Montage Editing

Click here to view our Initial Trailer Montage

This opening News Montage was inspired by the opening of the 'Gattaca' trailer .
Uses:
- a collection of fast edited images and
- overlapping voiceover
- creates a social context for the film's focus debate.

Although we were very proud of this version it was pointed out that the clips felt too documentary similar to programmes/sequences created by Adam Curtis. (Here is an example of his documentary style)

This decision was made in response to audience feedback.

After this we edited our montage:
- increasing the pace,
- overlapping and merging the over-voice more and
- only emphasising key phrases.

We cropped our first image of the BBC presenter to her mouth down to shoulders. The reduced amount of her face that can be seen establishes her as a vehicle to present our themes rather than an important character. Some shots were removed altogether to increase the fluidity of the message and the build of pace.

We looked again at the Gattaca trailer and conventions of our soft-scifi and dystopian genre. A bluy-grey colour scheme is frequently used to mirror the oppression of authority and we used this throughout our montage, deviating only to create dramatic contrast with shots containing fire which we added the 'Heat wave' effect to.

We also experimented with brightness, saturation and contrast to create the right ambiance of a fractured futuristic society.

Not only is the montage now shorter, with faster editing which creates drama, it has a more filmic quality.

Going Viral!

Visit our Facebook group, our Twitter feed, our Trailer or YouTube Account, final poster design or website.

Webpage creation

For our webpage, we decided to create an initial home page, with two subpages, one for each "cause". Clicking on either photo will take you to the prospective pages.

We aimed for a motif of red, black, white and blue, both symbolic of patriotism and rebellion.

For our Rebel page we were aiming for a recruitment style website. The photo shows our rebel leaders and the rebellion symbol. We blacked out the leaders eyes for anonymity.

The message of the page is to connect members of the resistance. The headers have been renamed for this reason. We have replaced 'photos and videos' with the title 'Reconnaissance' and 'Cast and crew' with 'Recruits and Targets'. We use the red, right hand button 'Join us' instead of the 'pre-order tickets' button. All of these we use to further create the ambiance of a rising rebellion.

We attempted to create a government information website. We inserted our politicians speech onto the page and a photograph of our politician to create a political party feel. The headers here have also been replaced. 'Photos' are now 'Archives' (inspired by the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy webpage), 'Videos' are 'Surveillance', 'Cast and crew' has been replaced by 'Agents and Suspects' and 'Contact us' stands in for the 'Pre-order' button.

Since the screenshots we have added a back button to both to return the viewer to the homepage.

Recruitment leaflet prop

Recruitment leaflet prop - rebellion symbol

Date at the bottom is 21/December/2012 is the cryptic font Windings.

BACK:

Newspaper words and letter highlighted - code

It reads "Our mind is so important, you feel that a major cultural change will separate crime. understand we believe in people."

"freedom of voices"

So cryptic even we don't understand it much but it was very hard to create any kind of relevant message.

Warehouse Mise En Scene

 

 

For our warehouse shot of the rebel headquarters, we set up a desk and spent a long time working on the mise-en-scene. We included chess pieces, among our props, to allude to the symbolic use of them in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Bladerunner, two of the films that greatly influenced us. They have connotations of war being about strategy and almost like a game in that both sides are playing the other. The laptop was used to link in modern technology, as our film is set in the near future, and a convention of sci-fi is that there is future technology involved. The maps and documents suggest the idea of manoeuvres in war and again, links to the idea of strategy being involved. We also included several pencils and pens, as well as open files and screwed up paper to show that the desk has been worked at and make it look more realistic. 

Website Background Creation

These are the videos we created to go in the background of our Government/Rebels pages on our website. We used static to break up images and this links the pages to our trailer and gives it a disjointed feel. 

Filming the TV Shot

We needed a very specific television-sofa layout for the shot where Luke, our protagonist, watches the political speech, so we decided to use Laura's living room as there was a decent sized TV and the sofas could be easily rearranged. The walls and sofa were also neutral colours, which meant that they would not draw attention away from Luke and the TV screen.

After setting up the mise-en-scene in terms of the room, we turned our attention to Luke; we asked him to wear the same clothes he wore for the other shots of him, to keep a sense of continuity and minimise confusion to viewers. As this shot was a close-up of his face, we decided to experiment using our injury research. With basic make-up and a face-painting kit, Hannah managed to create a very realistic black eye, broken nose and split lip for Luke - we tested how convincing it was by posting the photograph on Facebook without explaining that it was fake, and monitored the responses. Everyone was very shocked to find out that it wasn't real, which was a real encouragement!  

Our List and Planning: Shooting

As a group we took our favourite concepts out of all the ones we considered and made a list of each shot by location (this exercise also made us choose plausible locations), also listing the characters required.

Refined List Below:

As you can see some shots we are no longer using and other have moved location for conveinience (or, if upon further research and investigation, we found somewhere better asthetically or more equipt to our needs). These lists allowed us to critically evaluate the quality and quantity of shots we needed and refine our teaser concept. This was also the basis for our storyboards and filming schedule. Our ideas for casting followed shortly afterwards as we then knew what would be expected of each actor and who would be best for the role.

Casting Problems

Whilst trying to cast a presidential figure for our political speech our group met a number of problems such as:
- correlating free time,
- the location and
- finding an authoritative figure who looked the part.

These were minor issues however as the most significant difficulty was finding an adult who was willing to take part. One of the candidates we considered raised the point that the speech and set up, if filmed, put on the internet and taken out of context, could tarnish the reputation of the person who had read it.

For the point of our narrative the speech condemns the British media and removes public and private access to free speech in an Orwellian style future.

Fear of Footage Manipulation: Two of the potential actors for the presidential role were teachers and were strongly advised not to perform in our video for these reasons.

This highlights an interesting issue regarding the press and the power the media industry has to manipulate information, aided by the ever growing internet, and also edit original material distorting the truth. These teachers felt that their careers could be put in jeopardy in the future, implying, perhaps, that the media holds more sway over what we think and do than we would freely admit.

Solution: In the end we chose to film the full length speech because we had found a slightly younger actor who was willing to participate. After the speech was filmed we decided to edit it down, not only to reduce the length of the speech but also to remove some of the superfluous and more provocative phrases.

Younger actor:
The younger age of the actor portraying the politician actually worked in our favour.

The Double: - It created a new dynamic for the narrative as it seemed to imply the use of the double, typically a mythological or religious story idea (eg. Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel etc.) which has become a  prevalent convention in gothic horrors, fantasy and thriller narratives.

Comparisons: - It subtly provokes the audience to compare and contrast the two characters and creates an almost preordained conflict.

Not Right Verses Wrong: - Coupled with one of our potential taglines, the inter-texual phrase, ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ we hope to intimate that there are two perspectives of the dystopian world and not simply that one is wrong and one is right.

Jon, our actor, could be aligned in appearance to our current Prime Ministers which helped to add  depth and reality to the shots of the speech. We explored the concept of Prime Minsiters in life and film here.

[David Cameron (Left), Nick Clegg (Middle), Jon (Right)]

They all have:
- dark hair neatly styled,
- pale skin,
- slim built,
- clean shaven and 
- middle aged or younger.
We aimed to dress Jon in a similarly smart way as well for authenticity.

Filming the speech!

The most important part of our trailer - the speech -  is finally filmed! As we could not use a teacher, we decided to adapt our idea of the politician and use a younger man; he would represent the purity and honesty that the government are supposedly trying to implement through the closure of the media. We filmed Jon speaking on the school stage with Union Jacks either side of him and used camera flashes to create a professional political speech setup. Having the red tie with the black suit almost mimics the rebel logo, playing on our tagline, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". We also took lots of photos of Jon and Luke's faces to use for our posters. 

Our Lists and Planning: Teaser Opening Montage

These were our initial montage ideas -greatly inspired by the opening sequence of 'Gattaca'. Although we did not use all of these ideas, it was important to us that we built up a basis and ambiance for the montage. The main message we wanted to convey was the closure of media outlets and government intervention. 

To begin editing we required audio which would create a structure to the montage and hopefully set up the landscape of the social stage within our narrative. 

Our first base for research was YouTube where we searched a variety of key words eg. 'Freedom of speech', 'war', 'media impact', 'social networking debate','riots', 'terrorism', 'protests' and 'patriotism' to build a picture of the scenario within our narrative.

Below are our initial transcripts and links to the videos we took them from. Our manipulation of the resources online highlights the ease with which audio and images can be taken out of context and made to represent or symbolise something very different. This gives the media a great deal of power and creates, to a certain extent, fear, which is something we found during the casting of our Prime Minister figure.

Initial Montage Audio Transcript:

-          ‘An extraordinary moment in British journalism’

-          ‘The end of the News of the World’

-          ‘failure to start a reinvestigation into phone hacking two years ago’

-          ‘much tighter laws on media ownership’

-          ‘is closing down newspapers’

-          ‘those responsible being brought to justice’

-          ‘This Sunday’s edition will be the last’

-          ‘should you be celebrating tonight or lamenting today’s events’

-          ‘the damage could go beyond financial concerns’

-          ‘Thank you and Goodbye’

-          ‘Goodbye and stay well’

Freedom of speech video

-          ‘undermining the judiciary’ (1:27)

-          ‘the very foundations of western society’ (1:37)

-          ‘journalists who corrupt the language to suppress the truth’ (2:27)

-          ‘defending the indefensible’ (3:07)

-          ‘they’re anti-freedom, anti-free thought, anti-free speech’

-          ‘this is just the beginning’ (4:57)

-          ‘a crime against humanity’ (5:57)

-          ‘poisoning the whole world’ (6:05)

77 Tony Blair speech on London Bombings

-          ‘complete resolution, to defeat this terrorism’ (1:24)

-          ‘our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater then their determination’ (2:23)

-          ‘they will never succeed’ (2:50)

BBC 10 o’clock News 2003 –War on Iraq

-          ‘the day the war started’ (0:18)

News and Social Media

-          ‘the role social media can play in propagating news’ (0:33)

-          ‘influencing everybody else’ (3:20)

Media – Positive or Negative

-          ‘extremist groups’ (1:23)

-          ‘fabricating information’ (3:14)

Webpage Development

We chose a website with a motif of red, black and white to emulate the pervading colours of the 1984 poster and trailer. Traditionally this triplet of colours is representative of danger and gritty realism which played to the conventions of a dystopian future thriller. In our website research we found these colours were the most commonly used by the film websites that we deconstructed.

To add an element of movement which we found was also a convention, we used a slow motion loop of one of our more striking shots. This shot was the high angle view down spiralling concrete stairs, where Luke, our protagonist, runs downward and out of view, which is where we cut the loop.

We removed sound so that users can view our trailer without conflicting audio. 

We also added the navigation headers using a typewriter font in red so that they stand out and can be clearly read by users. The tabs we have created are 'Cast and Crew', 'Video', 'Photo' and 'Downloads'. 

We will continue to post as our website design continues to develop.

Filming 6th November

Yesterday we filmed all the shots in our warehouse location. These shots were heavily dependent on mise en scene, location and lighting. We experimented with using different lights to get different effects with the shadows, especially on faces and cast by the props, such as the chess pieces. We spray painted our rebellion symbol on a big board, and used it as both mise en scene and as a prop for possible poster/website images.

Wednesday 11th October

Today we filmed several of our action shots with Luke in the Victoria Centre multi-story carpark in Tunbridge Wells. We got some really great shots in the dim light, and using the stairwell. 

Monday 26th September 2011

Preliminary filming and location scouting for our teaser trailer! We began by filming a motion detector and followed it up with the burning of newspapers relating to the hacking scandal in order to create the idea of a paranoid oppressive society within our narrative. 

We printed off the front covers of articles pertaining to the News of the World closure and court cases surrounding their immoral journalistic techniques. We also put a blank CD in the fire to suggest that data is being destroyed. We bulked up the pile with other newspapers and literary articles relating to the media.