The document discusses potential problems Ewan Wild may face during his film production project and proposes solutions. It addresses technical problems like internet outages and power failures. It also considers theoretical problems such as actors falling out, poor weather interfering with outdoor filming schedules, and ensuring crew members have sufficient skills. The document explores experiments Ewan conducted to develop techniques for animating a flashing light on a movie poster. It also reviews budget and financing options, including borrowing money if costs exceed the estimated $15-20 needed to print a promotional t-shirt.

1. PROBLEM
SOLVING
Ewan Wild

2. TECHNICAL AND
PRACTICAL
PROBLEMS

3. ■ Internet/power goes out
– If the internet at the college goes out, it’s not a massive problem. I can
still complete PowerPoints and can just upload things at home. However
since the update to all of the adobe products, you are unable to use them
without internet so it’s more difficult during production.To tackle this, I
will just continue to do PowerPoints during production time. I will still
need to complete a daily production diary so I could start that earlier and
wait for the internet to come back on. If it’s still off and I need to
complete some production work desperately, I could complete it at
home, as I have older versions of adobe products there.
– As for the power going out, I firstly would need to make sure that I save
regularly so I don’t lose very much, if anything.This will need to be in
multiple places as if a computer shuts down suddenly, there could be a
chance of it crashing, so by saving it in multiple different places, crashing
isn’t a big deal as I have everything saved in other places so I can access it
easily when my computer returns to normal.There wouldn’t be too much
I can do while the power is out, as I rely on a computer to get everything
done, however I could think of more ideas that I could do in my
production. I have a notebook so I could jot down ideas and draw them
how I see them in my head, whether it’s another shot for my film, or
more merchandise that I could possibly make.

4. ■ Storage
– To avoid problems when it comes to crashing, or the power suddenly
turning off (as I talked about earlier) I need to save my work in multiple
places. Just to be safe, because you can never have it saved in too many
places, I have my work saved in four places.The first is this computer,
obviously since I’m doing all my work on it. But I also email it to myself
which saves it there, allowing me to access it wherever I can access my
email from.Thirdly, I have all my files on a memory stick. I’ve been using
this for the whole of my second year but it has 128GB of storage so it still
has plenty of room left on it, which is one less problem for me to worry
about. Finally, at the end of the week I save my work to my computer at
home. It’s probably not going to be needed, but it’s there as a last resort
just in case. I’d rather have it and not need it then end up losing all my
work somehow.
■ Saves corrupt
– Everything I have talked about so far in the technical problems section is
how I will get past corrupt saves, saving frequently and in multiple
places.

5. ■ Camera battery runs out
– During production, I will of course have to use a
camera. This comes at the risk of the batteries
running out of charge. As well as getting out a
spare battery, I can borrow a battery charger.This
way I’ll never be stuck with two dead batteries and
no way to charge them. While they charge, I can
talk to my actors about what’s next, explaining
shots that I want to try, and other assorted bits in
filming that they may want to know about in more
detail. I looked up the same charger and found it
on the Canon website, so I know how long it would
take to charge up, and I found that it takes
“Approximately two hours”.This isn’t too bad, but
it still wastes a large chunk of time that could be
spent filming. It could ruin filming that day as the
weather or how light it is could change drastically
over the course of two hours, so I would much
rather get the spare battery and not need anything
else, instead getting all my footage at once
without needing to charge.

6. ■ Working at home
– If I want to work at home I have to be careful. When it comes to practical
work, I only have older versions of the Adobe products at home which
may limit what I can do. Different versions may have different ways of
doing things and newer versions have more I can access. To tackle this if
I’m working at home I will stick to the more basic stuff. Cuts and assorted
other areas when editing can still be done well, and moving everything
across to a newer version shouldn’t be a problem. Photoshop is even
more simple, as I am limited with what I can do on that, so I don’t tend to
use anything overly complicated. This means that I’m not really held
back by different versions of it.
– When working at home, I will also have to remember to bring across the
different fonts. I tend to download ones that I like from Dafont so they’re
not just on all computers. If it’s a particularly difficult one to find, I will
save the link on my pre-production PowerPoint so I can find the font
easily when that work is on SlideShare. Otherwise, if it’s more popular, it
should be fairly easy to find if I remember the name of it.

7. THEORETICAL
PROBLEMS

8. ■ Actors falling out
– If actors fall out then there could be serious problems. Refusing to work
with each other could ruin my film. I’ve never run into this problem in the
past so it shouldn’t be a problem, but there’s always a chance of it
happening. To lower the chance of this happening I will hire two people
that know and are friendly with each other, or people who don’t know
each other at all. I find that with people a similar age to me, they’re less
comfortable arguing with strangers than someone with a different
generation, however I trust them to make a quality piece with me. If it
already gets to the point where two people are arguing, there’s ways to
stop it. I can just play peacemaker which I’ve found to be quite skilled at.
If that doesn’t work I could just threaten to not pay them. By making
them sign contracts if I add a clause saying I can take away their pay if
they refuse to finish to a standard that I’m pleased with, then I could do
that. It’s not the nicest thing to do, but it’s so important that I do well in
this project.
■ Crew skill level
– If I have a crew, then they all need to be good at their jobs for this to
work. If one person can’t do what they’re told and do it well, then I don’t
want them doing it. I’d put them on something different, the easiest is
probably working a static camera on a tripod. If they can’t even do that
then I’d just have to bring someone else in, which is easy enough.

9. ■ Weather
– A lot of my short film needs to be filmed outside, so it’s important that
it’s not raining. It doesn’t necessarily need to be dry, but to keep the
camera safe and the cast happy, I don’t want rain. If on the day it does
rain, then I’d have to start by filming the inside scenes so there’s
something done. If it’s still raining at this point then I’d have to
reschedule. This causes problems if there isn’t another date where my
cast and crew would all be available so it’s important that I keep track of
the weather beforehand. I still have other areas to work on so I could do
my work on Photoshop while I wait for what’s meant to be a dry day.
■ Unwanted Noise
– My biggest problem with this will be wind. Since it’ll be spring, there
could possibly be quite a bit of wind. Most of my sound will be added in
post, however for the parts that aren’t, this could be a problem. I could
wait until the wind is lower and then film it, because it’s possible to fix
some background noise in post. I’d rather not have to resort to this
however, and instead just wait until the wind has gone, or use something
to stop the wind from blowing right onto the mic. Maybe an umbrella on
it’s side?

10. ■ ProductionTime
– To actually film all the footage I need, I’ll only need a day. It will take
multiple days if I need to make improvements afterwards or if the
weather is not how I want it. If this time changes then I will be left
without anything to edit in college, which may potentially leave me with
less production time. However I don’t need to spend all my time editing
as I have other areas I can work on, should I not get all my footage
together in time. I’ll still need to make a shirt and a poster to go along
with my film and trailer, so I can work on them, which will also take time
to do well.
■ Health and Safety
– My film is fairly low risk, I’m not asking the cast to do anything
dangerous and there wont be any obstacles. They just need to remember
to keep warm because it could be cold when I film.The main areas of
health and safety will be surrounding what I do in post on the computer,
as there are several health risks that could possibly happen. It’s nothing
serious, just nausea and back pain, however it is still important to talk
about in a risk assessment.

11. ■ Shirt Printing
– I want to try actually printing a shirt out with my logo on it. I did some
research earlier and it actually turns out to not be too expensive. Looking
at variousT-shirt printing places prices vary, but it’s looking like it will set
me back around £15 if I want to make one, which is definitely doable. The
fact that I’m spending money means I will have to be very happy with my
final project however so I think it will inspire me to make a better final
product.
Spreadshirt:

12. Mypersonalisedclothing.com Shirtinator.co.uk
(Note that I used a colour photo from an experiment so I can a more accurate price)
 Finance
 What happens if I don’t have enough money? I only really need to pay for the
T-shirt which will set me back £15-20 so it’s not too much to pay. However if I
can’t pay it, there’s always the option to borrow money. I don’t really want to
resort to this, but it’s an option. Otherwise, I could just not buy a shirt. I’d
prefer to buy it, but it isn’t one of the biggest areas in my production so if I
can’t buy one, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

13. EXPERIMENTS

14. Experiment #1 - Poster
My first experiment relates to my movie poster. I want to
animate it with a flashing light in the window, something I’ve
never attempted before, so I wanted to experiment with it a bit
before I complete it for real.The first step was to get a photo to
experiment with, so I just got a random house from google. I
then had to separate the window into it’s own layer, which since
there were several sections, took some time, and then merge
the layers together. Once they were separated I could darken the
rest of the image, giving the impression of night time. I think this
area still needed work as all the colours are still vivid if you look
into the darkened image.
https://youtu.be/KcHHeBVWXjU

15. Next I had to add the colour of a light. I wanted
it almost cartoon-y, just like my final piece will
be, so I went for more of a yellow colour than
an actual light would be. Once that was done I
needed to add a silhouette to it, so I got a
picture of someone from Google.The person
ended up being Mark Zuckerberg but that isn’t
important to the experiment.
Once all of these layers were completed and
separate, I could start the actual animation
process. I gradually made the image darker,
then turned on the light when it got dark
enough, just like a normal house would. When
it got dark I started trying to make the light
flicker. I feel like this needed some work and I
didn’t do it too well, but that’s just another
area that I know I can improve upon when
production comes along.
I’m fairly happy with this experiment. It’s clear
which areas I need to improve on for next time
and I know I’ll be able to make them better
when the time comes.

17. Experiment #2 – More Poster
Work
I wanted to experiment with something
else on Photoshop before I moved onto
moving image. I decided to try a simple
effect for my poster that I may want to do
with a silhouette which involves almost a
crumbling effect like the man is slowly
disintegrating into space. I started by
getting a random one from google just to
mess around with. I changed the opacity
on the rubber tool to around 15% and
rubbed out the back area of the silhouette.
This is where the bits breaking off will
come out of, and so I want him to have less
body on his back.

18. Next, I used paintbrushes that could be used
for the effect. They are meant to be paint
splashes but can work for multiple different
things. I started off covering most of the
lighter area of the silhouette with smaller
versions of these splashes. As of then it didn’t
look good, but I needed them to cover most of
the rubbed out area so it doesn’t just look like
that, rubbed out. Instead it makes the parts
that are still showing seem like they’re slowly
disappearing more and more, so it works.
Finally, I increased the brush size and added
them on.To make sure it looked better, I
changed the angles of brush every time I
added it, to make it seem like it’s all random
rather than a pattern.

19. Although it isn’t the best quality as the picture I
used was quite small, you can clearly see what
I’m going for here. I am pleased with the
outcome and definitely want to try it for my
production when the time comes, though
whether or not I’ll actually use it will be
determined then. One thing I think I will change
however is which splash-style brush I’m going to
use. With this one the pixels are fairly clear, and
that’s not just because the photo I used was low
quality. So when the times comes for me to do
this, I’ll use a different brush that looks much
more clear.

20. Experiment #3 -Transitionshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IevXAeVQ3oU&feature=youtu.be
For my first experiment with a camera, I tried a couple of
different transitions. The first one was were I zoom in close,
and then zoom out to reveal a change. This is fairly simple
to and it came out pretty well.The footage I took didn’t
look great, and I came across a problem where once I put it
all on the mac, it was really dark, however this wasn’t a
massive problem as it’s all about the transitions, and as you
can see on the right, I changed the exposure to make it
brighter.This transition is very simple and I think it came
out well. I’m not sure if the style fits in with my short film,
but I would like to use it if I could do so in a way that feels
natural. All it takes is to slowly (or quickly) zoom in until the
screen goes black, then to do the same in reverse, starting
with black and zooming out slowly.

21. The second transition was a bit more difficult. I
needed to get matching colours to help move from
one wall to the other.To do this I had to mess with
the basic correction a little, including using the
white balance selector to do this.
I wasn’t as happy with this transition as I was with
the other. I did it in a pretty dim area where the
light levels are different, so proving to make the
walls look the same was difficult. As well as this I
made the mistake of not moving the second shot
instantly, so as you can see in the video it looks like
it stops in the middle. I know how to improve for
next time though, so this experiment wasn’t a
waste. Next time I’d need to find two areas with a
similar amount of light as well as just colour to
make it work better. As well as this I will need to
keep in mind that the camera should already be
moving as I start recording for the second half of
the shot

22. Experiment #4 – Reducing
Background Noisehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vOOzG9zJYg&feature=youtu.be
Reducing the background noise is very important with what I’m
doing. I don’t want wind making my audio bad, so it’s important
that I know how to fix if I run into the problem. So I filmed a hall
for thirty seconds with background noise coming from
classrooms so I can learn how to fix it.The first step was to go
into audio effects and select DeNoise.This is the tool that will
allow me to adjust audio settings in a way that will reduce all the
background noise. Once this was done I had to customise the
settings to reduce the noise how I wanted it, in this case, as quiet
as possible.The bottom left photo shows the screen that came
up to allow me to customise the settings, and shows the level of
sound I’m working with.

23. To change the noise level, all I had to do was
change the amount at the bottom from 40 up to
100, and instantly all the noise I don’t want is
quieter. It works well and is easy to do, and now I
know how to do it for my production if it’s
needed.
I’ve had positives and negatives from this
experiment. I did it properly and well, and the
sound is a lot smoother after doing it. However,
I didn’t really have much foreground noise, so
it’s difficult to determine how much quieter that
sound will be when I need to use the tool. I am
happy with the outcome though, and how
surprisingly easy it was to do this, so I think this
last experiment was successful.