Preliminary Task - Continuity Exercise

Below is our preliminary task - continuity exercise we did back in September 2012.

Final Cut - Feedback: The Untold

I thought I'd make a little Prezi 'Prezentation' (see what I did there?) on the feedback another Media Studies group gave mine and Farhath's opening sequence. The comments are good and really helped us look at things different and take into account how another person would view our sequence without being bias and noticing all the tiny things me and Farhath would of. So here it is, my little Prezi:

Over all the group gave our opening sequence a 7 our of 10 which is pretty darn good considering the amount of time we had. :)

Very, very rough cut.

Today was the deadline for our rough cut to be finished. I felt extremely under pressure as I was on my own today and had to edit it by myself. It wasn't even started. The trouble of not getting it all filmed in time and having to dip into editing time to film the last bit did hold us back; but i've managed to get it up to scratch with the extra time put into it.

The included video is our rough cut. It's very rough as you can probably tell and a lot of tweaking is in order but I'm pleased with how it's going. Things to include in the final cut are as follows:

• Music
• Titles
• Sound effects
• Visual effects (colour changing)

We also got to take a look at the rest of the groups work today which was exciting. I was looking forward to seeing where everyone else was at as we were a little behind schedule but i found out that not everyone is done either and there's still lots to be finished on everyones behalf. 

I volunteered to be the first to show my rough cut; I felt like I didn't have much to lose or feel anxious about as I already knew it was in a lot of progress and I spotted more errors than everyone else did. I decided to stay in the room while my work was critiqued as I love to hear feedback on things. It wasn't all bad and was mainly positive which was nice to hear. Some of the comments are:

Over all I thought the day went pretty good. I got as much as done as I could in the time given and I felt that it's a serious step in the right direction. Below you'll find our very rough cut of our opening sequence: The Untold

FINAL SHOOT, YESSSSSSSSSSS.

That's a wrap! It's finally the end of filming and I couldn't be more happy or as equally sad. I've had such a blast shooting with Sam and Farhath it hasn't felt like college work at all. The final shoot was just as much fun as the other times and in some ways more as we knew today would be the last time us three would get together, drive about in Sam's little red car and pretend he's a murderer. 

It started off with us shooting his hand washing scene once again as in the previous time our camera decided to die on us and it was a shame...r.i.p. 

Anyway, so we got that all done and dusted and quickly moved on to filming the very last parts of out movie - by this time we we're all pretty stoked and very tired. I haven't had such a busy week in a long time and the buzz of finally getting things finished was definitely in the air!

We arrived at the beach location, I don't know if I mentioned before but the reasoning behind this location is for Charles's (Sam) retreat, a thinking space if you will. Some class members we're slightly confused by his choice of location so I wanted to clear that up, hah. 
So we arrived at Birnbeck Pier and we got some nice stills of the location and some silent panning shots to see how they would look later on in editing. Today was also the day that Farhath would make her big debut as an Oscar winning actress, so that was exciting. :p

We spent a little while chilling in Sam's car, going over what to fil, how to go about it, how long certain shots would take and also keeping an eye on daylight - we needed a generous amount. 
In the car we got Farhath all dolled up, mascara going awol down her cheeks, looking seriously p-off at Charles and suffering from sleep deprivation and decided on that note it was time to get on out there and wrap this puppy up.

Below are some screen shots from our shoot, looking through these doesn't half put a smile on my face; especially Farhath's fabulous make up (I am an artist.)

I'd like to end this little post with a video Farhath quickly put together of us vlogging on day 1 of shooting, I thought it'd be nice to end our final shoot post with a little blast from the past.

07/03/13

Today is the day me and Farhath hopefully get all filming complete. We're hoping to film the outlying shots of Charles washing blood from his hands, Farhath's death and Charles exiting the building. Unfortunately today I feel we won't be able to complete it as the weather is a bit drab and our time might already be taken up by other things. Hopefully though we can squeeze in a trip to the beach to film reaction shots and the final driving off scene.


We're behind on editing out rough cut which is a little worrying, but I think we can get it back up to speed with making lots of time to edit out of lessons as well. Also getting filming done today will be a large help.

Our deadline for our rough cut is Tuesday 12th and then the final cut has to be done by the 14th Thursday. It's a tight schedule but fingers crossed on getting things done in time. Today I'm going to really push getting the filming finished in time.

Day 4: A Little Bit Mad...

Day 4 of filming, Monday 4th March.

Today was a bit of a late start for me as I had lots of trouble sleeping and the day seemed to drag. I came into college at 2:45pm to film with Sam and Farhath - our mission today was to get as much done as possible, hopefully even finish!

But, alas we didn't get it all completed but we got some vital footage captured. We filmed the argument scene between Charles and the young woman (now played by Farhath.) It was very trial and error and we had lots of times where we would all burst into laughter at how 'serious' the situation had to be. 

Although we laughed a whole lot we did get things done and it was one of the most enjoyable moments in the past week of filming. 
In total we spent 4 and a half hours in college filming, it felt like forever as we was cooped up in one room trying to perfect everything. 

It was a little difficult directing by myself but I did enjoy it. I found propping the camera up on the tripod was a little annoying as it kept becoming unlevelled and shaky, but after a few weak takes I finally got it looking a lot better. 

Below are some screenshots from the shoot:

 

Above is some messing about with lighting and colour balance. As you can tell, the original picture on top is quite yellow and orange whereas the lower image is more toned down and has cooler tone to it. it doesn't look so artificial. While viewing some of the footage we chose to change the colour balance to the cooler tones as we felt it looks more natural but on some shots it look way to washed out so we kept it original. Hopefully during final but editing we can edit it so it blends more naturally.

 The last shot of the young woman and Charles's conflict was the hardest to film. we had to take several takes to get it right as Farhath had to do some 'stunts' and after a few it gets a bit painful. But she was a good sport and kept going till we got a good shot. 


Conclusion:

I felt today went really well. We got a lot done and had a good time filming so it didn't feel like work or something we had to do. We covered a lot of ground and got a variety of shots to play with while editing. Over all another productive day!

Updates!

I have no creative streak in me right now to come up with a decent, quirky post title so this will do...

I thought I'd do a little update on the current circumstances with our opening sequence. So, quite a few things have changed.

First off, our actress Vickie who was going to play the 'young woman' is now unable to shoot any days with us. Which as you can imagine left me and Farhath in a bit of a jam as we had no back up...(learning from mistakes...) but thankfully, Farhath being the top banana she is and also having the advantage of Drama in her repertoire filled in the gap. 

Also dates for filming have moved and we've had to reschedule the argument scene and all the interior shots to next week, cutting it quite fine as our deadline for filming is Tuesday 5th. But hopefully we'll get it all done and dusted. 

We;ve also had to change location for Charles's house. We were all unable to get our own homes available to film in due to many reasons so we switched it up a bit in a way so we can use the college. We decided to go with Charles at work on one of the Macs and the young woman enters his work place and confronts him. We think it will work and flow well with the rest of the story and hopefully we can show this through editing.

It's been a very stressful but exciting and equally fun week. Having to re do shoots was a pain but it needed to be done. 
Me and Farhath also decided to take a couple days break and to spend the time de-stressing as well as planning a solid schedule for Monday and Tuesday. I think the break in between will be super helpful as things we're getting a bit much while filming and we wasn't taking time to concentrate on the little things. 


I'll be posting some screen shots from our second shoot soon as well as our behind the scenes footage.