two minute opening credits. (newest task)

Here are some possible idea’s for the latest task:

• The beggining of a horror movie where everything is dark, quiet and scary with big titles zooming in.
• A romantic film where there is soft sounds and we could use non-diagetic sounds for effect.

Genre.

My group couldn’t really think of a specific genre which our preliminary task would fall under, therefore this is still undecided until we can think of a suitable genre which fits in well with the preliminary task! 🙂

Evaluation of the Preliminary Task

 Problems:The problems we had when editing our film was that at the end of our recording the actor’s body isnt of full display only his torso is visible. this doesnt give the best effect of him storming out of the room. Also once we uploaded our film we realised that in the background their was carrier bags, and people in the shots so trying to cover them up or crop them out was very difficult as we had to make sure every bit of the before and after clips matched up evenly, so it doesnt jump too much and make it noticeable. We ended up making them just a lot more unnoticeable to the viewers. With the 180 degree we wanted to get the effect of walking around the table but if doing the whole table it would  mean the actors kept cutting in over the recording, we did this a few times  also by slowing there movements to get in front before they could cut in front of the camera this meant one of our camera angles the 180 degree rule was only half made we stopped once we got to the other side of the table in our film. When trying to slow our speed down of the dating sign at the beginning, our actors walking into the door and walking towards the other actor. This process was very long and confusing, we ending up slowing down each section by about half a second. The film after walking in was at a good speed and didnt need editing but only cropping. 

Editing:With editing we had to cut down the scenes into the correct time sequences we wanted them to be as we did not want them to drag on making it less entertaining to watch. We pretty much did that with all of our film, then making the flow right was key to as some parts would jump for example one piece the actor hit the flowers on the floor stands up slightly then it jumps into the next recording of him sitting down. This part we edited and added the end scene of the flowers on the floor after he had dropped them to take the fast pace our of the actors movements then the part showed him getting up and leaving. At the beginning we thought instead of just watching the speed dating sign doing nothing we added a fast spin to it to grab your attention. With sound and music we looked for some approiate music but our film is about hearing the conversation.  

 

 This was hard to get perfect as the spin was too fast to even recognise what the sign says. We found out how to make it slower but we had to add another one of the same clip after the spiral as it would have been to fast even when slowed down. Changing the colour also the black and white for the whole film made the background less obvious as there were objects we did not want to see. For the end scene we added the flower shot fading out to conclude the film this summed up the final clip as it seemed very slow and ends up seeing nothing. But we had to add two of the same clip again as it would have been a bit fast for you to recognise what happened.

 Overall the final film was successful as we got most of the shots we wanted only one was half way compleated and we know next time to plan out more carefully where we will do the filming, the time of day, the actors, and the background. We will need to make sure for our next piece keep out any unnecessary objects and props. choose the costume carefully, Plus make more time for ourselves to film. The way we finished the piece and managed to find out what the problems were whilst making and editing halped us improve our film and overcome some difficulties we had. Once choosing our location it was hard to find out what dialogue to say as when you start to film the mood changes within the room so the humour may be better when the dialogue is made up, That is what happened we made a rough dialogue and the actors improviced on what to say.

180 degree errror.

When looking through what we had filmed, we realised that our 180 degree shot wasn’t quite good enough. It was quite jerky because we hadnt used a camera stand and you could hear mark breathing in the background. We haven’t decided yet wether to use this piece of filming and then comment about how we could improve it if we did it again, or wether we should shoot a new scene to add on the front or end of the film.

Images taken whilst editing

Images taken whilst editing Preliminary Task

This photograph is part of the end scene. It shows the difference in the black and white colouring, as well as the difference in the normal film and the flowers being blurred out.

This image is at the beginning of the film. This is the introduction of the film. The sign spirals in then revealing the original poster on the door. This looks good because it creates some originality as we do not quite know what the spirals are going to lead to until the poster is unleashed, meaning the audience can start to piece together what might happen in this short film and I also feel this makes the beginning a lot more interesting to watch .

This image shows how we cut off the main character’s head, and how the feeling and emotion can be lost without seeing the expression on his face as he storms out of the room.

Evaluation

In our preliminary task we were doing a comedy. A male character was going on a speed date. He was supposed to be meeting a woman he had talked to online, and the realise that his date was really a man when sitting down at the table with him. We did a low angle when our character entered the dating room and a 180 degree  shot as the character went around the table ans sat down to face his date. We did this to highlight the fact that his date is also a male, and it is supposed to be funny because he thought it was a woman. While editing, we also realised that our 180 degree shot was not quite 180 degrees,  we did not go all the way around the table as we meant to do. We also used match on action to create continuity. We also ended up changing the original dialogue and let the actors improvise, wich turned out a lot better than the original one.

We made a few mistakes while filming, but it turned out ok. Next time need to make sure that no group members are in the background and that we don’t cut the characters head off. I think all of us will be more aware of these things next time. While doing the editing we tried to fix some of these mistakes, which was quite hard, but it looks a little better now. The hardest thing is to fix these things without damaging the good scenes. We were not able to do anything about the part where one of the characters head is cut off, so we will just have to avoid doing that later.

Evaluation of Preliminary Task

In our Preliminary task we had to make a thirty to forty second film someone had to walk into a room and sit at a table with another person, and then leave the room again. We wanted our film to be different from the usual and a romantic comedy. We decided to create a blind date scene in a restaurant with a hidden twist. This twist was that the blind date turned out to be a man rather than a woman and the date was a complete mix up with the wrong name. By the end of it the guy storms out of the room disgusted that he has met a man.

Our Preliminary task was successful in the end. In this task we planned to make it as realistic as we possibly could. The main idea was that the character at the table was a man who looked like a girl, but the blind date who entered the room did not know this to begin with. Once the character has sat at the table with the ‘woman’ he believes it to be, he begins to question ‘her’. He soon notices a name badge saying ‘Jamie’ and not ‘Jannie’ and realises that he appears to have facial hair. He then later throws the flowers he was clasping on the floor and storms out of the room. The genre of our film was comedy, and I feel that we portrayed this in a creative way. Our film makes you want to watch on and find out what is going to happen next. In the film we included eye level shots when filming, we did this because we thought it would bring the audience to the actor’s level as they would be able to see exactly what the actor could. We felt that this would also make them feel more involved in the film almost like there were there themselves seeing it first hand. I think that this worked really well as the camera was kept in good focus and was well aligned through the duration of time that it was kept at eye level. Another camera shot that we used was shot reverse shot when focusing in on the conversation between the two characters. We wanted the audience to be able to see the facial expressions clearly when the character’s were talking to each other, without the facial expressions the film would also loose some of its humour as this is what made the dialogue funny. Finally we included a 180 degrees shot around the table, this was so that the audience would get a full insight as to what was in the surrounding area and the props being used to create an effective setting to be in.

We had a few problems that were noticed after the filming process, once we had uploaded the video. One of the problems that we had was when we were filming an end shot we cut half of the actor’s head off, mainly leaving focus on the torso. This was done with out even realising that it was a problem. This meant that the expression on the character’s face could not be made clear to the audience of how he was feeling at that moment. Therefore the sense of emotion and feeling towards the end of the scene was lost. We solved this problem by cutting the end of the film so that is finished before the head was cut off. Another problem that we found was that our 180 degrees shot wasn’t the full 180 degrees. We followed the eyes of the main character around a table, but we did not do the full turn. This could be easily solved by going around the entire table showing a clear shot of the opposing character already sat at the table. We will use this for future reference when filming a 180 degrees shot and will make sure that it is the correct angle. When the actors spoke in the film it was not as clear or as loud as it could have been, and therefore when you watch the film you have to listen carefully. This could have been done better by the actors speaking louder and clearer, as well as the video camera being even closer to the actors. We discovered a further problem once we watched the film again realising that we had a lot of unnecessary items that were in the background, for example, bags that held the props and people who were watching us record the film.

The setting in which we filmed looked realistic but it could have been improved if it was set somewhere else, such as a place off the school site. We used many props in order to make it look as real as possible to the audience but I felt that it still did not express where they were meant to be. At the beginning of the film we focused on a sign on the door which we made on the computer, however we needed to make the sign look a lot more professional and realistic in order to improve the beginning of the film. Also the door did not look like a restaurant door as you could clearly tell that it was a classroom door, I felt that we should have filmed at an actual restaurant to improve on our final result. As the main character entered, this was a form of introduction as to what was going to take place in the room. When we were editing we had to order each scene into the sequence that we wanted them to appear in. This meant either cutting pieces out and shortening them, or adding the scene in more than once.

Music/Sounds

Within our task, we have planned to keep the diegetic sounds present as this makes the short piece look more convincing. As it is set in a school there us bound to be noises going on in the background. Also the sound of doors opening and shuting will be present. When we have finished the final piece we will look for a suitable piece of music to add to our preliminary task, this will be a non-diegetic sound.

Finished Film

We have finished editing and improving our film. We are happy with the end product although it could have been improved if certain things had been done to prevent errors in the first place. From this task we can learn that we need to be a lot more specific about what we want to happen and to make it clear. We also need to make sure we film from lots of different angles such as from the front, back and the sides. This will allow us to have a range of film that we can edit and put together in various ways and make the best of the film we are making. I feel that we needed to do a lot more planning such as if we were going to have any music, what props we would need, how we could make the scene look as realistic as possible and what we want to be said and done by the actors. We felt that by using different actors it improved the film a lot in itself. This is because we do not feel confident or good enough to be recorded as no-one in our group takes an interest in acting or performing as such.

Mistakes We Have Made.

My group had finally finished filming, but when we came to editing it, we realised that we had left out the vital shots which needed to be included in this task. We had done the match on action, but later found we had left out the 180 degree shot and also the shot reverse shot. We have decided to go film some bits again and will soon finish the editing of our perliminary task. We also found that our task lacks verisimilitude as the teacher who is played by marcus wiseman is not wearing a shirt and tie, which in reality we would expect a teacher to be wearing a shirt and tie to show his authority and power over the students, as we had already filmed the majority of the task we decided to make it a non school uniform day as this would explain the teachers ‘dressing down.’ In future filming I will try to ensure that all characters are in costumes which we would expect them to this, so then the film is less confusing to try and understand what is going on.