Post Production

When it came to finally putting our footage onto the computer i think that this was the hardest thing to do really because for some reason our computers only let one camera allow you to capture items on to the computer, so when we got the capture camera (after getting the wrong one first and wondering why it did not work for ages) we set to work trying to capture the film footage onto our computer but again that would be to easy so the computers started freezing up and we weren't able to capture all of our footage in one lesson so that meant that it went over into another lesson however that was when we started to use adobe premiere to start editing our shots. Obviously when shooting most of our shots we gave extra time either side so when it came to editing we could get the continuity editing to a tee however when we were filming on of our shots there was a fade setting that had been turned on, so the camera had a natural fade in and out at the start of one of our shots this meant that we had to cut it out as most of it was missed because of the fade. Withe the editing we only used a few effects on adobe such as giving it a fade to black at the end and we also decided to make the whole film black and white because it gave it more a sense of tension and of curiosity about what's going on. For us this still wasn't enough so we set about searching over the internet for soundtracks and we looked at a few but we did not like them until we found a whole sound track that suited our film to a tee and as soon as we put that in we realized that it made our movie a lot better and more believable as an audience. We also gave adobe after effects a go to make a moving title sequence however it was very slow to render on our computer and when we got it to finally render as it was completing our computer decided to reset it's self so with the time we had left we thought we would just add an ordinary title to the start and overall it came out quite well.

Production

As soon as we had our storyboard finished we started off getting ready for the filming. We set up the tripods for the camera's and the camera's themselves and went to the scene of our first shot. because of not having enough time in the lesson to get all the shots done we decided to do all of our outside shot's on the same day so as not to get different weather conditions and lighting it would be to much hassle and it worked out quite well seeming as our first and last shot sequences were outside so getting them done was useful so we could work on the other shots not as hurried as we could have been. Overall the filming went quite well as we did not have many disturbances, we did want to experiment with our shots so we used the wheels on the bottom of the tripod so we could have our tracking shot. This had to be done at least three times as it is hard to judge the speed the character is walking at and to keep their face in the same frame area of the camera shot. I also think we planned our shot reverse shot speaking scene quite well as we decided that the best way not to muck up positioning was that the actors just stayed in the same spot and we moved the camera around them. For our speaking shots we used a microphone which we had a few troubles with at first as we could not find the right boom arm clip and the headphones didn't work, but in the end we managed to find a microphone that fitted the clip and some half working headphones so we managed in the end. Also we found that we needed to add in some extra speaking shots which we didn't have on the storyboard as we wanted to have an extra shot in the conversation so a to get a view of both the characters faces rather than only seeing one of the faces, it also gave it more a sense of reality as you could finally see that they were both stood there interacting. If we had a bit more time i would have preferred to do quite a few more hots and possibly extend the scenes a bit more especially the speech scene's and maybe have a noticeable match on action shot but these are things we can make sure to do thoroughly next time.

Pre Production

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I have already explained what we had to do for our preliminary task however this is how we set up from the start about how we were going to do the whole task. To start off with we all had a pretty vague idea that the theme f the short clip would have the element of fear and surprise, but also a sense of mystery as you do not end up seeing who is following the character's. So with this idea in mind we started to design our story boards which we drew the pictures of the shots we anted and then we annotated them for example when we had a close up shot we wanted it because it could show the anxiety and tense expressions on our characters face. We also wanted to have a few high angle shots like a cctv camera however we knew we would not be able to have the equipment to get to the height we needed so instead we planned other shots to give the same effect. I think we had some good points in our storyboard as we were lucky as a group to have one of our members to be quite good at drawing depth perception and scenes so we didn't have any trouble putting our visualizations onto paper, and we annotated them like i said the way we would want the audience to feel and how they would interpret the shot. However i don't think we tool into account that we might have needed to add more in as we just stuck with our first storyboard so next time we might go back over our storyboard and see if we can add things in there rather than having the trouble of thinking of what more to do when filming. During the design of the story board we found ourselves going to the places where we were going to shoot a recce so we could get a real sense of what it looked like so when we drew a shot we good easily see the shot when we came to shoot it whether it would be a tracking shot or a close up. In the process of making the storyboard we had to make sure we were following certain rules before drawing our shots for example on our conversational shot reverse shots we made sure that we sticked to the 180 degree rule and also when doing one of our first drawing's of the start shots we thought it would be good to get a different view on the same area so we had two shots quite close in each others view but again we followed the 30 degree rule so the shots weren't to similar.

This is our group coming up with the shots on our storyboard where we also wrote the captions for what the shot was meant to mean, chris was our artist as he has very perceptive ways of drawing so he can give the drawing depth.

Brief of Preliminary Task

We were given our first task which involved us using the skills we have learnt so far. First we had to make a storyboard for a short film trailer of any genre and then we had to go film it. We were in groups of three and we filmed it in our school. Once we finished filming we are going to have to edit the film and all the shots we used using continuity editing. In our film we had to include certain shots such as, Shot, Reverse shot, match on action, and Close up shots.

Media Help

This is a useful website i have found to help with my media and have shared with the other groups-http://www.mediacollege.com/

A Wide shot image

Various camera shots and Techniques

I have just learned a wide variety of different types of shots that are used during filming. To me this was really usefull as I like films and when i watch them i try to imagine why the camera is doing what it is doing and now that i know what some of these shots are and why they are used I can understand the films abit more and the director. These are just some of the shots I learnt about:
Cross cutting- actions are linked so you can go back in time from something that someone is possibly reminiscing about and you can go back to that time period as well, it is a very smooth transition.
Cut In- Cut Away: Usually from a distance shot to a close up like having a shot of a car in a car park and then going inside the car. The conversation could start before the shot goes into the car.
Dissolve- Where the current shot blends into the next one so the transition is really smooth.
Establishing/Re-establishing shot- This is when you are have a shot on someone and then you keep the shot on the person but it shows the rest of the scene so it still has the person in the frame but is re-establishing the area.
Eye line Match- Is a shot that makes the audience know where they are actually looking at so for example if someone was looking at a picture it would show here staring and then what she was looking at and then you might have a close-up of what the object of the stare is to show precision of what the person is looking at.
Shot/Reverse shot- this is when if someone is talking you would see a woman talking to the other man and then vice versa the woman still talking to the man but from the man’s side of the view.
Graphic match- is when two shots are joined together and the first one has same size shape of the object in the second shot that they can fluidly join together.
Wide Shot-The person takes up the full frame, or at least as much as comfortably possible.

Greetings

Hi i’m Isaac I am taking media at AS level in ringwood school. So far we have learnt different techniques about filming such as the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is applied to filming which means that when filming or taking a picture if you take the picture looking at them head on it seems boring and unreal however if you use the rule of thirds you imagine a grid on what your are looking at(a 3×3 grid)and if you position the object on the lines the picture or film has more depth and interest.