Project Log - Week 10

In this post, I approached each issue I faced in each lesson and also talked about how I solved this issue. Moreover, the issues of sound and how I resolved sound, has been addressed in detail in lesson 3.

Lesson 1: Me and my partner were not able to edit today because our actresses that plays Leah was not available for the whole two weeks of the Easter break. So, today we set up the final details of our plans to film tomorrow. We planned to shoot from break time, our media lesson with sir and also lunch time - giving us roughly 2 hours. In addition, we checked our list of what we had to reshoot, making sure we thought about continuity and considered the feedback given by miss. Once this was completed we messaged the actresses stating clearly what time we was meeting as well as making sure mise en scene was the same as last time e.g. Costume and makeup - a problem that we noticed was that the blood stain on the actress's face in our sequence would not be the same. Therefore, we noted down that we had to manipulate the camera in such away that you do not see her face. Furthermore, it worked in our favour because we do not want the audience to see Leah's face until the mirror scene - where she reveals the bruises and bloody nose. So, it adds mystery and keeps the audience on their toes as they want to know who she is, therefore they give all their attention to find out. Lastly, my partner and I utilised the rest of the lesson time finishing off a blog post entitled "why we decided to alter our narrative".

Lesson 2: Today focused on filming the shots we needed to reshoot. We accomplished our goal. Once this was done, my teacher watched our opening sequence and told me what could be improved. He gave me some very useful advice telling me that not everything has to flow when it comes to the action. He advised to play around with the shots a bit more and cut them down. However most importantly making sure they have a certain meaning you are trying to convey. For instance one of our shots was 23 seconds long ( the mirror scene) he knew we were trying to slow down the action after the chaos of the smash mouth opening and just get the audience to focus on Leah's bruised face and in turn they shall sympathise for her. Sir commented saying it was just too long! And it slowed down the action way too much. So after cutting it down to 8 seconds, I instantly saw a great improvement and just after a simple cut, the scene became tense and created a sad atmosphere that we want our audience to feel. So today I have learnt how every shot must have its relevance and portray something that will aid the audience to think more deeply about what they are watching.

Lesson 3: Me and my partner uploaded the content that we filmed during lesson 2. We edited the footage as well as replacing shots. This was not enough time therefore we came after school and continue to edit up until 7:00. We came across many issues, one of which was the sound because a Leah takes out her headphones, we wanted the music to dim down. However, it was not complying and the music started to become echo like. To solve this we had to cut the music twice. (Before and after the shot of her taking out then putting back in her headphones). The next problem however was that we had to make the music flow, so there was no break( couldnt hear the gap in the cuts). The only way this could be solved was by manually matching the sounds perfectly - this took up a lot if our time but in the end we figured it out. Furthermore, we had to play around with the sound perspective as sometimes the music was too loud an you could not hear the diegetic sounds eg toilet flushing, therefore we had to balance the sounds so neither was overpowering. The last problem we had was the length our opening sequence - it was too short, coming up to a total of 1:09. To resolve this issue we looked through extra cut aways or any other shots we could use that had relevance to our sequence. So instead of our sequence ending on the scene where Leah walks through the subway. It was extended so you then saw her walking up the stairs and then later entering Newbury park station. Lastly, we placed the first few production credits that came before the sequence started into iMovie, as it was a separate shot an did not lay over any footage. In addition, we quickly imported all of our graphics onto Final Cut, ready to be place upon the footage tomorrow.

Lesson 4: This lesson focused on graphics only! We spent time trying to place graphics over the footage but this task was not easy. Due to our lack of knowledge of how to use the programme it took a while to get used to. Therefore wasting much needed time. My partner placed all the graphics in except the title. We did not have enough lesson time to put the title in as we unfortunately shared the mac with another group, meaning we had to get off. Therefore, I came after school to quickly insert the title but I soon found out my partner did not put in the graphics properly as the footage of our opening sequence was cut up with the graphics in between the footage rather then appearing on top of the footage. So I had to restart everything and another problem soon came about. Our graphics were dark and so was the footage therefore you could not read the graphics properly. After a lot of manipulation it was decided that the graphics should come at opposite ends if the screen (so one graphics would appear of the left of the screen, it would then disappear and then another graphic would appear onto the right of the screen). This technique then solved the above issue. Once this was done, I placed the title on top of the subway scene in order to emphasize Leah's isolation as well as connoting literally how she is stuck in a maze since she's in a subway alone. Then touches were added like adding a fade in and out of the title, this was inspired by what was done to the title in This Is England. Once the footage was rendered it was just a case of watching the graphics through and playing around with the duration as it had to be long enough for the audience to read (average if 4-5 seconds). Once I was content with the final sequence it was uploaded onto youtube - below is our final opening sequence.