Here are some screen grabs that illustrate some of the techniques we employed in order to complete the mix.

The hardest part of the mix was combining the voice of, supposedly being fed from Martins dating video, and the diegetic sound of the activities he's performing. Above is an example of how we had to alter the end of many of the clips in order form them to end suitability abruptly, enabling them to flow seamlessly into the next clip. Here we added a final decipherable punch (made by Joel), thus giving it a definitive ending from which to follow on from.  

Above is the point at which the non diegetic sound from 'Star Wars' fades out and Martins voice comes back in. I edited it so that the iconic theme music creates a natural fade in the sound, at the end of the note cycle i dropped the audio levels from the film and at the same time increased the voice over, the result is a relatively seamless transition, allowing the levels to remain the same throughout the audience are less aware of the change in sound and therefore accept the change, creating a much smoother edit. 

I believe it's the little details, many that often go un noticed, that make the biggest difference between a successful and unsuccessful sound design. Below is a screen grab of the 'excersice' scene, as Joel created the entire sound design for this scene from scratch we were able to manipulate it in almost anyway we wanted. An aspect that many will have missed is that at the point that Martin wipes his forehead, there is a lapse in the button 'smashing' foley, adding that extra bit of realism and continuity to the film.   

Voice Over Complications:

Despite not having a lot of footage where we needed to sync sound to the actor's dialogue, I faced a new problem in that I needed to sync the V.O to text being typed into a computer. The obvious issue with this is that words are spoken a lot faster than one can type into a computer, on average anyway, therefore I had to speed up the clip of the typing in order for the text to appear near enough exactly as it's spoken. Following this, the second problem was now the speed at which the actors fingers were moving, it just didn't look realistic. To overcome this I had to crop the image, lessening in quality, but removing the comical speed at which the hands were having to move.  

The screen grabs below show the amount I had to speed up the clip in order to achieve a synced effect, I would have thought originally if i was going to have to nearly double its speed the result would look fake, i.e. sped up, luckily it seems to work well, with the only hint of its increased speed being the slight reflection of speeding hands in the screen of the laptop.

  

Big Problems

The biggest difficulty we faced when shooting was getting the lighting looking natural and consistant. Due to this being the first time we've used lighting out of a studio environment a lot of trail and error was involved when setting up the Dedo's. I'm not convinced we did a brilliant job throughout, there are a lot of shadows the the lighting quality does differ shot to shot. This being said however, being that it was a steep learning curve I feel we did well in some scenes to create good atmosphere, particularly one of claustrophobia and intimacy. The screenshot below sees our character indulging in one of his favourite pass-times, being 'sociable' with like minded people on the internet. Not only does this shot feel personal, but after taking advice, we wanted to vary the times of day that the film portrayed, thus giving a better, more rounded depiction of this characters life style. Considering this was filmed at around 2pm on a sunny day, we have done well to light the scene as if it were late at night.

  

Below is an example where we didn't get it quite so right, the shadow on the left hand side is far too exaggerated considering there is meant to be no light other than the morning sunshine. Not only this but there is too much of an 'orangy' glow, this can be fixed in post, however it just goes to show we need more practice and to be less reliant on our colour correction skills.  

Another problem that was hard to over come was using the glide cam, after such high expectations, when we came to see the results, their lack of quality just didn't justify using them in the final edit. Aside from the quality, the reason they didn't look right was mainly because the vast majority of the film makes use of locked off shots, due to there being just one character in a house, there was little need to use camera movement. It was also party because we drew inspiration from 'Clerks,' a film that works brilliants with very simple, static shots. After storyboarding for a film that emulate the style of 'Clerks,' the late discovery of the glide cam, while exciting in theory, didn't add anything to the cinematography. The one shot that we had always suggested using movement for was the track back, away from the character in a scene where we hoped to increase the audiences empathy with him by showing how alone he was. This remains in the film but I'm not happy with it, had we more time I would have liked to re shoot that scene using a few different techniques and ideally earlier on in the day. 

As you can see its very dark, we wanted it to be night time, however because we were going to be moving back through the location the placement of lights was very hard to get right. Due to the camera moving away from the character, we needed to ensure a high aperture setting to allow the camera a larger depth of field, this caused problems however as more light was needed to light the scene. Either they would light the room too much or not enough (as is the case). Along side that, with a moving shot it becomes hard to stop lights drifting into shot or shadows becoming accentuated as your angle changes slightly. Overall I don't believe the footage we captured does the scene justice, which is a shame as it had potential to be one of the best shots of the film.   

Location:

Quite a lot of time was put into dressing the house in order to make it look like a space our character would exist in. The bedroom was in need of a complete rework, the cluttered girly room was stripped and  re arranged in order to make the filming of certain scenes possible. Seeing as we were on location, one of the main problems we encountered was creating space in which to film. We worked around this by moving furniture and faking their position so we could get in behind to shoot.

Below is a picture of the bedroom after the rework. Between the group we accumulated lots of 'geeky' objects and posters to better represent our character and give the location a more lived in feel.

Due to the location also being the home to six students, constant tidying was required to keep up the facade that this was our character's home. Below is a before and after of the living room.

As you can see we've cleaned the whole room and added posters to the walls

We used grease proof paper as a filter to defuse the light, this overcame the problem of a spotlight effect. 

By moving the furniture around taking into consideration the camera placement, we were able to over come the issue of a small set. 

New Potential

We recently acquired a Glidecam HD-1000 which enables us to create much more dynamic camera movement. As a result of this we are revising the story board and where appropriate, utilizing this new equipment.

Below is a short film made by using the HD-1000, it does well to show off its potential.

Research & Inspiration

The idea its self was not taken from anything I had previously seen, however, with the idea formulated there are a number of short and feature length films from which shooting style can be examined and imitated.

I found this short film on Vimeo. What I like so much about it is its simple introduction the the main character, the shots immediatly connote who this character is and to an extent what he's like. The cheery song layered over the top emphasis's the lighthearted nature of the film and alongside the stylised and simple yet well written V.O does well to further round up the protagonists personality.
  

The choice of voice actor was clearly taken into consideration for this film, the somewhat nasally sounding voice fits perfectly with the comical side of the piece, the fact that the voice is somewhat 'funny' sounding works a lot better than if the same film used a well spoken, deep and meaningful 'James Bond' style of voice.
This is relevant to the drama brief as it will be essential to get the V.O sounding right otherwise that images just wont match up.


The second piece of inspiration is from The Social Network. The scene in which Mark is blogging about the break up with his girlfriend is useful as its similar to what we're aiming for during the V.O/blogging narration. By using the sounds of typing as used in this scene along side the V.O, it wont always be necessary to see our character physically typing the narration, the sounds will act as a audible signifier and the audience will be able to work out and accept that he's blogging and not talking directly to them.

Below is a useful video for taking inspiration from. It highlights the kind of things a 'bad' online dating video might include, helpful for writing the screenplay.

The film Clerks was a great film to watch in order to gain ideas as to what can be done with very simple, static cinematography. Due to our equipment list being restricted, its impressive to see what can be done with essentially just a tripod. This style of shooting will be one we hope to imitate, the long takes and simple editing goes well with the well written dialogue and forces the characters to move the narrative along and keep an audience entertained.
   

The scene in which Dante is getting ready for work is simple and precise, there is little 'fat' and through the editing the audience gets to know quite a lot about the character despite the sequence being just under three minuets long (titles included). This way of progressing the story is something I plan to emulate, when watching a character get dressed, there is no need to show every part of the procedure. In the clip above for example, simply leaving the bedroom, putting on shoes, making coffee and getting into his car is all that's needed to ensure the narrative moves along quickly. Even with so few shots, the audience is able to connect the events, fill in the blanks and accept what Dante is doing.  

The simple shots also connote the atmosphere in which the two friends work. The mundane day to day chore that it is to work in such a business is represented in the static shots and the symmetrical, even framing.  Nothing (other than a few of the odd characters that come into the shop) is out of the ordinary, just another average day for Dante.