Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Practice Filming

Here we have practised our planning, filming and editing skills. We had to create a short sequence from a film leading up to a murder. This meant that we had to carry out the same steps as in our real coursework by planning it, filming the ideas and then editing them together. We did this so we could learn from our mistakes and find out what works and what doesn't.



Planning

We planned our sequence in a A3 paper, we used as a guide to make our film. We planned it and turned our ideas into main sequences, so it would be easy for us to film. We discussed which person is best for different characters. If we had more time and resources, we would prefer to add costumes. We had to add people from outside the class and we had to change some parts of the storyboard.

 Acting

Most of the acting in our murder mystery was done well and very convincingly. Some of our actors found it hard to take it seriously so we had to film the same sequence few times to get it right. One of the actors were not very natural, therefore we found it hard to make it look like real murder scene. At the end, the victim was smiling (when dead) , so it was a disaster and should have been refilmed.

 Selecting shots and angles/music

We decided to start the film with an establishing shot of the murderer walking towards the camera. We filmed for some time to draw the picture to the audience. We filmed it in front of the library and we had a good view from there, it was a long shot as we were trying to give a sense of where the action is taking place. There were also cars parked on the other side so it would be a perfect place to do a drug deal.

 We had lots of point of view shots to provide a sense of tension to the audience/film. At the end of the clip, we had a low angle shot to represent violence and sympathy for the audience. It was also hides the identity of the murderer, which represents mystery and leaves the audience with uncertainty.

 Editing Decisions   

In total we had more than 8 minutes of film and most of the footage was not very good. The final film was only 1 minute and 35 seconds long, it was more than the expected time.

We decided to change the colour at some parts of the film to represent tension and in some parts to represent violence. We thoroughly went through the clips and deleted the unwanted parts of the film. The good thing we did was that we filmed each scene two times so that we can have the best scene in our original clip.

 The last part of the film was presented in slow motion and in black and white to represent violence. Diegetic sound on the video was in effect (in low pitch), which enhanced the emotions of the scene. The end of the film was a picture of the victim dead to drag the sympathy of the audience.

We also used non-diegetic sounds to make our clip/film looks more effective and convincing. The type of music we chose was fast pace HipHop/Rap and the lyrics makes it even more tense and violent. The music was very well presented and perfectly timed so that the actions are compared with the beat.

 We were not really focussing on our dialogue, we were giving more attention to our video more to get it right. As this was our first time/project we were quite nervous and were not really sure what we were doing.

 Mise-en-scĂ©ne

We chose good settings and places to do our filming, but some parts did not work as we expected. Due to PE lessons and other factors we could not get the perfect background without people in it. Especially in the first part of the film we can notice lot of mistakes and background sound of people which we did not want in our film.

 In the last part of the sequence the setting was pleasing but we can still notice some unexpected appearences.

I believe that we planned our props well but we did not have enough resources to do as we planned. Some parts of our film did not look as great as we expected due to lack of knowledge on how to effectively use lighting. Some of our actors laughed when they were running, which made the clip even more unconvincing. One of actors' running was very unreal and it was very disappointing.

We looked like school kids as we did not have costumes. This is something that we will be expecting to do for our real thing.

 Improvements

There are number of things that we would like to change in our clip such as costumes, roles of the actors, the setting. I would also prefer to improve our dialogue skills and make things look more natural. And also to improve our camera skills to present a better and convincing product to the consumers/audience. We would also like to improve our editing skills and to involve graphics and 3D animation to our final project. We would also prefer to have more people in our group and to have more convincing events.

Shehan



Camera angles

We tried to use as many camera angles as possible to make our clip look as professional as it can be. This didn’t work out as we had to get the actors to freeze in a position before we could cut it and change camera angles. For example, we used two shots at the beginning to show the two actors had to share a space in order for the viewers to see they will have to interact with each other, and we tried straight away to use the POV shot on one of the actors, but unfortunately it didn’t work out because the actors had already interacted and it took way too long in the POV shot before the second actor spoke for them to stand somewhere else. I believe our camera angles were relatively poor and could be improved if we timed it a little better.

I noticed we had over used the long shot. It would have been good to of had a low angle shot when they were running so it didn’t reveal where they were running to. On the other hand a bird’s eye view angle would have been also good to show where they’re running to.  

The scene would have been more dramatic if it didn’t reveal the killer at the beginning and kept the audience wondering who the murderer was though out the scene. I think we used the low angle shot at the end of the scene very well as it showed the power of the murder and the vulnerability of the victim.

Working in groups

We had a group issue at first as one of our members wasn’t in so we had to have another person in our group. Additionally, we had a problem with our group size as we were just 3 in a group but needed a fourth member to be involved in the scene. I was very pleased with the group I was in as we all spoke to each other and no one was scared to put forward their idea down.  

It was really hard to come to a conclusion as we all had our own ideas and took a long time to decide which ideas were best.

I have learnt that in other to make a successful work, everyone in the group has to be committed, willing to share ideas, commenting on other people’s ideas idea and I think that’s what my group had.

Planning and storyboarding

This I thought Planning and storyboarding would have been the easiest part of the whole project as it was 3 of us in a group and I thought ideas would just come to one of us quickly. Unfortunately it was the other way around as it took nearly a whole lesson to come up with a story board, also, when it came down to shooting the scenes  we found we had to change some of the planning as they didn’t suit the environment. For example, in class, we planned to shoot a bit of the scene around the canteen but had to change our location due to a class going on.

Doing this, I have learnt that planning takes time and patience for it to be right and successful.

Acting

Over all the acting was quite poor as it was incredibly hard not the look directly at the camera or laugh when you’re acting. There is a lot of improvement to be done. It is also extremely hard to pass on information when someone is already acting. For example, the actors couldn’t hear when the phone was ringing for them to turn their attention to it, and there was no place to pass on the information to them, so they hard to rely on just pure instincts, which in the movie didn’t look good as it took them too long to react after the phone had rang. The bright side was that no one was shy to be in front of the camera. I don’t know if we got the right actors to play the role, as the victim looked like he would be able to put up a little fight before he was killed. This mistake will make us make improvements as we will now be aware of the depth need to pick the right actor so the scene looks more convincing.
Kennedy

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