Post-Production: Original Score

Here, presented via SoundCloud, are the various pieces composed by James Richardson for our opening, avaliable for streaming as well as download.
 

Post-Production: Soundtrack Demo

Our composer, James Richardson, recently turned in his demo tracks for use in our opening. I have therefore quickly edited the tracks onto our correct draft of our opening to give us a sense of how the final soundtrack should work with the visuals of the film.

 

 

The recording process involved setting up a studio for our composer to work in. He was provided the rough edit of the opening with "The Dark Knight Rises" soundtrack, as well as the newer draft without any music, so he could work on composing and recording the music to them, experimenting with various styles and melodies. He consulted us about exactly what we wanted, and we spent some sessions with him to expplore his creative and technical process. Overall, we are very satisfied with the music he has come up with and we are excited to see what other ideas he has for the opening score.

Post-Production: Soundtrack Research

For our two-minute opening, we decided that music was going to be an integral part of it, providing and accentuating the tension that is prevalent. A notable composer, Hans Zimmer, provided much of the stylistic influence, and for the storyboard animatic and the early rough edit of our film opening, we temporarily used a track from Zimmer's score to "The Dark Knight Rises".

"Gotham's Reckoning" can be heard below:

Another piece of music that was a point of inspiration for us was the Danny Elfman composition "Wolf Suite, Part 1" from the soundtrack to the film "The Wolfman", that was used excellently in the trailer to 2011 spy thriller "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy".

We intend for our dear friend, the long-chinned James Richardson, to compose and record a piece of music in the similar vein as these tracks, capturing the same level of intensity and cinematic flair.

Post-Production: Opening Titles & ADR Test Edit

Here is a rough version of what the film opening should look like with opening titles applied, as well as our recent ADR that we recorded applied to the project.

 

Post-Production: Sound Mixing & ADR

Of all the elements of post-production, sound mixing was the most arduous and exhaustive, due to the difficulties we encountered recording audio on location. This meant that extensive ADR was to be carried out, with our best attempts to record the dialogue in a way that would not sound out of place. Therefore we went the route of re-recording all of the dialogue using the microphone of the camera that was used to capture the visuals. I then used various internet resources to find ambience tracks that could be layered over the video to simulate the real sound of the locations in the opening.

The following video was instrumental in understanding how to incorporate the process:

Once I had determined which audio tracks were suitable, I matched them up with the actor's mouths to ensure they were in sync and looked as if they were recorded on the day. The audio of the opening was then created from the newly recorded dialogue in addition to the ambience, with some sound effects and elements of the actual recordings where they were necessary, for instance the sound of running and the actor's breaths during the fight sequence.

Post-Production: Anatomy Of An Opening Title Sequence

Opening titles are something that are often overlooked by a general movie going audience. However they can be extremely effective and evocative of the film to follow. When special attention is put into producing them, for instance using a suitable design of fonts and graphics, opening title sequences can be a highlight.

As we can identity from these examples of title sequences, as well as many others, the standard order of credits are as follows:

- [Distributor/s] presents
- A [Production Company/ies] production
- A [Director/s] film
- [Leading actors in order of importance]
- [Title of film]
- [Supporting cast]
Which are then followed by a number of leading technical crew-members, for example:
- Music by [Composer/s]
- Director of photography [D.P.]
- Screenplay by [Writer/s]
- Produced by [Producer/s]
And typically the opening credits end with:
- Directed by [Director]

However for our opening sequence of "Sins Of The Martyr", we discussed and came to the conclusion that the title would be more effective if it was the final credit in the sequence, somewhat subverting the conventions, and reducing over-exposure of myself and Nicholas Ashurst's names, which are featured on almost every credit prior due to our rather large role in the production.

Both opening sequences, "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" and "Quantum Of Solace" feature striking imagery and visuals, and the fonts and lettering are an integral part of that. While the former uses a more stylized font which is in keeping with its themes, the latter has a thicker more contemporary look, which we ended up going for. I selected a font that I felt was rather appropriate. 

The font 'Revolution' was suitable as it is quite bold and clean, and evocative of the modern thriller feel. I used size and spacing of the letters to create emphasis of names. The cast and crew credits are all written in this particular font, while the font of the title is a variation that looks eroded. There are similarities between our logo and the logo for 2012 film "Skyfall", from which we drew inspiration from in a number of aspects.

The website Art of the Title was also an in-depth and useful tool in exploring the often extensive process behind creating the title sequences for popular films.

Post-Production: Editing

Despite the opinion of my colleague, I, in fact, find the post-production process of a film the most exciting. Finally you can begin to see all the pieces of the film come together, and really appreciate the lengths you went to to reach this stage.

The software that I used to edit together the footage was Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, a program that I was not particularly experienced with, but had gained some knowledge of while working on the edit for our preliminary task. My use of the program was aided significantly through the use of YouTube video tutorials and other online resources, as well as my prior experience with Windows Movie Maker. Granted, though, Premiere is a vast step up from Movie Maker, and therefore I had to adapt to the layout and functionality of the software.

Editing began with the long and arduous process of sifting through the hours of footage shot on the day, and determining what takes were to be kept or discarded. It was then up to me to decide which takes were best for use in the final opening, based on a number of factors, such as actors' performances and the quality of the camerawork and image.

The clips were then imported into Premiere, where I made the annoying discovery that the format of the files meant that it was impossible to play correctly and at the right frame rate. Working on each of the scenes, one by one, I produced a rough edit of the opening, making cuts frame by frame, without much inclination of what it would look like played back. I would then exported the video, slightly longer than our intended run time, at 24fps down from 50fps (as this is industry standard as well as easier to work with) in the format most easily accessible and usable - MP4. This exporting process took several hours due to the low performance of my laptop, however I got on with other stuff.

This resultant video clip was then imported into a new project, where I viewed the footage (without sound - this audio will be done separately and then added) and made any corrections to awkward cuts that were not easily visible during initial editing. I then began colour correcting to ensure all the clips had a similar look to them and followed this with color grading to make them look more cinematic in appearance.

I used video tutorials such as this to help me:

The sound editing will be explored in a later post, and I will be making plenty of further edits to the opening over the coming weeks to ensure it is of the highest standard.

Post-Production: Opening Rough Edit

To celebrate the new year, we have a draft edit, of sorts, of our opening sequence for "Sins Of The Martyr", compiled of the footage that we shot last Thursday in London. As it stands, the current cut of the opening is a a lengthy 3 minutes 52 seconds, almost twice the length of the alloted time. However, in the final edit of this sequence, editing will be tightened significantly and the music (that I have taken from Hans Zimmer's score to "The Dark Knight Rises") will be replaced by an original score by my friend, James Richardson. There will also be significant ADR (Additional-Dialogue-Replacement) in order to make the lines more audible and there will be effects added to them to emulate telephone voices for the earpieces that feature prominently in the sequence.

For now, though, see this rough edit below: