Pig Head Film

Pigboy final from Billy Jackson on Vimeo.

Editing

Coming back after the Easter break Hannah, Billy and myself started to get a rough cut of the film together. We already had a good idea of what we want the film to look like and what the structure of the edit would be as we had a clear image while filming. This made it easier for us to quickly get shots onto the timeline in an order for us to start fine cutting and focusing on some effects and leaving us with more time to figure out the visual effects and green screen. The first manipulation to the edit we started on was reversing one of the shots of 'pig head' walking through the window, so that he leaves through the window backwards while keeping eye contact with the camera as we felt his eye contact is one of the creepiest parts of our film. 

Billy started messing around with overlaying some shots then making the duplicated clip slightly transparent and a little bit off time with the original clip so that it creates this weird effect as if someone is watching it while slightly dazed. 

The three of us really liked this change to the film and decided to add it to a couple more clips for even more of a uneasy feeling while watching it. We also played around with some music to see what would suit the genre of the film and we found quite a creepy low humming atmospheric sound with some occassional high pitched screeches which I thought went with our film really well, especially when the audience first see's pig head and the creepy cut-a-ways of the bloody deer head and blood splattering the painting on the wall. It really added to the unease and uncanny theme we have been trying to achieve. 

Mike Kelley: The Uncanny

In 2004 artist Mike Kelley curated an exhibition called 'The Uncanny' at the Tate Liverpool in which many artists explored "memory, recollection, horror and anxiety through the juxtaposition of a highly personal collection of objects with realist figurative sculpture." Each artist within the exhibition are able to provoke the uncanny effect by the use of the materials, scale and colour, which create a distressing and unnerving feeling but at the same time they are fascinating to its audience. Here are some of the sculptures created for the exhibition:

(Kristian Burford)

(Nayland Blake, magic)

(Gavin Turk, Death of Che)

(Ron Mueck, Ghost)

https://whitecubediaries.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/the-uncanny-where-psychology-meets-art/ 

Green Screen Session

In today's session we had a quick briefing of how to understand the basics of chroma keying on After Effects. I have used Adobe After Effects in the past while at college and found it a long process to eventually get the hang of, therefore when it came to this session I found it familiar but I was still unsure about the steps you have to take that leads to keying the green screen.

First of all we had some problems with filling all the green screen as we didn't have one consistent colour of green because of problems with how we lit it. This was a difficult task during filming because we had to make sure the board that had the green felt thrown over it fit the whole cut out window. For it to do this the board had to be right up close to the set, which created a difficulty with how we could light it. We had to from the side behind the right board which created a shadow over the left of the of the green felt and therefore created a darker green. I think that is the reason why this session was so important, we are able to have a look at all our footage and see where our problem areas were, so that in the future I now know what to take into consideration to make the work in the edit a lot simpler. 

This is roughly how we want the final edit to look like with the leaves frantically flowing in the background, along with a wooded area shot we are yet to shoot. This is to let the audience further understand that he is in a hut in the middle of the woods.

Filming

Today we filmed our set which to me was something new to get my head around. You have to really think about the angle your filming in as it's easy to end up outside of the set in the frame. I think my group worked round this well eventually. At first we had some difficulty with the green screen, as we needed the gap between this and the wall with the window as Ryan needed to climb through it into the set. The gap meant that the shot we wanted, which was a tracking shot out as he climbed through and came up to the camera, was difficult to get right as you could see the ends of the green screen wall through the window, which wouldn't work well in the edit and look a mess in the final piece. We eventually found the right placing of the green screen and the tracks with the camera, however I did think that it made the shot look a bit badly framed but it worked with the green screen and I think that's what was more important in this shoot. All we done once we were finished with the shots that needed Ryan to climb through the window we pulled the wall closer to the window so that there was no gaps at all. We used a dedo light to light the green screen and a kino light with an orange gel taped over to create a dim orange lighting. I think that the lighting worked really well as we wanted something dark since the set is supposed to be in the forest in the middle of the night, and the orange glow helps with the idea it's lit with candles and a campfire. The dimness and orange glow also helped with making the props look quite eery, especially the deer head. All the props actually tied in well with the film and I think the cutaways we filmed are going to look good in the finished film. Billy brought some fake blood spray and sprayed it on the deer head and the photo that's hanging on the wall, which on camera makes it look like someone is spurting blood off camera which I think was a really good idea. 

Set Building Week 2

After the problem with the pva glue on Friday, Susannah gave us a hot glue gun to use for the sticks which was a lot easier than what we were originally doing. This meant that while we continued to glue sticks on the wall, Carrie and Billy looked for props that fit in with our theme and some of them turned out to be quite strange and creepy which fits in well with our film. Billy also mentioned that he has a pigs mask that was used for Halloween that Ryan, who will be acting in the film, could were to add to the strangeness. We ended up getting one and a half walls covered in sticks before we ran out of the ones we collected, therefore I moved on to helping with props and picked out about 7 different throws/blankets to cover the floor. By the end of the session I think we had a good amount of props which all seemed to fit in with one another. Some of these included the deer head which was drilled into one of the walls, and some little trinkets on one of the stands that we found in the studio.

On Thursday Hannah, Billy and myself went back down to the studio with more sticks and finished covering all walls with them . The last bit of decorating we wanted to do was to use red paint to splat over the walls and create red hand prints to give the set more of a horror feel. We also set up another wall with green fabric thrown over it to put behind the window so that when it comes to the green screen session we can film some leaves blowing in the wind using a fan and key a clip of some woods onto the shots in the edit. 

Mood Board - The Uncanny

For creating our mood board of inspiration for our film we decided to create a digital board on Pinterest. This was so all 6 of us could be added to the same board and add any pins whenever we saw some that relate to our own ideas of what we image our film to look like. Seeing the board full is also a good way to remember certain themes and colours we want to focus on as Pinterest puts all the images together on one page so it's easy to look at and find a certain image. 

https://uk.pinterest.com/grencis/the-uncanny-cpr-project/