Comparison to our Preliminary task

Looking back at our preliminary task, our skills have developed a lot. Both through the creativity of the content, and our editing and filming skills too. In our preliminary task the lighting wasn't great, and we filmed in school; which limited what we could do. It also isn't very realistic when Maddie falls down the stairs, we had a similar problem portraying Charlotte getting hit by the train but we overcame the problem and was successful in making it realistic and clear what has happened. I think over all we have improved a huge amount, but we expected this as our preliminary task was our first clip we had ever made and had no experience of filming and editing before. In our preliminary task we did not add many edits, because we did not know how to, where as our film opening is a lot more edited and looks more professional, due to having more time to research how to use the final cut express programme. Our preliminary task did helped us a lot as if we had not done it then our finished film opening would not of turned out half as good as it did. 

Film opening evaluation

What we did
We were given the coursework task of creating a 2 minute film opening. So we had to get into small groups, in mine were Emily Hamer, Sacha Wyatt and myself. To begin we started researching background information and watching film openings to come to a conclusion of a genre we would like to make our film opening in, we come to the conclusion of creating a Melodrama film. We chose to do this as most other peoples coursework was horror, and we wanted to be slightly different. We knew portraying a Melodrama would be difficult but we were all prepared to work hard. We then brainstormed our ideas to create a plan of what we wanted our storyline to be, after agreeing on our storyline we developed this and created an Animatic storyboard. The animatics helped us as a guideline when filming. Before filming we conducted a survey to find out who our target audience would be, which we then put our results into graphs which helped us to see exactly who would be most interesting in viewing our film. We created a film schedule to plan all our filming and the dates. We filmed all of our footage on Monday 19th November 2012. We got all of the footage we wanted plus some additional footage just incase we were short, we were happy with what we had achieved. Then we began editing which took the most time, this was due to having to learn the software and develop our skills, we changed a lot of our film opening numerous times by improving it. During editing we created our character profiles, decided on a film title and got regular feedback for improvements. We then finalised our film opening and published it, and got final feedback by posting our finished media product on Facebook and Media.

Why we did what we did 
We chose to do all of our coursework  in this order as this was what worked best for us. We did all the research to begin, to figure out what we wanted our film to be like and then created plans before filming. Watching film openings really inspired us and gave us a lot of ideas for our own film opening. Our animatics helped us to plan what we were going to film and gave us guidance when we were actually filming. 

Evaluation on different area's
Research
During the research stage there was not many difficulties, the only one being when researching Melodrama we firstly could not find a great deal on it due to it being not overly popular. However, when looking at film openings we found it very interesting and easy to analyse, we were inspired by Seven Pounds, and Dear John. The research stage helped us to get additional ideas and look at the similarities between film openings which we may need to include.

Preparation
During our preparation we had many different idea's that we did not all agree about. It took us a while to plan all our ideas and pick a genre. However when we finally decided we were able to brainstorm all our ideas and finally create an animatic story board. The animatic storyboard was quite tricky, as the pictures took a long time to draw and it was hard to get them to look realistic, especially the one of the platform which needed to be in proportion. We didn't have any props to include when filming, therefore we didn't have to prepare for that. Over all the preparation stage went well as at the end of it we knew exactly what to film and what we needed to do.

Creativity and imagination
When planning our film opening we had no problem with being creative and imaginative. We didn't actually find any other Melodrama films that were similar to ours, so we needed to design our own and create completely our own idea's. We were very creative during editing too, as we used all our own imagination, we knew we wanted to reverse everything at the end which we hadn't seen in other film openings before. Also we had no problem choosing our film title, as we very rapidly came up with different idea's.

filming skills
I developed many filming skills whilst filming. As we filmed everything on one day I had a lot of different idea's pop up into my head which I tried and altered to make a good shot. As i'd never filmed anything for anything like this before, I think i did it well. The camera was fairly steady and the shots were clear and interesting. My filming skills improved a lot towards the ends of the day where I had got more practice.

Editing skills
As we had to experience of editing footage before, we developed our editing skills a lot. At the end of the process we could use nearly everything on the software. It took a lot of time learning how to use the different tools and we got a bit impatient at times, especially if we couldn't find any tutorials on youtube. But in the end we figured everything out and it improved our skills a lot.

Team work
I think my group worked excellent as a team. We all helped each other and worked together to make our film opening the best it could be. We encouraged each other to work hard and all learnt how to use the software for editing. All of our ideas were put together to create our plans and footage, which I think was very successful. We each suggested improvements throughout all stages of our media product and we took them into consideration, we didn't have many disagreements at all. If I was to do this project on my own I would of struggled a lot.

Social groups
Our film opening included two teenagers; Beth and Charlotte. They represent female teenagers as they are able to go out without parental guidance. And they purchased train tickets which shows they are independent which suggests they are older teenagers which is what normal girls of their age has. Both girls are fashionabily dressed representing the current teenage generation. They also come from normal families. I think we portrayed the two teenagers well, as they are just ordinary teenage girls, which people can relate to.

Media institutions
Looking at the outcome on our finished product I think the institution that would distribute my media product best is Universal Studio's, which is the institution we chose. This is due to the fact that Universal's films that they have distributed before some have included controversial content, they have been the insitution of many films such as E.T, which really was incredible for the era and time it was made in. I think as our film opening contains things that many teenagers and other ages can relate to, universal studio's would be able to distribute this successfully.

Improvements I would make if I were to do it again
If I were to do my film opening again I would of picked a different genre as I found Melodrama a really difficult genre to portay. We had to change our music three times in order to make our film opening more obvious that it was a Melodrama. I would still not have chosen Horror though as a lot of the previous film openings done by students for their AS coursework were that genre and we wanted to be different. Also I would not of done our filming at a train station, as it was very time consuming to get permission to film there and we could of spent that time filming getting the best shots possible. The phone call made in order to get permission also charged which we wasn't at all happy about. Also it was not the safest place to film, due to having to film Charlotte past the yellow line and close to the edge which was a major hazard; and at times I felt very unsafe filming so close to the edge. I would also add conversation into our footage, as this was one our feedback improvements. As our film opening had music throughout, we had the problem of it looking like a music video therefore we had to add lots of sound effects to ensure the audience knows it a film opening, plus addition conversation would of definitely made it look less like a music video.

Match on action

In our media film opening we have included match on action which was very successful, it flows well and I think we made it almost perfect. 

My favourite shot in our film opening


This is my favourite shot used in our film opening as I think it looks really professional and effective. We edited the producer's name (David Andrews) to fade in as they step out of the puddle, which I think also looks really effective. We had planned to get this shot as soon as we started brainstorming our ideas, as we planned to film on a rainy day which worked perfectly for the setting and scenario.

Feedback and changes

We posted our piece on a social networking site in order to get some feedback on our piece. This is what a few of our friends said about our film opening. The feedback contains positive and improvements.

As you can see the things that people liked were the shots and the fact you can tell it's a dream sequence. They liked how the credits blendid in so well, which is exactly how we wanted it to be so they don't distract the viewer from the shots and actual film opening. Some of the improvements were to have conversation, which I agree with and would include if I were to do the filming again.

[Our film is not called Morals anymore, but the film is still the same. It is now called Elapsed in Time as this relates more to the storyline. We chose to change the name from peer feedback in the class.]

This is what the film title originally was, however we decided to change it as we got feedback saying that it doesn't relate to the film enough. Also the font of the title appears to look quite vintage and medieval, which doesn't reflect the film opening. Therefore we chose to change it to a more modern font as well as a different title.

This is the font and title we used, as you can see the font is a lot more contemporary and modernised which suits the style of the film as it is set in the 21st century. We then got some feedback from the class to see if they thought this font was better, and they all said they did think it was a big improvement.  

Finished film opening

Elapsed in time

Click the link which will direct you to our film which is on Youtube. 

Editing evaluation on Final Cut Express

Throughout editing our film we faced many difficulties which took time and patience to fix. 

For example our first issue was importing our footage from the camera onto final cut express. For some reason it wouldn't allow us to select the footage from the camera or from the desktop. So we researched if anyone else had experienced this problem and many others had. We then found out that we had to put all the clips onto iMovie and make a video out of them.

We then had to export the movie which was on share, located at the top of the programme.

After we had done this we could finally get it up and running in Final Cut Express. It took us quite a long time to get used to the programme and one of the hardest things was finding where things were and the functions to do what we wanted to do. We faced many issues such as trying to put edits on our footage in order to make them appear like a dream or on one of the shots we needed a cctv appearance. We used youtube tutorials to figure out how to put edits onto the footage and had a play around in order to see which edits we liked. One of the hardest parts of the editing stage was doing the credits, because we initially wanted 3D text which we couldn't seem to do, we watched various youtube tutorials to help us however the software kept crashing and we lost our work numerous times which was inconvenient as we were coming closer to our deadline and were having to re-do work.

However, there were lots of things that went well such as being able to do our music quickly and we picked up on how to cut and put together the footage very quickly. We also were able to put everything together and in order from our animatics which helped a lot due to having a clear image in our head of the order already. 

Edits we used

At the end of our film opening we used a technique which made everything reverse backwards, as we wanted it to appear like a nightmare reminiscing what happened to the main character Beth. We put all of the shots in the opposite order and made them black and white which was quite easy to do once we knew what we were doing. We then sped up the speed of each clip and put the reverse tool on it. This made all the clips go backwards from end to appear like a memory/flashback. 

When the two characters walked out onto the platform, we wanted it to appear like cctv footage to give a variety of effects used. This shot was filmed from the bridge initially to look as if it was a cctv camera, and then when we added the image it made it look affective and realistic which helped to make our film opening look more professional. 

We also found out that not only were we able to make clips faster but also slow them down. This emphasised the clip and made it look important and dramatic. We used this tool for when Beth tries to grab Charlotte to save her from falling. This was an important shot in our film opening that we added towards the end as an improvement, as it helped portray exactly what has happened. Without this shot the audience may of been left confused. To make this shot look more dramatic we added a slight blur to it, this helped to make the shot look like it happened so quickly that it was a blur to the main character Beth.

When the train was coming towards the platform, we needed the train to go a lot faster than usual as originally the train was slowing down and didn't look as dangerous. We sped the train up a lot, this helped to show the audience the train had no way of stopping and hit Charlotte at an intense speed. This made the audience feel more tense,

 Sound effects we used 

Through out or film opening we added sound effects to make our footage more dramatic. We added train noises that we actually filmed ourself for the start of the film just as the music begins. We thought this would give the audience a good feel to the atmosphere of the train station.

The second time we used a loud train noise was when the train was rushing towards the platform when the tragedy takes place. We needed to add this sound effect to show how dangerous the train was and emphasise that the train was coming towards the characters.

When Beth tries to grab Charlotte to prevent her from falling we added a scream of Beth shouting her name. This made it very clear exactly what is happening with our film and without this added the film opening appeared less dramatic and confusing. 

When the footage starts to reverse we cropped and edited the music to make it appear like a broken record, this created a circular feel to the experience Beth faced. Which suggested the event that happened will never leave her memory.

Also during the footage reversing we added a heartbeat towards the end, this tells the audience that the flashback is scaring Beth, and that it really had a big effect on her life. 

When Beth opens her eyes we added a cinematic bang which I think looks really effective. It was just something that added more drama to our piece when she wakes up.  The heartbeat is carried on for a few moments throughout the title and when everything goes back as well.