Advantages of the blog
-record all progress updates
-audience research
-evidence of our filming
-general production of our opening sequence
Our group worked collaboratively by using individual posts, commenting on each others work and findings and using group posts. It was a effiecient way of collecting ideas and having all research in the same place so we could easily compare and share ideas with each of the group members. We also posted our preliminary task onto our blog so we can see what needs to be improved and what worked well. There are several examples of pictures and shots from reccies to show each other what shots and lighting works well. Filming
Whilst shooting our preliminary task we were able to experiment with different shots, angles and lighting which we could later adapt in order to use in our opening sequence. This task also gave us an opportunity to use the tripod and see how the DV cameras worked. A requirment of the preliminary task was to include a conversation, this meant that we had plenty of practice at using the 180 degree rule and after several attempts we could frame the shot correctly so that both characters shared teh centre of the shot.
For our opening sequence we used much more of our technical skills to create a better media piece. We had already had previous experience with using the DV cameras from our preliminary task and reccie to Wilderness Woods so we were aware that there was a button on the camera which we could use to create a shallow to deep focus shot. This was a very difficult to acheive because the timing of the focus change had to be subtle but eventually we were able to master it. We also tried out several different forms of lighting when filming in the corridor in order to create the illusion that it was the morning. Overcoming problems with shooting
Our main problem with filming was one of our chosen locations. We originally wanted to shoot part of the opening sequence inside of a tent, however when we went on a reccie to test out filming inside of the tent we found that the lighting was not right and no matter how much we changed it, even bringing the tent inside to have more control over lighting did not fix this problem. The DV cameras were not sensitive enough to pick up figures in the darkness of the tent. Fortunately because we had discovered this problem before we were due to start filming we were able to alter our storyline so that we could have this scene indoors. This way we could adjust lighting accordingly.
Editing
Editing was a long and difficult process because there are so many possibilities when it comes to editing and in order to achieve a seamless production, continuity editing is vital. It takes a long time and is difficult to spot mistakes in your own work but after editing it is worth the time and effort. For the very beginning of our piece there are girls using a ouija board, we needed to have lots of different shots and angles but wanted a fast cutting rate to show the idea of lots of time passing by. This was particularly challenging because we had so much footage from the ouija board and we had to cut up and choose the best pieces to use in our piece, this was an example of montage editing, to show lots of different actions and reactions from the different characters. In this piece we also used time compression on premier to speed up the actions and make it all seem more frantic. 
An example of our continuity editing is when our protagonist is walking down the stairs and into the bathroom where she turns on the bathroom light. Here there are several different shots but they are pieced together so that it looks like one continuous movement. We also needed to differentiate between where our protagonist, the girl was and where the murder was occuring. To do this we lept the girl in full colour and used a filter effect on premier in order to create a black and white effect on the scene of the murder. We also added a flickering effect to make it seem unclear, which showed that it was the vision of the girl.
Our ending consisted of a voice over without any footage being played. In this part we used a grey filter to show a crackling, fuzzy effect and one by one the letter of our title appeared. The letters repeated this formation but each time appearing quicker and quicker and finally flashing up at the end. This took a lot of time to edit because we had to import each letter individually and keep each on the screen for the same amount of time and make sure that it significantly sped up each time.
When editing we also had to import music and choose when we wanted it to come in and when it should end. Fortunately the music was soft and had no drums so we could fade it out and it did not sound like a sudden stop. We also recorded Marco doing a voice over for the end so imported that into premier and moved it around until we found the right place for it to start and end, according to the grey screen and when the music ended. To finish our piece we used white noise which we made in audacity and imported in. We adapted the volumes of this so we could progressively make it louder in order to drown out marco's voice reading out the helpline number.
Exporting
To export our piece onto our blog we first had to save it all into my documents, create a youtube account (which can also be used for further audience research on web2.0) and upload it onto there first. After posting this onto our groups youtube account we were then able to create a new post on our blog by copy and pasting the embedding code onto the 'edit HTML' section when making a blog post. This is also how we exported our preliminary task.
No comments:
Post a Comment