Our film group consisted of 4 people, me (Adam Arnold), Lloyd, Tim and Vonnie. Each of our group had a different role: Sound – me Camera – Vonnie Director – Tim Editing – Lloyd
After getting our roles sorted out, we than found some examples of our given roles to post on the blog (U-19).
We spent the first few lessons deciding on the genre of our film; we eventually decided to do a fantasy film, very similar to Alice in Wonderland and Pan’s Labyrinth, which ended up as the basis for our film. I feel that this process went well compared to other groups.
After deciding what genre of film it would be, we set about designing a storyboard; the first step of this was to decide what scene of the film we would like to do, unanimously we had felt the “change world” scene was the one to do.
We than set about designing a storyboard, we decided to end our scene when she entered the new world, and start it just before the arrival of “the man in the hat”. This was than finished overnight by Vonnie, we spent the next lesson converting this into an animated video, we also had made a mood board, a mood board is a set of pictures that show us the mood of the movie we aimed to create, I made a piece of music to go with this as it gave me practice on garage band, this music was slow and eerie, as a basis for what I believed the piece to need, it worked well, but I had to see our film before I could decide on music.
Here came the biggest issue, finding the location.
We than discussed locations to go and shoot our film, and we decided to shoot just outside of Harston, down Button End, at about 2o’clock
Tim and I were lucky in this situation, because it was Tim’s house and general vicinity that we were shooting. I was lucky because my family grew up in that area and knew it well; therefore, it felt right to do it there.
Due to this being a slightly isolated location, Vonnie arrived 25 minutes late, this was caused by several factors, these included the location being difficult to find and the public transport running late, because Vonnie had managed to get the actors, but they had to come from far away.
We finally went out to start filming, this went well, we only had two different locations and they were close together and we had finished in a couple of hours, we seemed to work together perfectly fine.
Next lesson we than started piecing the clips together to make our rough cut, I believe this went well, but cannot be sure because at the time, me and Lloyd were starting on the music for the piece, this had to be a slow and simple. After some consideration we had decided that we needed extra footage, so Tim spent that night getting some extra footage. (the following is in the words of Tim, taken directly from the blog) that consisted mainly of footage, walking up to the roof top, the scenery around that particular roof. I took an estimated five minute of footage there. As well as that we choose that should also go down to the fields, to where we shot the last few scenes in our rough cut where the girl falls to. I was too shoot some scenes where you could see the surrounding area, so that we could incorporate it into the final rough cut. I spent another five minutes taking footage of that surrounding area. On my way back from collecting this footage, I heard some very clear and loud early morning birds, so I put my camera to record outside my house, for about two minutes to gain some good clear wildlife sound, the actual imagery that I recorded, would not be of use to the group as it does not work with anything else that we had caught on tape.
The sound of the piece was a simple, linear piece, this consisted of only a few instruments, mainly being Piano and Harp, this music was portrayed to make the scene creepier, and on this shot the music works well, the harps have just come in the tune with the piano, and this causes an eerie feel to the film,this point is also the "start of the change of worlds" and the music was supposed to emphasize this.
We than spent the next lesson converting and uploading the footage to use in the rough cut, but due to the size of the footage only managed to upload the bird noise footage that lesson, but the footage did fit quite nicely into our cut.
We than made a second rough cut that never managed to get posted on the blog; this had a few changes made to it, such as less shaky shots and again we agreed that there were still several improvements to be made.
Our next task was to come up with a name for our piece, some of our examples were:
Rabbit The crack in the line Final Dreams
Eventually we agreed on Final Dreams as the title for our piece, because it has a deep meaning, and has more to do with the film than we revealed.
We got to work on our final piece and finished that only just in time, we had to leave the lesson whilst the film was uploading, and it didn’t upload to the blog properly.
I feel that this went well overall, owing to having good, willing, hardworking members of the group and certain amounts of luck.
Below are some screenshots of the music in development
Timothy Pearson's evaluation of short film sequence:
Our sequence is set near the beginning of the film where our main character interacts with a character from the fantasy type world, and then the clip ends as she falls into the fantasy world.
Genre/sub genre has influenced the decisions we have made by giving us an insight into how our genre (fantasy) has been used in other films, so that we learned the best way to portray ours, for example our clip from our film is based on an 'Alice in wonderland' type world but a sort of 'Pan's Labyrinth' type plot. An example of this is where you get the part where the man in the hat appears, he is a kind of representation of the 'mad Hatter' from 'Alice in Wonderland'.
As the director I have developed the narrative by listening to everyone in the group, as well as contributing my own ideas. I have aimed to make everything run smoothly so that we would not be set back by anything, as the group decided to do the shooting in my village, I had to make sure that they all knew where my house was, how to get there and what time to be there. This was quite effective as we all knew where we were going to shoot, we had all the equipment with us, and everything ran smoothly with the shooting. The only real problem was was, that each member of the group arrived at different times.
I worked with the editor to help him, when using the editing software keep to the storyboard, but also to change anything that we realized doesn't work as effectively, an example of this was the shots where you get the girl looking over the edge of the roof, at first it was quite plain that she looked over the edge however it was not the most stable of shots, we placed a second clip of the same view on top, so that it looked as though in the girls point of view shot she was seeing double image, I worked with the sound man, as we created the sound track to fit the actual clip by contributing my own audio files, as well as helping in the recording of a voice over. Lastly I helped the person behind the camera by scouting for locations we could use for filming, and by supplying a HD camera for good quality footage.
As we completed the our set task, we change our plans in many forms for example, when it came to shooting the footage, we changed our locations so that we would all be able to get there, we decided to use a better quality camera shot for certain shots to stand out. When it came to editing this footage we decided we did not have enough so we went back to re shoot certain aspects of clip.
Lastly when we had all the footage and when editing we had make some changes to what was going on in the storyboard, to create a better, visual image.
I wanted to the audience to respond positively to the Directing of the sequence and locations, with the use of Mise-en scene, as they both show the required specifications for the scenes and they work well with the actors, in portraying the story.
The props we used also shows the audience the type of film that it as it gives a strange sense to the film, having something peculiar in an average place. The costumes also emphasize to the audience positive directing as the costumes help portray the scene. for example the clothes that the man wears, are weird, having a large brimmed hat and a waist coat. The performance all together, shows good directing because it holds everything together making the audience understand what type of film this is.
The feedback that we received told us that the editing and sound were well done and did what was expected. Viewers commented on how they recognized that it had an 'Alice in wonderland' type theme. However, some people said that the music was to based on the piano and needed more variety of instruments, we received comment on how the camera work was rough in places and could be improved. These comments have told me that we edited our clip quite successfully to produce a good and understanding storyline, however there are some aspects that could be improved.
I think my technical skills have enable me to make the creative choices, as I have used my camera to take extra footage for our group so that we would not have to repeat the day shooting the majority of our shots, this put our group at an advantage of having lots of footage giving us a lot of options to go by. In class we needed an audio dub, the room wasn't quiet, so that we couldn't record. Luckily I had my laptop and the required software so that we could record the dub somewhere quieter, without any interruptions.
To conclude I believe that we have as a group worked hard at producing our final clip to high standards. Thinking about what it is about and what we where trying to achieve to give it a weird 'Alice in Wonderland' type feel, in which I think we have accomplished this in not only the visual aspects of the clip but in the sound as well.
Good use of angles sloppy panning good use of close up
Mise-en-scene
good when she changes clothes guy was well dressed and mysterious not noticeable that she fell into a new world good use of setting and shots good costumes
Editing good panning mental people? very good editing liked double vision
Sound
Trippy soundtrack good use of dreany voice filter nice use of Diagetic sound (birds) little bit linear (only piano tunes)
we have completed a second rough draft of our film, we also have agreed that there are still several improvements to be made before the final cut. We added a piece of footage to replace one of the less refined shots at the beginning and it now looks much better. We are currently working towards our final cut for the deadline.
Unfortunately, due to weather circumstances, we have missed a weeks worth of lessons, due to the college being closed,and students not being able to get to college. to catch up, we will work on editing for our final cut, and blog and everything else at the same time.
The extra footage that I had to go back to shoot as I had my own film camera, so that we could add more to the Rough Cut, consisted mainly of footage, walking up to the roof top, the scenery around that particular roof. I took an estimated five minute of footage there. as well as that we choose that should also go down to the fields, to where we shot the last few scenes in our rough cut where the girl falls to. I was too shoot some scenes where you could see the surrounding area, so that we could incorporate it into the final rough cut. I spent another five minutes taking footage of that surrounding area. On my way back from collecting this footage, I heard some very clear and loud early morning birds, so I put my camera to record outside my house, for about two minutes to gain some good clear wildlife sound, the actual imagery that I recorded, would not be of use to the group as it does not work with anything else that we had caught on tape. When I brought this footage into class, we unfortunately only had enough time to upload the footage of the wildlife noises, however we did manage to incorporate them into our rough cut quite successfully. So the things that the rest of the footage that I captured will be used in another Rough cut where we will be able to use footage, that is much steadier, as the previous footage that we used for our first rough cut is a bit shaky, as we had trouble using the tripod up on the roof and in the trees, even though I did suggest to the rest of the group that we could use my guerrilla pod, we have then decided in future because of our mistake we will use the guerrilla for when we are in the trees or on the rooftop. We will also use more of a voice over for the other cuts of our film, so that we can make the sound quality much better. For in our first rough cut we found that we did not have a great quality of sound because the camera did not pick much of the sound, because of the sound of the tape recording in the background. Another way we could remedy this situation would be to use My HD camera a bit more because it does not have a tape making noises in the background, and this will benefit us in more than one way as it has better quality of picture, you can adjust the amount of sound that the camera picks up and you can adjust the image according to the type of weather it is at that point in time so you don't have a dark home movie type image.
