Evaluation 1st Term

The first term is over. It is the half time of our production, we have to have finished our film opening at the end of next term. We have two more months, which is not such a long time if you think about it.

Where are we? We have build up our own production company, done our Preliminary Task, planned our film opening, we have created a storyboard and filmed all our footage. We have started editing as well, we have the first 30 seconds finished. We have all our titles, we just have to them add them to our movie.

We don't have the music yet, we don't have edited the rest of our movie, we have some sound effects missing and the sound is not perfect as well. If the quality of the sound of our footage is not good enough or if you cannot hear what the actors say we will have to use sound over.

A long way to go but I think that all over all this was a successful first term and we will finish our film in time without big problems.

The team spirit in our company is big, the three of us are really working together as a team and helping out if someone needs help.

Not everything was perfect, we can work on our efficiency and try to use all the time we have. If we achieve this next term I am confident our project will be a success.

(Simon)

Main Task: Filming (5)

Today we finished the last part of filming for our main task. We filmed the last part of the two characters walking from Windmill and Duffus towards the bar and arriving outside. Character 1 and 2 put away their phones and meet outside to wait for the main character who comes out of the bar a moment later.

Filming was very successful today as we planned very well exactly what we were going to do before we went out and filmed. There was a small problem with traffic but that was easily overcome. We tried to keep good continuity throughout the whole of filming and i think we achieved this.

What we have learnt from filming is that if you plan well then it is easier to have a good piece footage. You need to organise yourselves and then you will be able to manoeuvre around any obstacle that comes your way.

This is our work complete for this term and when we come back we will focus on editing and putting in all the titles needed to make our main task look like a real opening of a film.

(James)

Main Task: Filming (4)

Today we filmed the scenes needed for the character walking the last part of the road from Windmill to outside the bar at G House. Filming today was not very successful as we didn't plan what we were going to do before we left the classroom. There were vehicles parked on the street that we realised would not be there tomorrow and this would affect our continuity.

Tomorrow will be better as we have planned what we are going to do and we will complete the final part of the footage needed for our main task.

(James)

Main Task: Music (1)

For our film we want to have music which represents the characters and the storyline. As our film is about three cool myserious guys we want to have upbeat myserious music which will bring the audience closer to understanding what the characters are like and what the storyline is all about.

We also want different genres of music to represent each individual character and the situation they are in. For example the scene of the bar, when the barmaid turns around to watch the man on the phone, we want to have intense music to represent this situation. The audience are not meant to know who she is, but they are supposed to feel intrigued about what she is doing in the bar apart from serving drinks.

I searched different websites to try and find free copyright music for our film that would match the genre we are aiming at. I evetually found a tune called "Three Hilts" whcih I think is great as it fits perfectly with our genre. When asking people in the class what genre are film was based on, they said are you trying to do a sort of Hustle, Oceans theme. This was exactly the sort of thing we are basing ours on. By these comments we are sure we have found the perfect piece of music.

(James)

Main Task: Editing (3)

In the last two double periods I carried on with editing our Main Task. We have finished now the first 30 seconds, but some bits in it are still missing. When I edited, Gabi and James looked for music and sound effects. We need two different sounds for the introduction logos of our companies, United Movies and Art Productions. We are still looking for the right track of music, which represents the genre and gives the right feeling to the viewer. This is very difficult, so we decided that we maybe should do our own music with Apple's Garage Band. This is a Mac based program but it is really easy to work with.

At the bottom there are three pictures of the progress of the editing. The problem is that we have to change the sequences so often, because we aren't completely sure in which order they should come on the screen. This takes a lot of time.

I also made a second Production Company Logo. This company is called United Movies, but they are a completely independent company to Art Productions, they just publish the video so their logo appears at the beginning as well.

(Simon)

Main Task: Titles (3)

Today I practised using Photoshop as I have not used it often and so i am still finding out about all the different things you can to, like using different styles and layers. I also experimented with different colours and fonts to try and find an effect that looked professional and well made.

For our film we want our finished titles to be the best thay can be and so to do this we have taken a lot of time to make them and evaluate them to see how we can make them even better.

(James)

Main Task: Titles (2)

I finished editing of the titles today. We are not sure if we want to have the black title (top picture) or the white one (lower picture). The titles have to be read easily and the feedback we got on them was that some people had problems with the black one, so I made the white one. We will figure out in the next lesson if that works better.

It is quite difficult to find a decent layout which everyone can read. I white text with a black stroke would be quite good probably, but I find that so boring so we decided that we try some other things first.



(Simon)

Main Task: Company Titles

Today as a result of the weather our group was unable to go out filming for our main task. We chose instead to work on editing the footage we've already taken and formulating the titles which we will use throughout the beginning of our film. So that all of our names were included in the titles, we chose certain 'jobs' for each of us to be connected to although everyone in our group has had a chance to perform each job.

The first three titles that show up in our film beginning are:
- Directed by... Gabi Paterson
- Executive Procucer James Grieve
- Created by... Simon Dethleffsen

We also decided that the other titles we will include are the names of the three main actors which appear in our film beginning. These titles will say:
- Vidur Bharatram
- Simon Dethleffsen
- James Grieve

While discussing how the last three titles stating the names of the actors would appear, we decided that when each actor appears on screen, we will edit the footage so that there is a still shot of them. When each still shot is on screen, the actors name will appear.

(Gabi)

Main Task: Editing (2)

Today I continued to edit our film opening. I am quite new to premier elements and so today I carried on editing our footage and also experimented with the different sound and video affects that you can add into the film to give it an overall higher quality.

The scenes I edited where of chatracter 2 walking down towards the bar and answering his phone. I cut in many different shots to make it look more professional and more interesting to the viewer.Editing does take a long time to do as you have to go through the scenes you have filmed and separate the good from the bad footage. You also have to take into acount the background sound and voice of the actors.

So far editing is going well as we filmed plenty of footage. We now need to move on to cutting in the different characters and creating shot reaction shot to show the conversation that is taking place.

(James)

Logo

The last time I worked on our prodution company logo. It has to look serious and the layout of it has to fit with the name of the company. For example you cannot name your company Colour Productions when the logo is just in black and white.

A legitimate logo was very important for us and we were inspired by some other logos.

This logo is very clear. one colour, people can see what it is about, the most important part is printed bold and the star represents the movie genre.

The Celsius films logo appears very legitimate, the picture fits with the name and this logo shows that a black and white logo can look good as well.

We found this logo as well. This looks good, but without the name people dont have an idea what company this logo uses. Also the business in which the company works is not clear to see.

The newest photoshop logo combines simple layout and clear genres. This is the icon of the CS 4 version which inspired the "Art" part of our logo as well.

In this logo there is a line between picture and text, we think this is a nice way of layout and we used this in our logo as well.

This is our final logo. It looks simple and legitimate. We were inspired by many logos but ours is still unique.

Company

Movies are produced by film companies so we decided to make ourselves a company. This makes our film and blog appears more serious and legitimate. For viewers the small graphics of Universal or other companys stand for high quality and we want to achieve the same.
We all work for the company in equal positions, everyone is as important as each other. Our company needs a name. We thought a bit about it and decided that Art Productions would be a good idea. The name sounds serious, the word Art represents creativity as well.
The company also needs a logo. our logo will be on top of our blog and will be in our film opening as well, therefore the viewer can see that averything belongs together. (Recognition value.)

(Simon)