Construction Post 10: Looking back - reflections on our final outcome

Overall, I am very pleased with the final product of our film opening sequence and feel that maximum effort was put into it. As a team, we were able to progress with our ideas from the outset and throughout, all cooperating keenly to make a good sequence. We were also able to overcome problems such as the shots being too grainy for example. Based on comments from our target audience during the final screening, there are some aspects I would change; I would have altered the montage slightly to establish more of a relationship between Lola and Marlon in order to make it more obvious to the audience that they are a couple in a dysfunctional relationship and built up the character of Lola with more shots of her gradual mental deterioration throughout the party.

Construction Post 9: My technical learning curve (production and post-production)

At the beginning of the project, I was very unaware of how to use certain pieces of equipment and software and what a huge significance they played in the making of a film in both production and post-production. In our prelim exercise I learned how to use the camera on a tripod and briefly explored some of the tools on the Adobe Premier Pro software. However, in our main task, I gained a stronger understanding of how the tripod is made to allow for different camera angles and movement, as well as delving deeper into the Adobe software in order to find the effects and editing techniques that worked best for our sequence. Below is a longer list of some of the things I learned.


Production:

• How to work the camera, setting up and using equipment such as a tripod and shotgun microphone
• Reviewing shots in the camera to ensure we had the right one which we could use
• How to set up lighting, flooding it or making a spotlight on specific characters (as well as learning about the health and safety involved when using it, as the lights get really hot)

Post-production:

• How to use the Adobe software to a high standard and incorporating video and audio effects (ghosting and dissolves)
• Editing the continuity sequence to perfection so that the story line flows and makes sense to the audience
• How to use LiveType and experimenting with different fonts, sizes, effects and colours to produce titles that best fitted our genre and theme

Construction Post 8: My personal contribution to the Edit Sessions

Grading screengrab

This is my first year doing media, whereas the other two members of the group have done it previously for GCSE. I felt this put me in a lower position of expertise but we had done a prelim activity and edited our rough cut already so I knew the basic editing skills. As the time went on, I picked up on different things that could be done to make the sequence even better, using dissolves and video effects, to create the right feel for certain aspects of the film (for example blurring the screen when it is Lola's point of view to show that she is drunk and isn't thinking straight). Another important skill I learned, was how to grade shots to make them all look roughly the same colour. I came in most lunchtimes and breaks to work on the edit and spoke to the media technician about many points so that I could learn how to do different things such as making some of the shots slow motion. No more than two people were needed to edit the sequence at a time because otherwise it was over crowded, and so when we were all present (in lessons and at lunch), one person would be allocated the Macbook in order to work on the titles, and we all took this in turns.

Grading evidence - top ungraded, bottom graded

Construction Post 7: My personal contribution to the Shoot Sessions

During the shoot sessions, I played a main role within our sequence as I was the protagonist of our film - Lola. I had to use my acting skills in order to produce a convincing role as a teenage girl who's life is steering downhill, sometimes being happy and other times crying. When I wasn't acting however, I was actively working behind the camera and taking shots of people dancing in the party, taking care that the framing was perfect and people were in the right positions.

Still images of my role in the film

Construction Post 6: Reflections on Edit Week 2

Our group working on LiveType

After having mad good progress during edit week 1, our group was in a good position to add in the continuity slap from the back up shoot and then work on titles and grading. The shots didn't take long to edit in and so we directed most of our time on making the titles. At first, we chose a flickering effect but felt it looked too much like what one find in cartoon and so we had to select a different effect. After choosing one we just put the titles that we had planned on our storyboard but upon completing this, discovered that we needed more and hadn't done much research. We then looked into what other titles we could add and how they presented the starring cast (using words such as; with and introducing). The grading was quite simple as most of our shots looked the same sort of colour anyway due to using a flash light on the camera at all times. There were just a few shots that seemed too yellow or blue and we had difficulty changing, but over all the end product looked good.

A still image of our final sequence with one of the casting titles

Section from sequence showing the title 'introducing ella budgett'

Construction Post 5: The Back-Up Shoot

We started the back up shoot later than our main shoot as we only had to shoot the slap scene and this wouldn't obviously take up as much time. We showed our previous slap scene to members from our target audience as well as our teachers and they all agreed that the slap didn't look 'real' enough and need different camera angles to emphasise it as a big moment in our opening sequence. We decided that instead of showing the slap from a master shot point of view, we would film the whole thing from Marlon's over the shoulder and then cut the master shot in as he reaches out to comfort Lola. The back up shoot was very successful because it only required one extra cast member and so was easy to direct and get done.

The original slap that didn't work well for our continuity 

We had extra time left over and so we took some more bathroom shots to see if we could our make ending more effective, but it turned out that our original shots were the better ones.

Construction post 4: Reflections on Edit Week 1

During this week we managed to work really quickly, giving up a lot of our free time in and out of school hours in order to get the basic edit sequence finished. We focused on choosing the shots we wanted to use and placing them in the right order in the montage sequence (alternating between a collection of shots inside and then outside), as well as getting our continuity right. This took up quite a lot of time, as we had to cut all the shots down to the right times (only 2 or 3 seconds per shot).

Our group working at the edit suite

We noticed however, that our continuity could have been made to look more realistic. Despite it all flowing and making sense, the slap that Lola performs on Marlon looked too staged and fake, so we needed to re-shoot this in the back up shoot.

I learned how to dissolve shots into one another in order to show time passing, whilst making our actual sequence shorter as we had gone over 2 minutes by quite a lot due to our vast amount of montage shots.

A YouTube tutorial video on how to cross dissolve, like I did in our sequence