Final tweaks and burning!

The next chance I got to edit in lesson, I was able to add the music to my piece. I did this by saving the track onto a usb stick and transferring it onto iTunes on the Mac, and dragging it from there onto my work on iMovie. It took a lot of careful tweaking and fiddling, but i eventually managed to fit my music to my piece, and make it the right amount of time in length, fading in and out at appropriate moments. This was difficult as we had to ensure that our piece was only 2 minutes long, and mine kept accidentally going over.

With the music successfully added, the very final thing I had left to do was record my friend Alex's voice reading the letter for my voice over. We did this in the school music studio and burned the file onto CD which I then ripped the song from and put it into my piece. This was not the exact right length in time that I had planned to fit in with the music, but after some alterations I managed to get the two audio pieces to fit together, along with the film.

When I felt I was happy with my piece, I played it full screen on the computer, so I could get the whole effect, I did this several times to look for any mistakes I may have made, and I also got people in my class to watch too, to see if they could spot anything I might have missed, and what their overall reaction was to my film. This was very positive so I saved my work, (twice just to make sure) and started to burn. Once burning was complete we tested it in a DVD player and luckily it worked okay.

All that is left for me to do now is my evaluation. In preparation for this I have designed a questionnaire that will be given to classes throughout the school when they watch our pieces so that I can gain audience feedback, the opinions and conclude whether or not I was successful in portraying what I wished to in my film. I am hoping this method will work well and I have chosen a range of 10 questions that I hope will give me the answers I need to know how well I did, such as what genre they thought the film was and what they felt was most effective about the film. Most of my questions are multiple choice with the option of writing their own answer so that I can gain more precise answers that can be categorized and concluded on. I will use the answers I gain in my evaluation, and I have also posted my video on youtube in order to try and gain some more feedback. So far I have had over 70 views and 4 comments, all of which have been positive.

I am hoping I will have had some more feedback from that as well by the time I complete my evaluation.

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Editing!

The next lesson after my filming was complete, I was able to start uploading my footage. Doing this took itself nearly an entire lesson, as I had to connect the camera to the Mac, which took several attempts due to a few dumb moments, the footage then had to upload and after that letterbox. When filming I had ensured that I had plenty of footage to work with, so that I did not find that I did not have enough. This meant that all this footage which would then be edited out had to upload also, and this took a lot of time.

I could first start making proper decisions and editing my piece in the next lesson. The first thing I had to do was to put my piece into black and white. However, this proved difficult, as the simple 'black and white' effect that was already available on the Macs, did not give the effect that I was looking for, and I was disappointed that I would not be able to create the effect that I had envisioned in my mind. To try and overcome this, and to get nearer the image I wanted, I had to fiddle and adjust the colour settings on the screen. This ended up taking up a lot of my time, as I had to do this for every different shot I had filmed, as the lighting was different in each location and angle, and I did not want there to be too much of a harsh difference in each shot. It was at this point that I was thankful that I had filmed earlier than everyone else, and this set back did not leave me behind the rest of the class.

When making cutting decisions, and adding certain effects and transitions, I had to make very careful decisions as to what effect I wanted to created and how best to do this. I had to consider this for every decision made, and my reasoning for my choices will be explained in greater detail in my evaluation once my editing and film is complete.

I was fortunate in the sense that I faced few major problems when editing, and did not end up making any crucial errors or losing any footage. It took a few attempts to entire get used to using the editing tools, as I was now doing much more advanced editing than we did in our first artefact.

I found editing a lot easier and quicker once I had learned the keyboard shortcuts, such as delete, which as a lot simpler than dragging things into the bin

I am now halfway through my editing, I have edited all the footage I want, and just need to add my music, and record Alex's voice to read my letter, then I will add it to my film and make any suitable adjustments to fit the music.

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Filming!

I was extremely nervous and excited on the day of filming, I was excited because it was the first chance for me to create my idea and direct everything exactly as I wanted, and have a sense of doing something very productive. However I was also nervous because although I had left plenty of time incase something went wrong and was fully aware that this was a possibility, at this point I did not know what this was going to be, and what effect it would have on my filming.

Despite these initial nerves, both my actress and I arrived at our location in a very positive frame of mind, excited to get underway.

We first went and set up our equipment in the hotel bedroom, and we were lucky enough to have been given access to the honeymoon suite, therefore we had plenty of room to work with and accomodate our equipment. We were well prepared to shoot as I had the shooting script I had already made, telling me exactly when I need to be filming which parts, and what I needed in order to do this, so that was a huge help and managed to help me avoid any extra and unnecessary stress. However, the first problem we faced was that the room no longer had a grand dressing table with mirror as I remembered, so we were unsure as to how we going to film my establishing shot, an over the shoulder shot of Lauren looking in the mirror. We managed to remove a large mirror from the wall and balance it very carefully on the dresser, and with great care and caution, we eventually managed to get a successful shot.

The next issue that came to our attention was that at a certain point in filming I wished to do a shot panning across the room. However as I went to film this, we realised that the room was full of modern items, and these were not appropriate for the time period my film is set in. We then had to stop filming for a while and ensure that everything modern looking was removed from the shot, and the room ended up with most of it's furniture shoved in the bathroom!

After this minor setback I was rather worried as to whether or not we would be able to keep up with the shooting script, as the sun was starting to set and I did not want to be filming in the dark.

After several attempts, making my actress run up and down many flights of stairs over and over again, I managed to get the shots of the staircase that I wanted.

We were then ready to move outside and start filming out there. I found that this went relatively smoothly and most shots were successful after a couple of takes.

I was also very thankful that we had good weather, windy and relatively cloudy, which was the ideal weather I was hoping for to add effect to the loneliness my character is meant to be feeling.

I was very happy once I had completed my filming, and was confident that it had gone well, and I had managed to get some really good shots that would be effective in my piece. I also found that I finished filming an hour earlier than planned, which was fortunate as we did not have to film in the dark.

With my all my filming having been successfully completed in the one day, I was now ready to upload my footage onto the Macs, and begin the editing of my piece!

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Planning our second artefact

For our second artifact, the criteria states that it must be an opening to a feature film, and must be to minutes in length. We watched some examples of the first two minutes of films, and we analysed them to see what we could pick up about the camera work, editing, lighting and mise en scene. We made notes on how this what effect this had on the audience, and what information it gave about the film. We picked up on things like drawing attention to certain characters, colour pallets, costume, and use of music. We also saw if we could guess the genre of the film from the first two minutes.
All the things we noticed from the films we took notes on, so that we could get inspiration from these ideas when creating our pieces.

The first task we faced when deciding what our feature film was going to be about, was choosing which genre it was going to be. We had choices such as thriller, romance, comedy and science-fiction. When deciding on a genre, I had to consider which of these was possible to film with m equipment, available locations, actors and budget. I could then rule out options such as sci-fi. Overall, the genre that I felt I would be able to produce most successfully was romance, as it had no particular specifications, and was a very broad category that I knew lots about, and had lots of different ideas of what storyline I could use that would be interesting, original and appropriate. I then made the decision to add the film noir element, meaning that I would like my entire film to be in black and white, and preferably set around the mid 1900's.

I began researching the romance genre, as well as film noir, and I found out what typical examples of the genre consisted of, and the style in which they were filmed. From this I thought up several ideas for storylines, and in the end I decided on one which I felt would work well. I also managed to find a piece of music that would fit my piece, the atmosphere I want to achieve, and the time period I would like it to be set in. I researched what clothing women wore in the mid 1940s, the time I chose my piece to be set in, and found out many interesting facts that I am able to use and show in my piece, in order to make it look as realistic and convincing as possible.

Once I had completed my research and decided on a particular storyline, I began to storyboard, expanding on my ideas and considering different ways of filming and putting across what I was intending. I was able to get a clear idea of how my piece was going to look, what ideas worked well, and what ideas did not. I then began to think of a location that was easily accessible for myself, the equipment and my chosen actress. After a successful conversation with my boss, who was very enthusiastic about the idea, I was given permission to film on the premises of the hotel and in one of the most old-fashioned rooms that would suit my theme.

I decided I would use my friend Lauren as my actress, as not only is she a media student also in my class, therefore able to fully understand what I wanted her to do, but she also had the timeless look that I wanted so should would suit any time period and costume.
After several attempts I completed a successful storyboard that I felt very happy with, and confident that it would be able to work. I then created the same storyboard but on the computer using software that was allowed me to create a neater copy, and once I had filmed and taken still images, I could then upload the images onto the storyboard to represent each stage.

I then had to create two second-by-second time lines for my piece, one for vision and one for sound, and a shooting script that included details such as what time I was going to film each part, the location and any shot requirements that I needed. Even though both these pieces were tricky to construct, as they required much detail and careful planning, I found that they helped me greatly get a very firm idea of what to do when filming, exactly what I wanted to be happening and when, and exactly how I want my piece to look and appear once it is finished.

With all this completed I was now fully set to film at my location, and simply had to wait a couple of days until the date agreed for my location, in which time I could study my planning, and think of any more ways to make my shooting run smoother and any other requirements or problems I might come across on the day of filming.

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Editing our artefact

Once our group successfully uploaded our artefact, we then had edit our footage to create a smooth piece that fit the criteria. We decided to split the artefact into three sections (as there were 3 of us in the group) and edit one section each, so that we could all get used to using the editing software and working on the Macs. We found that after some initial frustration and confusion. in the end the editing went very well and we soon got the hang of it and were able to achieve the effects that we wanted. We also managed to successfully edit two pieces of footage into one smooth, continous piece, for example when Alex walked through the door. Once the footage was edited, we experimented with opening credits and music to use in our piece. We were all very happy with our end result. However, after watching our piece several times (out of pride at our first successful artefact), we began to notice small things on which we could improve, and different ways we could have gone about filming our piece, for instance keeping the camera steadier, and different angles that would have worked better with our filming to make it more interesting. We will take all these things into consideration when creating our next piece.

Here is our final storyboard for our artefact :

Filming our short piece

In our Media lessons, we have now progressed to the point where we have finished creating our storyboard, using still images to show how we will show that we can use the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action.

We decided that a simple and easy thing to film would be the end of a poker game, our piece consisted of Alex returning from the toilet to the poker game, only to find that Rachel (me) had cheated and changed their cards, resulting in her winning and having a 'royal flush'.

To start with we filmed Alex entering the room through the door from the corridor, so we saw the back of him as he entered. We then stopped the recording and repositioned the camera on the inside of the room, to re-film Alex entering, but so that we would be able to edit the film and keep continuity. We filmed this happening from different angles so that when we uploaded the footage onto the computers we could decide which looked smoothest. After we filmed Alex sitting down, we then repositioned the camera for 'over the shoulder' shots, positioning it so that we could see the tips of one players cards, and the face of the opposing player. We did this for both players, whilst a short sentence of dialogue was spoken by each. Once both players had played their cards to reveal the winner of the game, we moved the camera and zoomed in on the money in the center of the table, so that all was in shot was the money, and Rachel's hands reaching in and pulling it towards her.

However, once we felt happy that we had recorded all the footage we needed, we went to upload this footage onto the Mac computers, only to find that we had made a very basic error, but one that was to mean we had no usable footage. It turned out that when we had thought we had pressed 'record', we had actually pressed 'stop record' and vica-versa. It was a simple error to make, but meant we had to spend the next lesson filming the entire thing again, quite the disaster really.

We have now managed to finish our filming, and are now ready to finally start editing the piece to look how we want, a little behind schedule, but all part of the learning process i guess =)

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Creating our storyboard

Today was our fourth lesson of Media Studies. In previous lessons we have learned to use the digital equipment that we will be recording with, and got used to the different types of shots that we can use whilst filming or taking photographs.

Me, Alex and Lauren worked together in a group to create a short film showing the different types of shots we could use to show that we understood them, and we did this during lesson time around the school. In our two lessons today we learned a bit more about the 180 degree rule and began to think how we would put this into practise in a short film.

We created and used a rough storyboard to help us plan and show how our film will run, deciding on filming two people playing cards, and using different shots and angles from within the 180 degree area to show the people. We then took still photos that we will later insert into a storyboard on the Mac computers before we continue to film our piece.

When taking the still photos, we quickly began to get a good idea of what angles worked well and showed what we were aiming to achieve with our film, however we also learned what angles did not work as well as we thought they would, and how we could improve these shots by repositioning. An example of this is when we were trying to show a picture of the top of my playing cards, with the camera positioned over my shoulder, whilst also including Alex's 'poker face' in the shot.

In the next few lessons we hope that we will progress to finish our storyboards and begin to film our short piece.

Bye for now! x

Very first post!

This is my first post for my media blog. I have just finished creating my site but think it will definitely need some more tweaking! As we begin our media work and projects, I will be updating this blog with the way in which we are progressing, any errors or problems we come across, the reasoning behind the decisions we are making and what we think works best!

Bye for now x