~*Sound Effects*~

Having completed half of our voice over, we must now search for realistic sound effects. Although my user has limited access. many sites for downloading sound effects were blocked, thus I received help from Sarah to help me look for sound effects from her mac book. Here is a list of sound effects we hope to include in our trailer:

• School Bell (To create a school-time atmosphere and to make it sound as if we're in an actual school.
• Leaves Shuffling (To give it that naturalistic feel and to include in the park scene, to make it easier for one to imagine one is walking through the parkduring Autumn.
• Birds singing/Chirping (Also to be included within the park scene along with other noises you'd hear in the park, i.e ice cream van and children laughing/playing.
• Heavy breathing/Panting (to go along with Thriller conventions, to be included when the protagonist is dragging the dead girl's body.

Soundtrack

Thanks to my group members, here is a list of possible soundtrack we can include, from which we have all conjured up:

I have decided to use music to minimal effect in "TheCut", in order to capture the "heavier feel" of the darker stle of the trailer, Sometimes movie music feels fake and unrealistic, silence can be scarier than music. We decided to keep the music to minimal to give it that documentary feel.

The Trailer Plan

A preview of how our trailer is to look, a sort of step outline plan of how our trailer will order itself chonologically. ( Double-click to enlarge)

7th Meeting

On 9th of December, we all were to meet after college together, as a group. In this meeting, all we needed was the scene of Raza uploading his footage onto the Mac, and seeing as Suhail was in charge of filming, he filmed it with the camera I booked out for this date for us to engage our filming process. Therefore, Suhail filmed the scene to his full effort along with Raza acting out his scene, and I was planning for future filming as it will be beneficial for us all to film everything we have left to film before the Christmas holidays as the time there reminding shall be used for editing what we have filmed. I decided, that next Wednesday on the 16th of December, we shall film the remainder of our trailer including the toilet scene where Raza is lying unconscious on the floor where he is was attacked by the mysterious figure in the toilets after being excused from class.

While Raza and Suhail are filming in the toilets, me and Sameria shall focus on creating and editing the rest of our captions on Photo Shop as it is unnecessary for us to accompany the other group members in the boys toilets as it is wasting valuable time which can be spent on another important aspect such as sound and editing.

In conclusion, everyone had a productive day as we had filmed one valuable scene which combined the trailer together. And we have decided to film the remainder of what is left to film next Wednesday before the Christmas holidays.

Logo's/Captions

Here is a selection of logo's and captions we can use to extend the film trailer as well as making it seem like a film trailer through it's codes and conventions. These logo's have been distributed/found and edited by everyone from the group:

This logo was found by Suhail Muhammed through research and r

epresents an Independent British film and is quite rare in it's colourful style!

Filmfour represents a niche audience as

it doesn't distribute as many films as Warner Bros. does, but again it represents an Independent aspect.

^^ This is cut from the actual main poster we created in order to edit the trailer in terms of captions. This was created on PhotoShop along with dafont.com

Another Independent distribution company well known for distributing films like The country for Old men and There will be blood.

The UKFC another, Independent flm distribution company backed by the UK government to establish educational films thus would be a great company to use.

Another piece created from photoshop stating: "Outstanding, first-rate...and compelling" a quote from Phillip French, an editor from the Observer, another serious aspect to set the tone.

Five stars to make the whole trailer realistic enough with a nominated aspect of being rated. Therefore, the fuction of this caption is for the film to be taken seriously as it's considered to be a serious, independent, British best seller.

Voice Over

In terms of voice over, it was my job to complete this assignment given to me. Thus, on the 2nd of December, I asked Michael Trevaillon from the English Department if he were available to voice-over our trailer. I decided to choose Miche because he has a soulful voice plus a Canadian accent which is lovely and unique! =) Luckily, he had time and read out a small script I provided for him which was:

• Based on a True Story
• Nominated for best film
• At the Cannes film festival in 2008
• "Intriguing, fast-paced, neat."
• ^^ Empire Magazine
• The Cut (title)

Although, voice over's aren't a well-known conventions for an independent film trailer, we thought we'd go solo and start a new convention of our own. The least there is to say, the more effective it shall be.

We also asked Sam Rouse to participate from the media department,as the sound was all distorted on screen, we told Sam to repeat his script but this time, adressing the Mic in the studio room. We decided to go for Sam as he was on screen for the filming but he sounds extremely enthusiastic and blissful as he always is! =) Here are the lines for Sam in which he said;

• Welcome to film club, it will change your lives!
• The world on your doorstep...
• The trees, the birds, the nature
• It's great to see some enthusiastic film-makers!

Now, that we have completed the voice-over, the sound is yet to composed. Thanks to Suhail, we have found a song composed by Clint Mansell called "Death is the road to awe"from the operatic and classical era, here's a preview of the tune;

Improvements made...

Although we may have been unlucky to encounter such problems, or we may have even made some mistakes; the most important things to do is to learn from your mistakes! So here are a few improvements and corrections we made to make it more beneficial to us in terms of development and progression;

• Although, the sound wasn't exactly audible, we can still fix that as we can record in the studio room in college for sound purpose's, which we have already done. So what we have recorded are the sound effects (school bell, shuffling noises of leaves and background everyday noises), voice-over (we need one who has a deep and one-0f-a-kind voice to set the serious tone), dialogue (which we will hear Sam speak along with the rest of the characters according to their dialogues) and music ( classical, operatic music to set a spiritual theme to it)
• Having uploaded our work onto FCE, we did suffer from some stress as it would mean to go out to our various locations and film all again, but in order to solve this dilemma, we got our teacher, Sarah to upload our footage onto her mac book and was accomplished successfully as her user login may have had more privilege than ours.
• Finally, although we did spent plenty of time on editing, we have now started pre-planning for future jobs and roles to assign to one another to make the whole process less time-consuming as everyone would have assigned roles to do, such as me having to film some scenes in my neighbourhood to include more diversity, Suhail having to book out the equipment for future filming and arranging what to film where. Raza currently has the role of creating/editing captions and organising various fonts. Sameria and me have the role of sound and how to edit the voice over, along with the music and sound effects on garage band.

Problems encountered; ^^

Although, as a group, we've managed to film most of our storyboard, we have encountered a few problems which has delayed our project further in ters of time. Here were the problems we faced;

• Firstly, the sound wasn't exactly clear when we uploaded our work onto FinalCut Express, we could hardly hear the sounds, words, any of the dialogue from our recorded scenes such as the teacher scene with Sam in a room full of students. Sometimes we'd be able to hear the sounds but sometimes it would seem muffled which didn't really help as we were heavily relying on the dialogue to help progress the trailer.
• Secondly, having uploaded our work onto FCE, our work was worth half an hour's worth of recording, and it soon came out to be a long stretch divided up in to 2 second shots which obviously didn't seem genuine or satisfying enough to qualify for a thriller trailer as it all looked rather "choppy" and disfigured.
• Furthermore, as a group, we spent a great deal of time only on the fixing of the editing aspects which may be due to a faulty tape or the equipment supplied to us.

6th Meeting

As a group, we met again on the Wednesday the 2nd of December. In our meeting, we decided upon the various conventions of a Thriller trailer. We all came up with a list to provide for the trailer. I wrote them in the yellow book for everyone to intake. Here is a list of captions we all came up (Me and Sameria had researched by looking at other film trailers with similar aspects from our trailer, such as being a British film, along with being an Independent film as well as being a Low-Budget film. Here is a list of a few other British, Independent, Low-Budget - based film trailers:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQTJUfqNJts ( Moon )
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGFbWhlVezo ( Afterschool )
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rXw1myJlpg ( In the loop )
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Km9L1Sqd0(Nowhere boy)
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxz03dyZj40 ( Mugabe and the White African )

Thus, I researched trailer captions by looking at trailers with similar codes and conventions to our trailer and came up with a list of various captions we can use to sustain the "feel" of a British Independent film:

• Awards/Nominations. EG; Cannes Film festival 2008
• Distribution companies. EG; GreenT
• Quotes from film critics. EG; "Intriguing, fast-paced, neat." by Phillip French - The Observer
• Film title. EG; THE CUT, A FILM BY___________
• Institutional Data. EG; a GREENT CLASSICS production. FILMFOUR presents THE CUT in association with GREENT. "THE CUT". RAZA MUSTAFA. UZMA AKBER. Casting director SAMERIA IDRIS. Director of Photography, HINA MAJEED. Written, Produced and Directed by SUHAIL MUHAMMED. etc etc.
• Logo's. EG; We shall create logo's such as greenT, filmfour along with award logo's such as the Cannes film festival logo

Having construted variuous logo's for our trailer, we also went with creating our voice-over to move the trailer further in terms of speed as the deadline is pretty soon. Suhail asked Sam for him to read out his script again for the trailer as we went through some difficulties in terms of speech and dialogue when we uploaded our work, so SAM read out his script and me and Sameria went to the English department to ask Michael Trevaillon to voice opver our film trailer as he consists of a deep voice with an Canadian accent along with a unique feel. The sound went pretty well as we all played our parts and carried on. The voice over was uploaded onto garageband on my account, so it is my duty now to carry on in terms of sound effects, voice-over and music.