18th December

Deadline day. Handed in the finished DVD with a smile on my face for a job well done, in my opinion any way. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to do even better, although again, thinking up good ideas is the hardest part of filming.

15th December

I am now confident that I shall finish the editing and have it burnt to a DVD, ready to give in on Thursday. I used iDVD to make a title screen, I chose one which I thought looked nice, it’s got a nice little theme tune to go with it too. It took quite a while to compile and burn it all onto a DVD, which I was surprised at seeing as it was only about 2 and a half minutes of film, but such is technology these days.

12th December

This was the day when all the video I had recorded the previous evening came together into one nicely edited piece of work. After importing all of the film from the tape in the camera to the Mac I could then order them chronologically and fine trim the clips. The result – Pretty seamless in my opinion. There are a few things I would change next time though; the setting was a bit too dark, more light was needed to stop the camera continually refocusing. A better tape was needed, from looking at the footage, you can still see some of what was recorded before on the tape. Finally, I forgot to film the whole movement of one of the characters putting on his hat from 2 different angles, that’s why it seems to miss out his arm movement.

Apart from those things, editing the film was very easy, Macs really are as simple to use as they say. Although they can do less advanced things compared to some of the expensive movie editing software packages you see on Windows computers, they still provide an effective means of piecing together video.

11th December

Received deadlines for the rest of the Media Studies work for this year. Discovered I only had one week left to film my preliminary project. I wanted to film on the day so that I had the next double lesson to edit the footage. This meant I had to act quickly and talk to the two people I had established as my actors. We agreed that we could go to one of their homes to film, which is very lucky. When we arrived at his house, I looked around a bit at the rooms to see which would make a good setting. Turns out the best room was the living room, it had a fireplace and a truly amazing clock on the mantelpiece which I thought would look good in a kind of mysterious, dark setting.

It was at this point that a discussion arose about how the scene would start and seeing as it was now getting dark, one of my actors suggested lighting a fire. This inspired me to use the fire as a main source of light, the flickers of the fire would also add shadows to the faces of whoever I was filming which would create a dark atmosphere. 

It is at this moment that a script was developed, a little late in the grand scheme of things to think of something so vital to the video, I will certainly make sure I have a script before I choose to film next time. I decided on a kind of film noir/ gangster type of theme which seemed to suit the mood of the room.

Another good idea was to film the pouring of the glasses, with a hesitation in between glasses, so I could edit in my second character coughing, this idea really appealed to me and I think it worked well. I’ll have to wait and see when I edit it all together tomorrow.

8th December

This week I shall begin practicing using the camera more often, today I filmed some short pieces involving someone walking through a door. During this time I had to make sure the film would be continuous, as in, when they walked through the door on one side, from the other side no time had passed. This seems simple enough, I uploaded what I had recorded in the lesson and imported it into iMovie, the video editing software for Apple Macs. Macs are surprisingly easy to use, buttons are easy to find and most things are easy to find using the handy search box in the corner. After this experience using the Macs I was confident if I got my video recorded I would know how to turn it into a successful video.

5th December

Today I used the cameras for the first time, they are different to what I first thought they would look like, much smaller.  For most of the lesson I had to charge the batteries, this meant that I could not use them much.  I could however familiarise myself with the controls which seemed simple enough to use, some simple effects were possible to use directly off the camera, but I don’t think I will need to use any of them for my video.

1st December

Quite an uneventful weekend as far as Media Studies is concerned, although today I was able to brainstorm some ideas with my friends on what they were thinking of doing for their preliminary tasks and compare them with mine. Added details to the shots in my storyboard, things like the duration of the shot and I also added how I would move between shots. Things like this are better written down so I don’t forget them. I’m not completely sure how I’m meant to estimate the duration of the shot, it seems to me that that can only be written down once I’ve filmed it. But I’ll make a guess and change it afterwards. I extended any descriptions of the shots, using more ideas I had brainstormed onto paper.

28th November

Continued to develop my storyboard on an Apple Mac computer using Comic Life. Any new ideas I may have had in the week have been put into consideration, as I listen to more podcasts on film and media I find I am becoming more aware of the messages within them. Again, I considered a few more ideas, some about an interview scenario, which I have kept as a possibility in case my first choice is no longer viable. In the process of doing this I took a few more photos with the built-in camera and added captions to them too, although I do think that I should get down to some filming, I will try to get the cameras out next week.

24th November

I’ve had some ideas! There is obviously the plain idea of just filming a conversation as the specification says, but I think a dark and mysterious setting could also work well. After this weekend I started to develop a storyboard of my ideas on Comic Life on an Apple Mac computer. Macs are pretty easy to use, I like how they are much simpler to do things on then regular old Windows computers. It is at this point that I must get some of my ideas written down, it seems the program I used can put photos into a story board type view, so I used some photos using the built-in web-cam to illustrate my ideas, adding a few captions along the way.

21st November

Still no luck with any ideas. I have researched the different types of camera shots that are required in the preliminary exercise, they seem simple enough. Got to make sure I understand the concepts behind the 180 degree rule as well, bit of a hard one to get your head round but I should manage. Reverse shot and the two shot were some of the required shots, easy to include, shouldn't be a problem.

17th November

This seems like it could be a really fun project to do. I had always thought about making my own little movies with Windows Movie Maker but never really thought it worth doing. Now I actually get to do it to contribute towards my school work! I better start thinking of things to film.