Evaluation

On Tuesday 14th December, because we couldnt do anything with the sound on our production we planned our evaluation, this was just going through the questions with our teacher and making bullet points. There are 7 questions so we decided to answer 2 questions each and all contribute to the last question. Our evaluation will be a voice over, answering the questions whilst on screen print screens of editing or examples of films etc. On Thursday 16th December, we filmed the evaluation, this took a while as Me and Ryan didnt want to read from a script as we thought it wouldnt be clear enough, so we partially improvised. At the end of the lesson we captured the footage and we are going to edit the voice over on our first lesson back after the winter break.

15th- last day to finish

on the 14th of December we all were in lesson to finish off our production, but due to difficulties with the sound, me and Ryan were meant to come in on the 15th to finish, but unfortunately Ryan was ill. so I stayed behind on my own to finish, as Laurence was in a lesson. During this time, miss helped me fix the sound, and I had to enhance the titles, take away some footage from the 'doctors' scene and move some of the voice overs into more aproppiate positions. thankfully I did this before the end of the day, and it was all exported by Thursday 16th first thing.

Rough Cut Feedback

Laurence, Ryan, George

Strong aspects

·      Good use of a range of different shots

·      Appropriate music

·      The slow motion scene works well.

·      The shots signing the autograph work really well.

Points for improvement

Filming

·      You need some more reaction shots from the guy in the wheel chair to make it feel more like a two way conversation.

·      You need to keep the trimming and pace of the shots flowing smoothly and cut any of the shots that are too long.

·      Consider re-shooting the main subjects mouth to get more realistic footage.

Editing

·      You need to have the production company name and the names of the actors and directors.

Sound

·      You might want to include hospital noises in the background to create the ambience of the environment the characters are in.

·      The audio levels need to be sorted out and the music needs to start after the exam titles.

·      Consider using a voiceover of the subject thinking about what is going on in their head instead of the teacher talking.

·      You might want to add cheers on the playing field to create the atmosphere of a football pitch.

last bit of editing

today, we did our finishing touches in our free time, firstly, we re-shot, the close up of my mouth, shot a few reaction shots to make the film more personal to me, and a voice over to go over the top of the doctors scene. After this we went to the computer, and before capturing the new footage, we shortened the entrance to the doctors office, and some of the shots of the doctor speaking. Then we captured the footage, and put in the new shot of my mouth, and put edited in some of the reaction shots we did. Then we dimmed the sound to the minimum for certain scenes so the music and voice over will be the only things that will be heard. After this all being quite successful, we struggled with the opening titiles, we put in the first one ' Olympic Productions Presents', but as we put glow and a different colour on it, we had to have assistance to use the same font, colour and effects on each title, in the end we sorted it out, and all we have to do in our last lesson before the deadline, is thoroughly check it through and make sure everything is fine.

Feedback from rough cut screening

Today we watched the two presentations in our class, ours and the girls opening. This is because we had to do peer assessment, so therefore we got feedback from both the teachers and other classmates. The feedback that we got was very constructive and helpful, as we are using our free periods tomorrow to re shoot three shots (close up of mouth- make longer) ,(entrance to doctors office- shorten) and (more reaction shots of me in doctors office). Also we need to block out any background noise so it is just the music, and voice over when necessary and lastly but probably the most important, we need to add opening credtis such as, production company, director, starring etc.

last edit before rough cut screening

Yesterday, we had a few problems, this is because our free lessons are varied, therefore it is hard for all three of us to be able to edit in our free time. On Tuesday 7th December, we still had to film the voice over, so I decided so we can get a rough cut completed before our lesson today I would take the camera home and do it at home. This left Ryan with the responsibility of finding copyright free music to go with our opening. Ryan had some difficulties in doing this. so we came in yesterday(Wednesday 8th) and I took the camera with the voice over on to the media room before my English lesson and as i had to go home after, I asked Ryan to upload it. Ryan did upload it and Laurence was then asked to find some music, as it might have helped to have two different people looking. It got to our lesson today and still no music was found. so Ryan took charge of the editing, and me and Laurence got out the laptops to find music, even though we had left it late, we have now learnt to plan ahead. We did get the music in time and put in our opening before the screening. The editing today was basically trial and improvement, as we had to get the correct effects to make certain scenes to look like a flashback. Firstly we tried to use 'tint', trying all types of colours. We then decided to make it black and white, but not too dense as it didnt look very good. So once we got the right consistency for black and white, we thought it might look good if we added a glow....It didn't, but at least we tried.

Prop List

Football
Pen x2
paper
planner(autograph book)
poster
phone
labcoat

Editing

so far as a group, we have captured our footage and cut it so it is all in order and flows nicely. Even though the editing was done, it did cause some trouble, this is because Ryan who is the most experienced in editing, doing media studies at Gcse. Me and Laurence started to edit on the 30th November. We then continued to edit on the 2nd November, as we had captured all the footage, and everything was in order, we then had to film something else, but after some debate, we saw that the opening was already close to 2 minutes. This made it clear that it would make the opening too long and isnt actually that important. Today's lesson was making it flow, and right at the end of the lesson, we started to try and use different effects to give the effect of a flashback.

Filming

Our filming was overall a success. We started to film on the 23th November, only shooting the scenes that were short and easy to film in school grounds, this was because we had spent the first hour of our lesson planning. Our next lesson we all looked through the footage and decided that with a 2 hour session we can re shoot and obviously move onto shooting more scenes. During this lesson, we filmed all the scenes apart from the doctor scene, football scene, treadmill scene and the one where I (the main character) learns to walk. As we had not finished filming, we decided to use our free periods to our advantage and film the remaining scenes the following day. Friday 26th November at 10am we went to the back field and shot the opening and closing scenes. They caused some struggle with some of the shots, as with basic equipment, some of the shots look jagged, but it actually gives a good affect. There were several takes for many shots as it required alot of work from Laurence the cameraman, as Ryan was acting briefly as well.
Lastly on Thursday 2nd November, after a lesson of editing, we came across some footage from the doctors scene that wasn't satisfactory. So we decided to shoot this whole scene again, and with the absence of Ryan due to the weather, it took longer than expected, but looking back, it was worth the time and effort. After re shooting this, we had finished filming.

Roles within group

At the start of the pre-production, I was the only person who would be in front of the camera as the main camera, with Ryan and Laurence making cameo appearances if necessary. Ryan and Laurence both shared the filming and we all contributed to the directing; camera shots etc. as well as this, all three of us also contributed towards the editing, with Ryan taking the predominant role.

Summary of film opening idea

I am in a group with Ryan Bartlett and Laurence Kingdon. Our original film idea was to have a boy, who was a young football talent who breaks his leg, and was titled 'Road to Recovery'. Since then our idea has developed and this is the one that we have mutually decided on. It is now titled 'Halftime', but this time instead of a broken leg during football, he suffers brain damage. In the opening two minutes it shows frequent flashbacks of him before and after the injury and the last establishing shot is the injury itself. We have made it football related as we all enjoy sport and it is a good plot also.

Production Process

Pre Production:           Production:            Post Production:

Pitch                               Location                    Editing

Synopsis                          Sound                        Specail effects

Production schedule         Crew                         Mastering

Location                         Shooting                     Music

Storyboard                      Lighting                      Titles

Script                            Camera                        Sound

idea                              Tape logging                 Capturing

Shot list                         capturing

Preliminary Exercise

I completed the preliminary exercise with Fern Howe-Shepherd, Gabby Janes and Lawrence Kingdom, our team worked well together, but due to problems with the camera we had to re-shoot many of our shots. Despite this we managed to finish the exercise to an average standard but have learnt from our mistakes. At first it was me and Fern acting but once we saw that the filming wasnt capturing, Gabby decided she would like to act, so i directed, while Laurence filmed. 

Our camerawork was not completed to a high standard as not all the shots were steady especially when the door shuts the camera jogs and we didn’t get to re-film this as we run out of time. Also our first shot of Fern opening the door is not in focus. During the shot reverse shot the camera is too high which makes the scene off putting for the audience. The shots are also not framed correctly, as we have a lot of unnecessary space which shouldn’t have been in the frame. The eye line and 180 degree rules were followed accurately, even though the camera was positioned too high during the majority of the filming, we still managed to complete this successfully. 


Because of  the trouble with the camerawork the editing was made difficult as the material we had to edit with was challenging to make look successful. This is partly due to the fact that our shots were too short, as the six second rule was not followed and the dialogue wasn’t long enough. Therefore when we came to edit the sequence, especially the shot reverse shot we discovered that it was too fast and therefore this meant the pace wasn’t correct. We realised after we exported our preliminary exercise that there was a lot of black screen at the end, which needed to be taken off. Although we did successfully put a title at the start showing the exercise name and who is in it.

To improve our production we could change many things. for instance the camera was positioned too high, the dialogue was not clear enough, the six second rule wasnt followed and the shots were too short. To correct this, the speech should have been said louder and far more clearly, also we need to start using "camera rolling" and count to six before speaking otherwise the outcome will be unsuccessful.

In conclusion our preliminary exercise was not very successful as there are many elements that could be changed and improved if we had the time, although all team members contributed evenly to this task. If we were to do this again we would need to make sure that time was not wasted during filming, so the shots would need to be accurate first time round so if we decided we needed to re-shoot anything then we would have enough time left at the end to do this as well as edit our material successfully.