Friday 26 April 2013
Evaluation
This is my evaluation! My name is Rebecca Lipscombe, candidate number 3304 and I am the girl in the middle with a green jacket.
Friday 19 April 2013
Tuesday 16 April 2013
'Film Editing is Now Something Almost Everyone Can Do At a Simple Level and Enjoy It'
DAY ONE:
The first day we edited we decided that this was the time we should edit the Olivia section all together. This took its time as besides from the preliminary task we had never used final cut pro before so it meant having to get used to all the different features and functions of the software. Eventually we were able to get a rough sequence together and work on the lighting and colour effects we wanted in this scene of the film.
DAY TWO:
We watched back the footage from the previous day and decided that we didn't like the part where the Dad is talking to Olivia and reading the story. We decided to make it more interesting for the audience we would cut in between the two shots, almost like a reverse shot which worked really effectively. We also tried out different music that we wanted in our background during this time but couldn't decided on one because half of our ideas where too happy and the other half made it feel like a horror!
DAY THREE:
After getting back the footage of the card we edited this into our film, using the ripple effect between the card in the bedroom and the card in the street. We also decided that we needed to slow down the walking bit in town as it was all very quick and so we used the slow motion effect which made a massive difference overall. On this day we also chose music, titles and main title and put these into our film.
After watching it all back, although we were not the strongest group in the class I think our progression from preliminary has been massive and I am ultimately very proud of all the work and effort we have put in, even if it did lead to a few silly arguements within the group!
The first day we edited we decided that this was the time we should edit the Olivia section all together. This took its time as besides from the preliminary task we had never used final cut pro before so it meant having to get used to all the different features and functions of the software. Eventually we were able to get a rough sequence together and work on the lighting and colour effects we wanted in this scene of the film.
DAY TWO:
We watched back the footage from the previous day and decided that we didn't like the part where the Dad is talking to Olivia and reading the story. We decided to make it more interesting for the audience we would cut in between the two shots, almost like a reverse shot which worked really effectively. We also tried out different music that we wanted in our background during this time but couldn't decided on one because half of our ideas where too happy and the other half made it feel like a horror!
DAY THREE:
After getting back the footage of the card we edited this into our film, using the ripple effect between the card in the bedroom and the card in the street. We also decided that we needed to slow down the walking bit in town as it was all very quick and so we used the slow motion effect which made a massive difference overall. On this day we also chose music, titles and main title and put these into our film.
After watching it all back, although we were not the strongest group in the class I think our progression from preliminary has been massive and I am ultimately very proud of all the work and effort we have put in, even if it did lead to a few silly arguements within the group!
Friday 12 April 2013
'Whenever I am Shooting a Film I Never Think of How I Want to Shoot Something I Simply Shoot It'
After all our thorough research it came to finally getting to shoot our film! This was quite scary for us because we were going out for the first time (besides our preliminary task) to shoot our film that we had been focusing on for weeks, with a brand new DSLR camera and we had very high expectations! I think looking back on everything we did whilst shooting, I think we should have planned and organised everything a lot better, be it giving ourselves more time or just doing a more thorough storyboard.
DAY ONE:
On the 9th March 2013 we decided to go out for the first time and start shooting. The first thing we wanted to shoot was the story at the beginning of our film in Olivia's bedroom so this meant travelling up to Georgia's dad's house in Croydon so we could use her little sister and her dad. We got the train straight after school and arrived at her house at approx. 6pm, when we got there we talked about our film for a bit and ate dinner (and lots of it!). We were planning to film that evening but due to the time and our tiredness we decided to only film the outside of the house and wait until the morning to film the main bit as everyone would be more enthusiastic and awake. Then in the morning at about 11am we started filming, having to cross the barrier of natural light coming in through the window by using black out blinds, and were able to shoot all of the beginning half of our film in one day.
DAY TWO:
The next day we decided to film was one of the days in the following half term holiday. Unfortunately due to my holiday booked already, I was skiing when they filmed the next bit. They showed me how they filmed some of the card scene, in the Holyport field (just by their houses) and they made our leading man role come just in their normal clothes. This resulted in him wearing jeans and air max trainers; possibly not the right representation of 'hero' that we wanted! After looking back on this footage we decided that it wasn't really right for our film and so chose to take this filming as a sort of 'practice' as it helped us to get techniques and thus hopefully making our next go at it more successful.
DAY THREE:
Me and georgia then decided that we had to go out and film again because obviously we were not too keen on our first shoot. When we thought about the changes we had to make in order for our movie to be the best it could be, we decided that we should relocate and shoot in the middle of town. This gave us more of the 'Forrest Gump feather' style we were looking for and enabled us to get across to the audience the fact that this card was magical and unique. However after filming in two different locations in Maidenhead town, we decided that the one we liked we didn't have enough footage for, thus leading us to our fourth shoot!
DAY FOUR:
On this day we were able to capture the footage that we didn't get the third time we tried. This meant that we had to go back to the same location in town with our actors and shoot everything exactly the same as we had before in order for us to put it together with our previous footage. Obviously when we looked back on the continuity between the third day and fourth day footage, there were lots of errors so we decided to scrap all these clips meaning that we would have to go out on another day!
DAY FIVE:
This was our final shooting day (yay) and was where we decided to film more scenes of the feather flying around town to try and emphasis the fact that it was magical. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the filming personally but from feedback from the other members of my group and having watched the clips they filmed myself, I think everything went very well and we used pretty much all the clips they filmed that day in our final piece.
Overall the filming process was fun but a very long process due to our lack of organisation and making amaeteur errors. However I do think we were able to stick to our time constrants (even if we did leave things until last minute) and this resulted in us being able to make our fantastic film!
DAY ONE:
On the 9th March 2013 we decided to go out for the first time and start shooting. The first thing we wanted to shoot was the story at the beginning of our film in Olivia's bedroom so this meant travelling up to Georgia's dad's house in Croydon so we could use her little sister and her dad. We got the train straight after school and arrived at her house at approx. 6pm, when we got there we talked about our film for a bit and ate dinner (and lots of it!). We were planning to film that evening but due to the time and our tiredness we decided to only film the outside of the house and wait until the morning to film the main bit as everyone would be more enthusiastic and awake. Then in the morning at about 11am we started filming, having to cross the barrier of natural light coming in through the window by using black out blinds, and were able to shoot all of the beginning half of our film in one day.
DAY TWO:
The next day we decided to film was one of the days in the following half term holiday. Unfortunately due to my holiday booked already, I was skiing when they filmed the next bit. They showed me how they filmed some of the card scene, in the Holyport field (just by their houses) and they made our leading man role come just in their normal clothes. This resulted in him wearing jeans and air max trainers; possibly not the right representation of 'hero' that we wanted! After looking back on this footage we decided that it wasn't really right for our film and so chose to take this filming as a sort of 'practice' as it helped us to get techniques and thus hopefully making our next go at it more successful.
DAY THREE:
Me and georgia then decided that we had to go out and film again because obviously we were not too keen on our first shoot. When we thought about the changes we had to make in order for our movie to be the best it could be, we decided that we should relocate and shoot in the middle of town. This gave us more of the 'Forrest Gump feather' style we were looking for and enabled us to get across to the audience the fact that this card was magical and unique. However after filming in two different locations in Maidenhead town, we decided that the one we liked we didn't have enough footage for, thus leading us to our fourth shoot!
DAY FOUR:
On this day we were able to capture the footage that we didn't get the third time we tried. This meant that we had to go back to the same location in town with our actors and shoot everything exactly the same as we had before in order for us to put it together with our previous footage. Obviously when we looked back on the continuity between the third day and fourth day footage, there were lots of errors so we decided to scrap all these clips meaning that we would have to go out on another day!
DAY FIVE:
This was our final shooting day (yay) and was where we decided to film more scenes of the feather flying around town to try and emphasis the fact that it was magical. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the filming personally but from feedback from the other members of my group and having watched the clips they filmed myself, I think everything went very well and we used pretty much all the clips they filmed that day in our final piece.
Overall the filming process was fun but a very long process due to our lack of organisation and making amaeteur errors. However I do think we were able to stick to our time constrants (even if we did leave things until last minute) and this resulted in us being able to make our fantastic film!
Wednesday 10 April 2013
LIGHTS, camera, action...
We then had to think about the types of colours we wanted in our film and how we would use lighting and different effects to get this across. We decided, after looking at other romantic/girly films, that we wanted to try and use pinks and warmer shades when inside at the beginning. To show the difference between the clips we, we wanted to very much contrast the outside section by making the colours more harsh and 'whiter' in order to show the difference. We also thought that if we used the pink colours at the beginning and made everything warmer then it would look more like a dream/ flashback which it is and then to juxtapose it with the following scene I think it would make everything in this clip more 'real'.
We had only one issue with lighting when we went to film in that it was set at nighttime and, due to late trains and hungry stomachs, we didn't have time to film in the evening so ended up filming the next day. Obviously this meant that we had the natural light coming in from the window making everything seem more unrealistic and just didn't make for good continuity. To overcome this we decided that we would have to put up black up blinds over the windows and, although this didn't work perfectly, it was a lot better than before and because of the lightbox we used made us able to achieve what looked like a realistic example of an evening situation.
We had only one issue with lighting when we went to film in that it was set at nighttime and, due to late trains and hungry stomachs, we didn't have time to film in the evening so ended up filming the next day. Obviously this meant that we had the natural light coming in from the window making everything seem more unrealistic and just didn't make for good continuity. To overcome this we decided that we would have to put up black up blinds over the windows and, although this didn't work perfectly, it was a lot better than before and because of the lightbox we used made us able to achieve what looked like a realistic example of an evening situation.
Monday 8 April 2013
Ladies and Gentleman put your hands together for...
When looking into who we wanted to target our film at it was a hard job for us to decide on what we wanted to certify our film as. With research into different films that are of a similar genre to ours, most were of the 12A/PG 13 rating which showed us that this was the sort of thing we should aim for. After much talk about whether to make it a 12A or a 15 we decided on 12A because it meant we could widen our audience as both adults and children can view the film thus resulting in us getting the highest revenue possible. We then had to look at who we wanted to target our film at, be it girls/boys or both. We eventually decided that in order to make our film as popular as possible then we needed to make our film as broad as we could, meaning that we should make our film targeted at both sexes. This was one aspect of the filming process that worried me slightly as I thought that it meant us having to try and appeal to such a large number of people, all with different interests, that we would lose some of the meaning and individuality of our film. However after much debate we decided that we could make the film likable to both genders by using a mainly boyish genre and theme of our play but by juxtaposing it with the female main character that would attract girls to watch it as they would feel they may be able to relate to her in some ways.
Wednesday 3 April 2013
A Tale of Tall Tales..
When we had our costume, set and props all sorted out we had the tricky task of deciding who we wanted to act in our clips. As a group, we discussed the sort of look we were trying to represent when we looked into who could act as our little girl and decided that we wanted her to be your stereotypical 'princess'. As only Georgia had little sisters who were the appropriate age and physique, along with the fact that her bedroom was the exact style we wanted for our 'princess' to have, we chose to use Olivia in our piece. We then decided that in order for our clip to look as naturalistic as possible we wanted to make Georgia's dad, if he was happy to be in, the father in the film. We thought this would give the most 'real' performance as she would be most comfortable with her own dad and this would give the most effective opening for our film.
We then had the hard decision of casting our leading man! We wanted someone that was not your typical 'hero' that you get in most Hollywood films; muscly, tanned and good looking. With thorough research into movie hero's that have gone before, we found the perfect example of what we wanted in Clarke Kent from the Spiderman movies. He is not your usual hero as he is a geeky, everyday reporter and this was how we envisaged our hero to be. With this in mind we thought that the most appropriate casting for this role was our friend Harry as he reminded us all of this character. It worked really well and gave the impression that this film was going to be different and challenging some stereotypes which is what we wanted.
We then had the hard decision of casting our leading man! We wanted someone that was not your typical 'hero' that you get in most Hollywood films; muscly, tanned and good looking. With thorough research into movie hero's that have gone before, we found the perfect example of what we wanted in Clarke Kent from the Spiderman movies. He is not your usual hero as he is a geeky, everyday reporter and this was how we envisaged our hero to be. With this in mind we thought that the most appropriate casting for this role was our friend Harry as he reminded us all of this character. It worked really well and gave the impression that this film was going to be different and challenging some stereotypes which is what we wanted.
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