was perfect for the roles they were playing.
I received no negative feedback about any of these areas of the video from the public viewing and this leads me to believe that the video is fit for purpose, delivers its message effectively and is well presented to the audience.

Discussing with my fellow Media Students, a few of them noticed a few irregularities concerning the two different train scenes.

 In the first scene, Lucy is shown to be sitting looking out of the window as the image super imposes on her eye, sitting in a seat with a wall behind it.

 

However, in the second scene, she seems to have change seats and is now wearing headphones when she wasn't before.

However, I had anticipated these queries. I explained how this would be part of how the film would move on from this point. I explained, how this was to show how she had been somewhere without the viewers knowledge, how she had changed trains and had put in her headphones. For what reason they then asked. I explained how this would have been the scene where we would then learn what affect the Professor was having upon Lucy. She had just been travelling to a targets home. She had left the train at the point where the flashback had begun, the idea for this was to express how the Professor was still controlling her even then. She had broken into the home and murdered the target (I could not be more exact in how, where or when as I only designed it to be an outline of what would have happened from this point). She had then boarded the train just as the flashback ended, put the headphones in as a method of hypnosis applied to her by the professor. So when the final shot comes on, this then explained the irregularity.