Any use of music in the films on this blog complies with 'Fair Dealing' under the 1988 Copyright Designs and Patents Act (UK), Sections 6(i) and 6(ii); Fair dealing is a term used to describe some limited activities that are allowed without infringing copyright. Briefly these are as follows: Section 6 i. Research and private study Copying parts of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or of a typographical arrangement of a published edition for the purpose of research or private study is allowed under the following conditions: · The copy is made for the purposes of research or private study. · The copy is made for non-commercial purposes. · The source of the material is acknowledged. · The person making the copy does not make copies of the material available for a number of people. ii Instruction or examination Copying parts of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or a sound recording, film or broadcast for the purpose of instruction or examination is allowed under the following conditions: · The copying is done by the student or the person giving instruction. · The copying is not done via a reprographic process. · The source of the material is acknowledged. · The instruction is for a non-commercial purpose.
Our main opening for a film for our main exercise was for a film called “Becoming Bella Bright”. The narrative of the opening scene is that the main character is going to auditions. The opening scene uses codes and conventions of films of the same genre.
The opening sequence represents teenage girls in a very one sided view as this is only the beginning of the film we made it so that it draws from stereotypes of the character being very feminine teenage girl. This allows a quick set up of the character as you see her traits in the first few minutes of the film. In turn this lets the audience know what the character is like without explaining a back-story early in the film. This is done by using a classic “Waking up scene” which is popular with films in this genre. In the scene the character is shown getting out of bed and getting ready for the day. Most of the shots are close ups and you are always very close with the character making the audience more interested in her as she chooses her clothes and puts on her make up etc. Her character stereotype is reinforced by use of music which is upbeat pop music. The music also shows how upbeat the scene is and how she is looking forward to the auditions ahead with anticipation.
-Movies such as Camp Rock are in the same genre as our film
A media institution that may distribute a film such as ours are bigger companies such as Disney with more child/teen orientated films. Some of these include Camp Rock and High School Musical. I think a big company like this would produce a film like this because of its content is similar and they optimise their films to relate to the child/early teen audiences. The audience would be attracted to this film by relating to the lead character waking up and getting ready at the start of the film. This theme would continue in the rest of the film.
In the preliminary exercise I was the camera operator for the exercise and I used my own camera to make it easier. However my camera was hard to use with the editing software so for the main exercise I used a different camera which films on tape rather than a hard drive. This was a new experience for myself as I’ve only previously filmed on cameras with hard drives. I learnt about how to operate and record with a tape and how to export the footage onto a computer afterwards for editing.
We also used a more advanced editing software package for the main exercise which we all had to learn how to use. It was difficult to use to begin with and much more advanced. However once we learnt how to use the software though it was much better than the older more basic editing software. We could more things with our film with this software such as more finely edit.
I think that I have progressed from the preliminary task and improved skills I have learnt. At the start of the preliminary exercise I didn’t know how to edit properly but now I have learn how to edit in two different software packages.
I also think I have also learnt how to film and frame the shots better and how to use a variety of filming equipment. In the preliminary task we filmed with a camera with a hard-drive which was different to the camera we used in the main execerise which saved onto a tape.
I also feel that I have gained more confidence when sharing ideas with the group. At the begining of the preliminary exercise I was less confident about sharing ideas due to being in a new group. However as I progressed through the preliminary excerise into the main excerise I feel gained confidence.
When filming our main exercise we had a few problems in our way. We at first filmed half the shots with our actor but had to stop filming due to time restrains along with the poor weather on the day. After which we needed to reschedule another filming date. There were many days which the actor couldn’t do or we didn’t all have the same time off so the filming process took slightly longer than expected. We did get all the shots we wanted in the end and apart from these few problems the filming process ran fairly smoothly.
A few shots were changed on day of filming from our script because they were combined with other scenes and were no longer needed.
-Edits we made to our script on the day of filming
The editing process however turned out to be a much longer task. Instead of using editing software we already knew how to use, we had to switch to a different software package. This was because the shots were filmed in widescreen and the other software didn’t support that function well. Because of the switch in editing software it took time for us to learn how to use it effectively. Another problem which made the editing take longer was the fact that whenever we loaded up the files on a different computer, we had to change the file paths so the software recognised the clips.
- A screenshot of the editing process
When editing, we changed a few things for various reasons. Some of the scenes we filmed didn’t seem to flow and so they were taken out completely. One thing we had to take out is our original idea of having the titles written on a book and film the pages being turned. In the end we had to take these out as they weren’t quite big enough and didn’t stay on screen long enough. Instead we put titles on in a pink font.
The final edit has some variation from the storyboards and scripts produced originally because of the edits we made when filming/editing. I think that these edits mean that the film flows better.
When we began the planning process for the main exercise I immediately saw how much more planning was needed compared to the preliminary exercise. Along with the main parts of the planning for the preliminary exercise (storyboards,script etc) there is additional documents and planning we must go through. Such as researching audience and other films of a similar type and genre. However since doing the preliminary exercise it gave me some idea on about how long a lot of the planning parts may take.
When we did a SWOT analysis I thought some things that may be points we will need to consider is that in the main exercise we are filming outside for some of it, which we have never done before. Lighting issues shouldn’t be too much of a problem but the weather could be bad on the day of shooting. Also since the group has changed it means we do not know everyone in the group from before. This means that group dynamics may change.
- SWOT analysis
I think that I could improve my performance for the main exercise. I could do this by keeping better time management. Although I kept relatively fairly well to the schedule in the preliminary exercise, I should try and continue doing so.
-Production schedual
Another thing I could improve upon is the quality of my written work. The documents I produce could be longer and more detailed.
Before we could even begin to start filming we had to search for locations to shoot. We had some ideas of what kind of setting we wanted: mostly it was either an office scene or a dark room. We searched in lots of different places, mainly around the college to find a suitable spot for filming. One of the main reasons why we stuck to searching for locations in college was because we thought that it had a variety of different looking rooms and locations for us to choose from.
In the end after looking around different rooms we decided on the TV studio in the media department of the college for our place to film. The studio had the ability of changing the lighting and the black wall served as a good background and fitted in with the style of two hit-men meeting.
The day of filming generally went well overall. Thanks to our planning (i.e. writing the script, planning the story boards etc) we managed to film most of the shots without and problems. As the camera operator I found the storyboards a big help for framing up the shots correctly. I feel if we didn’t plan this before hand, our shots would have suffered on the day of shooting and would defiantly made the day of filming much longer.
However a few things did go wrong on the day of filming. One of the actors showed up late and the second didn’t turn up before which left us to hunt for actors at the last minute. Luckily we found one but our film didn’t have the dress codes we wanted because of this. If we had time I would have made them come in suits to match the scene rather than casual clothing. Also the new actor we found was female, but we orginally cast the two actors as both male. We decided that we should take advantage of this. We made the female actor the more dominant in the scene the change the usual sterotyping that the male is the more dominant.
Another minor issue was the lighting in the TV studio. Due to the fact that none of our group had previous experience with lighting, it meant that we could not set up the lights ourselfs. We were going to get our lecturer to do it for us instead but he was in a meeting at the time of filiming so we had to get another member of the media department to do it for us.
The lighting system was new to us so it got us quite a while to get used to it and then after each shot we would normally have to change the lighting around to make sure everything was lighted correctly. It was sometimes cause shots to be lighted incorrectly and meant we had to do serveral extra takes. Again this wasn’t a major issue but could have been avoided if we set up and tested all the lighting early and got experience with it.
After the filming we started to begin the editing process. I thought that this would be the easiest part of the excerise but it proved to be the most difficult of the whole thing. We filmed on a hard drive camera instead of tape due to the fact that it would be easier to edit on the computers. However we found it was incompatible with the computers we were using to edit. We overcame this by bringing in a laptop instead that we could edit with. The editing went fine after this. Although, after the main edit we did have to make the cuts faster because they seemed a little slack.
At the beginning of the preliminary exercise the idea of making the video was exciting. The exercise sounded both fun and interesting, mainly because I have never made a full video before. I have used video cameras before though and this gave me an extra interest in the task. I was also hoping to improve my skills with a camera during this task allowing me to take better framing of shots etc.
I was interested in using the skills I already had, such as my previous experience with a camera, as well as improving my weaker attributes. For example time management and research skills. During the planning stage it was required to plan out a schedule of what we were going to do on each day. Doing this allowed me to keep better management of the tasks we were set to do and keep track of things in a more organised way. Furthermore it enabled us to do the tasks in order. Also, searching on the internet for videos with similar themes helped improve my research skills. I feel that I have improved both time management skills and research skills during the planning stages.
At a few points in the planning process I was slightly concerned that the assignment had so much scope and so many ways that it could be completed that we may over complicate things too much. However this proved not to be the case as we set what we wanted to do fairly early on in the planning stage. This allowed us to concentrate on the shots and other elements rather than getting distracted on changing the idea later on.
Usually when I am set a task or a project I don’t plan as much as I should. This can cause parts of the task going wrong at a later stage causing major problems. Doing a task this way can be more time consuming than first expected as you think you are saving time from skipping out parts of the planning stage. But during the planning stages of the preliminary exercise I have found that it is very important to plan carefully what you want to do. For example, instead of going out and filming straight away, we planned all our shots which let us see problems with certain shots or angles. By doing it this way we saw any problems almost immediately and could pick which shots worked best and fitted together.
