Friday 8 April 2011

This is the Final Cut!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Here is our finished product! Woooooooo!
This is our final evaluation piece.

Evaluation:

We are currently in the process of uploading our final sequence and evaluation to youtube. Once it has uploaded, we will then link it to both our group blog and our individual ones. We are pleased with how our evaluation went and our overall project.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Sleeper:


This is our opening sequence of 'Sleeper'. This is not the final one since this was uploaded to youtube we have altered a few things such as lighting and credits. 


We are all very proud of our finished piece and believe that we have put in all we had to make it as best as we could.


Posted by Lucy.

This is my (Lucy Clark) self assessment that I completed upon reflecting on our project.

Finished Evaluation:

Today, we filmed our evaluation for our finished film opening sequence. We did our evaluation by setting up a tri-pod and camera and filmed us all answering the evaluation questions. We had all previously written up what we were going to say when answered each question so we were all prepared when we anwered them in front of the camera. It went really well and I felt we answered the questions with a good amount of description to hopefully gain us all a good mark. I also felt that we were all very confident in front of the camera when it came to filming the evaluation, which I definately think this is a a good thing and is down to the fact that we were prepared and ready for our evaluation.

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Problems faced when filming:

Whilst filming we were faced with a couple of problems, they were luckily only minor problems and did not affect our filming too much. One of the problems was the fact that when we were filming our outside scene we found it hard to film with the continuous amount of cars that were driving past us whilst filming. It affected the sound of ur film as the cars were quite loud and could be heard within our film. However, we did manage to change this using Final Cut to edit the sound of our film. We also found that it was very windy and rainy when we were filming outside which affected the stability and clearness of both the camera lense and tri-pod.
Another problem that we faced was the battery life of the camera, it did not last very long and affected the time in which it took us to film as we had to stop to charge the camera whilst filming.
To add to this, we found that filming on two different occasions affected the lighting and contrast of our film, we found it really hard when editing to get both the lighting and contrast to look as similar to one another as possible.    

Class Feedback 4:

Class Feedback 3:

Class Feedback 2:

Class Feedback 1:

Class Feedback:

When we showcased our film to our media class we gave out sheets which asked for feedback on specific parts of the film. We have randomly chosen 4 out of the 10 sheets that we got back to put on our blog to show where we have got our constructive criticism from and to show where we have improved. 


Posted by Lucy.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Evaluation:

Now our film is all complete, we must evaluate it. We have planned our evaluative piece that we are going to film and put on our group blog by Thursday 7th April. As a group we have discussed things that we would change if we had the chance to and are going to talk about these further in our evaluation. We realised that there were a couple of issues with the lighting in our film and have really tried hard to resolve the problems but it is difficult as there is only so much changing of the brightness and contrast that we can do before we can barely see the shot at all! We are aiming to film our video response on Wednesday 6th April and have our blog completely finished by Thursday 7th April which is our deadline.


Posted by Lucy.

Thursday 31 March 2011

Filming:

Whilst we filmed our sequence we had to assign different roles to different people in our group. As we only had one character being shown on the screen at one time it was easier for us as a group to share the roles. We all had a go at filming and assisting the 'director' and 2 of us played the characters. 


At the beginning of our shooting we were meant to have a friend from outside of our group to be the psychopath character, however, after we were let down twice by this person, we decided that it would be best if we were to just have one of the three member of our group play this part. We found this much more effective and helpful to us as we did not have to revolve our filming time around a person outside of the group and therefore could film whenever we wanted without this worry. 


we are pleased that we made this decision as we could therefore be more specific about what we wanted our character to do as we all had the same mindset in our group.


Posted by Lucy.

Wednesday 30 March 2011

Showcase:

Yesterday (29/3) we had our opening sequence showcase to the rest of our class. We finished our editing yesterday morning by adding music to our sequence and cleaning up some of our edits. The track we used on our final piece was called 'Abandoned' and we really really love how the track fits so well with the genre of the film. It builds up in the right places and we believe it helps to tell the story. We were really nervous as to how our final piece would turn out but the reception it got from our teacher and the class was extremely positive. We got some very good feedback as well as a few pieces of constructive criticism on our film. We were very pleased with the outcome however there are still a few things that need to be changed, but we are very happy with the work we have done.

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Music:

We have been using the website www.freeplaymusic.com which is contains copyright free music which we can use as background music on our film. We aim to find a suitable piece of music which will add a spooky feel to the film as well as help to create suspicion. Also, we would specifically like a piece of music which builds up to a climax as the film progresses.


Posted by Lucy.

Monday 28 March 2011

Editing:

Our film is still going through the editing process and we are currently adding credits and music to our opening sequence. We have almost finished making and adding our credits, and are progressing quickly. We plan to have our music added within the next few lessons and are very pleased with how it looks so far.



Friday 25 March 2011

Editing:

We completed our filming and we are now editing our film. We have mainly finished our editing but still need to add opening credits as well as the name of our production company and the music to our film. We are showing our film to our class next week to get feedback so that we can make any small last minute changes to it.

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Filming:

This week we finished the filming of Sleeper. We have uploaded all of our cuts onto Final Cut and are currently in the process of editing and completing our opening.
Here is a picture of Group M:

Tuesday 8 March 2011

Filming:

We had planned to film the remaining part of our film on 5th March, however, we were not able to borrow the appropriate equipment that we required for the filming and therefore were unable to film. We have therefore scheduled to finish the filming this Thursday (10th March) where we must complete it.


We have edited the film so far, however we will have to change this due to us changing some of the beginning part of our film. As a group we decided that in order to make our film more exciting and suspicious that we will add a scene in at the beginning of the film which will then develop slightly more as the film goes on. We decided to add a scene in which a text message is received on the phone of the man and a car then pulls up to hand him a package, which will lead the audience in suspense as to what is in the package.


Posted by Lucy.

Final Cut:

As a group we have begun to use Final Cut to edit our film opening. Originally, we found it really hard to understand what to and what tools to use for certain things. However, we gradually are learning what tools to use to edit certain things within our film opening. We have learnt and understand how to cut each shot and remove certain shots that went wrong or do not look good, this also making each shot cut to the next good shot.


Posted by Lucy.

Friday 4 March 2011

Filming:

As a group we have almost completed filming our opening film sequence and have begun to edit our film opening in class. We have shot the part of our opening sequence that is set outside, this was quite successful as we worked well together as a group and the camera worked well and overall everything went smoothly. However, we did find when editing in class that the shots were too dark outside and that we will need to re-shoot all of the filming set outside as it is not very clear due to how dark it is. To improve this, we are going to film outside at an earlier time in the day when it is not as dark.
We also have shot the bedroom scenes for our film opening, this went very well as we used the night vision  setting on the camera, this giving our film opening a more scary effect like the film Paranormal Activity.
All we need to complete is re-doing the outside shots and we also need to re-shoot a couple of shots that  we did inside that were also too dark and not very clear. We have planned as a group to complete our filming this Saturday, the 5th of March.


Posted by Lucy.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Preliminary Sequence:

We have made a video showing all of the different shot angles and have edited it using Final Cut. We have included: a close up, extra close up, medium shot, long shot, extra long shot, over the shoulder shot, ariel/birds eye shot, worm eye view, 180 degree rule.




Posted by Lucy.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Film Title

As a group we have decided that the title of our film will be 'Sleeper'. We thought that this would be appropriate because of the plot of the film. We also considered the name 'Dreamer' however, we did not want to give too much information away in the title because the plot of the film would be too obvious. 


Posted by Lucy.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Pages From Our Filming Production Booklet:


This presentation shows some pages from our filming production booklet.
Mind-Map
View more presentations from Westhatchmediastudies.

This is the mind map we produced to get ideas for our film opening, it was actually very successful as we worked as a group and thought of lots of good ideas which we are going to include in our film opening sequence. 

Second Shooting:

We plan to do our second shooting session tomorrow (Thursday) in which we hope to complete the filming so that we can begin cutting and editing as soon as possible in order to make the best of the time we have. We have as a group decided that in order to prevent being let down again by an actor for our film, we will infact use either a family member to help us or one of the members of our group will do it. This will not make a difference on the filming as the actors face is not actually seen in the film, just the back of them. We did need it to be a male character however, as their face isn't going to be seen we realised that it will not make a difference to the film. 


Posted by Lucy.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Friday 4 February 2011

Our Preliminary Exercise:

We all went out filming our preliminary exercise a couple of weeks ago with our camera and tri-pod. It was the first time that we were using both the camera and the tri-pod, so it was a good activity for our group to get to know how to use the equipment which we will be using for our filming. We filmed all over the school, both inside and outside. For our preliminary exercise we had to film a variety of different shots including: close up shot, extra close up shot, long shot, medium shot, aerial shot and lots more. Then, we had to film two people having a conversation sitting opposite each other and use the camera to zoom in and out to show the character's facial expressions and body language. 
Lastly, we had to do a shot following the 180 degree rule, for this we had the camera following a character around a room in a circle to capture the characters every move. 
It was a very successful exercise overall and it went very well, we managed to capture all the shots correctly and complete the exercise very well as a group. 

Tuesday 1 February 2011

First Shooting

As a group we began shooting last weekend, however, it was quite unsuccessful because our actor let us down last minute and despite us trying to find someone else, we did not.


We had all of the equipment so we decided to do as much as we could and so we planned further into how we wanted things for when we were next able to film properly.


We did several run throughs and did film a small amount for which we didn't need the actor for.


We are planning to use the equipment and continue filming this week/this weekend.


Posted by Lucy.