HERE IS OUR FINISHED FILM OPENING!!!!!!!!!!!!

Daisy Chain

https://vimeo.com/90740615

Who Is Our Films Audience??

As our film is a British social realism/chickflick we decided the audience that would best fir our film is teenage girls. This is because the central character of our film is a girl, therefore a girl audience will empathise with her and understand her more emotionally than boys.

Similar Types of Film to Ours

Looking at our film I would say the genre is British social realism or drama, if we were to make the rest of the film, and also a little chickflick, simply because of the main character being a girl with a dilemma. When Rosy and I decided to make our film opening we took our inspiration from films such as MeanGirls and Pitch Perfect, which both contain comedy and humour. Our film does not, therefore I would place it in British Social Realism. This is because of the British looking teen, and her setting, grey sky. Its slightly like This Is England, however not set in the 80s or 90s. The reason for it being a British Social Realism is because of the lighting, character and story, the characters problem is  mental issue, she struggles with it, making the film a drama.

Films that inspired us:

• MeanGirls
• Pitch Perfect
• Easy A

Films that are similar to ours:

• This Is England (British Drama)
• Trainspotting (black comedy/drama)
• Easy A
• Billy Elliot

I think the film Billy Elliot is quite similar, firstly because of the British essence of it, its a film that’s purely about lifes struggle for acceptance. This links to our film because the girl has the problem with herself, she shares a problem like Billy Elliot. Also the lighting and dullness of the sky making the colours in the film also dull but representing real life.

 

 

Makeup Video for Daisy Chain

This is the makeup video Rosy and I made of me doing Graces makeup before we filmed, we used final cut to edit it and add music etc.

New Ident

Rosy and I decided to make a new ident for our film opening to fit the theme, we decided on an elegant ident. This consisted of a branch which grows on the screen and a butterfly lands and sits on it, the words ‘Original Sin’ then appear next to the branch as the butter fly stays perched on the leaves flapping its wings. The butterfly then moves off over the words making them disappear as it flies past.

We decided to make the new ident because our old one really didn’t fit with our film and wouldn’t have flowed once put with the opening.

Filming ‘Daisy Chain’

In the half term break Rosy and I filmed our shots for out film opening Daisy Chain. Using my sister Grace as Daisy our main character, my garden as our location we set to work filming the shots on our storyboard. We came across several problems when filming here are the obstacles we overcame:

1. The camera ran out of charge after an hour of filming, stupidly I should have checked before we even started filming but it didn’t cross my mind unfortunately. But we simply charged the battery whist having lunch.

2. We needed a rather large audience for one of our shots, and we simply didn’t have that many people to hand. We still decided to film the shot just without the audience as we thought we might be able to edit them in.

3. Another problem was our location, our original plan was to use my garden for the outside filming, and the school for the stage filming. However, we came across a rather clever idea, in my house we have a little puppet stage, therefore we filmed this puppet stage close up, and then Grace’s face and if we edit it well we can make it look like she is in the stage.

Things that went right were:

1. The makeup and costume of our main character.

2. The weather for the outdoor location in the garden.

3. We managed to get all the filming done in one day.

4. We got all the shots we needed and extras, also filming each shot three times.

Practice Make up on our actor

My sister Grace is going to play Daisy in our film opening. I decided that I would do some practice makeup on her, but I wanted to keep it subtle because the character is shy so her makeup should be natural looking. Here is a photograph of her:

As you can see I have put her in minimalist clothes. She is wearing a grey skirt and top, a cardigan, black socks and green shoes. I think this looks good for a shy character as the patent colours keep the look subtle.

I have also used a shot from our storyboard and taken a photo of it in real person just to see if it was achievable, here it is:

 

I also experimented with making tears and I just used water and dripped it onto my sisters eye corner, here are some photographs of the effect:

 

I also experimented with shots from the storyboard taking stills of what it might look like, here are a couple of the face which we were planning on doing:

 

Character profiles

Daisy: 

Daisy is a quiet and subdued person and she is incredibly shy. That is why this show where she is singing, is such a big deal.

She is quite girly, wearing a skirt and cardigan however she is is not in with all the mega popular, girly girls. She keeps herself to herself and doesn’t even try talking to the popular girls or even try talking to boys. She hates the limelight, but she was forced into doing this talent competition by her mum who is concerned about her daughter. Daisy has a stutter condition but when she hears music or listens to it she can talk fluently as her mind is at ease from the sound of the music she loves. This is why, when she plugs her earphones into her head she becomes calmer and not so upset from her stage freight.

Nasty girls:

There girls wear lots of makeup and snigger at anyone who they believe is underneath them. They are freaks of fashion and thick. The laugh at others misfortunes to try and feel better about themselves.

Animation of our Story board

Today I animated our storyboard using the programme Final Cut pro. To do the animation I simply scanned the two sheets of storyboard and used the scale button to zoom to each shot so that it’s one shot in each frame at a time. I put them in order so that the storyboard was like a comic strip almost. I then used key framing to pan out and use movement in the shot to convey our camera movements.

I manages to get the hang of being able to make the image move, I was showed how to use key frames and this meant that I could move the shot around to mirror the camera angles that we wanted to use.

The animation was uploaded to Vimeo and this is the link to watch it:

We also used Final cut to produce another version of our story board which doesn’t include movement within the shot, but is displayed in a different way to the first one. We also put music over it and used a cork board background animation connecting the shots. Here is the animation:

Prop List for our film “Daisy Chain”

For our Film opening we are going to need:

• a Microphone 
• Headphones/earphones 
• Water (for sweat) 

 

 

 

 

What we need for filming:

• a camera
• a tripod

Interms of actors we need:

• an audience
• the nasty jealous girls
• our main character Daisy

The clothing of our main character Daisy:

• Skirt
• Cardigan
• Black socks
• Green shoes
• Daisys hair: up in a bun, not much makeup

The clothing of the nasty girls in the audience:

• Heavy makeup
• Drawn on eyebrows
• Blusher, lipstick
• Pink clothes

Shot List

Rosy and I have devised a shot list so that we know how to film each shot of our short film opening. This will benefit us when filming making us totally ready and instructing us how to capture each shot.

Shot list

Film I-dent

• Establishing shot of stage
• Establishing shot of stage and girl walks into the shot
• Close up shot of girls feet, camera pans upwards and around her to reach the back of her head. You don’t see her face.
• Close up of the side of girls face
• Extra close up of the girls forehead- drop of sweat runs
• Reaction shot of the three bitchy girls
• Extra closeup of the girls mouth then camera pans out.
• Establishing shot of microphone dropping to the floor in slow-motion
• Close up of girls feet next to microphone
• Establishing shot of stage with the back of the audiences head in sight, the girl is in panic and rushes out of shot
• Wide shot of girls back as she is outside. the camera pans up from her back to the back of her head as she lifts the headphones to her ears.
• Wide shot of tree as she walks into the shot
• Establishing shot of girl sitting at the foot of the tree
• Close up of girls face as a tear runs down her cheek

Storyboards!!!

Rosy and  I have been working on our storyboards for our film, adding colour to them and deciding on the shots we are going to use!

Here are the story boards in their simplest of forms, we might make them into an animation so that its simple to see what each shot will be like.

Looking at Film Idents at the beginning of the Film

Rosy and I have started making our idents for our films and we have been experimenting on the programme and came up with 3 good film idents, however we were told the problem with them was that they didn’t need the sound on them, so I have decided to research idents with the sound on.

Watching this video it is clear that sounds plays a dramatic part in the idents, therefore I think mine and Rosy’s ident creations are not too shabby. Of course there is some room for improvement, however for a first try and getting to grips with the programme I feel we did a good job and worked well to achieve 3 standard idents. I think we should possibly tone down the sound on ours because it seems slightly more full on than the famous ones like Universal and Pixar for example.

More Script Editing

Today, I decided to put our script on a script software which would give us the best way to write it in proper script format.

Here it is on the programme:

Before I had done this I had just written it up on a word document which I set out in script format as I had looked up how to make it like a screen written script.

Here it is on a word document:

 

We have also come up with the name for our film which we have decided to be “Daisy Chain”

Editing the Script

We have amended our scipt even more and changed it because we realized we didn’t need the 2 rappers at the beginning. This is a good idea because it means we can focus more on the main character, also its not too complicated and we can show more skill in the camera work and editing that we produce in the end.

Here is the edited script:

Script Writing

Rosy and I sat down and decided to begin writing our script after we’d finished discussing what we were going to include in the two minutes of film opening. Here is what we agreed on including:

• The film opens with 2 rappers dressed all gangster and trying to be really ‘sickk’ at rapping and performing.
• They finish and theres one clap from a member of the audience and a microphone squeal as the slump off stage making rock signs with their hands and saying ‘brap brap brap!’
• Next on the satge is the girl who is the main character, she walks slowly and is very shy and nervous. A drop of sweat falls from the side of her face.
• She starts to sing but cracks under the pressure and had a breakdown.
• There are some nasty girls in the audience who sniger and wisper spiteful comments.
• It all becomes too much for the girl and she flees off stage, dropping the microphone and running to the door to get out as fast as possible.
• She runs outside and yanks out her head phones and slowly lifts them to her ears letting the audience hear her track she listening to. This song will be soft and calming.
• She finds a tree and curls up underneath it, listening to the sweet sound of the music taking her somewhere away from the embarrassment.
• A single tear runs down her face as she closes her eyes.

We still need to come up with an idea for a name for our film, we have had lots of ideas but we havent settled on one yet because we want it to be clever and preferably a pun, to go with the chick flick comedy vibe.

 

Film Idents- research

For our task we must include our own ident, to think of a good one, its sensible we look at others that have been done and are famous and well known and look for the similarities in them.

Looking at the idents such as ’20th Century Fox’, ‘Walt Disney’, ‘Universal’, ‘Lionsgate’, ‘DreamWorks’, ‘Columbia’ and ‘Paramount’, you notice something in common with all of them. There is a sky setting or space background, usually resembling the colours of purples, black and blue. The settings are usually outside natural beauty places such as mountains or clouds from a sunset with hints of pink with the darker colours.

Here are the examples I just mentioned:

   

 

Next I decided to look at the motion on these idents, some of them have the letters fade in, some have the letters move around the central object like Universal and Paramount. Overall there is fairly little movement from the word, the main focus in the colours or the pictures which is the central object. Like Walt Disney has the castle which is really delicate and fairytale like.

Overall our ident should have some kind of back ground which includes and central object like a mountain or a moon etc like Paramount and DreamWorks.

Planning and Plan of Action

Today in class we were discussing the do’s and don’ts that we should go by when making our film and they are fairly important and we must make sure we stick to them otherwise were going to encounter problems.

After deciding the plot of our film we need to think about a number of important things, theses include:

• Location- how many locations will we have and what will they be?
• Actors- we need to choose actors who will be reliable and not mess around. We also need people who will be available because if we dont have actors then we simply cannot film on that day, we cannot afford to waste time.
• We need the actors to learn their scripts off by heart, they must be ready to do it in front of the camera.
• We need to make a story board to display our shots and fames, this will be time consuming but very helpful when filming.
• We need to pick the costumes and makeup of our characters, this is very important as we have the ideas in our head of how we want our characters portrayed so we need to display it.

Our plan of action:

1. We need to decide exactly what we want this 2 minutes of filming to involve, Rosy and I will discuss the possibilities that we could include in this project, communitcation with my partner is the most important thing when working with someone else so we need to agree on a final decision of what to include.
2. From this we can then write our script.
3. We will then choose the locations that we intend to use, choose our actors and give the scripts to the actors to rehearse.
4. We have also decided to make character profiles of each person in this 2 minute clip. This will help with the undertanding of each persona and you can get the gist of what they are like and how they are as a person.
5. We will then make a shot list to decide the order of filming.
6. Finally we will film the whole thing.

 

Rosy and Jess’s Film Opening Project

Our Task: To create the titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. We have to make up a fictional plot and firstly think of the whole film before we make the opening. The film must be interesting and we had to pick a genre so that we have some kind of theme to mold our ideas around.

We had to pick a partner to do this project with and me and Rosy decided to work together because we live fairly close and are both about the same grade students so we both want to achieve high in this project.

Our Film

Our film is going to be a chick flick and we have been inspired by films such as MeanGirls and PitchPerfect.

Our film opens with a Talent Contest set in a high school. As the film opens you see the first act, they are two rappers who are awful but class to watch and good entertainment. The next person inline is a Girl. She shakily gets on stage and begins to nervously sing her song choice.

She has major stage freight and cracks, she breaks down from the nerves and the faces of the popular manipulative girls in the crowd where they mock her and lagh so she flees off the stage. One particular lad in the crowd notices her. He is high up on the social ladder and all the popular girls adore him and are forever trying to snatch him up but they never succeed.
The girl runs away to the outdoors and sits up against a tree sobbing and curls up against it. She gets out her headphones and puts on some music. In this part we would make the music louder until it reaches her ears then it goes on full blast like the audience is hearing what she hearing. She relaxes and feels fine after this. The girl suffers from a stutter problem and it affects her confidence and her social life so she hasn’t ever spoken to any of the boys because she gave up to save herself from getting embarrassed.
The lad in the crowd decides to go after the girl and pushes past everyone in the crowd to get out and find her. He manages to find her near the tree and they get talking and discover they both share the interest of music. They spend more and more time together and it eventually leads to them getting together. This obviously leads to the popular girls getting jealous and they think of a cruel plan to split them up. He helps her overcome her stutter problem and become more confident.
The girl and lad decide to make music together and notice there’s an advertisement for a record company offering to copyright their music if they send it to them. They decide to do this however one of the jealous girls gets her hands on the disk and sabotages it by changing the music on it and getting a key and scratching the disc so it doesn’t work.
The couple obviously notice they haven’t had a reply from the record company and begin to argue blaming the other one for not getting the deal. It all gets too much and they split up.
Time passes and they both carry on living their own lives without each other but still are crazy about the other one. They both end up going to the same party but the girl seeing the boy with one of the jealous nasty girls and leaves when she sees them together and the jealous girl tries to kiss the boy. The girl leaves without a second glance and doesn’t see the boy turn away from the kiss because he still loves her.
The funny friend of the girl decides to cheer her up by taking her to a speed dating class, co-incidently the boys desperate lad mate decides to drag him along with him and they end up meeting there. The girl and boy get together again, and the funny friend and desperate lad also get together.
The camera them fades into the future from now showing the marriage of the boy and girl and the dream house they previously discussed.

Pitching our Film:

We stood infront of the class and portrayed our film ideas to the class, here is the video:

Initial thoughts about the opening of our film:

• We definately want to make it intraguing to the audience so we are going to make our characters likeable, for example our girl main character will be a different style to the nasty girl characters, those girls will all dress alike and copy eachother. The boy will be handsome and kind natured.
• We want to add humour to our opening so the first act f the talent competition will be two rappers who are gangster wannabe’s, they will be played by Rosy and I and we will make it entertaining to watch.
• We will have to make our own music for this project which I think will prove difficult but be fulfilling in our production as we will have done it ALL ourselves.
• We need to decide on actors that we think will fulfil the roles of the characters and portray their personalities how we imagined. We need people reliable to film during their own time on weekends out of school and people who will stick to the task and not mess around.

Reservoir Dogs- Evaluation

I have finally finished editing my video and its finished. I took me about three lessons but its done now.

Thing that I found difficult were putting the text on for the names of the actresses and writing Reservoir Dogs at the end and the credits, because I didn’t even know how to even do it. With the help of Rosy I was shown how to do it. Once I learned how to do it I saved a customized font which was similar to the original one in the film and it saved me time when doing all the rest of the text.

What went well?

Things that went well in our video was the walking past the wall part, where everyone’s in sunglasses and the music is playing. It really recreates the ‘cool’ scene like in the film, and our version is like the female version and still looks just as good. Once that scene got put in slow motion when I did my editing it made it so much more similar to the film.

Another thing that went okay was the voice over I did, it could have been improved if I’m honest but only because I hadn’t listened to the original voice over before I did it myself so it wasn’t as similar. I think I spoke a little too fast but I did put on the american accent and try to speak deeply.

I think most of our costumes looked like the characters we were supposed to be, if you watched it you would be able to tell who was playing who. We decided to pay lots of attention to detail with things like the props on the table in the canteen, including the old fashioned mobile phone which Kate brought it, Ketchup and fake monopoly money. This made out video more convincing because we tried hard to recreate the scene as best we could with the resources we had. We also drew the wrinkles and bags on our faces if our characters had them, my character for example had LOADS of bags and was an old man so Robyn did my makeup for me and did a good job of making me look tired and old.

What could have been improved?

Things that could have been improved was when we filmed the part where the characters are shown with their names in yellow font, we should have zoomed in more on the characters faces, this would have made it more like the film because in the film the characters head is at the very top of the shot and their neck is at the bottom and the top of their shoulders showing.

I could have also padded out my outfit more as my character Joe was fat, and I only stuffed the front of my top, therefore making me look pregnant instead of fat.  If we were to do it again I would pad out all my clothes to make me look more like my character Joe.

When editing the shots together I found it difficult to put text on the ending shot where the group of characters are walking down the street and the credits roll up the screen saying ‘Reservoir Dogs’. This text stops at the top of the page. I found it extremely difficult to do and didn’t grasp how to do it as Mr Grant was always busy with someone else so he never got round to showing me how to do it. I asked some of my peers but I still didn’t understand, this was a problem because it meant that my ‘Reservoir Dogs’ text just rolls off the top of the shot and doesn’t stop.

What I enjoyed from this task

From making this video I have thoroughly enjoyed dressing up and making ourselves into the characters we are supposed to portray. That  was probably my favorite part as it makes the video look so much more colourful and interesting if we are dressed as our characters instead of wearing uniform.

I also loved trying to make our version of the film as close to the original as possible. It needed alot of focus from all of us to get the attention to detail but overall I think we achieved a pretty good outcome.

Here is our finished video:

Reservoir Dogs- Editing

Once we had filmed our shots they got loaded onto the desktops and our next task was to edit them together using the real intro from the film as guidelines. We used the programme Final Cut to produce our edited film openings, most of us had used the programme before so it wasn’t too difficult to operate.

First I imported the video footage we made from the desktop onto Final Cut. I also imported the actual film clip onto Final Cut as well which I put under my clips as a guide to what goes where. I started by cutting my shots and putting them in the order of the film. Once I had all the videos in order on the timeline  I decided to add in the text, there’s a bit where the screen is black and there is yellow text which says ‘ A film by Quentin Tarantino’, for this I laid black as a back ground and wrote my own which said ‘A film by Jess Morris’.

There was also text of the actors name when the characters are filmed walking towards the camera. I made a yellow font which looked similar to the one used in the film and saved it so that it was the same font for every characters text. At the end of the clip the credits roll up the screen, for this I used a text template which moved up the screen and put in the writing I wanted.

After I had done all of the text I moved onto the sound. Mr Jackson made us record our voices saying the voice over part at the beginning of the film, we had to do this in an american accent and say it like the man in the film. We did this so that we could put it over the top of our edited shots and use our own voices as its more creative. Once we had done this it was put onto the computer and I imported it onto Final Cut. I then placed it on the timeline where I wanted it which was at the start in the canteen scene. After I’d put my sound on I took the sound from the film off, and imported the music for the rest of the sound in the film. This was difficult because I had to match the music to the music in the film exactly and it was either too forward or too backwards so i moved it as best i could to the spot where it starts.

I then decided to put an effect on the video which matched the film version, it makes the colours a little for brighter and defined, this looks particularly good on the characters who wore sunglasses and black suits, like Rosy, Jemma, Robyn and Jess, as the black sunglasses and suits stand out from the skin and shirt and make the shot more pleasing to the eye.

Before, without the effect:

After, with the effect, the colours are bolder:

Filming Reservoir Dogs- Our Version

On Wednesday the 4th of December we started filming our shots for the remake of the beginning of Reservoir Dogs. We had each been appointed the characters we were supposed to dress up as and paid particular attention to the details of what clothes they wore, their facial expressions and their overall physical appearance. As a group we were appointed roles for within the project, these were the director who was Jess Marshall, the costume decider which was Grace, the person who chose the settings which was Lauren, the story board makers which was mainly Rosy but I helped, the camera woman which was Lucy, and everyone else helped with deciding the props and organizing us as a team.

When filming we just had 1 hour, this seems reasonable for filming about 25 seconds of shots but it proved difficult as its not easy controlling a big group of girls. We started off filming in the canteen for the starting shot, for this we brought in plenty of props which recreated the scene magnificently as we needed to get it as similar to the film as possible. It took us about half an hour to film the canteen scene as it took us a while to get it right but we did manage it in time to get filming the next bit. We chose the wall outside where the buses go past to do the slow motion walking scene. We managed this rather quickly but the only down side was that we didn’t have a blue car in the back ground which is quite noticeable in the real film. We then filmed the characters walking where they are facing the camera, in the film its difficult to tell how they did this so we settled for the camera on the tripod and the characters walking towards the shot. When seeing the boys version they decided to go for a bobbing technique where they bobbed in front of the camera to imitate walking, I think this worked better as it looked more like the film. Our final piece of filming was all us as a group walking down the road. We got this in one shot as it was a fairly easy bit of filming.

The problems which we encountered  when we were filming were trying to get the exact correct position which looked like the film. In the canteen we found it difficult to get the right back ground and had several location changes in the room before we settled for the round table near the edge of the room. We seemed to spend more time discussing how we were going to do each shot, this was quite annoying as we had limited time and people were getting impatient and just wanted to get the shot done instead of spending ages getting it exactly the same as the film.

Another this we found difficult was getting the order of the characters walking past the wall right. We had to pay particular attention to who was who and where they were in the shot.

The most frustrating part of the whole task was that we only had 1 hour to film the shots in. However it was only about 25 seconds of filming so realistically we wouldn’t need long to film it. Yet saying this we did struggle for time by the end of the hour, which meant we rushed our last couple of shots. Though having a time limit does mean that we get down to work and do it, it is annoying because organizing about 9 girls to do exactly what you want them to is a difficult task. We did manage it though and our shots were pretty good.

The Making of Our Version of Reservoir Dogs-Planning

Our task was to recreate the opening scene to the film Reservoir Dogs, we were put into 2 groups, one of just boys and one of us girls. Then between us we all made the decisions on what characters we were and how was were going to achieve this task.

Here is the clip from the film Reservoir Dogs which we were copying:

To achieve this piece of filming to a high standard we had to assign roles to each other in the group. There was a director which was Jess Marshall, Jemma was organizer and made sure that everyone had a role and we all knew what we were doing. Grace looked at the clothing and wrote down what each character from the scene wore so that we could copy it. Lucy was the cameraman and filmed the whole thing. Lauren looked at location and where we could film each scene where it would look closest to the film as possible. Me and Rosy did the story boards, most of which was Rosy’s handy work as she took the story boards home and worked on them. Robyn and Kate helped with costumes and props, as when we watched the clip we wrote down as many props as we could notice which we would include in our version.

We had 3 lessons to plan our filming, which meant we had to focus and keep motivated to the task. In each hour of lesson we talked about what we needed to do when filming, practiced our walks and watched the clip endlessly to get down every piece of detail we could. We examined the positions and order of the characters, their clothes, hair, wrinkles, what was on the table in the diner etc.

Each character in the film had a specific ‘look’, my character for example was Joe who is a big old guy, He wore a brown top and grey trousers and he had quite big bags under his eyes. From this we all decided as a group that we would go for pencil skirts instead of trousers because we are an all girl group so we thought we should enhance it. I borrowed Graces grey pencil skirt and my mums turtle neck brown top. For the wrinkles, Robyn used an eyebrow pencil and drew bags under my eyes, lines near my mouth and between my eyebrows and lines at the corners of my eyes. I also stuffed a couple of hoodies up my top as my character is fat.

We are marked on our skills on how close to the film we can get it so we need to pay particular attention to what each character does and how they do it. We wanted it to be obvious which characters we were.

Re making our Video

Thomas, Ben and I decided that we would re make our Preliminary exercise video, therefore, we stayed after school, used the really good camera and got to work in having another go at our video. An advantage of us filming after school meant that we got the pick of pretty much any classroom we wanted to film in. We picked room 18 because it was most suited to our storyboard.

We altered our story just a tad, by making Ben’s character quite creepy as if he knows that the world is ending, we included some creepy laughing from him and ditched the cup cam as it was too obvious that there was nothing in it when Ben was drinking.

After an hour of trying to get all our shots done and include a good match on action, we packed up and finished. We now have to put it all together on the macs so I’ll make sure it goes up when its all done and dusted.

I also think it would be a good idea to put our other one on as well because it will show how we’ve altered it, made it better and learned from our mistakes.

Here is the new video which Ben uploaded to youtube, hope you like it better than the other one!!!:

Preliminary Exercise Evaluation

This blog post is about how our short film went and the feed back we received about it. There were plenty of problems with our video and here are some examples:

• We filmed against light so it reflected off the windows and shots filmed through windows were not clear. You couldn’t see the character very well through the glass.
• There was no match on action despite our effort to put it in. Sir said that there wasn’t any and it was a poor attempt. I however feel that we worked well and tried to put all the three requirements in, I for one, have never studied media before so this video we made was quite a revelation for me, and for a first time I think it wasn’t too shabby.
• When Ben was drinking the tea it was too slow and the shots were too long, therefore making the video slightly boring.
• There were major sound problems and our efforts to mach the sound on top of the video failed.
• We also need to put the camera to the height of the character that’s speaking and not above so its looking down.
• We filmed in 16:9 but the software didn’t recognize it, therefore it went to 4:3 which was an old TV shape.
• In our short film we attempted to include match on action, the 180 degree rule and shot/reverse shot. We tried to do match on action whilst Thomas was opening and closing the door, apparently it looked more like a continuity shot so sir didn’t want to class it as match on action. We used the 180 degree rule when filming as well which kept to the line and didn’t cross it. We used the shot/reverse shot whilst the characters were talking and made sure we had the back of the characters head in the corner of the shot and the other character facing them and their head in the shot. Our shot/reverse shot would have been better if we had the cameras at the height of the person.

Things that went well:

• I think we had good establishing shots, including all the action that was supposed to be shown.
• We didn’t break anything whilst filming which is a bonus, there’s nothing worse that breaking expensive equipment that’s not even yours.
• Thomas’s acting was very entertaining, everyone seemed to enjoy watching the video and found his lines hilarious.

Having another attempt:

• We as a group are thinking of re doing our video as it was admittedly a bit of a disaster, we want to have another go and I think that this is good because we shall be learning from our mistakes and creating something better.
• we are thinking of using the really good camera, as one of the other groups used it and their video quality was excellent, I think our group would benefit from this and it would improve our video. We will also be sure not to film against light as it totally ruins the shots, we will also make sure we include a CLEAR match on action shot and the sound wont be a total fail again.
• We have also altered our storyboard slightly to improve it, Ben has the copy of it so I will try to put it on my blog as soon as possible.
• We will be doing it after school tomorrow for about an hour, that just shows our devotion to this task, it better come out well this next time!!!
• Overall I believe our first attempt was alright, not great but I think we should use it as a learning curve, that’s the whole point of this exercise, the pick up skills and learn how to avoid mistakes. I also think its good that we shall be having another attempt at this, its another chance to prove that we can achieve a high grade even though I am new to this whole subject.

Our Video

First Impressions of Filming

Today my group and I began filming the shots for our preliminary Exercise. We encountered several difficulties whilst filming such as starting filming in one room and then the room have a class in when we needed to film again. To over come this, luckily we had only taken two small shots when we first started as the lesson ended, so we just started fresh in the free room in the next lesson and had a whole hour. Another problem was constantly using the 180 degree rule, it just made us have to be more careful when filming different shots.

We decided to film our task in the hall as it matched the room fairly well that we drew in our storyboard. We also used props in our shots such as a mug and attempted to use shot reverse shot, the 180 degree rule and match on action. Overall it went fairly well and we managed to over come most of the problems that faced us.

We used a hand held camera with a screen aside it, and we attached it to the tripod which helped us have smooth movements in shots. We also included a handheld shot where I carried the camera across the room whilst filming to accentuate someone shakily watching the scene going on infront of them.

I was in charge of the camera for this exercise so that Ben and Thomas could act. This meant that I had to be really careful when filming shots to make sure I was including them in the shot if it was an over the shoulder shot for example.

I also learned how to get that hang of using the microphone to pick up speech as its clearer than the camera. Luckily I had brought my earphones so I could listen to make sure it was picking up sound. This does mean that when we eventually put all the shots together we need to lay the sound recording over the top. I have no idea how difficult it will be to put the sound recording over the top of the video recording, but it will definitely be a learning curve for me.

Overall i think the whole exercise went pretty well as Thomas and Ben took GCSE Media so they were there to help and educate me at the same time as doing the task. Obviously it wont be a perfect video but I believe I have made a good start to filming and understanding camera work.

Storyboards for our Script

As a group we agreed on each shot and put in down on to a storyboard. Here are the Storyboards for our script. They show the camera angles and whats happening in each shot shown below:

Shotlist

We had to create a shotlist of the camera angles we were going to use in our task, this is what we came up with:

Mid shot Looking out from door window as Thomas walks into frame

Wide shot Looking at door from inside room as Thomas opens the door

Wide shot Opposite direction to previous shot. Establishes the room and introduces Ben sitting down at the table.

Wide shot over the shoulder as Thomas looks at Ben

Wide shot of room, Thomas slams the desk

Mid Shot Thomas closes the door

Mid Shot Thomas: “What are you sitting here for?”

Mid shot close up of Ben turning round to look at Thomas

Mid shot of Ben: “Just having a cup of tea.”

Mid shot over the shoulder Thomas: “Haven’t you seen what’s going on?”

Wide shot ‘Coffee’s POV’ Thomas: “It’s Armageddon.”

Close up of Thomas’ face Thomas: You idiot. People are dyeing outside.”

Mid shot over the shoulder Ben: “No I’ve been here all lunch.”

Mid shot tracks Thomas as he stands up

Close up Ben: “I had no idea why haven’t I heard about this?”

Wide shot from outside the room looking through window, ‘shaky/handheld’ Thomas walks down and sits in seat

Preliminary Exercise: Script

This is our script for our Preliminary Exercise, in this task our main aim is to get to grips with camera work and put into practice some of the shots we’ve been learning about. We have to include a character opening a door and crossing a room, then sitting down in a chair opposite another character with whom he/she then exchanges a few lines of dialogue.  Each group was given a word which we had to include in our script and ours was ‘Armageddon’ , therefore our script had to be based around the world ending. This is what we came up with:

Tom fast walks into the room, gently pushes the door open and carefully closes it behind him. He darts his eyes around the room looking frightened.

Location: Classroom Interior

 Tom

What are you sitting here for? They’re coming!

Ben

Just having a cuppa Tea

Tom

sits down on a nearby chair

Haven’t you seen whats going on?!!

Ben

No, I’ve been in here all lunch

Tom

You idiot. People are dying outside!

Ben

I had no idea, why hadn’t anyone told me about this?!

Tom

Slams table

Its ARMAGEDDON!