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.
