Planning when to work on our Evaluation Tasks

This is a screenshot of a note regarding the time we have reserved to work on our evaluation tasks. We have 5 lessons (5 hours) worth of class time to complete these, and have reserved ourselves 3 extra hours of extra time in case we do not finish our evaluation within these hours. if need be we can fit in extra time to work on our evaluation together at the weekend, but hopefully this should be enough time to get all eight of our tasks completed.

Evaluation Activity 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation task 1- In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? from Esthercox

Evaluation Task 7- What have you learnt in progression from Preliminary tasks to Final Product?

“Just Do it!”- First Preliminary Task
This was the name given to the first practical task our media class was assigned. For this we were placed in to groups and given digital video camera’s, being asked to come up with a story which involved the phrase “Just Do it!”. For many of us it was our first chance to film, using a variety of shots and edit them together on Adobe Premier Pro. Below is the video which shows this preliminary task.

This is one of a few close ups in this preliminary video. Since filming this, we learnt how important it was to use a variety of shots in our final piece, in order to make it consistently interesting and engaging for our audience. Close-ups like this one are used more frequently in our final piece as they help to highlight key props, character emotions or actions.

This is a screenshot of a mid shot, used in our preliminary task. Although this shot is good in that it helps to develop the narrative and varies from other shots used in the clip, the mise en scene here is limited (though relevant to the clip storyline). When it came to filming our final cut, we used a much greater variation of props and costume than what is exhibited here. The variation of props that we ended up using, made our clip more like the opening to a real film and helped it to conform to the genre we were trying to portray. For example, the fact that we used the Red Jam prop, fitted in well with our genre as the colour red is often used in horror films, and the spreading of the Jam with a knife had a foreboding effect, hinting to events later on in our clip when ‘Sasha’ would perhaps decapitate the bear producing blood, which the red Jam hinted to. Although this decapitiation is not seen, the use of the Jam and Knife props in combination allude to it, and this allusion helps the clip conform to our chosen genre.

This is an example of a notification which came up whilst viewing the Preliminary task we did. It acts almost as a testament to the quality of earlier work, this video was extremely shaky, and in most cases this detracted from its overall quality as it distracted viewers of the clip greatly. By the time it came to filming our Final Cut, we had learnt that the best way to ensure shots were steady was to use a tripod. However for all shots, this isn’t possible, and so as time went on we became better aquainted with the media we were using and when filming our hands became more steady. Of course, we also recognised that for particuarly shaky shots a stabliser, such as the one Youtube offers here (you can also get them in the editing software we used-Adobe Premier Pro) was a good way to ensure the steadiness of our shots. Generally unsteady shots are only used in our later work to create an effect, contributary to their genre, rather than as an example of bad Camera work.

This title is small and does not remain on the screen for a long enough amount of time for it to be noticed and acknowledged by Viewers. Equally, it is squashed and due to this somewhat harder to read. In our Final task we found deciding which titles to use and what sized they should be/ where they should be placed particularly hard. To solve this issue we watched several pieces of work from other students; some of which can be seen below (under the heading, ‘Other Student Work’), before creating our own titles. Since this task we have come to recognise the importance of making titles clear and readable.

Although this clip uses continuity editing, the editing in our final piece has a better flow to it and is more consistent, as we have learnt to make cuts shorter and more precisely timed. This extends to our match on actions, which had to be expertly timed in order to look realistic and improve the quality of our opening. Furthermore than this , we introduced a technique that this clip lacks; parallel editing. This was used to develop the two separate narrative’s we had within our piece of the girl setting up her tea party and her mother coming up the stairs to check on her. This is an improvement to techniques used in this video, as use of Parallel editing helps to make the storyline more complex, giving it depth and building up even more tension surrounding the actions of the protagonist. This tension which is built up via parallel editing, is something all horror films try to develop, thus helping our work conform to the conventions of our chosen film genre.

Other Student Work- We looked at a range of other student film openings (paying particular attention to it, if it was of the same or similar genre of our piece) to help us to try and decipher where our titles should be placed and what they should look like. Examples of what we looked at can be seen below:

Test Anxiety- Second Preliminary Task
In our second Preliminary task, we got in to different groups to begin to film and edit another clip. This time the subject we were given was ‘Test Anxiety’ and we were asked to first create a storyboard and then film our piece. At this time we had our own individual blogs, on which we had to log our progress and show evidence of the work we are doing, links to Megan’s can be seen below.

https://megansmediaworld.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/story-boarding-scripting/

https://megansmediaworld.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/storyboarding-and-scripting/

This shot in particular demonstrated the need for us to make our titles clear, placing them over a simplistic background, which would not distract from their content. Although the background of this shot is not entirely simplistic, the title placement here is a clear improvement from our “Just Do it” video, showing some progression in our editing techniques. Since this, we have continued to learn and research the importance of titles, considering their placement, colour, duration and size even more carefully in our final piece.

This image is incredibly blurred. When working with Media equipment more, we learnt to reduce blurring by ensuring that the work we shot was in focus. This was done using the focus ring at the front of the Camera lens, just before the zoom dial, which would be twisted whilst the camera was in a fixed position, until the shot we took was in focus. Although sometimes the lack of focus can give an interesting dimension to a shot, in the example above, the blurriness of this frame was not deliberate and thus a clear improvement in terms of focusing can be noticed from when this shot was taken to when we completed our final cut.

Other things we have Learnt from our Preliminary Tasks:

We have learnt how to frame our shots in a much better way, adhering to the rule of thirds in order not to alienate our audience and make our clip appear as realistic as possible. Similarly there has been a greater focus on Camera Angles in our later work. We realised that these are key to the narrative often showing the different levels of power that characters have in a film. In our preliminary tasks, there are little or no varying levels in camera shots to show power levels, however in our opening there are a few of these shots. Particularly there is a low angle shot of the character ‘Sasha’, which depicts her as dominant and domineering. This is  a shot which is much like the shot below from the horror fIlm ‘Carrie’.

There is also a considerable difference between the use of sound in the three clips I have mentioned here; for instance, the first preliminary task we did had no sound at all, minus the digetic sound we got when we first filmed this piece. The second task progressed a little from this, having a song playing in the background to contribute to the atmosphere of the piece. But neither of these pieces had any attention paid to the sound levels within them as our final cut did. Improvement can be seen across the 3 videos, as we progressed from having a limited selection of sound to having a diverse range of digetic and non-digetic sounds placed at different volumes throughout our clip. Our preliminary tasks taught us the importance of sound, showing how it can contribute to a film, creating an atmosphere and helping our film conform to the horror genre

FINAL CUT

This is the final cut for our AS Media coursework. Since the last final cut we produced, certain small changes have been made to our film opening, as can be seen here. This is the final version of our work.

Final Cut

Fixing the Camera

This was the first Email we received from our Media teacher to help fix the Camera.

Taking on board the advice presented above, I googled “how to change the white balance on a Canon SLR Camera”, finding several Youtube videos which helped me immensely. In the end I had to change both the White balance of the Camera as well as the exposure.

I used these Videos to help me:

Once the exposure and white balance of the Camera we had looked fine, I proceeded to shoot the parallel editing shots of my Mum.

Overcoming a Disastrous situation

As you know, filming our final cut took place on Monday evening, as this was the only date which we could get our child actress (Willow) to film for us. Although myself and Esther were fully prepared for filming, and the actual process of us filming went without a hitch, as we managed to get all of the shots we wanted (minus the camera dying half way through our filming), we had one rather large problem. This occurred once we had started filming with our camera, a Canon which we had hired from school. After taking a few shots with this camera, we watched back what we had recorded and noticed there was something inherently wrong with what we had filmed, everything had a yellowish tinge to it.

Given the fact we had filmed in daylight, with the blind in my room open for our rough cut, we thought that perhaps this issue might be due to lighting, as filming our Final Cut took place at night. In order to attempt to resolve this, we adjusted the lighting, with the dimmer switch in my room, also seeing what it looked like when we added extra lighting from lamps, torches, fairy lights etc. After doing so, we soon realised that the problem we had was not due to the lighting in the room but due to the camera itself.

Having used a Nikon to film last time, we were slightly ignorant to how to fix the Canon camera; nevertheless we both attempted to google our issue in order to look for a resolution. We tried the Canon website help page and looked at several Youtube videos amongst other things in order to help us, but to no avail. Eventually we decided that the best thing we could do would be to go ahead and film our piece and hope that we could alter the quality of our filming once it had been uploaded for editing. This is what we continued to do, working in  to the night to re-shoot our film opening.

The next day, I went in to school to upload the videos from the camera SD card to a computer and begin to piece together our final cut on Adobe Premier Pro. Once i had uploaded all of the clips to the computer, to my dismay we noticed that their quality was no better than it had been whilst we were filming. Again, I tried to resolve this by playing around with the filters Premier Pro offered, in the hope that by adding filters to our filming it might appear more naturalistic and less Yellow. However, this also did not work and I began to loose hope, as when looking at what we had filmed I noticed that the shots did not only have a Yellow-ish tinge to them, but they had a grainy quality and were often out of focus.

As soon as our Media teacher entered the school, I asked him for advice, spending a further hour and a half trying to resolve the problem. Eventually, Esther was able to meet me in the Media department, and the three of us contacted the School’s technician via text to ask if she was aware of what the problem was. Luckily, she was able to help us and inform us that there was probably a problem with the camera settings. We then sent her images of what we had filmed in both our rough and final cuts, from which she further identified what the issue was, informing us that it was an issue with the white balance of our camera.

Despite all of this being extremely helpful, we still had a further problem- we could not restore the footage we had already shot, nor could we find a date when Willow was free to film it all again before our deadline. Thus, we had only one option, to use the shots we already had of our child actress from our Rough Cut, drafting in some parallel editing to our piece of the child’s mother, which would be shot once I had fixed the camera

Filming Our Final Cut

After receiving the feedback from our rough cut, we thought it would be a good idea to begin planning for our final cut straight away. This is something which would be filmed in our Easter Break, meaning that much of what we had to organise would be done via text. Below can be seen a few screenshots of the text messages sent between us.

The conclusions of our communications meant that on Monday I went I to school to pick up a SLR Camera for myself and Esther to film with, alongside a tripod and camera charger in case the camera died during our shooting. I then went home and began to prepare the setting for our filming and organise the props, before meeting Esther, Willow and Harry (who was accompanying Willow) later on in the evening. The images below, show the varying steps I took to set up for our final cut alongside some images of the props we used.

Whilst preparing for filming, I had a checklist with me which I used to ensure that I had the right props with me and that we would be ready to film as soon as Willow, Harry and Esther came to my house. To ensure Willow would be ready for her role as the protagonist in our opening, we texted Harry to check that she had a change of clothes suitable for the role with her.

When everyone arrived, filming took approximately 4 hours, as we decided to re-shoot the entirety of our piece, adding in a few extra shots to our shooting script. The reason filming took so long was because the camera we had ran out of battery half way through filming, and thus we had to wait for it to recharge before we could continue filming once more. While filming, we got Harry to take a few photos on my phone of the process.

After filming, we began to plan when to come in and edit our video, choosing Thursday as the best time. On this day we decided we would come in to school to start the editing process and also to rerecord the voice of the bear.