Evaluation 6
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of making your film opening?
- Because this task was a group task we needed to work somewhere where it was easy for us to work collaboratively and to have all our research and ideas in one place. By using http://www.blogger.com/ and 'blogging' we successfully managed to do so. Moreover by having a definitive place to record our progress etc we were able to focus on individual points and be more selective with our research because we could assign each other particular tasks.
To actually film our opening sequence we used a 1080p High Definition Camcorder and a tripod. The high definition gives a clearer and more crisp picture and the tripod helps to keep the camera still in order to avoid shaky camera movement that spoils the atmosphere or tension that you try to create with smooth filming. However, shaky camera movement is necessary at times when trying to make the audience feel involved.
- Where lighting is concerned, we were very fortunate in that when we did the bulk of our filming the weather was exactly how we wanted it and therefore helped with the composition of our shots. For example, when we were out shooting in the park the sun was shining and so we placed the camera in different angles so that we could achieve different effects and see different shadows.
Problems when shooting
- We faced very little problems on our actual shoots, the weather was always how we needed it to be. However, some of our CUs of natural objects were unsteady and shaky because a tripod was not used. To creatively overcome this, we used our technique of montage editing so we incorporated our shaky shots to create disorientation.
The Edit
For our final piece we used a wide range of different effects. The use of these effects and filters helped to contribute to the enigma of a dream.
Here we used an effect that turned our 'normal' image into a black and white image. This helped to create a sense of disorientation, furthermore, we reversed this clip so that it went backwards.
For this blurry shot we overlayed two images and changed the opacity and scale of one of them to build a kind of ghostly blur without using a preset called 'Ghosting' that did this on moving shots, which would have been inappropriate for this shot as it isn't in motion.
- At first we spent a lot of time experimenting with different effects and colours to fully emphasise the fact that our montage was a dream, for example, using these effects for surrealism. When we had finished our 'experimenting' we ended up with a sequence that was more ambiguous than we wanted and too much was happening that you couldn't understand the plot of the opening.
- Furthermore, we decided to use a smaller range of effects to give a sense of continuity and flow to a piece that was not supposed to be continuous. This eventually worked really well and was easier to understand but at the same time also kept you active and open to different possibilities.
- To edit all of our footage and to finally create our opening sequence we had to use an editing software called Adobe Premiere Elements, upload our footage to the software and on to a timeline.
This is a screen shot of Premiere
This is a screen shot of the timeline
- Once we had all our footage uploaded and placed onto the timeline in a rough idea of where we wanted it we started to cut the footage down to our requirements. This proved to be a challenge. After having an overall 30minutes of footage we managed to cut it all down to 50 seconds. This was obviously not a great start.
- However, we managed to prioritise different shots and slightly change our timeline so that we met the required 2 minutes of film. From this we have now learnt to do as much filming as you can even if you don't think you need to, we also learnt that planning and storyboarding is extremely important.
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- Compared to real film production, our opening is different because we didn't actually need to make a whole film and so we didn't need to get bankable stars and think too seriously about finance and the final quality of our piece. We also didn't have the advanced equipment that professional filmmakers would have or the expert skills in editing. However, overall I am very pleased with our outcome and with our editing.
- In addition to this there was also the issue of the timescale we were given, which would be quite difficult to compare to a real film production.
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