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A levels: Final Submission

Trailer Links

TRAILER 1

TRAILER 2

Creative Critical Reflection

CCR

Social Media Account

@estranged_bis

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FINAL POSTER

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FINAL SOUND LINKS

Blood Pumping

Trouble is Brewing

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Post Production

Poster

We discussed the ideas for the poster. The director mentioned what she wanted on the poster and how the theme could be followed. She shared the pics we had taken separately for making the poster and suggested ides for the same. I looked up ideas as well and many examples for posters I tried making several ones.

I showed them to the director and went with one we thought best. After we took it to our teacher we made a few changes in alignment of texts.

After making this draft I made a lot many changes to reach the poster attached below. The alignments were corrected, names of director, cinematographer, editor added and the effects on images altered. Also I used Paint 3d to add the cold, foggy effect on random areas.

More Instagram Feeds!

The poster for our trailer was then ready for social media. We decided to wait on it and first post about our team. So I designed posts on Canva and used shadow effects for the text and maintained the same background as before.

I sent them to my director and she posted this with the captions briefing about us.

Final Poster

After finalizing the poster and putting it up on our social media page we started working ahead on the rest of the coursework. But soon after when we started work on the trailer's movie title, we were not able to use the same font for that. So we decided on changing the font for the poster as well. We thus used the Broken Glass font from dafont.com on both the poster and the movie title for the trailer. We had also mentioned in our trailer that it's a Netflix Original so to prevent copyright issues we used simple bold font and wrote Netflix at top of the poster.

After this we started working on the answers for the CCR. For this we applied all our knowledge of theories and all evidences we had collected during our production and post production. Then continued with the rest of the Reels and IGTV'S (Videos).

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Post Production

Editing

The shoot for 'Estranged' finished on time. I transferred all the clips from the SD card into to the pc. Started working on set apart the usable clips according to the shot division given to me by our Director and I sat down to start placing them in the sequence on Premiere Pro.

Movie Title

For the movie title I had initially decided to use the Font I produced on Canva for the Poster. But when I started working on the movie title in Premiere Pro I was not able to use the same font as it's copyrights lay with Canva. So I discussed with my teacher and found tutorials on how to create a shattered glass effect on a font. I was able to find a good tutorial to work with on Adobe After Effects. I started working on it but as the time progressed I was not able to work further on it because it was quite a lengthy process and the results were not as I expected.

So finally my teacher suggested another customizable font available online. The font used was 'Broken Glass'. I downloaded it from www.dafont.com. This I was able to use easily and I applied it on our final poster as well. On Premiere I applied a reflection effect onto the movie title .

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Post Production

Filtering Shots

I had done the filtering after the final Day -3 shoot and had everything divided so that it was easy for me to use during the editing.

I used the Premiere Pro CC 2021 app on the school's pc and sorted out all the shots and lined them up in sequence in a file.

As the syllabus states we this year had to create a social media page instead of a website. So our team sat together to decide a name for our product as well as for our page. We listed down a few names like Switched;

After a lot many discussions and listing we reached at the word Estranged. We chose this because it related to our character and on what the story is based.

We went with the literal meaning by considering that our main character is an introvert and alienated person from which the conflicts begin and everything.

We began working together on the social media page. To keep it different we named the page @estranged_bis as in bis (bodhi international school).

As making social media posts would take time the Director asked me to start with it firstly. I designed the Coming Soon image on Canva and separated them into 3 separate images. We went with a dark background and white font to maintain our color theme - black and white. Both the background with the scratches and the chalk font followed the horror genre successfully.

After this was done the director posted them and wrote the captions and I continued with my work on the trailer.

Alongside working on the background score for the trailer, I started designing the next posts which would be announcing our actors. I designed them on Canva again as I found a good looking Liquid Black Marble design for the background and matching fonts and effects. This worked wonders as we found our main background which could remain constant throughout our Instagram posts.

In this similar way I prepared the posts for Manan Chouhan (Marc) , Kaanchi Daga (Anna) and Darsh Jain (Lucas).

Background Score Selection

With the announcements ready I continued with my work on finding the background score for our trailer. As I have worked before on music related areas it was easy for me to find background scores that went with our genre. I looked through all the websites to go with the sounds that were mysterious, scary, dark and suspenseful. I found the best sounds on fesliyanstudio.com.

I listened to many songs and sorted out the ones I liked. Then I requested our teacher and the director to listen to it and suggest which ones they prefer went best. They selected 4 finally.

Villanious

Blood Pumping

Video Game Adventure

Trouble Is Brewing

Narration Recording + Text

The next day I started designing the titles that had to be placed in between the running trailer. I directly designed them on Premiere Pro CC 2021 as I found a good font on Adobe Fonts itself. I used the basic edits and font for the text. For the background I looked up several videos and went with a smoke one as it gave a cold and dark look which matched our idea of the upcoming poster.

After this I recorded the narrations for the trailer so as to match it with the selected background scores and shots. It was taken in both Esme and Esthelle's voices were recorded. One with softer and calmer voice whereas the other in a strong and bold voice. The director and I sat down together to work on this, we recorded and re- recorded the narrations to get the ones that matched best with the bg music's tempo.

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Production + Post Production

Day - 3

From here on my part in the production started. I took all the videos from the shoot into my laptop through the SD card given to me by the cinematographer. I started sorting them out by dividing them into folders as per scenes.

Once I did this I went through all the shots that were taken keeping the screenplay alongside to check that everything was available as required.

As I checked them I noticed that some of the mirror shots were very blur, out of focus and the frame was shaking too much. As I had to edit the mirror scene by masking it I knew the movement would obstruct it, so I texted our director the issue and she as soon as possible requested our teacher for a reshoot.

Day - 3

Then we arranged for the shoot on the very next day. As there were only 2 shots to be taken so we were able to work for it fast enough. We called back our actress, readied the location which was the school washroom and set up the tri-pod.

We shot the scene under our teachers supervision as the cinematographer was not able to come on the decided date due to personal issues. The director and I shot the scene ensuring that the shot was in focus and very still.

This experience was new for me as an Editor, cause I never tried my hands on camera before neither knew how to set up the tripod. Our teacher taught us how it had to be done.

We shot both the mirror shots as required and finalized that everything was perfectly available as needed.

Pack Up

We were done with everything finally, all shots were as needed, everything was ready for post production work to start!.

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Production

Day -2

We started out our shoot with on a positive note, our team was happy with how things went on day - 1. So we proceeded with the rest of the screenplay's shoot. Today's major part were the mirror scenes. We hadn't had any experience in such shots and even less idea on how we would be doing it so as to get the results we need.

So, before we started our shoot for the day we had gone through all tutorials, previous year works and every example we could find on how best we can execute this idea. With the best ways in mind we started shooting from the reflection scene and the cinematographer shot it with our teacher's guidance.

Soon enough all the mirror shots were done. The director approved it and moved on with the rest of the shoot for the day. This included the bullying scene of Marc and Esme and similarly the contrasting scene of Marc and Esthelle.

Once we were done with that the cinematographer shot a few montages along with Marc, Esthelle/ Esme and Ana in scene.

Now we moved on to the ending scene in our screenplay!

We had requested a room in the school quarters from Mansi Thopay and decided to shoot our room scene in it.

For this scene we required a simple yet beautiful room, but as we had less resources we settled with a basic room with bright light and basic amenities.

We had to show that both Esme and Esthelle lived their respectively. So we shot the diary and crying scenes for both Esme and Esthelle here.

The director worked on Esthelle's make up as Aditi constantly changed roles.

I prepared the prop required, this was a diary which was used in mostly all scenes as Esme's own.

We finally finished our shoot in the given time!!

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Production

Costume and Make-up

School Uniform

Casuals

Prep-Day

We used the day before our shoot to master breakdown everything and ensure that we dont face the issues as last time during the opening sequence's shoot. We re-confirmed the presence of our actors according to dates provided. We made sure the locations were in good condition. Also constantly sent reminders to our actors to carry their secondary costumes on shoot day.

We also requested more actors to co-act alongside as we had to show students in a normal school day.

Co-actors - Vinayak Rathi, Naman Jain, Shazli Mekrani, Shreyansh Jangid.

Day -1

Basketball Scene

We had divided the shot division according to the days provided so we started with the first half of our shoot on Day 1.

The decision was to finish with the shorter scenes first and free the co-actors for their exam prep. So we began our shoot with the basketball court scenes. We instructed the co-actors who were also from our class and had agreed to act alongside the leads. We showcased what we expected in every shot and asked them to act alongside Manan (Marc), Kaanchi (Anna) and Darsh (Lucas). The scene was to simply play basketball and then we shot Anna hitting Esme with the ball. This scene was shot 4 times to 2 as Esme and 2 as Esthelle so as to make sure we got the shot as we expected it to be.

Library Scene

In the library scene we asked the co-actors to act notoriously and the Darsh(Lucas) had to do his part as the a bully. We made sure the lights were bright enough so that their expression were clear. We shot both Esme's and Esthelle' s scenes. With different body languages, face expressions and characteristics.

Corridor Scene

We shot this scene as well with both Esme and Esthelle roles and this was the last scene we shot with the co-actors. Then they were thanked and sent back to their classes.

After this the last part of the shoot for Day 1 was with Manan, Kaanchi and Aditi only in it.

The cinematographer then rechecked every shot along with the director. With this we were finished with Day - 1's shoot!!

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Pre-production

Costume and Make-up

As the story is set in a school setting, we decided to go with our own school uniforms as costume. For the room scene we requested our actor to bring her own casual clothes as we simply required basic clothing worn at home. This helped us decrease the need to pay for rental costumes as well as prevented unwanted issues.

We only required make-up for Aditi Jain as she has change of roles.

For portraying Esme we went with Aditi's natural face look. Whereas for Esthelle we used kohl and eyeliner for bringing out a bit of a revengeful and dead look on her face, with a bit of lip gloss for making her stand out from the rest.

Our director did the make-up. Rest of the actors were to be showcased as simple school going students thus it was not required for them.

Shot Division

Our cinematographer jotted down few shots in draft and then shared it with the team. Our director then made changes and finalized the list of shots required as per the screenplay. We initially faced problems in deciding how the mirror shots were to be taken. Then with the help of our teacher and online tutorials we noted shots for that as well.

After concluding all the pre-production tasks and reaching on final decisions with screenplays and shot division, we decided on the dates for the shoot. Once we all agreed on the dates decided we ensured that all our actors will be available on said dates.

As this shoot had to done in between the preparation for upcoming Board exams, we had to take permissions from the teachers of each actor and arrange a suitable time so that they do not miss classes.

Once everything was ready we started with our shoot!

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Pre-Production

Location

This time because of the ongoing Covid pandemic we were restricted to our school premises for the shooting process. Luckily we decided on our story keeping in mind our location, thus it became easier for us to go with the screenplay as we decided.

School Exterior

School Corridors

School Washroom

Basketball Court

Room inside the School quarters

School Library

For the room inside the school quarter we requested a staff student from our school to allow us to shoot in it. Rest of the locations were present with no requirement of permissions as such.

CASTING

Aditi Jain - Esme and Esthelle

Aditi is a fellow schoolmate completing her IGCSE, she has a vibrant personality and is skilled in various areas. She was an out of the box choice for us as we have never seen her act before. Aditi personally was seen as more of an introvert character but she proved us wrong in the auditions. She successfully played her part as both Esme and Esthelle and the team loved her acting. She is our lead actor.

Manan Chouhan - Marc

He is our fellow A Level Media studies student. He has previous experience in acting for several school plays, our alumni's projects and many other works. He has a knack for acting and gels well with everyone around him with his outgoing personality. He acts as one of the bullies.

Kaanchi Daga - Anna

She is another one of our fellow A level media studies student. She has a very confident and bold personality. We were a bit skeptical about casting her because she has no acting history, but once we handed her the screenplay she thrivingly showed her best. She suited the role as we needed a girl who could bring out the reality of bullying to screen. Kaanchi agreed to act for us. She plays her part as a bully.

Darsh Jain -

He is a fellow A level student pursuing commerce in his subjects. Darsh has similar acting experiences as Manan. He has performed many a times in small skits, theatre acts and school performances. He has a pleasant personality and prefers to never miss a good opportunity thus agreed to act for our team. He plays his role as a bully.

We made sure we chose all our main bullies who are extroverts in real life so as to ensure a more realistic performance and allow the viewers an experience from the perspective of a victim better.

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Pre-Production

STORY

After we finalized our idea for the story, the Director and I wrote the story together on Zoom meetings.

CHARACTERS

Our final main characters based on the story were Esme and Esthelle. For this we required an actor who was good enough to play both roles with contrasting body language, voice, style etc. For Esme we needed a soft, calm person whereas for Esthelle we needed someone bold, loud and straightforward. We sorted through many actors we knew and had previously worked with as well and at the end decided on Aditi Jain.

She successfully auditioned and was able to act as good as we wanted. She showcased her skills as both Esme and Esthelle in the best manner possible.

SCREENPLAY

After selecting our lead actor we moved on to work on the screenplay for our shoot. The director and I wrote it together on zoom meetings. After many corrections and improvements made we finalized our screenplay. We used the Studio Binder software as last time to write our screenplay.

We divided our screenplay into 2 trailers.

The screenplay for our first trailer:-

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Research and Planning

Hi everyone! In this blog I’m going to share all of my research and planning for our advanced portfolio in which we have to create two trailers.

Our team was same as Before :-

Director - VISHALA CHOUHAN

Cinematography - RIYAAN BHANDARI

Editor - AADITYALEKSHMI

Initially we started with the idea of showcasing the social issue of school bullying and depression. School bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. Whereas, depression is characterized by persistent sadness and a lack of interest or pleasure in previously rewarding or enjoyable activities

We chose these issues as they are very common and one of the major issues faced by school going students.

But then as our discussion progressed we reached the conclusion of going for school bullying and depression as the two social issues. The reason for the same was, depression was something each student including we ourselves could relate to. Thus showcasing something through which we could aware people about seemed more interesting and meaningful.

We researched on what is Bullying and how its possible in schools. Also how depression is a factor relating to bullying.

Research on Bullying and Depression

Common types of bullying

Direct Bullying and Indirect Bullying

Direct bullying is different from indirect bullying as direct bullying involves direct contact with the one being bullied. Indirect may not. An example of direct bullying would be throwing something at a person, or yelling hurtful words at them. An example of indirect bullying might be spreading rumors about a classmate.

Physical Bullying

Physical bullying always involves physical contact with the other person. This can mean hand-to-hand, but can also mean throwing items, tripping, or eliciting others to cause physical harm to a person.

Emotional Bullying

Emotional bullying involves using ways to cause emotional hurt to another person. This can include saying or writing hurtful things, causing others to gang up on an individual, purposeful ignoring, or spreading rumors.

We also researched on what all places bullying can take place in a school. It can occur :

in the hallway or stairwell at school

inside the classroom

in the cafeteria

outside on school grounds

on the school bus

in the washroom or locker room

Thereafter I researched the effects of bullying : Depression and anxiety, increased feelings of sadness and loneliness, changes in sleep and eating patterns, and loss of interest in activities they used to enjoy. These are the major issues students are more likely to experience.

One of the top most search engine questions is how can bullying lead to depression. Thus we conducted a survey and social media poll to ensure that we are moving forward with an actual serious social issue. Our responders were the active student community who are the target audience of our trailers.

The results for the same were:

INSTAGRAM POLL

Does bullying lead to depression?

Is School bullying common?

Are bullying and depression a serious social issue?

ONLINE SURVEY

We began collecting and grouping these issues and researches to relate to our genre of horror and drama.

Once we started with planning our story the team decided that we could use hybrid genre. So we started planning our story based on drama and horror genre. We firstly saw many trailers and read a lot many horror stories to gain perspectives and ideas on what could be done to combine these genres. Some of the trailers we watched were:

The Director and I hosted many Zoom meetings and discussed our researches with each other. We jotted down many ideas and various ways in which we could showcase our story through help of these trailers. We started writing our final ideas into the story we want.

The director and I wrote 2 varied stories and forwarded it to our teacher for approval.

We finally reached on two main ideas.

1. A girl reading a scary book realizing herself as a character in it and starts behaving wired around her classmates where they starts bullying her.

2. Classmates playing TDS and gives dare to the girl to record a video of the places where no one has visited and is locked where she receives calls from a person named black hood who hides his face and calls her to do certain strange things.

After discussing as a team we listed there pros and cons according to how we could depict it in our school, we decided not to go with these ideas.

So as a team we end up with whole new plan for our story line. The director and I thought of showing a story of twins where one is trapped inside the mirror and another gets bullied in the school and suffers from bipolar disorder. This way we reached the conclusion that we will be able to portray both the social issues as well as produce a horror story. Also cause the story is set in school premises the genre of drama would easily add up.

With the story decided and the script ready I started learning effective editing related stuff alongside starting work on the poster. I looked up horror trailer, scary sound effects, bullying related series and ideas for poster making. The director and I also watched a limited-episode Netflix series to understand the gist of what bullying and depression is and in what all ways it can be showcased.

This is a series on how the bullied outcasts at prestigious Al Rawabi School for Girls plot a series of risky takedowns to get back at their tormentors.

We also watched Trapped which is a survival drama for more references.

13 Reasons Why stood out through all the issues and controversies it faced and showcases bullying, depression and major issues faced by a student at school in an easy going manner, this attracted a huge no. of audience and successfully gained recognition as it:

Made specific moves in order to have the audience feel EXACTLY what the character feels.

Does the best to highlight what every single person in a suicide/sexual abuse/bullying (etc.) experience may feel by touching on almost every situation.

Stresses that these situations do exist, and that there is ALWAYS a way out.

Watching varied trailers and movies we sorted out our clear plan for a new story. Even though we made several changed based on enumerable suggestions we received, we eventually were able to bring out the best version of all.

Once this was done we did our research on Codes and Conventions of Horror genre.

All the research, planning and brainstorming was done!. So we began with writing our final story.

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Welcome Back!

Hii everyone! I am Aadityalekshmi.S and I’m an A Level, Media Studies student at Bodhi International School, Jodhpur.

I have opted for this subject to broaden my perspective in the stream of films alongside learning about the developing industry. We have opted film as a media to study. In our first class for A levels, we developed an understanding about the syllabus for the course and also what Cambridge demands from us as a media studies student.

The unwelcomed Covid - 19 pandemic still continues. We did our pre-production, research and planning all on online video conferences and classes. Soon we were granted permission for physical classes, thus we worked on our post-production face-to-face.

The week began with a brief discussion on the syllabus criteria and its requirements for the portfolio.

This year I’m going to learnt a lot more about filmmaking and how trailers are produced and distributed to the audience. Trailers in my understanding are shot to attract and appeal an audience to the film.

So let's get started!

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AS LEVEL FINAL SUBMISSION

Film Opening Sequence

Naaz

Creative Critical Reflection

AS LEVEL CCR1 AS LEVEL CCR2 AS LEVEL CCR3 AS LEVEL CCR4

Sound Link : AS LEVELS

Sakar Khan Plays Kamaicha - YouTube Kaalbeliya - Rajasthani Songs

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Post Production

Being an editor, post production was entirely my area to work on. After the successful completion of our shoot, we started with the editing of our opening sequence. We chose Adobe premiere pro as a video software as i found the software effective compared to other video softwares.

As briefed earlier, we had to make two logos for production company and film company. i first tried my hands on Canva and created few samples but i myself wasnt satisfied with those. My teacher suggested me to use Adobe After effects. it seems little difficult at first but i managed to come up with good effective logos. The interface of adobe after effects is quite similar to adobe premiere pro cc.

In the process of making logos, i understood that the feedback is very much important. Feedback not only improves the product but also makes our working effective. There were few tips or suggestions which i recieved from my Teacher before i started learning video editing. Like handling data, filteration, right research, proper use of effects and transitions. while editing , your data should be properly arranged.

After the first draft where i filtered and arranged all the data, i realized that we need a strong narration to make our opening sequence more effective. I discussed it with my director and our Teacher Ms. Ankita helped us in recording the narration part. while i was working on the first draft , my difector and cinematographer were looking for the proper bg scores on youtube. After a lot of trial and error we decided to go with few tracks.

while working on audio layers i realized, that the editing of audio and video are quite different. i used audio transitions like exponential fade, constant power and also adjusted frequencies to match different audio layers.

For movie title, i researched various youtube tutorials and found write on effect effect impactful. My director wanted to have our movie title to be unusual. so i tried my hands on it and was successful in creating one for our opening sequence.

Fonts used by me was Impact. For Credit titles i used Tw Cent font. to make it look smooth i used zoom effect for movie title and for credit titles i worked with opacity, scale, position and also dip to black transition.

I also worked on color correction layer by layer changing contrast, brightness, shadows to make it look more cinematic.

After the final editing, i exported the video in H.264 format. and uploaded on Youtube channel as Unlisted.

After the editing, i started working on my CCR's.

I used different platforms to make my presentations creative and effective. I used 4 different platforms - prezi, adobe spark, youtube and visme.com

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PRE- PRODUCTION & PRODUCTION

This following week was our shoot!

It took a lot of efforts for the team to decide the final shot list and prep the location and the camera angles accordingly. We targeted onto challenging the typical and common conventions of the drama genre. We did this by following a hybrid genre which allowed us to add a varied and wider range of ideas as well as creativity to it.

Three members of the team including our teacher contributed to this by shooting from different angles at different speed and styles front camera as well as personal phones to gain a variety of shots that would help us choose the best out of all.

The cinematography pattern included steady, swift and clear movements of the character in frame.

Pre-Production

Pre-production documents

Clip Analysis - Fargo season 1, ep 1.

Clip Analysis - 34 season 1, ep 5.

This week included us learning how to write a screenplay and how to make a shot division.

This is our first draft of the screenplay for AS production.

We created this using Studio Binder Website, and maintained our backup on Microsoft Office Word files.

Simultaneously, we are also practicing Clip Analysis. This week, we analyzed a clip from Fargo S1 E1.

The analysis happens in all the 5 areas -

Represenation

Mise-en-scene

Editing

Camera

Sound.

We focused specifically on our particular areas designated, as mine was editing.

1st task - Arranging and organizing stuff for the external shoot.

2nd task - Contacting and confirming location availability and transport respectively.

Master break down & shot division

Finalizing actors

Finalizing location for foundation portfolio

After organizing and preparing our location in the first 30 mins of the day. The location was in the outskirts of the city, approximately a hours distance from our start point.

We booked a room at the location and settled ourselves, thus began our shoot.

Our location had a traditional and authentic look which provided us the natural lighting, artistic doorways, wide arenas and much more.

We shot at different spots at the same location, used the natural lighting and the traditional look to enhance the shots.