Journal - Film Opening
Week1:
In lesson:
we got into our groups to decide on whose film opening we were going to re-create. We all had chosen Katie’s film opening because her idea was simple enough for us to re-create. We all sat down and discussed ideas on camera shots, costume & make-up, props, characters body language and time duration within scenes. We all decided on individual roles within our group.
Camera:Me Props & costume: Me (all contribute at some stage)
Audio: Me,Joanna and Jurate (all contribute at some stage)
Main character:Katie
Editing: Joanna and Jurate(all contribute at some stage)
My participation is crucial to the group as I am mainly in charge of props, costume, and stage directing the actors appropriately in front of the camera. I have to try to re-create a woman in a smart suit with a smart, yet modest veil for a funeral. The most vital participation, which I am included throughout the production, is stage directing the actors. I will direct them with their facial expressions and body language. I have been nominated for this role as I have currently qualified in a LAMDA exam and attend performing arts school. I am being trained to act in front of the camera and stage; therefore, I am directing the main characters so the camera shot which Jurate and I are mainly in charge of will contrast perfectly. This will be proving to be a hard task but I will help in filming in and out of school.
Outside of school:
In my own time, I prepared ideas for costume and props to make the scene look as realistic as possible. The props also have to suit the overall theme/conventions of the genre. I made sure during my own time before we start filming this week, some costume items had to be brought in and I had figured some stage directions which were demonstrated whilst filming. This told me whether my techniques had succeeded or not. We developed Katie’s opening further to make sure all the scenes are doable in class. However once we had discussed our ideas with our teacher, we made some realistic changes that would be simple and easy to re-create in a short amount of time. Our first idea was to make the first scene in a grave yard, however that was not possible to do in a green room so we changed it to a woman in viel in an office to make it look she came from a funeral. The back costume will act like a convention of a funeral.
Week2
In lesson:
This week we started to film our opening, first we filmed our flashback scene where Katie and Joanna were re-enacting a happy memory that was shared together. For this, Joanna used a knitwear jumper to make herself look older and Katie used bright red pigtails and socks pulled up uneven to make herself look younger. I used close ups, middle shots, and two shots to show their facial expressions and their body language towards each other. This would be able to show the audience the strong relationship the characters once had.
We also filmed the scene where the main character is reading a letter from her mother about her death. I used close up shots to show the text and I also followed the text to make it look like the character is reading the text. This would make the letter seem more realistic.
This week we also started to edit and put together our film, we used final cut Pro for this. We learned this creative skill, as we were able to use various effects. Katie and I also searched for suitable music to be played alongside the voice over of the letter. We found a mysterious soundtrack suitable for our opening by a random mistake.My participation within the group also increased considerably as I was the only person who was filming. This meant the responsibility to film various of camera shot in various of angles was my responsibility to make our opening look good and to show off what we have learned about camera shots and put it into practice. As I did all the filming Joanna and Jurate helped with the stage directions whilst I maneuvered the camera to get the shots that I thought suited that pacific scene. I knew if the camera shaked allot then it would be my fault and it could possibly affect the total presentation of our opening. For this reason, in some of the scenes I learned how to use a Tri-pod. This one of the practical skills I learned. This included learning how to fix the camera to a Tri-pod and how to use the leaver to maneuver the camera to the position I needed. The main skill that I successfully learned was how to work the camera. I learned how to zoom in and out of the camera and how to upload the film clips we took onto the MACS. I knew this was successful when I looked back at what we filmed, because the camera did not shake as much as I expected it would. The last skill I learned this week was how to use the lighting in the Green room to the best of our advantage. We had to make sure that the lights were not visible on camera but also to aviod any shadows appearing from the charcters as the background appear as clear as we would like it.
Outside of school:
We spent some time out of lesson finishing filming which did not take long.
We also started editing some scenes of our opening.
Joanna and Jurate recorded our voice-over for the film.
Week 3
In Lesson:
We continued with the editing by using final cut pro. I was able to learn how to use different effects and how to insert a background of our choice instead of using the background in which we originally filmed in the green room. We also tried to do the voice over for our film but it didn’t come out exactly as what we would have liked so we will do that again next week during our own time. At the beginning of our film opening when Katie is sitting in her office reading her mum letter, we were going to put an image of an office as the background. However, as we used a variety of camera angles, we figured the background would not move but stay in the same place and would look odd with our camera movement; therefore we changed the idea and stuck with the green room as a substitute for an office. Our ideas changed again for our flash back scene. Originally we were going to film the flashback on the fields to represent a sunny day out in the park, however as we were not allowed to go onto the field we went into the green room and decided to insert an image of fields. Once realized the same problem would occur like the office. We decided to put clouds as the background as clouds do not really move so it would seem more appropriate and clouds are commonly associated with dreams, high above etc.... This is why we changed the idea of a sunny field to a mixed picnic on clouds. This would also show some vague memory in confusion as dreams normally are. My participation this week involved helping my group with the editing and help make decisions on the background and which effects we were going to use to best suit each scene.We also changed the scene in which Katie is reading the letter into black and white to make the atmosphere more sad and gloomy; this also made our flashback scene more powerful as there was a contrast between no-colour and colour. I also helped add in the soundtrack that Katie and I had found earlier. This took us quite some time, as we had to get the timings precise with the some of the camera angles. As we had nearly finished editing, we added the credits to appear and fade to match the title, which was also going to appear and fade slowly. The skills I had learnt this week were all on final cut pro. These included, how to change the green screen to a specific background, and also how to add text.
Out of lesson:
We rerecorded our voice over for the film. This is because the first time we did it,half of the voice over was cut off therefore, we had to re-record it. This was a problem and a minor setback however we carried on doing what we could do until we could record it again. We came back at lunchtime, so that we could have a quiet room in which to record it. This would make sure there was no other noise or distraction, which was not relevant to our scene, which could also then dramatically change our atmosphere.
Week4
In lesson:
This lesson we had nothing much to do as we had finished editing earlier on in the week. However, one thing we did improve on was how to let the sound slowly die down instead of just letting it stop. This was one skilled I had learned as my teacher had taught us how to do it, when we did not know how to do it before. Apart from that, all we did was learn how to upload it onto YouTube so that we could eventually upload it onto our weebly sites. My participation was to help upload it and give my opinion on the final opening along with everyone else in my group to make sure everything is completed and that we are happy with it.
Outside of lesson:
- Helped with a part of the voice over
- Came back in our own time to complete the editing
- Finally finished the film opening.
In lesson:
we got into our groups to decide on whose film opening we were going to re-create. We all had chosen Katie’s film opening because her idea was simple enough for us to re-create. We all sat down and discussed ideas on camera shots, costume & make-up, props, characters body language and time duration within scenes. We all decided on individual roles within our group.
Camera:Me Props & costume: Me (all contribute at some stage)
Audio: Me,Joanna and Jurate (all contribute at some stage)
Main character:Katie
Editing: Joanna and Jurate(all contribute at some stage)
My participation is crucial to the group as I am mainly in charge of props, costume, and stage directing the actors appropriately in front of the camera. I have to try to re-create a woman in a smart suit with a smart, yet modest veil for a funeral. The most vital participation, which I am included throughout the production, is stage directing the actors. I will direct them with their facial expressions and body language. I have been nominated for this role as I have currently qualified in a LAMDA exam and attend performing arts school. I am being trained to act in front of the camera and stage; therefore, I am directing the main characters so the camera shot which Jurate and I are mainly in charge of will contrast perfectly. This will be proving to be a hard task but I will help in filming in and out of school.
Outside of school:
In my own time, I prepared ideas for costume and props to make the scene look as realistic as possible. The props also have to suit the overall theme/conventions of the genre. I made sure during my own time before we start filming this week, some costume items had to be brought in and I had figured some stage directions which were demonstrated whilst filming. This told me whether my techniques had succeeded or not. We developed Katie’s opening further to make sure all the scenes are doable in class. However once we had discussed our ideas with our teacher, we made some realistic changes that would be simple and easy to re-create in a short amount of time. Our first idea was to make the first scene in a grave yard, however that was not possible to do in a green room so we changed it to a woman in viel in an office to make it look she came from a funeral. The back costume will act like a convention of a funeral.
Week2
In lesson:
This week we started to film our opening, first we filmed our flashback scene where Katie and Joanna were re-enacting a happy memory that was shared together. For this, Joanna used a knitwear jumper to make herself look older and Katie used bright red pigtails and socks pulled up uneven to make herself look younger. I used close ups, middle shots, and two shots to show their facial expressions and their body language towards each other. This would be able to show the audience the strong relationship the characters once had.
We also filmed the scene where the main character is reading a letter from her mother about her death. I used close up shots to show the text and I also followed the text to make it look like the character is reading the text. This would make the letter seem more realistic.
This week we also started to edit and put together our film, we used final cut Pro for this. We learned this creative skill, as we were able to use various effects. Katie and I also searched for suitable music to be played alongside the voice over of the letter. We found a mysterious soundtrack suitable for our opening by a random mistake.My participation within the group also increased considerably as I was the only person who was filming. This meant the responsibility to film various of camera shot in various of angles was my responsibility to make our opening look good and to show off what we have learned about camera shots and put it into practice. As I did all the filming Joanna and Jurate helped with the stage directions whilst I maneuvered the camera to get the shots that I thought suited that pacific scene. I knew if the camera shaked allot then it would be my fault and it could possibly affect the total presentation of our opening. For this reason, in some of the scenes I learned how to use a Tri-pod. This one of the practical skills I learned. This included learning how to fix the camera to a Tri-pod and how to use the leaver to maneuver the camera to the position I needed. The main skill that I successfully learned was how to work the camera. I learned how to zoom in and out of the camera and how to upload the film clips we took onto the MACS. I knew this was successful when I looked back at what we filmed, because the camera did not shake as much as I expected it would. The last skill I learned this week was how to use the lighting in the Green room to the best of our advantage. We had to make sure that the lights were not visible on camera but also to aviod any shadows appearing from the charcters as the background appear as clear as we would like it.
Outside of school:
We spent some time out of lesson finishing filming which did not take long.
We also started editing some scenes of our opening.
Joanna and Jurate recorded our voice-over for the film.
Week 3
In Lesson:
We continued with the editing by using final cut pro. I was able to learn how to use different effects and how to insert a background of our choice instead of using the background in which we originally filmed in the green room. We also tried to do the voice over for our film but it didn’t come out exactly as what we would have liked so we will do that again next week during our own time. At the beginning of our film opening when Katie is sitting in her office reading her mum letter, we were going to put an image of an office as the background. However, as we used a variety of camera angles, we figured the background would not move but stay in the same place and would look odd with our camera movement; therefore we changed the idea and stuck with the green room as a substitute for an office. Our ideas changed again for our flash back scene. Originally we were going to film the flashback on the fields to represent a sunny day out in the park, however as we were not allowed to go onto the field we went into the green room and decided to insert an image of fields. Once realized the same problem would occur like the office. We decided to put clouds as the background as clouds do not really move so it would seem more appropriate and clouds are commonly associated with dreams, high above etc.... This is why we changed the idea of a sunny field to a mixed picnic on clouds. This would also show some vague memory in confusion as dreams normally are. My participation this week involved helping my group with the editing and help make decisions on the background and which effects we were going to use to best suit each scene.We also changed the scene in which Katie is reading the letter into black and white to make the atmosphere more sad and gloomy; this also made our flashback scene more powerful as there was a contrast between no-colour and colour. I also helped add in the soundtrack that Katie and I had found earlier. This took us quite some time, as we had to get the timings precise with the some of the camera angles. As we had nearly finished editing, we added the credits to appear and fade to match the title, which was also going to appear and fade slowly. The skills I had learnt this week were all on final cut pro. These included, how to change the green screen to a specific background, and also how to add text.
Out of lesson:
We rerecorded our voice over for the film. This is because the first time we did it,half of the voice over was cut off therefore, we had to re-record it. This was a problem and a minor setback however we carried on doing what we could do until we could record it again. We came back at lunchtime, so that we could have a quiet room in which to record it. This would make sure there was no other noise or distraction, which was not relevant to our scene, which could also then dramatically change our atmosphere.
Week4
In lesson:
This lesson we had nothing much to do as we had finished editing earlier on in the week. However, one thing we did improve on was how to let the sound slowly die down instead of just letting it stop. This was one skilled I had learned as my teacher had taught us how to do it, when we did not know how to do it before. Apart from that, all we did was learn how to upload it onto YouTube so that we could eventually upload it onto our weebly sites. My participation was to help upload it and give my opinion on the final opening along with everyone else in my group to make sure everything is completed and that we are happy with it.
Outside of lesson:
- Helped with a part of the voice over
- Came back in our own time to complete the editing
- Finally finished the film opening.
My Evaluation
Pitch and Pre-production
Before we could even start the practical of creating our film opening, we had to prepare ideas for films which we may want to develop further. In preparation, in lessons we learned allot about production, distribution and exhibition. We found out the process films go through before they are released in the cinemas. This is when we thought about our favourite film and how it was developed. Once learning about the first few stages, we learned how to start creating our very own film pitches, and developing ideas. Our pitches had to be about 150 words, which included genre, camera shots, characters & cast and target audience. This is where we all were able to let our creative juices flowing to come up with an original idea. This would be the main idea /the starting point in which the logline and storyboard would all eventually form from. A logline is a one sentence summary of the film narrative at the beginning of the pitch. Once everyone had decided on their final idea for a film, we were able to start creating our 20 frame storyboard showing the possible camera angles/shots and mise-en-scene of our film opening. My idea for a film was about an Asian girl desperately trying to pursue her dream despite her parent’s traditional values. My idea came about when I put myself in this situation, as an Asian who knows it will be very difficult to get into the performing arts industry. From this, I knew I would be able to make an impact on the audience as my ideas from this film would be authentic as they are coming from real life experiences. Slumdog Millionaire, being my favourite film, I knew my film would link somehow from tea boy being looked down upon and being doubted, yet proving everyone wrong. After sketching out my storyboard, I was able to feel a great sense of my film opening come to life as i drew the images in full view of their camera angles and thought about the appropriate time duration for each shot. After completing the pre-production stage, I realised that the easy part of this assignment was over and the hardest part was about to commence.
Creating production
At the beginning of creating our film opening, we got into groups and chose one of our ideas which we thought would be the best and be the most practical one to film. In the end we chose Katie’s and started planning what we were going to do, where we were going to film and what roles we had within our group. Though we did not storyboard our idea, I drew a few sketches of how I thought I should film each sequence as the others left me with the all the camera work which I did not mind at all. In my opinion, I wanted to use as many camera shot/angles which would be appropriate for our scene to make it look interesting and for the audience to see the main objects (the main character and the letter) in different perspectives to give a real sense of the devastating atmosphere which we were trying to create. Whilst filming, we had to bear in mind the audience, the genre, sound and mise-en-scene. Our genre changed from being a horror/crime film to drama. We found the perfect mysterious soundtrack to suit the words/clues given in the letter. As this was drama genre, our target audience had changed to a more grown up audience as the audience would have to think about he mysterious clues given and try to work out the case. T o create atmosphere we had to make sure that the genre communicated well with the mise-en-scene and the soundtrack. This was successfully done as the voice over and soundtrack had a mysterious feel and the clothing Katie wore was back, therefore having connotations to a funeral and death. In my opinion, I felt as if we used the green screen to the best of our advantage for some difficult flashback scenes, and learned who to position the actors and lights in the green screen. We worked very hard on our production making sure all our editing on the confusing pro cut application was to the best of our ability and learned many skills to help u sin future practical media work. We all kept a journal of our own views of our progress and in the end; we were all very pleased with the outcome of our hard work. It’s safe to say that we were all very happy with the end product and we all worked very well as a team.
Before we could even start the practical of creating our film opening, we had to prepare ideas for films which we may want to develop further. In preparation, in lessons we learned allot about production, distribution and exhibition. We found out the process films go through before they are released in the cinemas. This is when we thought about our favourite film and how it was developed. Once learning about the first few stages, we learned how to start creating our very own film pitches, and developing ideas. Our pitches had to be about 150 words, which included genre, camera shots, characters & cast and target audience. This is where we all were able to let our creative juices flowing to come up with an original idea. This would be the main idea /the starting point in which the logline and storyboard would all eventually form from. A logline is a one sentence summary of the film narrative at the beginning of the pitch. Once everyone had decided on their final idea for a film, we were able to start creating our 20 frame storyboard showing the possible camera angles/shots and mise-en-scene of our film opening. My idea for a film was about an Asian girl desperately trying to pursue her dream despite her parent’s traditional values. My idea came about when I put myself in this situation, as an Asian who knows it will be very difficult to get into the performing arts industry. From this, I knew I would be able to make an impact on the audience as my ideas from this film would be authentic as they are coming from real life experiences. Slumdog Millionaire, being my favourite film, I knew my film would link somehow from tea boy being looked down upon and being doubted, yet proving everyone wrong. After sketching out my storyboard, I was able to feel a great sense of my film opening come to life as i drew the images in full view of their camera angles and thought about the appropriate time duration for each shot. After completing the pre-production stage, I realised that the easy part of this assignment was over and the hardest part was about to commence.
Creating production
At the beginning of creating our film opening, we got into groups and chose one of our ideas which we thought would be the best and be the most practical one to film. In the end we chose Katie’s and started planning what we were going to do, where we were going to film and what roles we had within our group. Though we did not storyboard our idea, I drew a few sketches of how I thought I should film each sequence as the others left me with the all the camera work which I did not mind at all. In my opinion, I wanted to use as many camera shot/angles which would be appropriate for our scene to make it look interesting and for the audience to see the main objects (the main character and the letter) in different perspectives to give a real sense of the devastating atmosphere which we were trying to create. Whilst filming, we had to bear in mind the audience, the genre, sound and mise-en-scene. Our genre changed from being a horror/crime film to drama. We found the perfect mysterious soundtrack to suit the words/clues given in the letter. As this was drama genre, our target audience had changed to a more grown up audience as the audience would have to think about he mysterious clues given and try to work out the case. T o create atmosphere we had to make sure that the genre communicated well with the mise-en-scene and the soundtrack. This was successfully done as the voice over and soundtrack had a mysterious feel and the clothing Katie wore was back, therefore having connotations to a funeral and death. In my opinion, I felt as if we used the green screen to the best of our advantage for some difficult flashback scenes, and learned who to position the actors and lights in the green screen. We worked very hard on our production making sure all our editing on the confusing pro cut application was to the best of our ability and learned many skills to help u sin future practical media work. We all kept a journal of our own views of our progress and in the end; we were all very pleased with the outcome of our hard work. It’s safe to say that we were all very happy with the end product and we all worked very well as a team.
