Gaia's Army

This film opening is named "Gaia's Army". It is the product of our AS Level coursework brief, the opening minutes to a fictional thriller film. Youtube annotations have to be on for at least the first 10 seconds of viewing.

An early version was uploaded to my Youtube Channel, Venturay Productions, on the 3rd of March, which collected a large quantity of feedback which my partner Louis and I took on board. 

This is the final version of the opening.

The opening reveals the two protagonists, Ben and Louis, who discover a dying secret agent who claims to have become rouge from an underground organisation named Gaia's Army, which is trying to save the world from pollution through mass homicide.

Preliminary

This was our preliminary task. Louis and Lewis (another classmate who made the prelim with Louis and I because he was working solo on his film) acted while I went on camera. The prelim contains the typical structure of a scene - an establishing wide shot, followed by a series of two shots and over-the-shoulder shots employed in the shot-reverse-shot technique. The 180 degree line remains intact for the duration of the video. 

RichMix Recording

I recorded the presentations at RichMix on my Zoom H4n so I could go back later and make notes more detailed than I would've been able to at the time. I also uploaded the files to Youtube to make them accessible to the rest of my media group as well.

LAST 'LIL BIT OF FEEDBACK

Nick Handel, a succesfull producer/director in the BBC and author of News kids on the Net was able to provide feedback on Gaia's Army after I re-established contact with him over email. The following is his feedback; 

'Hi Ben,

Thanks for sending me the link. A really impressive piece of work. If you want my professional feedback, I`ll give it to you. This is what I`d say if a professional director shot it for me at the BBC: Beginning needs more pace and some of the dialogue is a little unnatural (nobody would say “Did you hear that?” after a massive gunshot). Suggest cut straight from your establishing shot (which is excellent) to the gunshot (losing the rather phony conversation about “Warhorse”). Then cut straight to the fair guy`s turn back then cut to “That was a gunshot”. The dialogue between the two guys in the tunnel doesn`t cut well because the eyelines are wrong. If one character`s eyeline is left/right the other one must be right/left (learn about `crossing the line`). Both your actors are looking left to right (which is a mistake). The chase to the victim is v. effective and atmospheric as is the scene that follows. Nicely lit, too – full of suspense. Take out the line “We need to go now” it`s really hammy and unnatural. The final sequence is good and I like your opening title. Hope this helps – and please understand that I`m judging it by the highest professional standards. Keep me posted. 

All the best, 

Nick'

With time agaisnt us and Gaia's Army due for tommorow, I sent on the feedback to Louis as the project file is on his personal Macbook.

SCREENING AND EVEN MORE FEEDBACK

On Saturday my colleague and I screened Gaia's Army to seven focus groups, each of about 15 people. The age group ranges from around eight years old to forty years. 

The feedback recieved was not constructive as such, but very encouraging - words such as 'impressive', and 'sophisticated', 'unbeliveably good' and 'I can't believe thats all original!'


I also attended an opening morning at Royal Holloway (University of London) and in doing so met the head of the Media Arts department Jonathan Powell and Victoria Mapplebeck, senior lecturer, who I gave my Youtube channel (as an electronic portfolio to slightly boost chances of being accepted later, if I were to apply). The following feedback was given 'This is very good, really well shot and Directed'. 

GREENSCREEN IN PROGRESS

 Well, greenscreening outside doesn't work. And neither does using the sun to light it. 


The problem is the wind - it's easy to forget once the fabric is up and ready to go it becomes like a sail; the wind won't stop messing with it. The footage I did manage to record features the screen billowing, however - for reasons best known to the camera - the camera turned itself off, missing the climatic moment when the win pushed the green over on top of me.


Furthermore the position of the clouds means that the brightness of the sun is constantly changing, so even if the wind dropped for long enough to get footage the sun's brightness causing  constant changing of shades within the screen would make the footage useless.


Later I will go out again; set up the greenscreen against a flat wall in the front of our house, at a time when the sun has cast a shadow over my house before dark falls. This will eliminate the changing light levels; and if the flat surface idea doesn't work, then I'll find a room somewhere in school which is big enough to greenscreen in. 

As it turned out the second attempt was a successful attempt - my ideas on how to eliminate wind and sun problems worked. 

Editing the question on Final Cut

HOME STRETCH

Four of the seven evlaution questions have been answered. Gaia's Army is reaching 200 views on Youtube. The interactive trailer (after After-Effecting so hard the computer began to smell like smoke) is exported and is ready for the internet. It's the home stretch to completeing the project brief.

All thats left to do now is to download the Sony Pictures ident; re-render our Gaia's Army with the changes from the feedback worked in, and to finish the evaluation questions.

The sixth question, which asks '' will be answered in the form of a video - I will set up my greenscreen at home over the weekend and put myself into a white room with a giant floating TV which will display images of whatever technologies I'm currently talking about.

It will be a challenge - I am not able to access the school's stage for lighting, and my partner-in-film (who has a set of cinematic lights - various pieces of equipment are shared between us) is unable to provide them anytime soon. So shooting without proper lighting could cause a challenge in the edit... however, challenge accepted!

SONY PICTURES - AN UNEXPECTED NEW DISTRIBUTOR FOR OUR FILM

Today my partner and I discovered that our chosen distributor, Columbia Tristar, is in fact a used-to-be distributor which has by now evolved into Sony Pictures.

The answer is simple; just change the ident at the start of the Gaia's Army. It still fits as a valid distributor for our film because although the name has changed over the years, ultimately it still distributed the films I looked at such as Layer Cake and Men In Black.

RICHMIX AND CHARLIE PHILLIPS

The previous Tuesday our media class had an outing to RichMix centre in London for a day of presentations primarily aimed at helping our exam, however many elements became useful for Gaia's Army. 


After the morning which was entirely exam based, an episode from Sherlock was screened followed by a lengthy Q&A session with the presenter (top-dog-of-OCR-Media-A level) Pete Fraser and the editor of Sherlock, Charlie Philips. 


The afternoon enlightened my eyes to the professional editing process - for example the understanding of offline and online editing, when the music becomes involved and how long it takes to edit an episode of Sherlock, which was a shocking four months per episode... however given the episodes are basically short films, this speed is actually impressively quick.


After the presentations, I walked down to the Q&A area where Charlie was packing up and struck up a brief but potentially very useful conversation; asking for his contact details, I plan to email him soon of the behalf of Louis and myself asking if he would be able to find the time to watch Gaia's Army online and perhaps leave some feedback. With a job like his, it's a long shot but we think it's worth the try.

THE NEW RIG

Recently for my own reasons I purchased a DLSR shoulder rig, which arrived in time to shoot the interactive trailer. It allowed for the POV shots to become smoother, and therefore more 'POV' in style (as when one walks, what they see does not become incomprehensibly jumpy).

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK 3

Feedback via email

'Hi there

I thought that the film was really great and very professional. The music really enhanced the storyline and the ending graphics were really good.

It gave a very realistic feel not just going through the motions for a school project. The acting came across as very natural as well

All the best for your next work and looking forward to seeing it'

Feedback via Facebook share comments

'Really enjoyed watching your trailer, great editing and very professional. Especially loved the final credits, well done Ben and Louis.' 

Taking advice on board

The previous lesson Louis and I looked through the fantastic feedback we have recieved and derived several things; the audience loved the music (the Youtube version has different tracks to the final version due to copyright issues), thought the editing was professional and loved my dad's cameo appearance as the dying GA agent. 

Constructive critisim was also present, most prominently from General Bill and the other emails from the MOD, which suggested there was 'too much non value acting' and various scenes could be cut shorter as they added no suspense to the plot (such as our characters walking into the ICT Dept, and the unnessicarily long pauses in the IMAX tunnels). This we took onboard, shortening several shots to maintain a slightly faster pace to keep the audience revved up. The other two points, however, would be unrealistic to act upon; it was pointed out at parts that dialouge was stinted, however reshooting this far into the project would be counter productive. The other point (from the General) was that the closing CGI sequence could feature some video clips of 'nasty stuff' which was built up by the GA Agent and the blurb-like description of the opening in the Youtube video's description.  However shooting nasty stuff would require some level of footage from a third world country, which unfortunatly Louis and I simply don't have access to.

Finally the GCI sequence was slowed from 100% speed to 95% speed, as it had been commented on (In a real life conversation, not a virtual one) that it passed very quickly, and a slight slowing down could allow the viewers to take more in before it was over in a very litteral flash (it ends with a sudden lens flare). 

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK 2

Feedback via more emails from my dad's work at the MOD


'I liked the filming – great technique. I really felt that I was travelling down those tunnels. The music was good and well chosen and fitted with the scary atmosphere. The art work was also good and felt very professional. I also liked the story and the idea of these boys finding this dying man with his secrets. My only negative comment is that the dialogue felt stilted and that for me was a distraction. But amazingly good for boys of that age. What lucky boys they are to have that opportunity.' (The wife of the ex-general)

Feedback via Facebook share comments and Facebook Chat app

'how exciting especially the start..... did I notice a young Alister Murray ?.......Oscar winner there!'

'Incredible! Well done Louis and Ben. Very professional.'

'Briliiant work. Full of suspense. When will the rest be released? Alistair fulfilling one of his dreams via his son? Great performance and very professional by all involved. I hope Ben and Louis do extremely well. One day I will be able to say I lived next door to Ben - my claim to fame!!'

'i seen it man good effects and all the rest'

TRAILER - AN INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE

Last Sunday (yesterday) Louis and I ventured into London one final time (with a DSLR, Louis' Pentax-kx and a new DSLR shoulder mount I had recently purchased for the benefit of Psyched, my personal project) to shoot an interative experience for viewers as part of the distrubution process.

The trailer takes the point of view of the rouge GA Agent moments before the beginning of the film. He begins at the Royal Festival Hall Theater, running up to Waterloo bridge from his unseen chasers (enigma), the corrupt agents of Gaia's Army. The interactivity kicks in when the video presents the viewers with a choice; turn right on the bridge, or cross it and go straight on? Both options will lead to new videos in which the outcome of the choice is depicted. One will result in a diversion from the film's plot, causing the viewer to go back and try again, while the other will continue the chase until the ex-GA Agent gets shot at the right moment. The nature of youtube allows the end of the trailer to link directly to the film, the viewers having affected the plotline with their own choices.


Below is the beginning of the trailer

WHAT WE WENT FOR - OUR DISTRIBUTOR

Looking into specific distributors, Momentum and Lionsgate were my first two choices. After looking at Lionsgate, I judged it not that closely tied with successful thrillers - however Momentum came across promisingly, having taken on films such as 'The Woman in Black', 'Limitless' and 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' series. However it came across as highly American and big-budget, perhaps not too suitable for Gaia's Army... then using the IMDB site I found

Columbia TriStar Film Distributors

which looked promising. Big budget, yes, but also with a British stand which has successfully taken on films such as 'Layer Cake', 'Spiderman',  and 'Men in Black'. The sci-fi element to films such as men in black and spiderman, in which the ultimate goal is to save people from a terrible fate, matches Gaia's Army's plot line which works around two teenage boys saving the world with nothing more than an iPhone. While perhaps lacking in more conventional science fiction (such as aliens or superpowers) elements such as the existence of a secret and corrupt organisation can be fitting.

GAIA'S ARMY DOT COM

An extra component of the Gaia's Army package, the website design which is actually built entirely within photoshop; A screenshot was taken of google with www.gaiasarmy.com written into the URL. Later i used the clone tool to get rid of the google caption at the top of the page. The photo of the GA Agent is the same as was used for the poster, for continuity; the contents of the video tab were actually made in After Effects, then exported as a still image which I moved into Photoshop.

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

Comments via Facebook wall posts and shares of the uploaded video

'Love it. And Al (Alistair Murray, played the dying GA Agent) finally fulfils his dream of being an actor'

'Super Intense, exciting start! We want more! R.I.P.agent A...Professional editing!'

'Wow!! This is really good work. Well done! I am very impressed'

'Hey I just watched your video Gaia's Army! It was absolutely amazing!'

'Just saw your video, very skilful :)'

Comments posted directly onto to video via Youtube

'Ben and Louis,

Great work! A real thriller, good and clear story line, nice urgent, fearful camera work and great music, throbbing pedal bass accompaniment. Maybe it would be good to show something nasty going on in the download to screen, since it promises that in the blurb and all you see is naval and air stuff.

But overall, a good, clear and potentially gripping story: well done and good luck!

(Ex-Military General) Bill'

Comments recieved via email (my dad sent the video to his work in the MOD and collegues replied)

'Phenomenal.

Extremely high quality. Highlights for me : The graphics 'intro' and the music throughout - set the tone and the mood brilliantly.

It would be harsh to be critical of any of it but if I had to - too much non-value-add acting. I think (only as a consumer/viewer) that they captured the essence in the scenes really well so watching 2 guys go down a set of stairs or into the 'IT Department' added nothing to the plot or the suspense.

The last 20 seconds is utterly compelling by the way and it's outstanding in total.

David'

'Thanks, Al,

Great to see you reliving your younger days, passing out at Waterloo on the way home.

The film is great: it is fantastic stuff, puts across a great atmosphere of chilly dread and comes across well. The menacing music with the fear inducing pedal base throb set the mood well.

I am making a few unenlightened comments at the comments section for Ben and his mate.

Real talent, teeth cut on the demanding pitch of the KSA a while ago! Hope that we get into the credits for this..

Regards and congrats to Ben,

(Again, Ex-Military General)Bill'

  

LOOK INTO SHIFTY

As part of the research into which distributor to go to I looked at 'Shifty', an urban thriller set in the outskirts of London, covering 24 hours in the day of the life of a drug dealer. Distributed by Metrodome Distribution.

This image also contributed to the research into cinematic posters. The pull quotes used, ratings by magasines such as Total Film all give credibility which may entice viewers aswell as establising the genre of the film. The colour scheme visually addresses audience with the yellow and black colour scheme (similar to that of Layer Cake) which has connotations of danger (as in nature, the yellow and black colours of a bee or wasp mean imminent pain) and is also known to have been successful in the past. 


I also vistied the Film Education site on which I found a transcript of an interview on video by the producers of Shifty; 

'Rory Aitken (RA): Hello, I'm Rory Aitken. I'm one of the producers of Shifty.

Ben Pugh (BP) I'm Ben Pugh. I produced Shifty with Rory'

 

AUDIENCE INTERACTION

A screenshot of the Gaia's Army website, which was actually completely designed in photoshop, will be uploaded soon - furthermore it will feature an interactive video which takes the point of view of the GA Agent minutes before the beginning of the film, and will even give viewers the potential to affect the plot line - as the rouge GA agent runs from not-so-rouge GA agents (unseen, to maximise enigma)  the viewers can choose which direction the rouge agent runs; for example, across Waterloo bridge to the station or to head down and enter the tunnels. Each choice will either lead to the shooting of the agent before he reaches the tunnels, therefore hindering the plot, or will move onto the next sequence in which the chase continues. If the viewer chooses all the right options, the agent will eventually get shot in the IMAX tunnels and the opening begins to play to inform the viewers what happens next.

The interactive video will be uploaded onto Youtube; possibly to Venturay Productions, which is my own channel (it currently hosts the Gaia's Army behind the scenes footage and other various projects, such as Psyched which in my own time I have been shooting alongside Gaia's Army). The nature of Youtube comments and likes will allow further interaction with our audience. While on Facebook only a small number of friends have seen the page, Venturay Productions has gone viral already; with over 21,000 views we are guaranteed to receive some level of audience feedback.

ADDRESSING THE AUDIENCE

The Facebook pages for American hollywood film 'Source Code', and the British Steven Speilburg 'War Horse' masterpiece.


Facebook pages are a very convenient way to communicate with an audience - with Facebook as the most popular social networking site in existence to date, it is a fantastic medium to spread word of a film across as many people as possible. Following up on this, Louis and I made our own Facebook page for Gaia's Army.

The page will be used as our primary medium to publicise the film opening; the poster, pictures from on location and screenshots from the film have already been uploaded. Minor levels of audience interaction are being experienced however we hope that once the final product is uploaded, this media can be used to receive as much audience feedback as possible. 

A LITTE EXTRA 'STUFF'

Gaia's Army promotional poster

 The website in early design stages of photoshop. The text "Gaia's Army" was made in After Effects, because photoshop wasnt able to create the electric blue filling in the white frame of the letters. The shot of the dying GA Agent is a screenshot from the film, the background masked out in photoshop, the wall faded. I colour corrected it with high contrast and no saturation to create the silhoutte type effect. The image of Earth is from google, as I - fairly obviously - can't take a picture of the Earth from space, but if I had a way I would.

The release date for the film was made up on the spot, as the film won't actually be released - but it is based on the release date for the final Harry Potter film, which was offically released in the UK on the 15th July 2011.

DISTRIBUTION

Distributors, the secretive 'wizard of Oz' behind every film. Throughout the production of a film the distributor is constantly working to pulicise to ensure the largest viewer audiences possible. A films' budget is often a distributor's budget; sometimes the distrbution even costs more than it does to shoot the film. Posters, websites, interactive experiences and trailers, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds for films are all managed by the distributor.

Sara Frain: On how a distributor approaches a marketing plan: Play clip >

Part of the research I did involved looking at the Film Distributor's Association, on which I watched several videos in which various figures, such as Sara Frain (video above) discuss the various aspects of distribution.

Trailers:

Distributors usually have a range of audiovisual 'content' to work with as they prepare campaigns, including short and extended clips, approved by the producers; making-

For Gaia's Army, we need to find a British film distributor who would be willing to take the risk of taking on our film. Early ideas included Lionsgate (which I used for my GCSE Thriller opening, Dead Capacity last year) and Momentum. We have decided to use Columbia Tristar, after looking it up on IMBD and looking at films it has previously publicised - our opening has a similar feel and tone to movies which this paticular distributor has taken on in the past.

The website for American thriller 'Source Code'

Another of our optional tasks was to create some publicity for our films; so I researched several websites for thriller films for ideas about what goes where, and what is 'what' in the first place. 

Website for Dan Radcliff's new thriller/horror 'The Woman in Black'

THE EVALUATION QUESTIONS

The Seven Evaluation Questions:


1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Answered


2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?



3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Answered


4. Who would the audience be for your media product?
Answered


5. How did you attract/address your audience?
Working on it (YOUDO)


6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Working on it (film, voiceover)



7. Look back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product? 


By next Monday Qs 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 will be done :)

FINISHING THE FILM

The visuals of the film are complete - the shots are colour corrected with After Effects' curves controls, the visual effects shots are spliced in with what I call 'the narrative edit' (which is the main chunk of the opening; the flow from shots to other shots, conveying the story), and the running shots have been warp stabilised on AE to create a stable, electric throbbing effect.

Myself, getting into character whilst doing ADR

All that remains to be done is the audio work, as the sound captured on location is messy - full of vehicles, bus brake screeches, other peoples footsteps and voices when we don't want them there. So in the previous lesson we decided to completely re-record all the audio/dialouge, to dub over the sound we have at the moment in a process called ADR, or Additional Dialogue Recording/Replacing.

Louis, my partner, doing ADR in the music tech studio

I learned this was not easy - on a previous project which I am still currently working on named 'Psyched', I took Louis aside to do a small portion of ADR to dub over one of the scenes. So being the second time we had gone about this process, we had already learned how to seamlessly record sound using vocal/condenser microphones recording directly into Logic Pro 9 in our school's sound studio (located in the music department). 

PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

Finally the GCI in Gaia's Army is complete. I only had toe join the pieces of the puzzle now; the CGI amd the mac-track shots are already spliced, and as I type the closing sequence within the opening sequence is rendering out of Adobe After Effects. Below are screenshots from splicing together the number tunnel which connects to the grid, and the mactrack shot in which the screen of the Macbook explodes into pixels, revealing the CGI underneath. 

 

 Above and below; tracking the Mac laptop. The greenscreen and blue crosses were an image on the screen made in photoshop. In the edit I realised it would be far easier to track the layer and attach the screenshot of iTunes over it, rather than under, to save me greenscreening.

 

Above - Louis' body passes infront of the blue crosses, making it impossible to track - so I moved the track points to the zoom H4n (Sound recording device which reeaally should not have been in shot...oops) and to a piece of paper and the shadow it makes, because the trackpoints fix onto what they track by measuring the contrast in the area selected to track - so the white agaisnt black in the triangular shape makes a perfect tracking spot. 

Below, the screenshot taken on Louis' Macbook which we placed over the greenscreen Mac, and then exploded.

Waiting for AE to render out the project

CONVENTIONS OF THRILLER

A screenshot from a Skype call I had with Louis, during which we talked about and summarises the conventions and other various aspects of thriller movies. I recorded the conversation podcast-style with my Videomic Pro (boom-pole mounted) and Zoom H4n, which records what the microphone hears to an SD card.

We used this call to answer the first evaluation question, the recording can be listened to here.