Experience

In a previous vlog, we talked about some of the struggles we went through while filming. Here is a video of us testing out our location for the first time and seeing if our ideas we had planned out on our storyboard would actually work!!!.

This was our first time pitching our idea to the rest of the class in order to receive our feedback. As you can probably tell, our ideas for the film were very different to what they have become now but our ideas are starting to be altered in this video to start moulding the final piece that we have now. In one part of the video we start talking about our POV shot, an idea that came from the film 'Blaire Witch'. We would consider this to be our inspiration for the wonderful scene we have now.

Our POV Shot

To add more tension and give our opening that dramatic hook that we wanted, we decided to place a POV shot of our main character getting attacked. This would give our opening more dimension as we get to see things from different angles which in my opinion makes it more exciting. Having to drop the camera on the ground was a scary moment to film as we were worried we would break the camera  or it would take many goes to get our shot, which would result in us damaging it. Luckily on our first trial run we managed to get the perfect shot which we were quite shocked about but so happy. What we liked about the shot was the fact you are able to see our attackers feet in the frame which we wasn't originally planning on happening but we felt it worked very well.  This is one of my favourites scenes from our opening as it was a total look that turned out perfectly.

Our First Storyboard

Looking back on what we originally planned, it is clear to see that many things have changed and been improved. One thing which you can instantly notice is our change in music, we are much happier with our current sound and feel as though we didn't know what we were thinking when we chose the sound for our storyboard!!!

Continuity

Considering our location being in a place that all looked the same, continuity was a big factor that we had to constantly be aware of. Remembering where our character was standing and what position she was in, had us having to always look back at previous footage we had filmed to check that we had got it right. We encountered some difficulties such as the lighting not being the same and filming would have to be postponed, or certain props such as  certain trees not being in a match on action shot. We started filming with our character having her hair tied up with ripped jeans on but one day our character wasn't dressed the same and in order to carry on filming, we decided to re film all of the few scenes that we had again. This though became a problem when editing. If there was a scene that we didn't like, we were not able to use old footage and instead would have to go back to our location and film what we needed. This was because of our characters appearance.

As I have talked about in a previous vlog, here is the class giving us their feedback.

Downloading Bars

One scene which we wanted in the film from the very first day of planning, was an image of a downloading bar. This would be our main source of suspense for the audience as they will have no inkling of what is downloading or why its being downloaded. This would be part of our plot if we were to make a full film. Finding two bars, one downloading at 1% and the other at 100%, that looked exactly the same was very difficult and delayed us filming those few scenes until we have our desired bars. In the end, we had to use already existing pictures and edit them to make them fit the look we wanted.

Feedback

Here we have filmed one of the students from our school to give us some feedback on our finished product
 (Still editing)

POV

During our filming sessions, we realised our character getting attacked was very abrupt and didn't fit in well with our other scenes. We had to think of a way to resolve the predicament we were in as we didn't want to leave our scenes in the state they were. Us as a group decided that we should add a couple of shots from the 'predators' point of view as this would create suspense for the audience and also allow us to use the camera in a way that we hadn't done before.  The camera was hand held which gave us the shaky effect we wanted to make it look as realistic as possible. This took a couple of tries as it was harder to do than we thought but luckily in the end we found a way to make it look as authentic as we could. Having POV shots also enabled us to have scenes of Kira from angles that we also hadn't used before and had our opening have more of a variety of  shots. In addition to this, we had a chance to experiment and have fun with the camera which resulted in our group creating some very funny moments.

Finishing Our Sound

While we have Kira looking at the phone while its ringing, we wanted to have the voicemail audio playing in the forefront over the background music. We done this by recording the voicemail from one of our phones using a microphone. We then downloaded it onto iMovie and foiled it our audio over the top of our original music, we also done the same with the noise of the phone ringing. We made this decision due to us not being able to hear the original sound when just recording it on the camera. While editing we could also lower the foiled audio or increase it to our preference.

Planning

I started planning my evaluation by producing bullet points under each question which I can then use to expand on for the real things.

1- In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• Establishing shots at the beginning 
• stuck to the conventions of an adventure and spy film e.g. the music used, text and the fast paced shots 
• challenges the stereotype of girls being involved with something 'dodgy'

2- How does your film opening represent particular social groups?

• Girls are  always the venerable ones   

3- What kind of media institute might distribute your film and why?

4- Who would be the audience for your opening?

• As a group we decided on making our opening aimed at teenagers
• This is due to it being violent and an intricate storyline to follow 

5- How did you attract/address your audience? 

• We involved violence which entices the younger audience 
• Dramatic music 
• Good effects at the beginning with our title to make the audience believe its good straight away

6- What have you learned about technologies from the process of contracting this film opening? 

• Camera angles and shots 
• Tracking and panning 
• How to work a camera and its accessories i.e. tripod 
• How to use software such as iMovie 

7- Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final film opening?

• How long it takes to make sure every angle is perfect 
•  The amount of work it actually takes to make a film 
• How the editing process works 
• That you need to think about all the factors that make a good scene e.g. lighting 
• How to make the scenes so jumpy and choppy 

Here me and Kira are talking about our experience while filming. It took a lot longer and was a lot more hard work then we thought it would be and even though we spent ages planning it all out, many things had to be changed and altered in order to get the best result possible.

Opening Presentation

For my film case study, I got given the 'BFG' (2016). This Disney film came out last year and is a great case study to use in essays as its an example of a film that has failed even though it had all the right resources, marketing campaigns etc. to be able to succeed. Its especially good considering its produced by Walt Disney, a company people think would never have such a fail of a film and therefore shows that huge production companies don't always succeed like we expect them to.

    

Once we had finished editing all our opening together, to make it a finished product we had to come up with a production company to add at the beginning of our film. We looked through each of our camera roles on our phones at pictures we had taken to see if they would give us any inspiration for our production name. We decided to use a video Kira had taken of her on a motorbike and called ourselves Fast Lane Productions. We then used a photo of stained glass to use as our partner company and used the simple name of Stained Glass Productions. Even though each one is simple, we like the effect it gives. The clip of the motorbike goes well with the fast paced scenes from our film and therefore comes together very well.

Location

After visiting our location for the first time to start our first day of filming, we realised things we had planned to do were not going to be as easy to do as we thought they would. For example, shaking the tree to get the leaves to fall down for an establishing shot was very tricky and awkward to do. Therefore we decided to scrap that idea and film the leaves on the branches instead. The scene where Kira runs across the field, we wanted it to be through long grass. The area we found within Oakwood park that was covered in tall grass, we thought was perfect. It wasn't until we walked through it to map out the scene that we realised it was full of pot holes and would be far too dangerous for Kira to run through. This resulted in us changing locations in the park to a more suitable place that we did in fact end up liking more. The weather was also an issue for us, we had to find angles and directions to film in in which the sun wasn't in the way. we had to make sure that we then kept to the game position every time when we filmed Kira to follow through with continuity. Below is our behind the scenes footage where you can see us struggling with some of the issues I have mentioned.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeXE-pCxd0s