Construction post 10: Looking back - reflections on our final outcome

My film opening sequence:

I have thoroughly enjoyed doing this project as film is something I'm really interested in so getting to plan, film and edit my own film opening sequence was very exciting for me.

My highlights of this project were:

• Working together with two very enthusiastic and encouraging people, Mario and Angela. I felt like they were always there to support me throughout the course of this project and we all worked really well together to create a final piece that we're all proud of
• Seeing how far we've come with this project. If you watch our rough cut and then our main film opening you can see how vastly we've improved everything from the shots to the editing.
• Getting a chance to experiment with grading was really exciting and seeing the difference it had to the shots was really amazing. 

My lowpoints: 

• The whole project was really time-consuming. For example, the shoot sessions were 8 hours long and sometimes we'd spend quite a long time trying to perfect one shot which usually ended with us taking numerous takes of one shot and still not being satisfied with it. The editing as well was really intense. We had to come in on our frees, after school, lunch times and also lesson time to finish this project. The second week was especially tough because we were one person down so me and Angela had to put in the extra effort to finish the project. 

How we hope our finished film will be received by the audience: 

• I hope our audience really like our opening sequence as we really put a lot of time and effort into it. We're also really proud of what we achieved and hope it is received well by our audience. 
• I also hope the male audience will be able to 'laugh' at Guy and still watch it despite it being a rom-com which isn't usually a male orientated genre. 
• I hope they will be intrigued enough to say that they would carry on watching the rest of the film

If we had more time:

• I'd really like to work on the grading of our shots to make them even more professional looking and stylised
• I'd like to work a bit more on the voiceover because even though we rewrote it several times I feel like the voiceover, dialogue and action compete with each other rather than work together so that's something I would like to spend more time working on 
• Created our titles on LiveType as the font of out titles isn't very cinematic and in LiveType you can add more effects to your titles. 

Construction Post 9: My technical learning curve (production and post-production)

I have learnt a lot throughout this project, especially in the production and pre-production stages. Before this project, I knew a little bit about handling cameras and editing but I didn't know much. Throughout this project, I have learned how to do a lot of things like creating smooth shots with the tripod whilst moving the camera, grading, sound adjustment, adding titles and transitions and just this whole project has been a massive learning experience for me.

I have put together a table to show my strengths and weaknesses:

Photographs for evidence:

Construction Post 8: My personal contributions to the Edit Sessions

My whole group were actively involved with the editing process of our opening sequence. However, Angela and I really had to step up and do a few more edit sessions in week 2 as Mario wasn't there.

My contributions:

• I helped cut the basic sequence together to ensure that we had perfect match-on-action between each shot to make sure that continuity wasn't broken.
• I also made some of the titles and had to choose carefully where to place the titles as well as the font and the transitions. We took inspiration from 'John Tucker Must Die' and also other rom-com films where majority of the titles are in plain white text and fade in and out. They are usually also overlayed over the action which is what we did. 
• Adjusting the sound levels was quite a challenging task as we had to lower the volume of the music track and increase the volume of the voiceover/dialogue in order for it to be heard clearly. 
• Grading was another difficult process as I hadn't really done it before so it was a learning process for me. Grading helps to correct the colour of your shots in order to produce a professional looking finish to your film. Since I had never done this before, I had to watch a YouTube tutorial in order to understand the basics. Here is the video that I watched: 

I really enjoyed the editing process of our opening sequence as it provided me with the opportunity to learn a lot of new things and also meant I could experiment a little bit to see what worked and what didn't for our opening sequence. After the whole process, I feel like I'm a lot more confident with editing and I have new skills which I previously didn't have such as grading and creating multiple layers of video and audio. 

If I had the chance and a longer timeframe then I would experiment more with grading to create an even more professional look to our opening sequence. However, I didn't have the luxury of time so we had to grade each shot accordingly to ensure that we would finish by the deadline. 

Construction post 7: My personal contributions to the Shoot Sessions

My roles during our shoot sessions:

1. Camera Operator - this was quite a challenging role as I had to make sure everything about the shot was perfect such as the framing, composition and lighting. I also had to think ahead to try and figure out what the shots would look like edited together and whether or not there would be any continuity errors.

Above is an example of a shot that I filmed. This shot was particularly hard to film as there was limited space in the bathroom and also I had to make sure that the camera and tripod weren't visible in the mirror. Therefore, I had to physically get into the bath with the camera and tripod in order to film this shot. 

2. Director - this was another challenging role as I had to also try and be the character (Guy or Bella) in order to direct the actors well and I had to also act it out for them so that they understood exactly what we wanted of them. 

3. 'Messenger' - I was the person in the group who had contact with Aybala so before each shoot session I'd ask her when she was free, what time she was able to come on location for and what time she had to leave. I would then feed this back to my group and ask them if this was okay and then we would finalise things. 

Construction Post 6: Reflections on Edit Week 2

Here is our edit schedule for our second week of editing: 

Mario was not here for this week of editing as he went on an AS Geography field trip to Swanage. This meant, me and Angela had to work more intensively to get our project finished and we had to make some important decisions without Mario. However, we did keep him informed via our WhatsApp group chat throughout the week.

What we have achieved so far:

A picture showing me working on our project

• We've added in the new shots in the place of the old ones and we are super happy with the way it looks now. 
• We've added in transitions for the titles so that they dissolve in and out. 
• We've added a 'Cross Dissolve' between the last shot and the title shot which means the title comes in before the shot finishes as a sort of overlay but then the image in the background fades away to leave just the title. 
• The main focus of this weeks edit sessions was the grading of our shots. We used effects called ProcAmp where we can adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and hue of our shots and the Three Way Colour Corrector which allowed us to play around with the colour of our shots. This process was quite hard and quite time consuming so we spent most of the week working on this 

This is the ProcAmp and Three Way Colour Correcter interface on Adobe Premiere Pro

• Chris, our media technician helped us re-write our voiceover and we also decided that the Guy speaking in the voiceover would be future Guy so he will be looking back at himself with the audience and realising just how weird he was. 
• We also had to adjust the sound levels of the voiceover, music and dialogue so that we could hear everything clearly without a struggle 

Construction Post 5: The Back-up Shoot

We decided to schedule our back-up shoot on Saturday 7th March as it was convenient for all three of us and our actress, Aybala. We only had to redo the shorts shot and the outdoor shots so our shoot session only lasted around 3 hours. 

Here is a picture of me framing one of the shots

This is a picture showing Angela operating the camera whilst I was directing

What went well and how did we improve our footage:

• The weather was a lot nicer during our back-up shoot so we didn't face as many problems with the background noises. However, since it was sunny there was a lot of people around and it took a while to get our shot done since people kept walking across our shooting space whilst we were filming.
• We also decided to do a master shot of Bella and Guy's conversation so as to improve continuity and get rid of the pan as it slows down the pace of the sequence. 

Before: 

After:

• We also successfully managed to re-film the shorts shot

BEFORE

                           



                                                     AFTER

Contruction Post 4: Reflections on Edit Week 1

This is the schedule that we used to record down when we were editing and make sure we had enough edit sessions to finish our final cut. We had to have a very intensive edit schedule in order to achieve that. 

12B Media - Our lesson times, most of which were used for editing

We have eight periods in a school day each lasting 40minutes and some of these periods are free periods. We all edited in as many free periods as we could. The edit schedule helped us to be efficient with our editing as any of us could come in and work on the project rather than waiting until all three of us were available. This helped us spread out the editing evenly and everyone had a go at everything.

Window where you view your rushes

Timeline

Window where you can effects to your shots.

What we have achieved so far:

• We've cut our sequence together and made sure we have perfect match-on-action on each shot so as not to break the continuity of the sequence
• We've added in our chosen music track "The Life of Riley" a copyright free music track which we downloaded from a website called Incomptech 

• We've overlayed our titles onto our shots but we now have to add transitions to them so that they don't just appear. We made the titles on Adobe Premiere Pro and changed the font from the rough cut as we felt the new font fit with our genre better than the previous one. 

• We've added the sound effects of an alarm clock at the beginning and also a notification sound for a text message.

What went well:

• We are happy with the way our opening sequence is looking so far, the continuity and the pace is so much better than with the test shoot. 
• The new shots that we added work well and help connote our genre well.
• The feedback from all three staff members were positive apart from a few constructive criticisms which we can fix during our back up shoot.
• We have showed it to other members of our class and it has made them laugh so that made us very happy.
• The music track fits in well with the opening sequence and the titles look a lot better

What we need to work on:

• For the back up shoot we decided we do not have to re-film many shots as we are happy with the majority of the shots
• We are re-filming the shot of him putting on his shorts which gives us an opportunity to correct the mistake of him wearing Calvin Klein boxers and replacing it with just plain boxers. Initially we wanted to try and buy some Superhero boxers but we had limited time and the delivery would not have reached us in time. 
• We are going to re-film all the outdoor shots because as I mentioned previously there is a lot of background noise from the wind and since the weather is supposed to be a lot sunnier this weekend, hopefully, we can overcome this issue. 
• We have to rewrite and re-record our voiceover because it doesn't fit well with our sequence now and there are loads of gaps where nothing is being said.

Construction Post 3: Reflections on our Main Shoot Session

What were our priorities for this shoot?

• Re-film all the shots and also film all the new shots
• Make sure the 30 degree rule and 180 degree rule were not broken whilst filming
• Get the framing and composition of each shot right

My group and I have filmed our footage for the real cut of our opening sequence during our main shoot session on Saturday 28th February.

Here are pictures which show all three of us operating the camera. I was shooting the shot of Mario picking out his clothes, Angela was filming the bath robe shot and Mario was filming some pans of his bedroom.

                                      

Here are two pictures from our main shoot which shows what our actors looked like in their costumes:

Behind the scenes: 

This is the date shot showing the conversation between Bella and Guy behind Bella's shoulder so that we can see his facial expressions: 

This is the date shot showing the conversation between Bella and Guy over Guy's shoulder so that we can now see her facial expressions and her reaction to seeing him:

I was operating the camera for both of these shots and it was so hard to get the framing right for both of them as it was an over the shoulder shot and I had to ensure continuity wasn't broken and had to film over the opposite shoulder of both of them. I filmed over Aybala's right shoulder and over Mario's left shoulder. Angela was on the clapperboard and also directing the shot. We now have to edit these both together during our edit sessions this week. We plan to edit them together to form shot reverse shots so we can see both of their faces during the conversation.

What went well?

• We managed to work efficiently as a group and listened to each other and worked to each others strengths and weaknesses.
• We filmed all of the shots that we wanted to and also filmed some extra shots just in case we wanted any additional shots.
• We were happy with the way they looked in terms of lighting, framing and composition.

What could have gone better?

• Some of the audio in the outdoor shots were quite bad as it was really windy that day and there is a lot of background noise in the shots. We will re-shoot all the outdoor shots during our back up shoot because the weather on that day is supposed to be a lot sunnier and a lot less windier. 
• In the shot where Guy is putting on his shorts, he is wearing Calvin Klein boxers. We feel like Calvin Klein's are too fashionable for our character and doesn't fit in with the rest of his costume so we will have to re-film this too during our back up shoot. 
• The weather was really bad when we were filming as it was very windy and it kept raining so we had to try and adapt our schedule around that by filming out outdoor shots when it wasn't raining. 

Construction post 2: Our Post-production Kit

This is the edit station we will be working on to edit our opening sequence together. There are two screens which means we can edit on one screen and watch the sequence on the other one. This will enable us to edit efficiently and watch the sequence as we are editing to see if everything works well together.

The programme we will use to edit our sequence together is called Adobe Premiere Pro. It allows us to create our opening sequence on a timeline and also add voiceover, music, SFX and also overlay titles. We can also adjust the look of each shot by adjusting things like brightness and contrast to give us a professional looking finish to our opening sequence. Here is a screenshot from when we used this programme for our test shoot:

We used a separate microphone to record our voiceover. We will use Mario's voice as he is also speaking the dialogue so it will be essential that we also use him for the voiceover. During our rough cut one of the issues we faced was getting other people in the room to be quiet in order to record a smooth sounding voiceover and avoid any unwanted background noise. When recording for our main cut we will have to ensure that no one else is in the room in order to achieve our desired voiceover.

Along with that we will use a programme called Adobe Audition to record the voiceover on. 

Construction Post 1: Our Production Kit

For our main shoot we will be using the same equipment that we used for our test shoot. This will make handling the equipment easier as we have already used it once before and know how to use each piece of equipment properly.

This is the camera we will use:  

We also used a clapperboard which made it easier to cut shots and put them together as the actors can walk onto shot and the action only starts when the director says action.