Construction Post 30: Looking back - reflections on our final outcome

Our Film Opening:

My group and I recorded our reflections on the final outcome of our media product in the form of a podcast. This be be accessed below:

Construction Post 29: My technical learning curve

Through the creation of our film opening we had to delegate roles; this therefore caused each of us top develop certain skills in the different aspects of  production and post-production. For example, during production  I mostly acted and prepared the mise-en-scene of the set-pieces, whilst during editing I was mostly responsible for continuity and music/sound.

Construction Post 28: My personal contribution to the Edit Sessions

Within the post-production stage I really enjoyed the editing as I mostly took on roles which I felt I had the most experience with and therefore produced the best possible work. For example, I took the lead when it came to editing all the best takes to the correct length and placing them on the timeline in order. This job sounds simple but it did take quite a long time to edit the shots for continuity and still ensure the whole sequence flowed well and was in the time limit set by the brief.

Me editing the film opening sequence 

I also took responsibility for the changing of sound levels to what the group thought was best for the film opening, i.e. what sound levels needed to be high or low at different points to help contribute to the atmosphere of the sequence. Below you can see a short video of me editing sound levels on the soundtrack:

As well as all this, I also helped with the editing of the titles and their effects. However, as this was my first time working on the software, LiveType I had to experiment with effects in order to find the best ones. This was actually quite fun as it helped me gain confidence in my ability with title editing and in turn helped me produce titles which all of the group and our teachers approved of.

Me experimenting with titles on LiveType

Construction Post 27: My Personal Contribution to the Shoot Sessions

I served in many different roles within every location.

Location 1: My house

I acted within this location during every shoot as I played the role of the antagonist. This meant I had to follow the director's commands as well as rehearsing my shots whilst not be filmed in order to reduce the number of takes needed for it to be as good as possible. Below is video of me preparing for a shot during the test shoot:

Location 2: Enfield Island Village Forest

At this location I helped direct the shots as our main director, Sailesh was occupied with cameraman duties and therefore needed some aid with arranging mise-en-scene, such as the placement of the microphone when the news reporter is taken, as well as encouraging the actor and helping her with her lines and her positioning on the set. Below is a video of my group filming the news reporter scene, whilst I watch over the scene and look out for anything that may mean we have to re-shoot.

Location 3: Classroom

For this location I took on the role of director and cameraman due my increased knowledge of the set in relation to my other group members as I was the one who arranged the classroom into the best format possible. Moreover, I had time before the shoot to plan out the shot and experiment with framing, thus I thought I would be the best person to direct the shot and go on camera. Overall, I believe that this was one of the main contributing factors of us only taking 2 takesto capture the footage we needed.

Construction Post 26: Reflections on Edit Week 2

Throughout this edit week our aim was to complete our film opening. The first step was to add in all of our new shots from the back-up shot onto our basic timeline, then we went delegated roles within the group to ensure we maximised efficiency. For example, if a couple of us were grading and adding special FX to the shots then the third group member would be editing the effects on our titles. As edit week 1 went so well, we repeated the use of an edit schedule. However this time we added in a lot more editing slots as we didn't want to waster any time that we had at our disposal.

The schedule for edit week 2

For grading, our intentions were to darken our shots, especially the ones which had the antagonist in them as we thought this were add to the atmosphere of the sequence as well as obscuring some of his facial features. By obscuring some features we were able to make the identity of the antagonist a little more mysterious. This was done by increasing the contrast of the selected shots and decreasing their saturation as well.

A graded shot in our film opening

Construction Post 25: The Back-Up Shoot

Our back-up shoot was scheduled on Sunday 5th March in the time lot of 9am to 4pm. As we wanted this shoot to flow as best as possible we made as many preparation as possible, such as a shootboard, a revised script and better communication with our actors. This transpired in our shoot finishing early that anticipated as we were all very happy with the footage we had shot in a highly time-efficient manner.

The shootboard for the back-up shoot

As mentioned in our reflections during edit week 1, we re-shot the news reporter scene with our actor Aisha learning her lines prior to the shoot day and her changing her costume in order to look more professional and in turn make the scene more believable to the audience as a real news broadcast.

News reporter after

News reporter before

As well as this, we also shot some reaction shots of the antagonist watching the news broadcast as this gave a clearer message of his intentions.

Overall, I believe the back-up shoot went very well as we manged to get all of her intended shots at a higher quality than what they were shot at in the main shoot.

Construction Post 24: Reflections on Edit Week 1

Our groups target for this edit week was to have all our chosen shots onto the editing timeline in the correct order and cut down to the correct length. We also aimed for them all to be edited for proper continuity and mixed well with the soundtrack and sound effects. As well as all this we wanted our titles to all be in the correct positions but with basic effects, i.e. not done on LiveType. The reasoning behind this was because we needed to find out if any of our shots needed to be redone for reasons such as incorrect framing, bad lighting or acting which could be improved upon. Any shots which we thought needed to be re shot were noted and then planned as part of the back-up shoot on the following weekend. To make sure the group's organisation was high we designed at edit schedule so everyone knew when to be editing and to ensure the workload was fair.

Our edit schedule

There were two main issues which we flagged up that we felt took precedence over the rest:

1) Throughout the entire news reporter scene, the actor can be clearly seen looking to the left of the screen in order to read her lines; this is not normal for a professional news broadcast and therefore disrupted the immersion of the audience. Thus, we agreed that the actor needed to learn her lines in advance so this issue would not arise again in the back-up shoot.

2) Another issue we encountered when looking back on our footage was that is was not obvious for the audience that the antagonist was watching the news broadcast due to some continuity errors. To fix this we thought it was best to add some reaction shots of the antagonist during the broadcast as this would make it clear to the audience that he was watching it.

In spite of these issues which needed to be corrected, I believe that this edit went very well due to the high efficiency that everyone in the group worked at as well as the fact that we felt our sequence was meeting the demands of the brief.