Sunday 15 April 2012

I just went back and completed part 3 of my evaluation. For it I researched media corporations that would be likely to distribute our film and what factors would make them successful.










I have now completed all the evaluation tasks and therefore completed my coursework project.

Saturday 14 April 2012

I just completed part 5 of the evaluation tasks. For it I analysed the ways we addressed what the target audience demanded and made the characters/story line relatable to them.

Tuesday 10 April 2012

I just completed the final part of my evaluation. For it I recorded all the different technologies we have used during the coursework process and briefly explained what use they had to us.










I now just need to go back and complete parts 3 and 5 of the evaluation and my coursework will be finished ahead of our deadline on Monday.
Tonight I did part 6 of my evaluation. To do this I looked back and reflected on the progression Georgina and I have made between the making of our preliminary task and the completion of our main task title sequence and recorded some of the skills that we have learnt.

Monday 9 April 2012

Tonight I skipped ahead and finished part 4 of my evaluation. I produced a character profile of one of my friends who fit teenage female target audience perfectly and analysed her and why she would like our film.

I just completed task two of the main task evaluation in which I had to analyse how our title sequence represented particular social media groups. The main representation in our sequence is age and the representation of teenagers. I analysed how we represent teenagers against the typical social stereotype, then looked at how we showed the transition of the characters aging through costume. I also compared our sequence to the Notebook again as it too shows a transition of age through clothing throughout the film.


This morning I completed part 1 of my evaluation task. It took up 7 pages and covered the headings Title of The Film, Setting/location, Costume and Props, Camerawork and Editing, Title Font and Style, Story and How The Opening Sets It Up, Genre and How The Opening Suggests It, How characters are Introduced and Special FX.










The two films I chose to compare our title sequence to were Titanic and The Notebook; I chose them because they both fall into our Romantic Drama genre. When analyzing I saw they both had similarities and differences with our title sequence.


Friday 6 April 2012

This morning I continued with my evaluation task 1, following the A grade template example as I had been before. I have realized that in order to properly evaluate the title I will need to look at some films of the same genre to compare it to, this is something I aim to select films for and hopefully start to do tonight. I also need to take some stills from our finished title sequence to accompany what I am saying under each heading, this is something that should be relativity quick and easy to do.

On Friday the 30th of March, I joined media and film studies students from my school on a trip to Paris. The object of this trip was to visit an independent film festival running across the Saturday and Sunday.













The films we saw varied in length, topic, method of shooting among other things and were all very interesting to observe. Some were filmed in black and white, occasionally using selective colour on specific objects or shots for dramatic effect. Some were done using cartoon/animation. Some were shot on film cameras as opposed to digital.
Each film had a very different story line chosen by the director. Some were documentaries about personal issues close to their hearts. Some were about dramatic incidents and revelations. Some were completely weird and make believe.
On the Sunday we also attended a talk on editing, where we were spoken to by a professional editor about the basics of editing and how he conducts it in the industry.
We also got the chance over the weekend to go out and explore Paris and to visit inspirational sites such as the Eiffel Tower, which my group actually went to the top of.

















Everything I took in from the weekend I can now use to contribute towards the evaluation on my main task as I think it will help me find criticisms in my work of things I perhaps may not have noticed so much before.

Thursday 29 March 2012

In todays lesson Georgina and I exported our main task film opening and title sequence to a video file and therefor finished producing our work. We are extremely pleased with what we have produced.








Now this is done we shall be using our two week break to complete the evaluation tasks and complete any work that must be uploaded to our blog before our final deadline on the first Monday back.

Wednesday 28 March 2012

In today's lesson Georgina and I finished the amendments to our titles. We ensured each title we created was inside the guidelines and also added some additional titles such as Editor and Casting. For the names of the main two characters, we split them from the block they were in and placed them on separate sides of the screen so that they stand out to be more important.













Now this is completed all we have left to do is export our sequence and save it as a video file, thus completing the production of our main task. We plan to go up to the media room to do this tomorrow, then we will use the Easter holidays to separately cover the seven parts to the evaluation (which I have already begun at home) and to finish uploaded and finalizing any documents on our blogs.

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Today Georgina and I had a clear plan of what we wanted to achieve. We began immediately by taking the ambient sound we had recorded yesterday, playing through it and then adding it to the end of our title sequence where we the edited it so that it would fade in as the music fades out. When listening to the clip, we realized halfway through the quiet sounds of the wind and the birds are interrupted by a loud siren in the distance. Although this was not there by plan, it actually sounded quite good against the footage and seemed to enhance the emphasis that the girl (Emily) is now dead, perhaps in some kind of traumatic accident which the nature of would be revealed later on in the film (if it were to be actually made).









Once we were happy with how it sounded, we moved straight onto making and applying our titles. We used the program Livetype to create the lettering, then we applied each title to the footage. For some of the positions since we had deleted several shots when shortening our sequence had to be revised and put in new places.























Once these were applied to the correct places  on our title sequence, we then set about adding effects to them. We wanted the transitions to be soft and slow so we applied a cross-dissolve to the beginning and end of each title, and also made them all 00:03:19 in length so they would not linger on the screen longer than was necessary.









Once this was all completely finished, we got our teacher to watch it through and voice any opinions he had on faults we could change or improve. He pointed out to us that we had missed off some vital pieces of information, such as editors names (with would be Georgina and myself) and that also where our title appears at the end of the sequence, the dramatic effect and beautiful calligraphy on it is taken away from by the fact the same font is used throughout. Taking this into account, we went back to alter our titles again, amending what we had missed out and then selecting a new font for the rest of the text. The font we chose was AppleGothic. We chose this because it is not written in calligraphy so does not distract from the main title, however it is still reasonably soft and curvy, as apposed to having harsh sharp corners.












Tomorrow we shall get our teacher to watch over it again, and if he has no more criticisms, we shall then save it as a proper video file to upload and the continue on with our seven part evaluation. We also have a number of things we want to retrieve from our computer to add to our blogs which we plan to do aswell.

Monday 26 March 2012

In today's lesson Georgina and I focused primarily on the sound for our main task. The main things we needed to get done were to edit the song so that the changes in sound match the footage now it has been cut down, and also to record some ambient sound which we plan to apply to the background of the entire sequence, making it more apparent towards the end when the music fades out.
While Georgina went off to find a camera for us to record some ambient sound on, I edited the entire music piece. To do this I removed sections from the song we had and re-lined up the clips so that the specific changes in rhythm/volume etc changed at the correct times alongside the filming. I then ensured that where the clips where lined up the sounds flowed into one another instead of suddenly jumping mid note. For one of the clips i struggled to get it to fit together perfectly, so I added a cross-dissolve onto it to blend the sound together more smoothly. Finally I used the pen tool to drag the volume at certain points up and down, creating slow fades in and out of the sound at the beginning and end of the sequence.













Once I had finished this Georgina and I headed out to record our ambient sound. We walked round various points in the school grounds looking for somewhere that had similar sounds to our filming location in the park. The spot we chose was near to the school entrance along side the edge of the field. We chose this spot because it was far enough away from the buildings that the noise from classrooms would not interrupt us, not too close to the road so there would not be too much sound from passing cars, and because on the field we could hear the wind and the sounds of birds (just like in the park) reasonably clearly. The sound clips we recorded were only around a minute long because there were cars and people approaching the exit at various intervals, however we will get around this by adding the sound to our sequence on a loop. Since it is only background noise it wont affect the way it sounds too much.

Tonight I began writing the first of my seven point evaluation. I used an A grade example template to look at how best to structure it, then began writing under the title 'In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products'. Following the example I was given, I split my answer into the categories of Title of the Film; Setting/Location; Costume and Props; Camerawork and Editing; Title Font and Style; Story and How the Opening Sets It Up; Genre and How The Opening Suggests It; How Characters Are Introduced and Special FX. It is now a main priority to get the sequence finished as quickly as possible so we can both write up our evaluations in more detail.










Our aim for tomorrows lesson will then be to properly apply the ambient sound to the footage, and then to make and apply all of our titles (some of which the positioning will need to be altered for now the footage has been re-edited).

Friday 23 March 2012

In today's lesson Georgina and I immediately set about  finding a solution to fix the dilemma we were having with the missing shot. After discussing with our teacher and playing around with the shots, the final solution we used was to take the practice shot Georgina had filmed which zooms in on the actors, and then to apply a fade overlapping it with the end shot which zoomed out from the tree still leaving enough time to still apply a title to the trunk before the shot starts to move.








After doing this, we also went back to one of our earlier shots and played with the clips to make the tree in the two shots match up more accurately. To do this we had to layer one clip above the other and then change the transparency of the one on top. Once we could see the outlines of the two trees, we moved the center point around until the trunk matched up better and would therefore reduce jumping in our transition between them.













Once this was done we had edited our entire sequence together. However the footage we had was still 30 seconds over the two minute time limit so we had to begin cutting down the shots further. We got our teacher to watch through the sequence and point out all the shots he didn't think were necessary and decided on a few that we were able to cut from it. We also shortened the length of the majority of the clips used in the opening scene of the film until we had cut the footage down to fit the two minute playing time.












Unfortunately in doing this it meant our music no longer fitted to the perfect timing along side the footage we originally had. To fix this and get back the changes in sound at specific times we wanted, we are going to have to spend next week editing the music we have recorded and moving sections of the song around until it fits again. We will start this immediately on Monday in the lesson and have also decided to record some ambient sound to add to the beginning and end of the footage to fill in where we don't plan to have music. We will also finish making our titles and apply them to the footage. Since some of the shots that included titles have been cut and all the timings have changed, we are also going to have to re-plan where our titles will be placed again.

Thursday 22 March 2012

We weren't meant to have a lesson today, but Georgina and I went up to the media room anyway because we finally managed to get hold of the camera we had used for our filming to retrieve the clip we needed to complete our editing. However when we connected the camera to the computer, we found another student had wiped the memory the day before and therefore deleted the one decent take of the shot we needed. Since we are too near our deadline now to return to the location to film for a third time, we immediately set about trying to come up with solutions to get around this issue. The shot we needed was the one which focuses under the couple beneath the tree, then pans sideways and zooms into the tree where it can then match up to the shot that follows by zooming out again to reveal the boy sat alone in the present day. There were several solutions we considered. Firstly we thought about returning to the original versions of the shot that we had filmed in our first shoot, however the main reason for our second shoot had been to find a more effective way to film this particular shot as it had been too shaky, so we have pretty much ruled this out as an option. Another solution we came up with was to take the practice shot Georgina had filmed, where she only zooms in on the people, and to apply a cross dissolve so that the tree trunk in the next shot fades over the top. However the flaw in this would be that not only would it take away from our concept of time passing around the tree, but it would also make it much harder to carry out our plan to edit a title onto the tree trunk during the two shots. Our teacher was ill today so we have decided to wait and consult him about what he thinks we should do tomorrow.
To fill the rest of the time we had in the room we continued with the making of our titles. We got another student to show us how to use the program Live Type correctly, the began officially creating them. As we began to work on them, the transition we had already picked did not appear as we had hoped, so after deciding we didn't like any of the other transitions we decided to apply the cross dissolve we had been using on our editing to the fonts when we add them to the sequence instead. For the font colour we decided upon white in the hope it will stand out against the scene in the background, however we may have to go back and change this if it doesn't look right when applied to the sequence.

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Despite not having a lesson today, Georgina and I met with the intention to retrieve a shot we missed when uploading footage from the camera we used, so that we could edit together the final two shots of our title sequence. However the camera was unfortunately unavailable which has hindered our editing until possibly as late as Friday now when we next have a lesson. Since we were in the room, we took advantage of the access to the computer and continued finalizing plans for making our titles. We looked at the titles used on a poster for the film 'One Day' to get an idea of the kinds of information we should be inculding, then we began to re-list all of the credits we would feature on ours.














With this amended list, we then went back to look at our title sequence and re-listed the exact times and shots we would use for each title.
Georgina had to leave early, but I continued on with the work on the titles and drew up small sketches to note the composition of where each title would be positioned in the shot.














We also print screened each of the shots we would be adding titles to in order to be certain where they would go.




Friday 16 March 2012

This morning Georgina and I listened to the music that has been recorded for our title sequence. The outcome was exactly what we had wanted and when applied to our footage seemed to fit perfectly with our editing and combination of scenes. We decided to adjust the volumes slightly so that the music is playing softly in the background at the start of the film opening, then picks up as the camera zooms into the photograph at the start of our title sequence.

Also in this lesson we learnt to use Livetype to create the titles to apply to the footage. We went through all the possible fonts and animations and narrowed down and finalized which ones we will use. We listed what titles we will need and which shots they will be applied to so on Mondays lesson we can edit the last two shots together and then make and apply the titles to complete our main task.


Thursday 15 March 2012

We weren't meant to have a lesson today but Georgina and I went up to the media room to continue working on the editing of our main task. By the end of the period we had edited almost the entire opening and title sequence together and have began further cutting down some of the shots to ensure it does not run over the 2 minute time limit. We have also combined in the editing we did with the rotation of the photograph in yesterdays lesson and removed any unnecessary sound from all the footage on the dashboard.













The boys we have enlisted to write and record the music are meeting tonight so we will hopefully have some kind of recording to apply over the top by tomorrow. Following our questionnaire research, they will be recording what they write on acoustic guitars.
On the way home today we then discussed the fonts we will use when we apply the opening credits and titles to our footage. We decided we wanted something not too harsh or sharp. When I got home I then created a document filled with experimental fonts that we may use.

Wednesday 14 March 2012

In today's lesson Georgina and I looked at the photograph graphic match we have leading into our title sequence with our teacher and looked at ways we could improve the visual effect of it from the simple cross fade we already had applied. Our end result was a transition in which as the camera zooms into the photograph inside the program, the photo then rotates and re-enlarges until it fits the screen whilst also fading into the scene as it comes to life. We still need to add slight adjustments to the alignment of the photograph so that it matches perfectly to the freeze frame applied between the shot of the program and the shot of the live photograph, however the visual effect is already much better.

Tuesday 13 March 2012

In todays lesson Georgina and I uploaded the re-filmed footage we did yesterday for our main task. Once on Final Cut pro, we could already see our filming was significantly better in quality and our thinking process as we went through it was more focused and well planned out. We began editing the clips down and replacing the previous shots with them on our editing board. We continued to add the Cross Dissolve transition between the memory shots and managed to get our new footage to fit together well with the childhood memory scenes which we planned to keep.







Since we had filmed the opening last, the sun is setting which we had planned on dulling down, however when watching it back we decided the lighting actually looks quite good as the bright sunset clashes with the depressed atmosphere and feeling the boy is emitting as he looks down to the funeral program.













We have discussed with the boys who will be recording the score for our title sequence and they will be recording what they have written on Thursday. Our plan therefore is to complete the editing process over the next two days so that we are then able to apply the music and sound on Friday and hopefully upload our completed film opening and title sequence.
We also came up with the name of our film, which we are going to call 'Don't Look Back In Sadness'. This is a play on the Oasis song title 'Don't Look Back In Anger', however we changed the last word to fit our film pitch as it is about a boy looking back on his time with his girlfriend and learning how to stop living in the past and move on to a happier time.

Monday 12 March 2012

Today Georgina and I returned to our location to re-film the opening to our film and the teenage years of the flash backs. This time we did things differently to improve a number of points of our filming. Firstly, we got the actor playing Sam to remove his suit tie and jacket in the memory scenes in order to make it easier to distinguish between the past and the present. We changed the acting in the scene which looked too posed so that it would look more natural and believable. We printed a new copy of the funeral program using the photograph we got from our last shoot to make the transition easier than editing it in.












Finally after experimenting with ways to make the end scene where the camera circles the tree less shaky, such as tying string round the tree and the camera to tether it; we eventually decided it was proving too difficult to keep the camera still enough and changed the scene so that instead the camera stays still, panning slightly sideways and zooming into the tree, then reversing the process as we return to the present. The weather was a lot sunnier today which will look good in the memory scene as they need too be happy and bright, however in the opening where the atmosphere needs to be dull and depressing we will have to edit the lighting slightly on the computer.

Friday 9 March 2012

In today's lesson Georgina and I worked on the information for our call sheets.














We also scheduled our extra filming for next Monday, cleared it with the actors, and planned out extra props we could use to improve the visual effect such as a different coat to be worn in the past and the present so the difference in time is more distinguishable. We also checked the weather forecast to ensure we used similar weather conditions to last time for filming.