Editing our film

My group and I wanted to start editing and uploading our film onto the school computers as they are the only computers with the correct editing software. As it is currently half term, we had some difficulty with doing this as the classrooms were locked and so we did not have access to the facilities we needed. This means we have the raw footage of our film but we can not edit it until the half term is over. We will start editing as soon as we arrive back in school and we have the correct equipment and software.

Diary of filming

My group and I had many things to consider for the shooting of our film such as;

• The Weather. We chose to film some of our movie outside so we had to check the weather forecast frequently for good weather.
• Dates and Times. We had to choose appropriate days and times which was suitable for all group members plus acting crew.
• Camera angles. When we arrived at our filming location we had to decide which camera angle we could capture the action best in.
• Battery Life. We underestimated the time we had that we could use the camera before it ran out of battery so we had to find a plug socket to charge it up which wasted valuable filming time.
• Costumes and Props. We filmed the scenes over the course of two days and so all costume, props and the setting had to remain the same to keep continuity.
• The Public. We filmed in an outdoor public area and so we had many people walk through the film shots unintentionally and ask us about what we were doing.  

We encountered many problems during filming in some of the categories above. We had to rethink carefully about many of the shots we wanted to shoot and had to take a break from filming to charge up the camera battery. We considered a lot of this beforehand but we still encountered and resolved a few problems.

Photos of filming

                            









These are photos taken during the production of our film. The locations of these photos are from the board room scene and the free running scene in Leatherhead Town. Cast and crew were photographed during filming. We can see some of the camera work used and some of the possible ideas we had during production. Props can be seen in these photographs along with settings and costume. We had to ensure that all characters wore the same clothes all throughout the days when we filmed to ensure continuity.

Animatic

Analysis of Animatic

My group and I created a storyboard of the first 2 minutes of our film. We then took pictures of each picture of the storyboard and uploaded them to the computer. We added the pictures into the editing software we use called premiere. We then ordered the pictures into the correct sequence along the timeline. We then cut and extended the time of how long each picture would play for, relevant to how long we want that scene to last when actually filming.
          We added music over the top. The music is called Slam by Pendulum. This music is copyrighted and we will not be able to use copyright music in our real film but we decided to use this piece of music in our animatic as it was catchy, upbeat and went with the idea of our film. We will have to use uncopyrighted music in our real film. We found it easier to find copyrighted music we liked as copyrighted music is more widely distributed and easily available to get hold of as opposed to uncopyrighted music. The music we have fades into the animatic as opposed to just starting to play as we want to increase tension by increasing the music slowly in the animatic. We will most likely do something similar in our real film.  
          We added editing titles and production company titles in a similar sequence to that of a real film as we wanted the animatic to be as close as possible to showing a resemblence to a real film. The titles fade in using different animations like fade in and compress. We wanted the titles to be introudced into the film so the audience are aware they are there but also slightly unnoticable so the audience can focus on the action. We only had titles in the first 15 -20 seconds of our animatic.
         We used slide transitions inbetween scenes as to make the audience notice the scene has changed and the setting is different. The editing techniques used were appopriate and suitable for our film. We made sure that they were subtle but so the audience notices a change inbetween scenes.

changes/problems

originally we were going to do a horror film but we decided to do a action movie because we thought it would be more original and more interesting to make. as we discused action it became more clear that we had a lot more ideas for that genre. as we when into more depth, our ideas all lead to one idea 'organisation 13'. we thought it would look alot more realistic, having a group of spies than having a group of vampires as the make up would be hard enough to do once, but trying to do the same thing over and over again would be very hard and waste a lot of time.
for the sound track on our animatic we looked through a range of copyright and non-copyright music we were looking for spy type music or epic music but not over the top music. we found 5 or 6 we liked but we choose slam by pendulum  it fit the animatic really well. we didnt find that much non-copyright music we liked. hopefully we can find something like slam so it fit the film well.
we had two locations to choose from leatherhead or ashtead. we decided leatherhead was a lot better than ashtead as the high street had alot more places to run around in and it gave a more realistic feel. we decided to choose from these locations because they were close to home and we knew them well so we could get the best places to film and the best angles.

8th February 2011 Tuesday

Today we stayed after school to check out the board room for our gangs meeting in our opening two minutes. We took some pictures of the room with lights on, lights off, blinds open, blinds closed etc. Were most likely going to use the room as it’s the best we’ve been able to find so far, but we will need to darken the room up a little as it looks to light.

                          

What we need to do. . .

• Cover up colourful notice boards.
• Clear away all papers/ folders etc.
• Make the room as dark as possible.
• Covering windows from outside maybe.

Basically we need to transform a teachers meeting room into an assassins board room.

8th February 2011 Tuesday

Today we all stayed after school to work on our storyboard and animatic together for our blogs.

• We continued with drawing out our storyboard and we spoke about where we should take it, the best filming location for the shot and things like this.
• We started taking photos of the storyboard and our animatic is now in process.
• We havne quite finished our storyboard but its almost there.

4th February 2011 Friday

Today my group and I went out to the cinema to see a movie produced by James Cameron called ‘Sanctum’.

·        We watched the movie and then discussed it as a group talking about the good parts; bad parts and sections we felt could have been removed.

·        We found the film quite intense as people kept dying horrible drowning deaths throughout the film, plus time was running out for what ever remaining characters were left which added to the tension.

·        We thought the film was good but not at James Cameron’s high standard. It was predictable throughout but not a complete waste of time.

26th January 2011 Wednesday

Today my group and I went out scouting for locations for our opening 2 minutes,

·      We stayed around the leatherhead town area searching for alleys and small-secluded areas.

·      We took photos of three alleys which we think could become useful, two of which are fairly busy and in constant use which may make them harder to use, the third one is smaller and leads to nowhere but it fits in really well with the storyboard.

·      Also in our opening 2 minutes, we need a good amount of space to do a chase scene.

We’ve uploaded the pictures we took onto our blogs.

Soundtrack!

In a previous post i said that we would use non-copyright music for our final piece but we have decided to use copyright music for our animatic as that is allowed . The track we have chosen is called Slam by Pendulum, it starts off at a slow pace and then speeds up as it plays. I think this would be a really good track to use because it sets the pace of the scene and what the film be like; an action packed film full of adrenaline filled chases....... or at least that's what we're aiming for!

For our final piece, unfortunately, we will have to use non-copyright music which I don't think will be as good but as a group I'm sure we will be able to find a suitable track to use

Pendulum's album with Slam on it!

target audience

Gender: Boy
Age: 17
Favorite music genre: R&B
Favorite film genre: Action
Hobbies/intrestes: Hockey
Trips to the cinema (per month): 3-4
Amount of dvds owned: about 100

February Research and Planning Mark

Good research into different film openings (need to link to what you have learned. Some good audience profiling.
There is good organisation of actors, locations, costumes and props.
Moodboard etc is there but not explained.
It feels as though in changing our mind over the film planning still has a long way to go.
At the moment your mark is 11/20 which is a D because of what is missing (see below).

Target: Shotlists and storyboarding / animatic

Possible Filming Locations For Opening 2 Minutes

Questionaire- Preference of film genre

Questionaire- Do you watch a variety of genres?

Males

Females

Questionaire- Do you buy a lot of DVD's?

Males

Females

Questionnaire

1. How old are you?

……………………………….

2. Are you male or female?

………………………………

3. What’s your favourite film genre?

……………………………….

4. How many times do you go to the cinema a month?

……………………………….

5. Who’s your favourite actor?

……………………………….

6. What’s your favourite film?

……………………………….

7. Do you watch a lot of different genres?

………………………………

8. Do you buy a lot of DVDs?

……………………………….

9. Do you like happy endings or mysterious endings?

…………..…………………

10. Do you like hybrid genres?

………………………………

11.     What’s the best action film you’ve seen?

………………………………

12.     Do you like to know what’s going on all the way threw the film or do u like to find out at the twist at the end?

..........................................................................................

Audience Research

Audience Research

This is a table showing the percentage of age, gender and class of people that went to see Hitman when it was realeased in cinemas. I chose this film as it relates to the film we are planning to shoot and we wanted to see which target audience it would most likely appeal to. As we can see that hitman was a very male dominated film with 65% of the audience being male. Hitman was viewed mostly by 15-24 year olds but also appeals to the older audience of 25-34 and 35-44. As we can see, the majority social class that watched hitman was C1 and C2 which are labelled as people with intermediate occupations, small employers and non professional self employed.

Media Diary. 18th January 2011 Monday

Today my group and I started on our research and planning sheet, in our two media lessons, this included...

• We completed our new action movie mood board of explosions, great action films and well known action movie actors.
• We started research on props, actors and costume for the movie.
• We need a soundtrack to the clip, so we’ve started looking at sound for the first time with our new action theme in mind on non-copyrighted sites.
• We’ve also started looking at things similar to what we hope to achieve for example movie trailers and books. One of us found a great trailer which relates to the brief storyline that we’ve come up with so far, its called The Tournament and one of us has read a book which might be good research called Scorpia.

We uploaded the action movie mood board onto all of our blogs.