Sunday, 28 February 2010

Thursday, 25 February 2010

SKILLS AUDIT: FILMING AND EDITING PRELIMINARY MATCH CUT EXERCISE



In today’s lesson we were set a task to make a film for our opening match cut exercise. First we filmed it in a classroom and carried on with our storyboard plan. It was difficult, but then we got used to it and finished the exercise. It got easier because we experienced filming and editing before. As a group we then had to use live type and soundtrack pro to create our titles and sounds. Because we had practise before we were able to:

•Delete
•Shorten
•Change shots.

Tuesday, 23 February 2010

PLANNING PRELIMINARY MATCH CUT EXERCISE INCLUDING STORYBOARD

In today’s lesson we were set a match cut task where we were asked to make a succession about a character that enters a room, sits down opposite the other character and they talk about something private. As a group we came up with a storyboard on how the plot would look like. Firstly we started planning the storyboard then for the main task we went through our notes and we decided to come up with 16 shots.

Storyboard:

Sht 1) A long shot of the actor walking down the corridor
Sht 2) A cutaway of the actor holding the door knob
Sht 3) A point of view shot of the classroom as the door is opening
Sht 4) A point of view shot of a actor looking at the other actor
Sht 5) ''
Sht 6) A OSS shot of the actor walking towards the table
Sht 7) A close up of the actors hands pulling the chair
Sht 8) A long shot of the actor sitting down
Sht 9) A long shot and two shot of both actors sitting on the table
Sht 10) Shot reverse shot of the conversation between the two actors
Sht 11) ''
Sht 12) ''
Sht 13) ''
Sht 14) ''
Sht 15) ''
Sht 16) ''

Monday, 22 February 2010

Pitch/Preliminary Match Cut Exercise and Storyboard

Pitch
For out Thriller film, we came up with the name Day 56. This name best reflects our story as the main character will have a diary and will write all of his life in there. Other names were suggested such as Memory lane and Disturbia, but we thought that they were to obvious and did not best represent our film.

Our film is a Psychological Thriller. The main character suffers from amnesia and in order to remember his past, he must write down in his diary everything that has happened. When he writes down an event that has just happened, this will trigger his memery to see many flashbacks of the past. Our film was influenced by mainly "The Butterfly Effect". In this film the main character also suffers from amnesia and goes through a series of flashbacks. "Marathon Man" also influenced our film, in the begining of "Marathon Man" the main character is shown running/jogging down the street. We took some of the aspects of that scene, but made it our own.





Through the uses of the camera work in "Marathon Man" We will try and use some of the aspects, by showing some running scenes, then cut back to normality with the main character writing in his diary. "The Butterfly Effect is shown as psychological as he is also running frantically. He then goes into a room and writes in his diary leading to a flashback. We will take some of this and try to make it more thilling.

For our sub-genre, we choose to do a Psychological thriller. We chose this because we wanted to be different as everyone else chose to do an action thriller. Psychological thrillers are more challenging. They require the audience to really think, so we got inspired by this. A psychological thriller is a thriller where the actor/actress conflict is mental and emotional rather than physical.

Our location to film consisted of two places. We chose to film in a house when the main character lives. This is his comfort space as he will run to his house and takes a deap breath as he will feel safe. Our other location is Hampstead Heath. In this location, we will be filming the running scenes and some other scencs such as houses and parks.

We will use some props that best shows that we linked our title to our film. Our most important prop is the diary that the main character will be using to write down eveything that has happened to him. Our main character will be dressed in casual clothes as we do not want to it to be obvious that he is a mental patient who suffers from amnesia. We will use other smaller pros like perhaps a music box or swings in a park. We will aslo use a house.

Our first shot will be the production company in white font on a black backgroud followed by the distribution company. The nest shot will be a POV shot of the main character running down the corridor to a room. As he enters the room the camera will be panning to the right when he sits at the corner. He will then begin to write in his diary and the camer will be at eye level. A close up will appear to the diary and differnt various shots of him will also appear. The camera will then zoom into his face and after this the flashbacks will appear. Different shots will appear in the flachbacks such as his jewelry box, different shots of houses and him running in the park. Our titles will begin when we see the main character, the music however will start as soo as the flash backs come up. Our main title "Day 56" will come up at the end.

We chose to film on days where we were all present:

Monday: 9am - 2pm - Room scenes
Wednesday: 3pm - to any time - running scenes in Hampsted Heath
Thursday: 1:15pm - 2:55pm
Friday: 4:30 onwards (final touches/ extra scenes)
Sundays: (Only if needed)

In our media lesson, we sat through a presentation about the health and safety of the camera and how to use them. We were informed that one person from our group must give in their phone number incase the technician wanted to contact us. We were also informed to give the location where we were planning on filming and how long we would be there.

In another media lesson, we were introduced to 3 new progams. Final cut pro, Livetype and Soundtrack pro. We learned how to edit some clips, create titles and add effects, and how to create music from scratch.

We chose "Working Title" to produce our thriller. We chose this comapany because it is a British film comapany that we could possibly afford. Our film is a low budget independant film and "Working Title" manly produces this. "Working Title" has a great reputation and we may gain audiences from America as they are loinked with Paramount Pictures.

Our target audience are aged 16 - 24. We chose this technacally savvy audience because our film consits of many fast paced flashbacks that are thrilling. Our main character is young and will appear to a young audience as they may relate to him.

Preliminary Match Cut Exercise and Storyboard

In Media, we were told to make a sequence which included a range of match cuts and some dialogue between two characters. Our storyboard consists of 16 shots, these are the following:
Shot 1: A long shot of the character walking on the hallway
Shot 2: A cut away shot of the characters hands on the door
Shot 3: A pov shot of the classroom as the door is opening
Shot 4: A pov shot of a character looking at the other character
Shot 5: A pov shot of the other character looking at the character
Shot 6: A ots shot of the character walking towards the table
Shot 7: A close up of the characters hands pulling the chair
Shot 8: A long shot of the character sitting down
Shot 9: A long shot/two shot of both characters sitting at the table
Shot 10: Shot reverse shot in dialogue
Shot 11: Shot reverse shot in dialogue
Shot 12: Shot reverse shot in dialogue
Shot 13: Shot reverse shot in dialogue
Shot 14: Shot reverse shot in dialogue
Shot 15: Shot reverse shot in dialogue
Shot 16: Shot reverse shot in dialogue

SKILLS AUDIT: LIVE TYPE AND SOUNDTRACK PRO



Today’s lesson was based on two programs called live type and Soundtrack Pro. These two programs are very important for editing, because we are going to use it when making our film creation.

This is a picture of Soundtrack Pro. In class today we learnt how to use this program because we are going to be using it to make our music for our opening sequence. I didn’t have trouble in using this program because we had a tutorial at the beginning of the lesson, which made it easier for me to get started. Making the music was enjoyable but it can get difficult when you add the music to the video but apart from that it’s straight Foward.

In the tutorial we learnt how to:

•Listen to different sounds, e.g. Instruments etc
•Move the sounds
•Make longer sounds
•Mix up sounds
•Change and delete sounds





This is a picture of live type. In class today we learnt how to use this program because we are going to be using it to create titles for our opening sequence. I didn’t also have trouble in using this program because we also had a tutorial at the beginning of the lesson, which made it easier. Making the titles was enjoyable but it got difficult when you put all the effects together, which got better when I learnt it.

In the tutorial we learnt how to:

•Change the style of the font
•Change the size of the font
•Using effects e.g. backgrounds, shadows, fades and floats
•Mix up effects

Skills Audit: Livetype and Sound

In Media, we had a tutorial on how to use Livetype and Soundtrack pro as we were preparing for our own practice film.

This image is from Livetype. We learned how to write on Livetype and change the effect around. There are many options to choose from in Livetype, for example, font, size, colour, effect, timing, adding all the effects together in the time line and many more. This was very useful as we use Livetype to add our titles to our Thriller film.


This image is from soundtrack pro. Soundtrack lets us create our own sounds from scratch. We learned how to view all of the many genres, drag pieces of sounds onto the timeline, add more pieces of sounds to the timeline, and change the size to longer or shorter and many more. This is also very useful to us as we will need soundtrack for our Thriller film.

Camera and Health Safety Tutorial

In Media, we were given a tutorial on how to use a camera. In the lesson, we went through all the needed information on how to operate the camera. We learned how to:
Turn the camera on/off
Focusing the camera
How to open the tripod
How to place the camera on/off a tripod
Where the memory cards are placed
How to insert a battery
How to record and watch the recorded clips back.

Final edit of livetype and sound filming practice

Here is a practical our group did, it was a practice to help us understand the function of the camera and the tripod. We were given a task to film a bag swap scene in 45 minutes. We had to include camera angles such as long shots, two shots and close ups.

Preliminary Match Cut Film

Sunday, 21 February 2010

Skills Audit: Filming and editing preliminary match cut exercise

In this lesson we had to film our preliminary match cut exercise, we filmed it in a classroom and followed are storyboard plan. At first it was a bit hard but then after we got the hang of it and we finished the exercise. It seemed easier now as we had already practised filming and editing before. We then had to use livetype and soundtrack pro to create the titles and the sound for our sequence. Editing the film on final cut pro is very useful because after watching what we have recorded we are able to delete, shorten or change the shots.

Preliminary Match Cut Exercise

For this task we were asked to make a sequence and it had to based on a character that opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue. In preparation for this we had to the same for another plot, my group came up with a storyboard on how they thought the plot would look like. When we started planning the storyboard for the main task we all discussed our different ideas and we came up with 16 shots .
Storyboard:
Shots no. Shot Type Shot description
1. LS - Person walking down the corridor
2. CA - Person holding the door knob
3. POV - Door being opened from inside the classroom
4. POV - Person looks at the other person in the classroom
5. POV - Person exchanges looks
6. OSS - Person walking in the room
7. CU - Hand pulling the chair
8. LS - Person sitting down
9. TS - Both sitting at the table
10. SRS - Conversation
11. SRS - '' ''
12. SRS - '' ''
13. SRS - '' ''
14. SRS - '' ''
15. SRS - '' ''
16. SRS - '' ''

Final edit of livetype and sound filming practise

In this lesson we were editing our sounds and titles for the opening sequence of the film we made called : the bag. We were adjusting the final touches to our opening sequences like making the titles bigger , making the sounds longer and making sure everything fitted in properly.

Skills Audit : Livetype and sound

In this lesson we had a tutorial with two programs called Livetype and Soundtrack Pro. Both of these programs are essential to our film making because we use them for our editing.

This is what the program Soundtrack Pro looks like. We learnt to use this program because we will be using it to make music for our opening sequence. I liked the program because it was easy to use and the process of making the music was fun however it can get complicated when you are trying to import it to the video but apart from that its a very good program. In the tutorial we learnt how to :
- Choose and listen to different sounds, i.e instruments
-Drag and put the sounds on to the timeline
- Stretch the sounds across the timeline to figure out how long you wanted the sounds to play
-Put more than one sound in the timeline
-Change or delete sounds



This is the Livetype program, we were given a tutorial on this program because we will be using this program to create titles for our opening sequence. This program was also easy to use because it had many things to choose from but the only confusing thing was how to put all the effects together because sometimes they wouldn't work. In the tutorial we learnt how to :
-Change the style of the font
-Make the size of the font bigger or smaller
-Add effects such as texturised backgrounds, shadows, fades and floats
-Play all of the effects on the timeline

Intro to camera & health and safety tutorial


In this lesson , our class was given an introduction on how to use the cameras and a health and safety tutorial. We learnt the basics and now i feel confident to use the cameras because at first i was very cautious with the cameras because i didn't want to drop it but after we all took turns to have a go with the camera i felt ok. In our lesson we learnt :
- To slot the memory cards in to the camera.
- Turn the camera on and off
- Set up the tripod
- Lock the camera on the tripod
- Unlock the camera from the tripod
- Take the camera off the tripod
- Open and closing the lens
- Focusing the camera
- Recording footage
- Viewing footage
Learning these steps have been very beneficial because we know how to use a camera properly for example we can check the focus incase its blurry, we can prevent anything from going wrong with what we have learnt in our lesson.

Friday, 19 February 2010

CAMERA - HEALTH AND SAFETY



In today’s lesson as a class we were given an introduction on how to use the cameras and were told all health and safety steps. At the beginning we were taught the basics. After learning all the basics I felt confident in using the cameras, because I had experience from before and this helped me from getting started.

In our lesson we were taught:

•How to insert memory cards in to the camera.
•How to turn the camera on and off
•How to place the tripod
•How to lock the camera on the tripod
•How to unlock the camera from the tripod
•How to release the camera from the tripod
•How to open and close the lens
•How to make the camera focus
•How to Record the footage
•How to view the footage

Learning all the steps made it useful for us as a group and as a class, because now we know how to use a camera correctly. This will avoid us from making mistakes.

FINAL EDIT OF LIVETYPE AND SOUND FILMING PRACTICE

In today’s lesson as a class we were set a practice task for our opening sequence. As a group we had to edit our sounds and titles for the film we made called the bag. Because we had four people in our group two of us edited the sound and two of us edited the titles. At the end we put it together and added it on to our film.

Tuesday, 9 February 2010