Evaluation Of Final Filming...
Things i did well
I think organisation of the casting was most important, and i think after a few hours of worry, i managed to get them all on the set at the right time. The help of latasha at first with the filming of sarah was great as she recorded us filming. She also contacted chandni after a few attempted my self. I brought all the equipment my self; tripod, camera, masks, and i asked some members of the cast to bring spare jumpers in case others failed to bring their own, and that was helpful. I believe even though i was bossy, that i did instruct the cast properly, and they did exactly what i wanted which was great and they worked well. i scheduled two meeting times at the same place (McDonalds), one at half 11 for the first filming of sarah, just to get her first bit out of the way, and then the second meeting for the others, and they would make their way to the set at 12. They all wore black which i believe worked very well in contrast to the white masks, which unfortunately were too small, but still were used. When it came to organisation i was the one that had to put it all together, knowing every shot had to be done carefully, and there were many retakes. I stuck to the idea that i would film as much as i can, even improvised shots, just so i can edit more on the computers at school. I took on the role as director, and cameraman, but we did take turns.
I think organisation of the casting was most important, and i think after a few hours of worry, i managed to get them all on the set at the right time. The help of latasha at first with the filming of sarah was great as she recorded us filming. She also contacted chandni after a few attempted my self. I brought all the equipment my self; tripod, camera, masks, and i asked some members of the cast to bring spare jumpers in case others failed to bring their own, and that was helpful. I believe even though i was bossy, that i did instruct the cast properly, and they did exactly what i wanted which was great and they worked well. i scheduled two meeting times at the same place (McDonalds), one at half 11 for the first filming of sarah, just to get her first bit out of the way, and then the second meeting for the others, and they would make their way to the set at 12. They all wore black which i believe worked very well in contrast to the white masks, which unfortunately were too small, but still were used. When it came to organisation i was the one that had to put it all together, knowing every shot had to be done carefully, and there were many retakes. I stuck to the idea that i would film as much as i can, even improvised shots, just so i can edit more on the computers at school. I took on the role as director, and cameraman, but we did take turns.
Things we did well as a team
Latasha did a lot of camera work, and when chandni arrived she also helped, so we did take turns. Latasha took the main role of behind the scene filming where she would just film off her phone moments where we filmed and retakes. Chandni was great at positioning the camera, and at the end she took the tripod in her car to take back, and both of them were also helping out with organisation. Latasha even stared in a little bit herself, as the person who would casually walk by, and i played a role of a 6th masked man (luckily i was wearing black). As a team i think we pulled this off very well, and with the weather in worry, it did turn out sunny, which was a bigger problem then the idea of snow, because the light kept ruining the shot. We didn't even have to use the battery light at any time because the weather was so bright. But we came to conclusion that we can edit the contrast of the light to a much more darker atmosphere, and we're toying around the idea of fast/ slow forward edit and black and white. We took each problem and solved it, through improvisation. We knew we couldn't do every shot, but we did try to stick as closely to the anamatic as we could, but we also added extra footage we believe worked better.
Problems
the weather was a big problem. At first we were worried it would be too snowy and icy to film, but instead it turned out to be quite sunny, but that was still a problem as the light kept getting in the shot, and making it too bright, when what we wanted was a dark disturbing atmosphere. We couldn't use tracking because of the weather and possible damage to the tracking on the floor, but instead we used a tripod and paned instead of tracking which still worked great. We didn't have that many masked people, hence i was in a few shots as one my self. However we did re use some of the cast in different shots to give the illusion there were many of them there. Because it was cold, i felt we just had to shoot as much as we can, and just make sure it's good enough. So with that in mind, we didn't manage to film every shot done in the the anamatic, but we did improvise and we did have to retake the shots a lot. We didn't have a lolly pop to use, but luckily there was a toy left in the park, so we used that instead; it still gives sarah that slightly childish personality. Another problem we faced was that there were many children and parents in the park at the time, so we had to work with it. We are taking away the sound so no kids can be heard, but we use some audio such as kids laughing and birds in the distance. No dialogue so that was no problem with lines or acting. I did tell the adults who approached us that this is a media project, and we did allow the other set of swings to be used, so filming in the park wasn't such a problem, some parents were quite interested in what we were doing. We didn't feel the need to give ask people to sign our permission slips, because the people who did approach understood and used other parts of the park without problem, so us being there wasn't frowned upon at all. There were kids who did get in the shot, but we were patient enough to not let it affect us, and we didnt approach anyone, but were being very professional about it.
Things i would do better next time
I would test shoot further with ALL cast members, and make sure they will all be there. I must think of alternative shots if problems ever arise, such as cast members failing to show up, or the weather being a major problem. I should of evaluated the set more, to see just what time the parents take their kids to the park, and perhaps i should of asked people for their permission, just to be safe. Even though i planed out each shot, i didn't use EVERY shot i should of, but it still worked. I should of experimented with better more creative shots, because my true aim was just to shoot as quickly as i can, even if i had a lot of retakes. Also i would of liked to of used a fish eye lense, but it wasn't available.
Effectiveness of planning
Without a lot of planning i couldn't of done this.Without test shooting i wouldn't know where to put the camera at all, and i would of had to reply on improvisation. If i also hadn't taken stills of the place, i wouldn't know where to position my cast members, and by retaking the shots i gave my self more options to play around with during editing. By planning the anamatic, i gave my self a basic template to work with; a few shots i had to have. However because i wanted to film as much as i can, i did do a lot more then the anamatic will show, and a lot of the shots are different, because we had to work our way around the weather and children in the background.
Effectiveness of research
without the research i know i wouldn't of been able to get a good grip on techniques such as depth of field to distort the image. I had a lot of inspiration from masked horror films such as scream, and the effectiveness of the mask it's self, and a lot of the shots are based around on that disturbing view. By researching films i can get a understanding of how a thriller is created, and by having a slow build-up, it worked. However this is just a opening, we will be editing a trailer also, just to keep it as professional as a website could be (were going to have a website similar to the block buster ones). Overall i think the final shooting when very well. LOREN
The filmimg procces
We had started filming on sunday the 5th of December. Our location of the movie was at the cheswick park during mid day we did succeeded to do so and the shoot started off as expected and was completed within two to three hours smoothly. Although the the weather was not how we imagend it to be as we wanted it to be dusk or foggy to build a diffrent atmosphere to create the correct feeling for the movie but believe this could be achieved through the editing process. It was great experience filming and using the knowlegde learnt from the media lessons was a huge help for us as we applied it to the filming such as the use of camera , the angles and postions that could be used to create the film we want.The charcters that we used for the shooting were great to work as they responded to what we wanted for them to and also stayed claim when some of us got controlling. we had managed to get all the shots that we had planed to and improvised one or two which turned out to be quite useful, the next step now is to do the eiditing to make this opening complete. CHANDNI
Editing process 1
7th December 2010
In todays lesson, I uploaded the final filming. We decided to each do our own edit, in our own styles, and them get back together to go through ours, and finalise our actual edit. We'll take bits of each others edit and focus on one main one, which will then be uploaded onto the wix website. I wanted to make it all in black and white for the following reasons: to darken the scene slightly, take away the distraction of colour where sometimes it's not needed, to focus on the contrast of masks (white masks with black clothing) and to avoid weather change throughout the filming. I made the mistake of focusing on techniques like reversing, forward wind and fast speed, when I should have just focused on the actual edit cutting. Our teacher suggested that the edit gave the impression it was like a short film, which I wanted to avoid because it's supposed to be an opening of a film. With the bonus of text, which i'll be doing next lesson, it will add to the opening effect, similar to those in big holly wood films. What I plan to do is to have audio over the last few clips; "That wasn't the last time we saw Sarah"...and then it will follow with a reversed clip of her toy falling from her hand, suggesting she will be coming back later on in the film. However because that's not relative now, i'll stick to just one reversed clip. Looking back on the filming, I realise I had a few problems of focus, but sometimes it worked very well. Also I had problems with my shadow getting in the way of shot, and showing children in the background. I'll will try to crop out as much of the shadows as possible, and with the children in the background, it could be suggested that even though this is a crowded park, the masked men cannot be seen (we made this happen in one scene where Latasha walks by obvious to the masked men) how ever, i do feel that our problems we had during filming can be solved through edit of imovie. Next lesson i will explore showing titles in different ways. I will use my masks and film titles separately, just to bring it all together.
Instead of filming titles separately, with the ideas of masks, I did 3 different finals, exploring the contrast levels, transitions and titles (temporally). My first final was done in complete black and white, a classic style, my explaination was that it was to draw definition of the contrast of black clothes and the white mask. It did so, but after speaking to the teacher, i realised that as he said, it lacks depth, and that using colour can also show a good contrast. looking at Latasha's work, I saw she was adjusting the contrast which worked very well in different shots, but she hadn't kept it all like that as she hadn't finished editing. I decided to also adjust contrast levels, brightness and saturation, to explore a use of colour without distraction. With saturation, it draw little colour in the right places such as the masks and her red dress, so the colour remains, but slightly faded, giving us a ghosty feel to it all. Before this I started playing around with black and white and use of colour. I used colour when the shoot dosnt include the masked men, but when they did appear, the shot would transform into black and white, signifying an invading atmosphere, where they simply take away any trace of colour left. I did find that the transactions of colour was very distracting to the story, even with a meaning behind it. It did fail to explore the main story, and with that in mind, the titles also became too much all together. My third final was done with contrast as I said above, and with the titles, I simply put them in white, fading in and then fading out as the shot played. The reason I did this was to limit the timing, so instead of having a black background, the titles played with the same shot, this was so I wasn't wasting time on the titles. I knew they were important in identifying it was an opening, so I made sure each title was around 4 seconds long and faded in each time those people came up on the screen. Use of Transactions slows down the cutting of the shot, and also creating this unsettled atmosphere. I added what kinda of audio i'll be doing, by simply stating it, as I haven't yet finished the editing process, but in the next few lessons I will be focusing a lot on audio and music (after term). Next tuesday I will be creating titles for my own, just to show that ive thought about different methods of titles, and i'll be exploring the way other openings of films have done their titles.
Editing Process 3....
In this lesson we got together in a group and watched each others edits, writing on paper what we thought worked well and didn't work well. As a group we decided having a low saturation and a low contrast will help to create a ghostly atmosphere, while using the idea of fading the colour, draining it out. we also agreed that we would have to crop out a lot, because a lot of shadows appeared, and people in the playground, which we wanted to avoid but in the end couldn't. We played around with the idea of using the 'night' method of colour in I movie, but some parts were too dark, and if he had adults with their children in the background, it wouldn't work with the night atmosphere. we then began to edit the final one, together in a group.
Editing Process 4...
as a group we spent the first two lessons finalising any details on the final edit, completing it by the 3rd lesson. There are parts we need to fix up, but overall we have the story line we want, the shots in order as we wanted. a problem was trying to make sure the cut was perfect, and that took a bit of time, and also the parts we sped up and slowed down needed tweaking, but we managed to do it all. for further work to be done, we just need to finalise any problems we may have, as looking back i still think we need a lot more work to be done. As we have another 3 to 4 weeks left to edit, i will spend the time making sure the edit is perfect, to then back up with the music (which is still left to be discussed) and sound effects, which we will either later record separately or use the existing audio in twine with the shots wanted.
Editing Process 5...
We spent around an hour finding the perfect music on free play website, which is a music download site, copyright free. We chose a few, but I thought one in particular worked well with each shot, it was around 40 seconds long, so when I did edit the sound in, I had to extend the sound clip and copy and paste further bits of the sound. Over lap of the sound works well, but I intended to keep the sound continuous. At first I thought that music wasn't needed, or at least we would use some sound effects, not full music, but after listening to the music in twine with the clips, I knew it would work well. The music is helps to create tension and keep with the rhythm and pace of the opening. After this, and seeing the titles appear in front of the images, even after contemplating black background titles, we decided to upload the clips we did before, where we made our own titles. This was just filming a hand draw the titles on a single piece of paper, and having someone rip it apart after. This was effective, but were still unsure whether we should use it, and if it really does work. Once sped up however it does have this strange effect, and during the next editing process when all of us are in class, we will explore this and perhaps reshoot the titles, just to have it there for planning.
Editing Process 6...
I stayed later till around 6 to finalise all picture edit and bring it onto the garage band. We had to join all attached sound, for the atmosphere track, to deepen the soundtrack. Our aim was to not use dialogue, but have music and sound effects (which still need to be records. sound effects such as the swing moving, and deep breathing). Once we embedded all the atmosphere sounds, we then moved it all onto the garage band, where i attached the free play music. The music we chose was dark and tense, and people said it resembled music to the excorsist, which is ideal, as the promotion used for the excorsist is a example of ours in our research. We wanted to create a detached feeling, and so i had to finalise all the cuts and edit it much closely, and by heightening the sound at dramatic moments, this enhanced the feeling we wanted to achieve. i also made a trailer, which we will use on our website. We came up with the idea of having the blog as our main evidence of work and evaluation, but also share a link to a website which i have begun creating, as a promotional website for our film.
Editing Process 7...
We watched each of the groups openings, and were asked to write things that worked well and things to improve, and a overall grade, stretching from a low 1 to a high 4 (the highest mark). At this point we understand no one has finalised it all, and we all had much improvement to do, but overall the scores given were quite high. the feedback we got were questions on the possible props used (the toy woody doll-not much to say but that we used it simply to highlight her state of mind and childish personality).. another was that we needed to improve on the soundtrack overall, with the idea of using more sound effects to heighten the atmosphere. One idea was given that we were to use a narrative or some sort of dialogue, but we all agreed not to, as we wanted to keep with just sound, and picture to create our meaning. The feedback we got was mainly positive, and i believe we have a lot more work to be done, and just to finalise the edit and to work on sound, as that was the biggest problem with all groups. Looking at the other groups, it helped me to understand their levels of progress, and that we also need to work harder. LOREN
Another problem we had a parent and his child quite close to us. If the child was to trip on anything we left behind or the camera and tripod its self when left unattended it will cause problems with location. We might have to move somewhere else. We made sure there was someone to always stand by the camera, and we had a designated place for the costumes, bags ect,, to make sure that no one could trip on them.
Weather would be a problem, but we made sure weo av chose the day that was suppose to be sunny. This would ensure no damage was done to the camera from the rain or wind. LOREN
PROBLEMS
A main problem we faced was location, and that in most of the shots people in the park were present. We couldn't exactly ask them to leave, but we did make sure they know (once they asked) what we were doing. However used this to our advantage as it gives it a sense of reality, and when they dont acknowledge the masked men in the shot, it gives it that little bit of mystery, suggesting they are figments of her imagination or ghostly characters people from the outside cant see. We did have to frame certain people in each shot, just to make sure they don't become dominate in the shots. We did try changing angles to avoid the people we didn't want in the shot, but it all went down to the actual editing process, which allowed us to crop the frame of the clip, in order to eliminate distraction. LOREN
SOUND
SOUND
I looked at the sound used in the opening sequence of Donnie Darko, i found it very interesting as it looking at the sound which has some aspect that we have try to included to our opening. it mainly starts of with slow and interesting sound making people want to watch the movie, it was quite creepy as well it also gives away the genre keeping the audiences interested.after the music is played for about 40 seconds the music stops playing since than, atmospheric sound of the wind, birds and of an open air comes which i found it very simple and effective this is due to the fact it gives a sense of realistic events are taking place, as our opening in based on true events we have been inspired to use the atmospheric sound from the orginal filming day as the sound of bird and childern and the wind got recorded,which we kept it in the sequence throug out although we have added some music which is inspired by the Halloween film. CHANDNI
The Development process
we were all involved in the development process throughout to edit and make the opening look as we would like it to, as far as i know, we have achieved great results to the effort we put into the editing. the editing process took us much longer than the shoot it self as we completed the shoot within few hours on the other hand the editing process continued for week.I
- we firstly started of with creating our own individual edits with the same film to help each of us do as we desired and form it as we wanted to. this took us about 2 week of lessons to complete
- The second step was to get together in the group and analyse each edit and pick out the good techniques within each opening and use that in the final. there was many that we picked from each edit that we considered to use.
- Thirdly as a group we started to edit again including the bits we picked from the individual to make one. this part of the development took us many weeks to complete.This also included us to add titles to the film even including the attachment of sound that we used from the free play site.
- The fourth and the final step was to complete the picture edit so we were able to transfer it from i-movie where we had done our film editing to garage band so we than include some soundtrack and music to the opening.
One thing that i had noticed whilst editing was that we were more flexible to use music than other groups since our opening didn't contain any dialogues in which we were not restricted to the consideration dialogue.This made it easer for us as a group.CHANDNI
