Editing after our second attempt.

The problem which we had faced with the Mac and the conversion of files was not able to be resolved over the half term for several reasons, firstly, the teacher did not get the email which was sent to him during the half term to inform him about the situation with the mac. Secondly the problem on the Mac was unable to be resolved and we instead learnt that we needed a newer Mac in order to convert the files. The editing which wasn't done during the half term because of this issue did in fact set us back massively in terms of being able to re shoot any thing else that needed further changes. At the time however it did not feel like a massive set back however if I look back in terms of what could of been changed during this time there was a lot more that we could have accomplished I believe in terms of different shots. 

Editing the footage took a lot more time than I thought it was going to take as well, as editor for the group I found that it was often very hard to match different shots and it was also very hard to always keep the timing correct. Other problems I encountered were to do with the different transitions between shots and the lack of knowledge in terms of what transitions to use. Now I know I should of gone to the teacher in order to have gotten help with these such problems, however, I do believe that by doing it alone and figuring out how to use Premier Pro alone did help me in terms of learning how to edit footage and I believe that it will help greatly next time I need to edit footage. 

The footage I had edited I believe was good compared to the previous footage we had laid out and once I really started to edit the film begun to take shape and it was really great to watch the footage we had filmed come together into a film. I did get help on the footage from the other two members of school when taking the Mac in, in order to receive my groups opinion on what I had edited so far and if they wished to have anything changed like the speed, transitions, music and titles. 

I believe that my editing was good for a first proper attempt at it, I learnt a lot and am now able to edit even further. I do however think that there is still stuff which needs changing and we will be looking at this with the teacher in order to see what we need to do in order to change the footage as currently it seems as we are missing something.

Filming - second attempt.

Today we've filmed all of our footage again at Alexandra's house and this time we are much more positive about the footage. As this was our second attempt we were able to learn from previous mistakes and were able to make sure things such as continuity, was correct in each shot. We also were able to learn on the technical side of things how to use the equipment more efficiently so things such as the wonky camera angel were resolved using a different tri-pod and learning how to make sure it was at equal footing so the shot wasn't wonky.


After spending almost seven to eight hours filming this time I believe that we have taken much more care and consideration over what we were doing and hopefully it will mean that the outcome will be of much better quality than before. We have however come into an issue with the Mac we have taken out from the school in order to edit as we thought that to have a better quality of film we would use Alexandra's camera instead of the schools as this is exactly what another group have done with the same camera and we have seen how much the quality of their final footage improved. The problem however is that the Mac won't allow us to import the footage into quick time so that we are able to use it on premier pro and edit. This is due to the file format which on Alexandra's camera is AVI but for the mac we need MOV. Alexandra has emailed the teacher in hope that we are able to get a reply and hopefully we will be able to sort it out and edit before we get back to school otherwise this sets us back even further and will mean the amount we work will have to be double as we are wasting a lot of editing time during the week.

Re-shoot

Me and Alexandra sat down in order to look at the footage in order to see what needed to stay and what needed to go from the footage we had taken, this was mainly because Alexandra had previously looked at the footage on her own and was not completely happy. When we sat down and watched it I agreed with Alexandra that there was much that could be changed in order to produce a better quality of work. We realised that several things were wrong with the shots such as the movement of hands and feet which didn't match in each shot and therefore looked strange when laid out next to each other but also we realised that the shots were wonky and there was no way to change that other than to re-shoot. We have therefore decided that we are going to re-shoot all of the footage again on the 18th of February and hopefully by taking a mac home over half term will be able to get at least a good half if not all of the editing done over the week.

Filming - first attempt.

Filming for the first time was much harder than both Alexandra and I anticipated. First of all we had issues with where about in the room we wanted to shoot and this took us along time to figure out as we had to base it all around lights so that even if it got dark outside the lighting would stay the same in the footage in order to maintain a good quality. Secondly the setting up of the props took a lot longer than we thought as well as we assumed it would be easy to just put the props in place however we found that we didn't always agree with the positioning but also that when it came to filming certain things didn't look right and therefore we would have to change things around. The filming itself seems good so far on the camera but we have yet to put it onto a mac in order to see it laid out together. If we do have to film again then I believe that this first attempt has been positive as it will allow us to have more of an idea about what exactly we want from each shot as this time we were very unsure in places and had to take several shots from different angels rather than having one solid idea and this cost us a lot of time.

Planning - Animatic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CyzPlnAHQ&feature=player_embedded


Our anaimatic was made in order for us to be able to see what our final opening would look like whilst in sequence rather than just looking at the pictures on the page. I don't believe that our animatic gave us a great in site into our final project as the pictures didn't move as we want them to, however, it did allow us to see how areas of the footage may not work and how perhaps certain things will need to be changed during our filming.

Planning - Costumes

I have been trying to find information on different costumes for us to use in our opening however I found it very difficult to find different information about costumes without a story line.
We now know what we are doing and so now we have an idea for our costumes.


The male - Killer - The mise-en-scene of our two minute opening requires our characters to dress as if they're attending a wedding and therefore we have to dress the male character in a smart black and white suit in order to fit the wedding theme.


The female - Girls - We decided that we are going to shoot the girl in separate parts like the leg, arm and head. Because of this we only need to find a ring, vial and a shoe which will fit in with the idea of a wedding.


We hope that the items of clothing we have picked will match the mise-en-scene and therefore depict a wedding. Through research I discovered that there is not one specific style of outfits which is usually seen in a thriller but that isn't the outfits usually depict the story line and the roles the characters are meant to be playing within it. Therefore I believe that the costumes chosen will work well for our opening.

Planning - Our idea change.

After discussing with our teacher what we are planning on doing as our plot for our opening we discovered how it can be seen as very cliché and whilst we want to keep up the thriller conventions as well as the horror conventions throughout our opening we decided that we wanted to do this in a way which is less cliché as there has already been things like this which have been done. 


Our new idea is still going to be a young girl however we have now decided to go along with the idea of a wedding day. We are yet to complete the story board and understand fully what it is we wish to do exactly however so far we know that we are going to have the young girl dead and in different parts with her body kept in different places around the house. We decided that we are also going to keep the main character a male, we decided that we would stick with the usual idea of a male killer and a young girl, this has been done many times before however we decided that if we are wanting to do something which is less cliché we still have to keep up out conventions of a thriller in different aspects and I believe it is probably expected from the audience for the male to be killer as this is what they are use to seeing. 


We understand that it may be hard to shows only parts of the body around different areas of the house but this is something which we are going to tackle when it comes to shooting and we will start deciding how to hide different body parts whilst we create our story board for our new idea.