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.

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.

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.

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.

In todays lesson Georgina and I discussed the issues with some of the clips we'd filmed for our main task with our teacher. After showing him the shots we decided it would be best to refilm some of them to improve things such as the steadiness and smoothness of the shots, as well as ensuring they will edit together better than the ones we currently have. We dont actually have a lesson tomorrow but Georgina and I have planned to try and meet anyway to go through a deside for definate all the shots we need to reshoot.

In mondays lesson Georgina and I began to cut down the shots that we had and edit the transitions between them. Some of our close up graphic matches were very successful, however some of the ones filmed at a distance in which we planned fitting one scene into another do not match up properly so we may need to consider re-filming them. The transition we have started applying to the memory shots is called 'cross dissolve', this superimposed one image over the other and made the clips seem dream like and reminiscent. I wasn't in the lesson yesterday so Georgina worked primarily on her blog and ensuring all the documents we'd uploaded had no mistakes that needed to be updated.

In todays lesson Georgina and I began editing together the footage we had filmed for our final task. We used the program Final Cut Pro to go through all of our video files and select the best clips of each shot we needed. As we did this, we dragged the best take for each one down onto the editing board to place them in the order they will play.

We continued with this till we had all the shots that make up our title sequence in cronological order in accords with our storyboard. Next lesson we plan to begin cutting the video files down so they are the right length that we want and once that is complete we will progress onto changing the speed of some shots and looking at transitions we could use between them.
We discussed the transitions we may use whilst we were going through the files today and decided that maybe using superimposition or fading type of cuts to sybolises the memories fading into one another and also the transition between his memories and reality.