from Donna

Apart from felix, you are al behind. Can you attend workshop this week to catch up. Can you all please add more 'talk to camera' footage, as this will give your blog a more dynamic feel. Can you post some ideas you have for your film opening and we can discuss them on Thursday.

Thanks

Donna

MATCH CUT EXERCISE

PRELIMINARY

EVALUATION

In my prelim, the main problem was that whilst filming the conversation between the two men, the camera has moved. Although it may not be obvious, it is essential that whilst recording my thriller I pay more attention to getting the levels and angles correct.

Also I must make sure I get my framing correct. As shown above, the picture on the right clearly shows there is too much space in between the character and the top of the screen. Therefore I must also pay attention to the Rule of Thirds whilst filming. 

MATCH CUT EXERCISE

PRELIMINARY

FINAL

MATCH CUT EXERCISE
PRELIMINARY

EDITING PROCESS

This is the track i choose to go along with my prelim

Selection of clips used

Adding titles

Positioning titles in correct place

Before and after

Timeline

Turning film into a suitable format for blogger

2011 Thrillers

In 2011 over 150 thriller movies were realised. The Thriller category is one of the most popular genres of film.
Top Grossing Films of 2011 -
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows - Part 2
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn
Kung Fu Panda 2
Fast Five
The Hangover Part II
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
The Smurfs
Cars 2
With more than half being thrillers.

As a group, we got together as a group and begun to start prepare for the filming of our Prelim. In order to do this we needed to choose our filming space, we chose a spare classroom that was empty and would have been suitable for our planned Prelim and we also get all the equipment needed; memory card reader, still camera, a trip pod, a flip camera and of course a filming camera. 

We had to make sure we still remembered and understood how to use the equipment before we started.


The first scene of our Prelim meant that we had to find a space outside of the chosen filming space to shoot our first scene, we had some problems with this, because the space that we used had limited space which meant that we had to be extra quiet in order not to disturb the class the we were shooting outside of.


After the first scene shoot was done we went to the our final filming space, we set up the filming space simply by clearing all the furniture in the way. We got the actors ready and began shooting.

 

 

Problems we came across -

• Getting match cuts to fit together perfectly.
• We should have planned who our actors were before hand instead of improvising on the day
• Pre planning, our pre planning of the film needs to be much better, we need to under stand how some shots will be shot, were, who will be in them etc.. In order for our opening to be successful
• The filming process, we weren't able to match the match cuts very well, this all comes back down to the pre planning 

I've learnt that in order to have a successful Opening Scene then planning needs to be key, everything that will be needed on the day of filming needs to have been thought of.

Practice: Prelim

The filming of the Prelim

We got together in our groups and got put into a room of our own for filming. Once we did we had to get out all the equipment that we would need for the filming of our Prelim. This includes camera, our groups memory card, a still camera and a flip camera. 

Once we had got our equipment we had to familiarise ourselves with it by quickly reminding ourselves of all the cameras functions and how to use/operate it.

We had to find the write place to enable us to film a wide shot outside our door. We ended up having to film the start of our film outside of someone else's room because of the restricted space 

(we would have to think about spacing when shooting our real project. If the area isn't big enough to do all the shots that we need to then maybe we may have to reconsider the shooting area because it would look unprofessional shooting one shot in two different areas) 

After shooting the start of the story outside we then had to set up the room by pushing all the tables across and setting up the two chairs for the characters. We had to improvise one of the characters because it was initially meant to be a woman however there was only a boy (Tobi) available to star in it.

(when shotting the real thing we would have to ensure that we would have access to all the characters that we plan to involve in the story before we make the storyboard because if we dont we may end up having to rethink our story which would be very time consuming so planing is vital to this stage)

Once the room was set up it was time to begin shooting the footage within the room and getting all the shot together before we eventually finished.

Some of the problems we faced while shooting was;

• Getting the angles right during the match cut. We struggled when attempting to go from a wide shot to a mid shot whilst keeping the angles the same
• We also struggled when shooting an over the shoulder conversation shot. When we shot over one shoulder and moved the camera to catch the next shot then attempted to move the camera back into the same place, we had a hard time finding the exact same place and angle.
• When zooming out from an over the shoulder shot to a wide shot we found it hard to zoom out without being too fast and also without making it jittery when attempting to zoom it out slower. 

Practice: Prelim

Planning: Making the Storyboard

We had to get together in our groups and decide how our story should be. Once we had decided on a genre and a basic theme of the story we finally began to draw.

We were given very basic guidelines from the teachers so that we were able to show our creativity more. This would also ensure that there wouldn't be many of the same kind of story.

We chose quite a ghostly story to do where initially one woman was supposed to be a ghost however came across a few difficulties when trying to draw this. So we decided to change the story slightly and keep the theme the same. in the end we decided to make the woman a demon and make portray the darkness trying to get her until eventually it gets her at the end.

Once we had drawn out the images and was happy with it and it abide with the guide lines we then took pictures of it step by step and up loaded them on to the website; http://www.createagif.net/create.php

where you could go to create a gif which we have done above.

Research & Practice

Putting on the Foley sound

once we had finished collecting the sounds we had to go back on the computers as a group and put the sounds on to our clip on final cut pro. we had to make sure that we wasn't using the footage and just using the sounds so we had to lock in the sound so we could delete the blank footage without getting rid of the sound as well.

After this we had to put it on the correct place on the sequence line so that the sound and the footage mathed up. 

Once this was done we was able to adjust the sound levels. If it was too high we were able to bring it down. Also if we wanted to bring it down only in a certain area we was also able to do so by selecting the pen tool and clicking on a certain part of the red line and dragging it down.

We were also able to fade the sound in and out where we found necessary by going to effects then selecting audio transitions and then clicking cross dissolve. After doing all the editing to the sound we was happy with how it turned out so decided to save it.

Research & Practice

Foley sound

We were told to get together in our groups and watch a video on how film makes put on the foley sounds on to their film. Foley sounds are all the sounds that are on set (diegetic). They have people who would make these sounds at exact time to fit the mood of the specific point in the movie. For example in there was an action scene then they would amplify specific sounds to add to the effect.

After watching the video we had to get together in our individual groups and watch our Arlington Road clips and take down all the sounds we would need. After doing this we had to fill out a form on for all the equipment we would need to collect all the sounds we would need and all the footage of us collecting the sounds for our blog.

Once all the technical stuff was sorted we collected our things and set out to find the rite spot we needed to collect most of our sounds. There was many different factors effecting our decision of place, such as back ground noises, the flooring we was on to make our noises and where we could collect the most noises for it.

Once we had found the wright place for our group we began to collect the noises that we needed.

We couldn't get some of the sounds such as the car approaching because all the roads around the college are rather busy so we wasn't able to catch one car slowly approaching so.

We also couldn't get the sound of the man getting out the car because we didn't have a car so when making our own short movie we are going to have to keep in consideration all the foley sounds we are going to need to get and how we would go about collecting these noises.

We saw that in the movie there was quite a few tree's behind the houses and also because of the state the boy was in we decided to do it from his delusional perspective so we decided to make the noise of the swaying leaves louder by bringing the mic closer.

We started off with the sounds of the boy walking. Because Patrick had on similar shoes to the boy in the clip we decided to let him make the sound of the walking.