27th January

What an intense day! I engaged in some very good exercises and resources to analyse, it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. The man who came in to look at my project so far gave some very interesting feedback and advice specific to my video and planning. He highlighted throughout the day that the picking of a genre and showing the conventions of it is a key thing to include, which he said I had done very well. The scene with the phone call, probably the trickiest part of the video to film, did have some problems though. He suggested that I re-record the voice of my actress on the phone because it sounded like she was in the same room as the rest of my actors. There was also an issue with the music I had chose, he recommended something more blatant in terms of connotations in the song, something poplar which would be obvious to any audience watching.

One other point he made, is that because of being the camera man and editor you are more likely to hesitate with cutting unnecessary footage which to you looks essential, but to other people seems pointless. This is the main idea I took away from the enrichment day as I think it is key in selecting the right shots to use, and affects the overall outcome and meanings of the video.

Another key point he made was that it is essential to keep the audience interested. Well that’s pretty obvious you may say, but actually to keep the audience hooked and wanting to watch any video you must entertain them sufficiently throughout the duration of the video. To do this you must diversify your styles with different camera angles, and interesting effects, all in the name of producing quality video and keeping the video actively interesting.

26th January

Finished the last pieces of my editing today. It seems adding credits to the end of my film is harder than I thought to do on Macs. You have to have a certain amount of video to use at the end of the timeline to place the words on, unfortunately this meant the title appeared half way through the last scene of the film. I spent most of today’s lesson trying to make it appear at the end, I am going to have to considerable Google research to make this work, which is pretty annoying. Tomorrow is an enrichment day in which someone who has experience in making films is coming into school to analyse our work so far and give us some feedback, hopefully what I've produced so far is to their liking. We’ll have to wait and see.

22nd January

When I sat down at my Mac this morning I was surprised to see how much of my footage I had already edited. Nearly three-quarters of the two minutes I was allowed to use had been filled, and I still had the ending credits to take care of. One thing that I don’t like with using Macs for editing is the level of technicality that the software goes in to. Everything is a bit too basic, there are only 3 tracks for instance - one video and two audio, which means you are unable to layer any videos over each other. I’m also considering changing the font I use at the end, choosing the right font for the title has a great effect on the atmosphere of the film.

20th January

Editing went very well today, I was pleased with the quality of the tape, and the quality of the filming. It took some time to import the footage from the camera, it seems I had a lot more than I had previously thought. After ordering the clips chronologically on the timeline in iMovie I went about trimming the transitions between them, making sure none of the scenes overlapped. This is where the Macs are exceedingly useful, you can move the slider by the second very easily, making it simple to cut very small pieces of footage. I did have a few extra scenes that I wanted to include to add depth to the exposition of the opening, but due to the time constraint of 2 minutes I had to cut them out. It was at this stage that I had to edit audio for the first time in my videos, fairly simple stuff but really essential. Thought some German tan metal might fit into this scene, we’ll see how it goes.

17th January

Spontaneously went to a friend’s house, we were going to try and think of some more possible ideas for filming but ended up filming the whole thing. The Romcom ideas seem to fit and with our combined knowledge of romantic comedy conventions I think we have filmed quite a good piece. I particularly liked the scene where clothes are thrown out of the room, it’s a classic convention that comedy films have. Filming this time round I was much more aware of where I was filming from and for how long I was filming. My actor, Mike, came up with some good ideas for cutting which I made a note of to incorporate when it came round to editing. I can’t wait to get into school to edit this on the Macs, as boring as it sounds I’m actually looking forward to Monday. It was also at this stage that I knew I would have to include some music to make one of the scenes ‘work’ in the way I wanted it to. This led to discussions on what music other similar scenes used from more well known films, Bridget Jones’s Diary came to mind.

16th January

Now the brainstorming has officially begun, thinking up ideas is again as predictably hard as it was the first time round. I am confident however, that I will think of something if I work hard at it. My teacher mentioned RomComs to me, a genre I don’t tend to watch, but could be a good idea. Ill have to think more about that, maybe scribble down a few ideas. Watched Hot Fuzz today, thought the editing in some of the scenes was excellent, picked up some ideas that I might like to use in my video.

Main Task - The Beginning - 12th January

A new year has begun!

Hopefully this second part of the foundation project will go well, thinking up ideas is hard work, and I think that good ideas take time to form. I've looked over the specification for the main task, only one sentence on it, it seems that I have very few limiting factors - I can film basically anything I want. Everyone seems very enthusiastic after this Christmas holiday, I'm liking the atmosphere.