Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Evaluation.

This is my evaluation:

Friday, 3 April 2009

Feedback

During one lesson everyone in the class watched eached others work and five people were giving out sheet to fill in to give us feedback on a variety of aspecs on out work.

Out of the 5 people who evaluated our work, 4 rated our production to have excellent codes and conventions of a romantic comedy. The other person thought they were good. Personally i agree that we followed the codes and conventions of a romantic comedy as we included all the things we have researched and found out from our audiences.
People also thought our production was well planned. Which it was as we created an action plan and managed to stick to it although there was some trouble when we were supposed to be filiming the first time. Also from the feedback sheet our group thought that our production shows high imagination and creativity, as a group we thought the idea of our film was good and we tried to add in some things the did not conform to usual rom com conventions such as the singing and dancing as well as the fact that the couple hate each other to begin with, although these aren't typical rom com conventions and we challenged them we still managed to create a decnt rom com.
Shot composition and mise en scene were given ones, we added as much as we could into the shots and made sure we really worked on the mis en scene to make the story line more realistic and believable. For example, we added in sweets and empty wine and alcohol bottles to make it look like her friends were trying to maker her feel better, as all good friends do.
The editing was also given mainly ones and one person commented that it was quite creative as we added a split screen and also a lot of dissolve shots, and made some of the shots black and white to show that it was the past. The music worked briliantly and was absoloutly perfect and amazingly cheesy to go with the storyline and the dancing and one person commented that the music went really well. The titles we used were also given ones and went perfectly well with a romcom storyline as they were pink, white and in fancy writing.
One person commented that at one point in the film, where she finds the bra, Nova looks at the camera. I had noticed this, but personally I diddn't think there was a problem with it, but maybe not... So from this feedback we could of done it that part again, there is a part when they are running down the stairs that seems to be a bit blurry that we would have filmed again, and some of the shot's havn't got great lighting on them and are a bit dark so these could have been done again, but it took so much effort to get everyone we wanted in the film to be in one place at one time to actually do it, it wasn't actually possible to refilm...

Wednesday, 4 March 2009

Still getting it done... and finishing!

- We have been working some moreee to try and finish the final edit of our film, on monday, we were still adding shots onto the film according to the story board. However we had some problems when trying to acheive a split screen for the shot where both girls are singing a line of the song each. This wasnt on the original story board, but when we were filming we decided this would look good so filmed both the girls singing both of the lines. When we were trying to make a split screen, we had to master all the things you could do like putting the shots on top of each other and moving them about on the screen. This also caused problems however, because we tried to give each girl half of the screen, but kirsty had made her bit really big and animated so her shot couldnt fit on the screen. This meant we had to fiddle about with it all and try and get them all to fit into the frame. But no fear we got it done! WOOP!

- Today we continued editing, and managed to get all our shots on the film! YAY! we had to sync all the footage to go with the music. Also, we were adding effects such as when the friends are trying to get the main girl (Nova) up, we put some of the footage of Nova and James back when they were happy in the background and made it black and white to show it was in the past. We made both of these shots opaque so it was dissolved in the background. We also started adding credits, we decided we would be called minted prouductions! :) Oh yehh. Also we found the font that suited the romantic comedy genre. We made the first word of the line pink and the rest white to conote girlieness of which the film would definitely include a lot of! The white was to suggest starting again because she is starting her life again after spliting up with her long term boyfriend.

-Today was the deadline day, and we were nearly done, we just had to add some final tweeking and we had to decide if we liked the gap between the part before the start of the "I will survive song" and I wasn't to sure to start with... but we spoke to our tutor and he said it looked fine and liked how it was almost the start of the new section of the opening. We also made all of the titles fade in and out but it diddn't look quite right, so we just had no effects on them in the end which looked more effective than having all the fades on them. When we had finsished messing around with it, we watched it back at least 5 times to double check that we hadn't missed anything, and we hadn't to we filled in the slip and that was that! WE HAD FINALLY FINISHED! WOOP WOOP!

Getting it donee :)

I am going to write about some of the problems and things we have done whilst putting our project together.

We set our film in my house, but was believable that a young adult could have lived there. We wanted to bedroom to be all pink and girlie so we could establish that it was the girls room so had to be the girls house that he was being kicked out of. And, embaressingly, my mums room is just like that, so it had to be done. The pink-ness and girly-ness of the room made it more believable that she would be the type of girl to have her friends over to comfort her when she was upset also the pink PJ's that we told her to wear emphaisized this. We made the boy wear just his boxers and a tshirt as this is what most men wear in bed. We made him wear a black top to give the connotations of evil and to contrast with the innocence of the pink, also the slogan on his top made him look like a bit of an idiot, lmao. We diddn't tell him to wear that top, so he's just an idiot, LMAO! Love you really james :). The friends wore high heels as this was essential for the shot of them running up the drive. Also, heels have connotations of being worn by proffesional young women, who dont need men! and this is a convention of a rom com, and we this also showed that the characters are middle class, as they weren't prada heels, but they weren't tacky either. They wore scarfs and cardigans to make them look young and fresh but more grown up, costumes were decided by our one and only Hannah! We dressed the living room up to have loads of bottles to look like they had been drinking all day so the audience would get that they were slowly getting drunker... although really it was just ribeana! and some of it went on the carpet, my mother was not too impressed. The girls we chose were perfect for the part aswell (and they were amazing when we were filming, although they kept getting the giggles, ily Kirst and Sinead!) because they looked like they could be friends and the same with the cheating lad as him and the main character. The boy and the girl was a tricky decision between the group, but we knew we had to have two people who wouldn't be uncomfortable lying in a bed together. So we chose an actual couple so they were comfortable around each other so it worked really well! The bra we used was also good because it was black which matched the colour of the top James (the main guyyy) was wearing conoting that this was bad too, we initially wanted to use a pair of really slutty knickers but we forgot to bring them so we had to compromise! LMAO, and the Bra was actually kirsty's, as I diddn't want to use one of my mums, so she was bra-less during this fimimg section, luckily she wasn't in that bit, LMAO!


How weve managed so far....
Firstly we didnt get off to a great start as we had a problem with the filming on the 18th of january so we had to postpone filming untill the saturday afterwards... lets not go into it, its better that way. But we managed to get the whole thing filmed in one day! There were a few problems on the day... we found out a few shots didnt work as well as we'd hoped for example when filming at the door the sun was so bright it shone through the window and ruined the lighting, so he had to have someone block the light outside for us! (Sinead with two place mats) We also added in a few shots that werent on the story board such as the extreme close up on her mouth of the main girl (Nova) we thought it would be really useful, and it was used in the final piece. Aswell as this we had misplaced the knickers we were originally supposed to be using for the beginning so we used a bra instead (Kirsts Bra) LOL! We spent approximately the next 3 lessons getting to the stage where we could put the shots together, having to fill out both the recording logs and the edit decision list. Next we had to log and capture which took AGES, a whole hour and a half due to the large amount of footage we had shot! This amount of footage however soon became a problem as we found when we came to piece the film together, as I wasn't there when all the clips were named, and lauren and hannah weren't there the next lesson, so it was a bit of a nightmare finding all the shots! We had followed our storyboard and had pieced together the first half of out storyboard only when playing it back it had run to 2 and a half minuites, and the whole thing has to be no more than 3 minutes. This meant that we had to look over what we had got so far and start either getting rid of shots or shortening them. For example the shots of the couple at the beginning when they were happy, we shortened down to about 3 seconds each and scraped the idea of panning across the still life pictures. We also shortened most shots to make it seem a lot sharper and more fluid than when they run down the stairs, instead of them starting at the top we had them already slightly down the stairs as this looked much better and the audience would know they had to of came down the landing. When we had finished with this, the time had been reduced by about a minuite. We had to be cut throat and leathal with it, and once we started cutting down, i'm surprised we had any film left!

One of the day's THE SNOW HIT! But it wasn't too bad here, and we did have some trouble with getting to some of the lessons, so this was a bit difficult. On the first lesson I took over final cut pro and did some editing whilst the other's gave me a helping hand next to me, but we all took turns and distributed the editing between us. I edited the section where Nova roll's over in the bed and kisses james on the cheeck, roll's back over and finds the bra sits up and screams, the WHOLE of this section is match on action, so was quite difficult to do, but I think we did it quite well, even if I do say so myself! lol.

Action Plan!

Action Plan:
In order to complete our coursework to the standard we wanted it to be, and to be in on time, we made an action plan in order to make sure it happened :)


Sunday 18th January - Start Filming
Saturday 24th January - Complete Filming
Wednesday 28th January - Start Editing a rough edit
Thursday 29th January - Continue editing
Friday 30th - Continue editing
Saturday/ Sunday 31st Jan/ 1st Feb - Any extra filming that needed to be done.
Wednesday 4th - Thursday 12th February - Continue editing.

Friday 13th - Sunday 22nd Feb - Half Term

Monday 23rd Feb - Start editing final edit.
Wednesday 24th - Friday 27th - Put together final edit.
Friday 27th - Hand in film!

List of cast:

Directors: Matt, Hannah and Lauren!
Filmed by: Matt, Hannah and Lauren!

Main Girl - Nova
Cheating Boy - James
Friends: Sinead, Kirsty

Nova!
-Bring pink PJ's
-Bring make up
-Needs fluffy slippers from somewhere

James!
-Black vest top - PJ Shorts/Boxers

Friends!
-Stilletoes
-Skinnies, Big Scarf, Bring foundation and all thier makeup.

Story Board/Annotation

Hello! I havn't posted on here for ages.
But I have been keeping everything up to date in my boook on what we have been doing.
Just need to log it all down now!

Next I would be putting in the storyboard.
But I am unable to find it, and as on the day of filming it got soaked as someone spilt tea on it.
I fear it may have been thrown away!
But we did make one, honest.
I will get post it on here if its ever found!
Ian did see it,and it took us ages to do aswell, GUTTED.
I hear you shout "What are they going to do!", well do not fear.
I have exactly what we wrote down for each shot in my book.
So ive got the mission of writing it all down now, great...


1.Collection of photo's on bedside table - LOVE Joss Stone (The music).
2.Zooms in on each photo and then it starts to move - goes into that clip - both of them are happy! - Black and white - Past.
3.Pans across them in the bed from the shot of the pictures on the bed side table - over the top of both of thier heads.
4.Long shot of them in bed facing seperate ways. She starts to roll over (match on action) Then on the next shot you see her finish rolling over and kissing him on the cheek and then see her roll back over to the other side of the bed and put her hand under the pillow (This is going to be like loads of shots) See her pull out something - match on action of her sitting up in the bed from pulling out the "Something" from under the bed. Insert on pants, and then insert on her face screaming.
5.In the hall - High angle shot of them arguing in PJ's - fluffy slippers - reaction shots of them arguing - Insert on hand on door - opens - long shot of the door. Medium close up of her putting the pants on his head, Medium shot of her pushing him out of the dooor. She shuts the door and slides down the door - Meium shot - Tilt.
6.Text message - Insert - "He's been cheating on me"
7. Wide shot of her sat in the corner on her own - fade to black.
8.Stiletoes running up the drive - low angle - Bright colours.
9.Two friends - coming in the door - medium close up.
10.Over shoulder of the main girl - reactions of her friends.
11.Close up of her face - make up has ran everywhere (Main Girl)
12.Wine bottles - shot of putting the last one bottle down - pan across them.
13.Point of view shot - friends wiping the make up off and girl getting the lipstick ready to put on.
14.Pan across empty wine bottles last one fallen over - wine spilt out.
15.Point of view shot - sat on the sofa (Main girl) shot of the friends standing up saying "You dont need him".
16.Shot of the main girl sat on the sofa in the corner (she looks a bit crap, but she has her makeup done) - eating ice cream.
17. Insert on the stereo - "Lets put some music on!" - presses pay button. (I will survive - Gloria gaynor)
18.Shot of two hair brushes sycronized picking up of the hair brushes.
19.Shot of one girl singing a line - "At first I was afraid I was petrified"
20.Shot of second girl singing a line "Thinking I could never live without you by my side"
21.Bothe friends try to pull the main girl up to sing - "but then I spent so many nights", then she sits back down - "Thinking how you did me wrong", and they pull her up again - "But I grew strong".
22.In a huddle singing "I knew how to live alone" - Main girl is singing into the spoon she was eating the icecream with - Medium shot.
- Point of view shot from the door - all three girls run towards it.
- Shot of the door left open - long shot - Girls pop into the shot "From out of space"
- Shot of the girls bums - like alicia dixon video.
- Shot of them dancing in the road - tilts up to the sky - "MOVING ON" comes on the screen fade to white.

Some of that diddn't make much sense to me, but you know at least you know we had some sort of plan.

Thursday, 15 January 2009

We have decided to useeeee

IDEA ONE :)


As everyone in the group all agreed that we thought it would be the easiest to do in the amount of time we had, and was the best idea out of all four of them, no one in the group diddn't want to do it :) So everyone was happy and it was great!