New Movie Logo 9.12.09

For the past few days I have been working on the new movie logo. This is because we planed to change the main storyline and so the old movie logo did not suit the opening 2 minutes of our movie. Even our genre has changed to teen drama, where the other one was horror.

Again I have been doing some research on what are the key elements to make a good looking teen drama movie logo, the font, colour, and positions of the title. As you can see below that I have been tweaking quite a lot in Photoshop to make it look as good as possible.

First screen shot shows that I have added two colours to the font instead of one which would make it look boring. And I was just discussing with my Shamedia team if it would look better with the colours of black and red or white and red. And finally decided that red and black looks much better, as the background colour is black it self.

The second screen shot shows that which positioning of the bright flower and the title would look more effective and best for the audience. And so after spending some time playing around with the layer, I have decided that if the title is at the bottom of the image and the flower is at the bottom of the image, it would look really good and professional. I also asked my Shamedia team and some other friends and they agreed with my decision

The final screen shot shows the different positioning of the title, which I and my Shamedia team agreed on.








The Final Movie Logo.



Written and Created by Ahmed Mohammed

Media Studies 8.12.09

We finally finished our Coursework. There are a few little things that we have to make clear before puplishing it on our blog. We worked really hard because we thought we where far behind everyone but apparently it looks like we finished first. Our film opening looks really professional and we'll wait for some critics from other groups to see where we made mistakes or what we could improve.

Please Comment here

Written by Henri Yueksel

Comparison between Skeleton Key and Aftermath

Skeleton Key



Aftermath



When I watched Aftermath I found the scenes very disturbing and scary, this is because the blood and the organs were very well made. I think that the trailer for the film is not very exiting and simple which therefore does not attract many viewers. I have also watched Skeleton Key and I believe that the two films are very much different. Aftermath is more violent and has no back story unlike Skeleton Key where the film has a lot of background story involved. If I had not watched any of these films and was offered to watch one I would probably pick Skeleton Key because the trailer is exiting and very tense.

Written by Sultan Mackinnoin

The Antichrist (2009) Trailer

The Antichrist (2009) is one of the most controverse and shocking movie I've seen. But the cinematography is amazing and they put a lot of meaning in the shots and actions of the characters. For example there is a lot of nature to see and the main story takes place in a forest. The movie talks about a women that has lost her child. Her child jumped out of an open window while she was doing something else. After this incident she gets mental because it was her fault that her child died. She then turns to a satanist (not on purpose) but we are shown that she thinks and acts like described in satanism. In principal it's about women and satanism. The movie will be misunderstood by a lot of persons, the violence and controversial footage is one of the main problem why most of the people are shocked after seeing that movie.

There is one scene for example that represent the fears of the main character (woman) at 0:46. During this scene she explains what she sees in her dreams and what scares her. Several shots are fully edited and gives the audience a weird feeling and sometimes a sort of miscomprehension.

The different shots of "nature" shows us the connection that nature has with satanism, that's why the shots have been edited a lot to project their meaning. There are animals shown that are actually speaking to the main characters to show several meanings.

The shots are often shown in slow motion and with a lot of sfx to give a very creepy and disturbing ambiance. The movie is like a book with different chapters and titles, where the story and happening of the two main characters is shown.

I really liked the movie because of it's controversity and the shot's that are amazing even if the story is really violent and disturbing.

Written by Henri Yueksel

Preliminary Task Questions

Q1: My group consisted of three people, they were Henri Yueksel, Ahmed Mohammad and myself (Sultan Mackinnon). In our preliminary task we each had a main role that we took, for this task Henri took the role as being the head cinematographer. Ahmed and myself were the actors for this preliminary task but as a group we helped each other and gave advise of what kind of shots we should have in the appropriate time. Our preliminary task video consisted shots such as high/low angles, shot reverse shot, point of view and close ups on the face. When there were shots of only myself we always had two or three cameras in different positions, this made it easier to take shots of different angles at that moment.I enjoyed making this video because no one argued in the group and we all got along well with each other and obviously communication is the key to successful in this matter.

Q2: When we took shots of different angles we always had three or two cameras but we forgot about the 180 degree rule, this had slowed our process of editing and taking shots because what we found out half way through our task is that we broke these rules so therefore we had to re-shoot. In our process of filming we did not take enough shots and camera angles so this also slowed us down because we had to re-shoot some in some of the areas. At one point we were so concentrated on finishing our preliminary task that we forgot there were tripods at the end of our filming, this had made us delete a large amount of footage that we took and take new ones to finish our task.

Q3: If I could re-make our preliminary task the areas that I would concentrate on are lighting and maybe acting (even tho you don't get marked for acting). The reason why I pointed out lighting is because we took all the footage in one day, but when we took the footage there were parts were the lighting were dark and some are were they were light, this made our task unprofessional and tacky. Even tho you don't get marked for acting I believe that we could have projected our voices louder and clearer.

Q4: When I used Adobe at first I found it confusing, the computers at that time were slow and this made our job much harder and more frustrating, but as we kept on working we found the editing program much simpler. Henri had started editing first then it was followed by Ahmed and then me. Ahmed and Henri were already familiar with the program so they had very clearly explained it to me.

Written by Sultan Mackinnon

Preliminary Task Questions

A1) Me and my team worked really well together, as we took turns taking different types of shots, e.g. high angle shot, low angle shot, (for entry and journey) shot reverse shot (for dialogue exchanging)…and more. Henri was the head of cinematography so he had the idea of where to take each different shot. So basically the filming went very well as we worked as a team which is really important in order to make a successful video clip.

A2) As shooting for the very first time we made quite a few mistakes, especially when we were editing, we did not add any transitions, when exchanging the clips from one to another. Also when taking the shot reverse shot, the entry of light came from different angle which looked weird for anyone to watch the clip. So from this we have learnt that lighting is very important in order to make the clip continues instead of it looking like one clip was shot a day and the other was shot on some other day.

A3) I would definitely add some lighting in order to show clear footage and also, if the sound is not very clear, I would of dub the sound separately. Even though there was not a major issue with sound in our video clip. The editing went well; just that we should of added some transitions to it so make the video clip better.

A4) Well, we took turns for editing, first its was Henri, then me, lastly it was Sultan. Because we were familiar with the editing software, we all found it really easy to use the basic editing tools and editing timeline.

Written by Ahmed Mohammed

Preliminary Task Review

Q1: We had a lot of very good camera angles and very good dialogue and match on action. Our Preliminary Task was very fluently and the shot reaction shot has been very well done.

Q2: The light was the main problem. We took different camera angles without noticing that the light was different. Except for this error we didn't make much mistakes.
I learned a lot about filming only through the preliminary task, how to film different shot's, how to use the camera properly and how to edit film footage and to use the editing program.

Q3: I would be very careful with the lightning and the sound, those are the only things I would change. The camera shots we had were pretty good and the editing wasn't a big problem because all of us already knew how to use and edit film footage.

Q4: We hadn't have any problems at all, we found everything we needed, but we could have used more transition's and or we could have cut our task a bit better.

Written by Henri Yueksel

Media Studies 3.12.09

Today we finished the editing part of our film opening. The Title and our production logo have been added to the opening. Our film opening is about 2:20min. long, the problem is we have to have a maximum of 2:00min. so we'll probably have to cut some bit's out of the opening. There was not much else to do than finish our opening today and compare it with other ones.

Written by Henri Yueksel

Media Studies 1.12.09

Today we nearly finished the editing part and have finished our movie's title as well. We worked very fast and concentrated today, that's what gave us a huge advance. The only thing that is left to do is editing the final bits in our movie. We hadn't have much problems in the last few weeks because we teamed up and put a lot of concentration in the work we did to, hopefully, get the maximum of marks as possible for our task.

Written by Henri Yueksel