Tuesday 5 April 2011

Evaluation.



Feedback for our final film.

'The use of different angles really put me on edge'
'It's pretty good. You could of put some effects onto the titles though'
'The music was really eerie and the dim lighting fitted well into the theme of the film'
'I like that you've used a good quality camera, it makes it seem more realistic'



I was happy with the feedback we received from our audience as this is what we were trying to achieve with re-shooting and using different angles during the opening. I was also happy as we did have difficulty finding a piece of music which we believed fitted the opening well as so I was happy to see that people also thought that the music went well with our media product. Overall I was happy with the feedback however I don't believe that we would of got the same positive feedback on our rough cut and therefore I'm glad that we re-shoot at the end in order to incorporate the different use of camera angles. I agree with the comment that we could have put some effects onto the titles however, I think that due to the genre of the film it didn't necessarily need fancy titles and that the simple titles work well for the thriller/horror genre as they are straightforward and not too fancy. I would like to see what the film would of looked like with different titles though and I believe that it was a good point to raise. 

Monday 4 April 2011

Final product - 'Commitment'

Editing for the final time.

Today we decided to edit the footage we had shot on Saturday and incorporate it into our opening. We managed to finish editing within our double media period and I was surprised with the amount of work that we had completed. We not only completed the work but I believe that we completed it well as our opening still smooth and flows well without, this was an issue that I was slightly worried about before adding our additional shots as I wasn't sure if the piece would flow as well as before but actually using the extra shots in order to break up the sequence actually made it appear more of a thriller genre, as instead of being narrative the whole way through and simply following the character down the opening was slightly broken up and therefore left an element of mystery I believe that this goes well with our thriller horror as by breaking up shots is more likely to leave the audience wondering what is going to happen next rather than being able to see where exactly our character is walking to.


I am proud with what we have achieved and I believe that we have now completed our opening for good. I am pleased with this as our final deadline is Thursday. Now I am able to focus on making sure my blog is completely up to date and I am able to find out our audience feed back in order to evaluate our work properly. There is much I would do different if given the chance again however I am happy that it is now over as it was much harder than we anticipated despite being told numerous times.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Deadline

As a group we were unsure if we were able to hand in our coursework on our deadline however we were able to complete this dead line to our surprise. We felt good about this however our teacher gave us our feedback and it wasn't as good as expected, as this was a chance for him to see our work he gave us the chance to add a few shots.


We decided to change a few shots and re-shoot on Saturday. We decided after talking to our teacher that in order to push our coursework into a level three - level four we would need to add in different shots from various angles instead of having the camera on the floor for a large number of shots and instead incorporate some mid level and high level shots. We found it difficult in parts to use the camera for shots like high angles as we didn't know what looked the best and what didn't as it was the first time we had taken many of our new shot ideas but actually once we tried it a few times and watched it back we were able to see quickly where we were going wrong and what we needed to change in order to improve the shot. I believe that we were able to come to this conclusion much faster than if this was our first time using the equipment at all as we now have a great knowledge and therefore we were able to think of different ways in which to go about each of the shots and were able to come to a conclusion about what would look good and what wouldn't.


We also had to change the parts we already had my breaking some of them up so that instead of constantly panning along the ground in order to follow the characters movements we were shooting from one side of the room and moving to the other to show that he was walking towards are certain direction or was walking past certain points. By doing this we are adding more and more variety of shots and our teacher has told us that by doing this we have the potential to push our grade up further.


I believe that with the shots we have taken this weekend that our coursework should go up another level as we know use a variety of different shots rather than staying safe with the shots we knew how to do rather than thinking what would look better and trying different things. I also believe that our work in now deserving to go up a lot higher in marks as we have done what we have been told to do in order to improve it and I believe that we have carried it out well.

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Filming establishing shots.

The filming of our establishing shots for our sequence went well today. It took us much longer than anticipated just like our other attempts at filming. This was mainly due to the fact that we hadn't tried these shots before so we took various from different angles in order to have various shots to work with and to include within our footage. We realised as we went along also how certain shots which we had planned on using wouldn't work and instead we needed to do other shots from different angles, our advantage this time was that we had used the equipment previously and were now a lot more confident with using it and were able to try different shots as we now had more experience with the camera and we're starting to learn what does and doesn't work and how to make the shots look better.


I am now beginning to add the footage to what we have already edited in order to see what it looks like with our new shots in between to establish the changes in the rooms. I have added in the shots and now need to cut them down so that they fit properly but I am already very happy with the establishing shots and I am glad that our teacher pointed it out to us because now our opening already looks so much better and now that we have changed it I can see how previously it actually made very little sense unlike now where the footage flows more and is easier for an audience to understand. I am leaving the titles for our group to edit though although I am changing the way in which they are laid out on a black screen and instead putting them over our shots which allows us with more time during the footage so we are able to lay down the new shots. I am leaving the font to the other two members of my group as firstly that is one of  Sareenas job to find different fonts and choose them according to our genre and also because I believer the font is something the whole group should have a say on. Whilst editing I have also listened to our choice in music over and over as it plays whilst I edit the clips and I have decided that it needs to be changed straight away as when listening to it the music has a very oriental sound and I don't believe that it goes with the opening and I know that the others agree that the music isn't a perfect match so we now also have to find some new music to include. Overall I am happy with the progress we have made in such a short space of time however I would change the way we have gone about this if I was able to as I don't believe our time at the start was organised very productively due to several reasons and now that has had a larger impact than we had imaged on the amount we needed to do so quickly despite the teachers reminders.