Christmas!!!
My Blog will be closed for two weeks now because its Christmas time =)
I will begin posting again in 2009...Merry Christmas everyone!!!
Monday, December 22, 2008
Editing
Editing this term has been a great experience for me as I have learnt so much! During the first week of editing, I was not so confident and spent more time observing how to use the software and then having a go at it myself. Capturing shots has become very simple now, and I am much more confident with trimming and cutting each shot and placing it on the timeline. The first week of editing helped us experiment with our shots and the order that they would go in. We also edited in the shower sound bridge which works really well. Once we edited a rough sequence, we were able to see what works for continuity, and what doesn’t, for example in some shots it was raining when in other it was dry. The lighting too varied in the shots, the street becoming darker by the end, which did not look very believable or work for continuity. The first week of editing gave us an idea of what we needed to re-shoot.
After our second shoot, we added our new shots of Laura in the steamy shower into our originally edited sequence. Alice and I also began to add titles (directed by…starring…etc) and we learnt how to add key frames when using the fading effect. We played around with fonts and colours and we also added brightness and contrast to all of our shots making them look much more professional and of better quality. Alice had a lot more time to edit in her free periods as a lot of mine clash with 12E’s lessons but I try to help as much as I can during our lessons. Unfortunately, Mel had been very ill during this week but overall I think we made quite a lot of progress. We still needed to redo Barney’s street shots and add them into our sequence.
Finally, after having taken Barney’s shots we entered our third week of proper editing. Mel was back and well =) We edited in a different shot distance of Barney in-between the crosscutting. Alice, in her free period, also added in the dialogue and tried to synchronize it with Barney’s lip movement, which I think she did really well. However, unfortunately at the end Barney says something different in the Audio and Video so we may have to re-record that after Christmas. Alice also found a soundtrack, which we added on Thursday, and having gotten much feedback, everyone including Miss Thrasher thinks it works really well. Personally I love the sound track as it makes everything seem much slower and really builds up the suspense giving it an eerie atmosphere.
Overall Miss Thrasher said that our sequence is looking much better now, and that all the continuity works really well. She did however say that there were a few little things, which we could improve after Christmas but nothing major. This was a good end to our term of shooting and editing. One thing that continued to annoy us was the camera sound throughout the sequence however a helpful classmate, Nick, said that we could solve this problem by lowering the treble so we also need to remember this for after Christmas. We also plan to add in some Foley sound if we have time for better sound quality.
In general, I am much more confident with editing now, including cutting and trimming shots, adding sound, adding fonts and using effects, and I look forward to adding those final touches to our sequence next term.
Editing this term has been a great experience for me as I have learnt so much! During the first week of editing, I was not so confident and spent more time observing how to use the software and then having a go at it myself. Capturing shots has become very simple now, and I am much more confident with trimming and cutting each shot and placing it on the timeline. The first week of editing helped us experiment with our shots and the order that they would go in. We also edited in the shower sound bridge which works really well. Once we edited a rough sequence, we were able to see what works for continuity, and what doesn’t, for example in some shots it was raining when in other it was dry. The lighting too varied in the shots, the street becoming darker by the end, which did not look very believable or work for continuity. The first week of editing gave us an idea of what we needed to re-shoot.
After our second shoot, we added our new shots of Laura in the steamy shower into our originally edited sequence. Alice and I also began to add titles (directed by…starring…etc) and we learnt how to add key frames when using the fading effect. We played around with fonts and colours and we also added brightness and contrast to all of our shots making them look much more professional and of better quality. Alice had a lot more time to edit in her free periods as a lot of mine clash with 12E’s lessons but I try to help as much as I can during our lessons. Unfortunately, Mel had been very ill during this week but overall I think we made quite a lot of progress. We still needed to redo Barney’s street shots and add them into our sequence.
Finally, after having taken Barney’s shots we entered our third week of proper editing. Mel was back and well =) We edited in a different shot distance of Barney in-between the crosscutting. Alice, in her free period, also added in the dialogue and tried to synchronize it with Barney’s lip movement, which I think she did really well. However, unfortunately at the end Barney says something different in the Audio and Video so we may have to re-record that after Christmas. Alice also found a soundtrack, which we added on Thursday, and having gotten much feedback, everyone including Miss Thrasher thinks it works really well. Personally I love the sound track as it makes everything seem much slower and really builds up the suspense giving it an eerie atmosphere.
Overall Miss Thrasher said that our sequence is looking much better now, and that all the continuity works really well. She did however say that there were a few little things, which we could improve after Christmas but nothing major. This was a good end to our term of shooting and editing. One thing that continued to annoy us was the camera sound throughout the sequence however a helpful classmate, Nick, said that we could solve this problem by lowering the treble so we also need to remember this for after Christmas. We also plan to add in some Foley sound if we have time for better sound quality.
In general, I am much more confident with editing now, including cutting and trimming shots, adding sound, adding fonts and using effects, and I look forward to adding those final touches to our sequence next term.
Reflections on Third Shoot- Saturday 13th
Finally, we managed to get all of Barney’s shots done! On Saturday, we mainly focussed on all the street shots, trying to get a variety of shot distances to make it more interesting. We also re-did the establishing shots in a better light. We managed to get a range of shot distances on the Barney’s phone conversation, which was good, and Miss Blackborow gave us some ideas about taking more shots of Barney at the door, maybe CUs of him ringing the doorbell, looking around etc so we experimented with these too.
All these have worked have worked really well, and although the weather was rainy and cold again, we were well prepared for it this time. We remembered the mistakes we had made the last time, with the water smudge on camera and rain sound. To solve these problems we kept cleaning the camera screen to make sure there was no smudge and immediately after the shoot, we re-recorded Barney’s dialogue indoors so the rain sound would not affect it. We also recorded some atmospheric sound when the rain stopped so the sequence seems realistic. We stated filming earlier this time and made sure we worked more efficiently so the street sequence could all be shot in the daylight before it got too dark. This meant that we also had to retake the clock shots changing the time to 5pm rather than 7pm to match with the lighting. I think this shoot was quite successful and we definitely managed to get a lot more variety in our shots.
Finally, we managed to get all of Barney’s shots done! On Saturday, we mainly focussed on all the street shots, trying to get a variety of shot distances to make it more interesting. We also re-did the establishing shots in a better light. We managed to get a range of shot distances on the Barney’s phone conversation, which was good, and Miss Blackborow gave us some ideas about taking more shots of Barney at the door, maybe CUs of him ringing the doorbell, looking around etc so we experimented with these too.
All these have worked have worked really well, and although the weather was rainy and cold again, we were well prepared for it this time. We remembered the mistakes we had made the last time, with the water smudge on camera and rain sound. To solve these problems we kept cleaning the camera screen to make sure there was no smudge and immediately after the shoot, we re-recorded Barney’s dialogue indoors so the rain sound would not affect it. We also recorded some atmospheric sound when the rain stopped so the sequence seems realistic. We stated filming earlier this time and made sure we worked more efficiently so the street sequence could all be shot in the daylight before it got too dark. This meant that we also had to retake the clock shots changing the time to 5pm rather than 7pm to match with the lighting. I think this shoot was quite successful and we definitely managed to get a lot more variety in our shots.
Monday, December 8, 2008
The Second shoot - Friday 5th
I was really looking forward to our second shoot as we had some good new ideas to work around especially for Laura. Unfortunately although we had to re-shoot all of Barney’s street shots due to a smudge on the camera screen, he was very ill and therefore we had to re-schedule his shots for next Saturday.
However we decided to go ahead with Laura’s shots and I think it went very successfully! We reshot the downstairs corridor shot adding more light and making it more sinister by lighting the candles on the wall. This was very effective. We also re-shot the picking up knife shot adding more light so the knife showed up better. We had a problem of Barney not being there as the silhouette at the door but Alice too his place instead, putting on a black coat and holding the rose.
According to Miss Blackborow’s advice, we added some more shots of Laura in the shower, turning the shower off and stepping out the shower. I think all of these worked well and will add to the build-up and help introduce the character more. We will replace the pan of the dressing table with this as it will work better for continuity and use the pan later on.
I am looking forward to capturing these new shots as it will be interesting to see how the cross-cutting works and I’m sure the better lighting will improve the quality of our opening sequence.
I was really looking forward to our second shoot as we had some good new ideas to work around especially for Laura. Unfortunately although we had to re-shoot all of Barney’s street shots due to a smudge on the camera screen, he was very ill and therefore we had to re-schedule his shots for next Saturday.
However we decided to go ahead with Laura’s shots and I think it went very successfully! We reshot the downstairs corridor shot adding more light and making it more sinister by lighting the candles on the wall. This was very effective. We also re-shot the picking up knife shot adding more light so the knife showed up better. We had a problem of Barney not being there as the silhouette at the door but Alice too his place instead, putting on a black coat and holding the rose.
According to Miss Blackborow’s advice, we added some more shots of Laura in the shower, turning the shower off and stepping out the shower. I think all of these worked well and will add to the build-up and help introduce the character more. We will replace the pan of the dressing table with this as it will work better for continuity and use the pan later on.
I am looking forward to capturing these new shots as it will be interesting to see how the cross-cutting works and I’m sure the better lighting will improve the quality of our opening sequence.
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Real Shoot
Saturday was a very productive as well as eventful day for our group! We applied a lot of what we leant from the test shoot to the real shoot and we also learnt a lot of knew things (like don’t forget the house keys or you will get locked outside in the wet and cold). I was very pleased with it as it seemed to all come together since the test shoot with the final actors and props and looked much more promising as a whole. We were better organised with our shooting script and finalised storyboard and knew exactly what we were doing and when. We even planned our breaks, and breaks for actors whilst we set up other things. Overall, I thought it was a great success although we were faced by quite a few problems. Here is a summary:
Things that went well
-Perfect actors-brilliant acting and co-operation
- Park shots look good
-Laura’s make-up (beautiful and scary) and costume
-Mis-en-scene- in kitchen and bedroom looked really good.
-nice photo-frame with realistic looking picture
-better continuity shots
-Laura managed to light the candle perfectly
-the ‘red curtains’ covered up dark sky outside
-We recorded nice shower and tick-ticking sound for sound bridging.
-managed to get a phone with chord.
-OTS of Laura looking at the photo worked well
-Laura’s evil smile at the end
-Barney’s walk with rose (thanks to Mel)
-The phone conversation came to both actors very naturally
Problems Faced
-The weather was definitely a great problem as it was not raining in the fist few park shots but began to rain during the street shots, which may affect continuity. We could not however go back and re-shoot park shots because the park had closed and the lighting outside had also changed quite obviously.
-It also got dark quickly and street lamps switched on which also became a problem, as we had to try to keep them out of shot.
-Sound was a problem as the raining sound on the umbrella protecting the camera equipment could be heard quite loudly.
- The street was also very busy so cars were constantly driving past creating noise and coming in the way of our shots.
-There was also building work going on in the background so a constant drilling sound was present.
-When quality-checking one shot we noticed that an umbrella could be seen in the corner so we had to go out and re-shoot it.
We tried to overcome problems of sound by recording atmosphere of the outside street once the rain had stopped and recording Laura’s footsteps again as the chair we used to track made a lot of noise as well. We were able to solve or get passed most of our problem and i felt the group and actors remained extremely patient and possiive.
throughout the day =)
Overall, apart from the problems faced, I think this shoot went much better than our first and we all had fun together although it was one very long day. Our group worked extremely well together and as there are three of us, we were constantly rotating between the roles of Director, PA and Sound technician so we all got a chance at everything gaining much experience. I am definitely looking forward to capturing the shots tomorrow and I hope it goes well!
Saturday was a very productive as well as eventful day for our group! We applied a lot of what we leant from the test shoot to the real shoot and we also learnt a lot of knew things (like don’t forget the house keys or you will get locked outside in the wet and cold). I was very pleased with it as it seemed to all come together since the test shoot with the final actors and props and looked much more promising as a whole. We were better organised with our shooting script and finalised storyboard and knew exactly what we were doing and when. We even planned our breaks, and breaks for actors whilst we set up other things. Overall, I thought it was a great success although we were faced by quite a few problems. Here is a summary:
Things that went well
-Perfect actors-brilliant acting and co-operation
- Park shots look good
-Laura’s make-up (beautiful and scary) and costume
-Mis-en-scene- in kitchen and bedroom looked really good.
-nice photo-frame with realistic looking picture
-better continuity shots
-Laura managed to light the candle perfectly
-the ‘red curtains’ covered up dark sky outside
-We recorded nice shower and tick-ticking sound for sound bridging.
-managed to get a phone with chord.
-OTS of Laura looking at the photo worked well
-Laura’s evil smile at the end
-Barney’s walk with rose (thanks to Mel)
-The phone conversation came to both actors very naturally
Problems Faced
-The weather was definitely a great problem as it was not raining in the fist few park shots but began to rain during the street shots, which may affect continuity. We could not however go back and re-shoot park shots because the park had closed and the lighting outside had also changed quite obviously.
-It also got dark quickly and street lamps switched on which also became a problem, as we had to try to keep them out of shot.
-Sound was a problem as the raining sound on the umbrella protecting the camera equipment could be heard quite loudly.
- The street was also very busy so cars were constantly driving past creating noise and coming in the way of our shots.
-There was also building work going on in the background so a constant drilling sound was present.
-When quality-checking one shot we noticed that an umbrella could be seen in the corner so we had to go out and re-shoot it.
We tried to overcome problems of sound by recording atmosphere of the outside street once the rain had stopped and recording Laura’s footsteps again as the chair we used to track made a lot of noise as well. We were able to solve or get passed most of our problem and i felt the group and actors remained extremely patient and possiive.
throughout the day =)
Overall, apart from the problems faced, I think this shoot went much better than our first and we all had fun together although it was one very long day. Our group worked extremely well together and as there are three of us, we were constantly rotating between the roles of Director, PA and Sound technician so we all got a chance at everything gaining much experience. I am definitely looking forward to capturing the shots tomorrow and I hope it goes well!
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