Log And Capturing unfinished

In this lesson we were missing a member of our group and had some planning to do. So we just stayed in lesson. We were agreed that we needed to get filming done on a day outside of college hours, so we decided that we would go out that Friday and film the remaining footage. After planning for about 25 minutes we decided to log and capture our already filmed footage, this task took up the rest of the lesson.

Filming In Frinsbury Park

We hadn’t done much for two lesson due to members of the group being ill, so we decided to go out filming on a weekend. Sayvita had located another tree for us to finish off our outdoor filming. We met up in the afternoon and made our way to the new location. Once there we realized that we would have to scrap a lot of our previous footage, as certain parts of the two different locations were too noticeable to pass off as the same place. So we had a lot more filming to do.

We had to re-film a lot of shots from our 1^st day filming so we spent more time then expected filming. The re-filming happened easily with no problems. It’s when we came to film the hanging tat we had problems, as it’s not an easy thing to film as no one had any experience hanging. So we just had to improvise this part a lot. As you could imagine this attracted a fair bit of attention, a group of teenagers filming a girl hanging herself in a public park on a Friday afternoon. We had to answer a few questions but otherwise we were left alone. The only real problem we had was that the person trying to hang themselves had trouble tying knots so the make-shift noose kept falling apart or off the tree. In the end we had the shots we needed and we were satisfied that we had filmed enough so we left for home.

1st Day Filming

This was supposed to be our 1^st day filming for our final film, we got all the equipment (camera, tape, tri-pod) we left the college and then went to our selected location. When we reached there and had set up the video camera ready to start filming the park warden came over and said we couldn’t film here without permission. So we had really given up on filming for the day because we couldn’t think of another park or anything near by. So we headed back to college with rather down moods. We told our media teacher what had happened and she couldn’t think of a solution until another teacher came and told us of a churchyard nearby.

So we decided to give it another go, we found the churchyard and set up again, it was an okay location it just never had the tree what we needed to do the hanging scene. We each took it in turns filming different parts of the scene. We just experimented using different styles of camera work and the out come had us all positive again. By the end of the day we had about 18 minutes of footage. We had most of the footage we needed, we just need to find another tree to finish the outside shots off, and the bed shots.

Story Board

this was our 1^st lesson after getting permission to film, we had to create a schedule for our teachers, planning out when we would be doing what. The 1^st thing we planned to do was create a photo storyboard. So we borrowed a digital camera and went out to find our location. This day went really well actually, we found our location and a perfect tree. We got a lot of good shots we completed the photos for our storyboard with in half an hour and we were back in college uploading the photos to be changed in to our storyboard. We made a few final adjustments to the storyline and then we called it a day.

The Pitch

In this lesson we had to make our pitch to see if we would get the green light to go and start filming. My group hadn’t had time to put our pitch together before this lesson due to various members being ill. So it was all a last minute thing.

We came up with 3 ideas, the 1^st being an action thriller. A chase scene, with two males involved in it, the chased is a normally dressed teenager, wearing tracksuit and carrying a suitcase. The pursuer being a casually dressed man, wearing jeans and jumper. He slowly but surely starts to catch up with the teenager, and then it ends.

The 2^nd idea was a more a kind of horror thriller called ‘Walk Of Death’. The story line is quiet simple, it opens with a girl tossing and turning in her dreams, we then see a feminine figure dressed in a white dressing gown, gray jeans and white shoes. We would follow her progress from a pathway in to a forest or park, her final destination being a tree. She would then start tying a noose, which she would use to hang herself. The shots of her tying the noose would be mixed in with her walking towards the tree so it’s like flashing in to the future. At the end of scene we would see the girl who’s dreaming walk in to the scene and see the hanging figure, she would walk over to the figure and see it was herself hanging.

The 3^rd idea was a more crime thriller of which we saw a man on his computer downloading files. He then burns them on to a disc; he then places the disk in a suitcase. The scene cuts to a train station we have him walking, the scene continuously switching between him and another character, they’re walking towards each other. They collide and they drop their identical suitcases, they then each pick up the others case and then walk off. We got this idea from the opening of Collateral.

Because we had 3 ideas we didn’t know which one to choose so we asked our teacher and two media technicians which idea they thought we should go with, our teacher and one technician said we should go with the 1^st idea, whilst the other technician said the 2^nd idea was the better choice. He also said our only problem might be that the film might end up more as a horror than a thriller. In the end we decided to go with the 2^nd film proposal ‘Walk Of Death’ we got the permission to film as well with a lot of useful input from our teachers and technicians.

Editing Brief

we were given two sets of editing tutorials, the 1^st using final cut to piece together the shots, and the other using soundtrack pro, to put music and effects to the finished film.

For the film-editing tutorial we were given a collection of different shots. We then had to piece them together to create the full scene.  We learned to cut from one shot to another, how to fade shots a together using effect such as dissolves and others like it. The task was alright to begin with but after a while it was hard to keep the continuity going, we had to cut all the shots down to try and make it link together easily.

For the sound editing tutorial we were given a scene from Casino Royale, the sound had been removed and we were given a list of all the sounds that should be on the scene. This was a lot harder then the film tutorial. With this you had to select the right sound from a cache of similar ones. It was extremely hard to get the sounds in sync with the scene, like matching  up the footsteps.

Pre-Lim A Thrilling Card Game Pt 2

In this lesson we had to edit our shots from the lesson before, we started slowly because we had to finish off the story as we had improvised the ending. The scene starts with the deck of cards being shuffled, it then cuts to a male character walking in to the scene/corridor, the camera follows him to the door of the room. We then cut to a close up of him placing a gun in the waist of his jeans. We then had him enter the room. We go back to the dealer shuffling the cards this time she deals them to the other male character, who’s in the room the 1^st male walks in to the scene. We decided to use a lot of close ups of Adams and my face to create tension in the scene. The scene ends when the gun is revealed and we have a medium close up of my shocked face.

Editing this scene was hard because we were still getting used to using the software and trying to make the scene continue with not a lot of different shots. We also never had the 5 seconds at the start and end of every shot so this made it more difficult to put the shots together. The other thing that could of improved the scene a little bit was music, but we never got around to putting any in, unlike some other groups.

Pre-Lim Thrilling Card Game

In the 1^st lesson on the thriller we had already been put in to our groups, I was put in a group with, Adam, Sayvita and Yvonne. We all get along together so we should also work well together. In this lesson we were also introduced to the video cameras, they had created a video on how to operate them. With each step in operating the camera & using the tripod they would pause the film and shows us manually how to work it. They also gave us a set of rules to follow, on how to take care of the cameras.

The main objective of this lesson was to get us using the cameras, so we were sent off to create a short film of a ‘Thrilling Card Game’ showing tension through camera work. We had to show our media know how by using at least 3 different camera shots and angles. Our planning never went well and after everyone had started filming we still hadn’t got much done so we just decided to improvise the 2^nd half of the scene.

We were all supposed to get used to the camera so we all filmed a little bit, however Adam and me were in the scene so the girls did majority of the filming. In the end we never had a lot time to film after spending too long planning but we got enough footage to piece together to make the scene look good.

Lesson - 30/1/09

In today's lesson, there were several problems that our group were faced with.
Firstly we weren't allowed to film in the park that we had decided to film in. We had already started and had set up the camera were just about to film when someone came over and said that we needed a permit to film in the park, and to get this permit we needed to write to the council and we wouldn't get a reply for at least 10 days.

We went back to college and found one of our teachers and explained the situation to her and she was just as confused as we were. She told us that there was another park nearby with a church as well that we should be able to use, however at this time everyone wasn't in the most enthusiastic mood so we were contemplating whether or not to continue filming.

After about 20 minutes of sulking, we decided that there was no harm in seeing the park, so we set off and this new park was actually even better than the other one that we had which definitely lifted our spirits. The only downside was that it was very cold at this time and we had to figure out how to start off, because as the location had changed we need to decide what direction to start from and little things like that. The new park was better because it was a bit more private as it wasn’t on a road surrounded by house and was bigger as well.

We got set up and began filming and I think we were all quite pleased with how it went, the change of locations set us back in regard to the time so we didn’t get to do everything that we had planned which was really disappointing. Overall the shots we took, I think, worked really well which was good.