Unit 1 Pre - Production Techniques Task 3) Filming log

Unit 1 Pre - Production Techniques Task 3) Filming log

Tuesday 22nd April 2014
Today was the first day of shooting. We are quite a way behind the other groups in the class and are behind schedule, so we are going to make sure that we get all of the filming done this week.



We only had an hour to shoot (12.00pm - 1.00 pm), so we decided to shoot the corridor shots of the trailer. Overall, the shoot went well and everyone worked well together. We used Adan, Katie, Donovan and Kausar in this scene as the actors. We filmed this scene on the top floor of our college. Even though it was dinner, there were not a lot of people there so this made it is easier for us to film what we needed to film in a short space of time.

The corridor shots were the shots in the scene that would help build the tension. This was basically shots of the main actors running through the corridors with a camera in their hand, showing that they were running away from something/looking for the ghost.

We also had time to do the stairs shots at the end. This consisted of all of the characters walking up the stairs. One of the characters were getting taken away by 'the darkness' and then the rest would turn around wondering where the character had gotten to.

Overall, we did well on time in this shoot as we only had an hour to film, so we got a lot done.

After I had wrote this, we changed the cast slightly, as one of the characters couldn't make it to the rest of the shoot days. So now James is in replacement of Adan and we are re shooting the scenes we shot on 22nd April as it would not make sense because of the character change.

Thursday 24th April 2014

Unfortunately, I was not present at this shoot as I was off ill. The original plan was to do outside shots and on Monday we will re shoot the corridor and stairs shots.

I have spoken to one of my team members, James, and he said that they still shot today from 10.30 - 1.00pm and got a lot done and that it went really well. He said that they re did the corridor shots from Tuesday, and also shot the opening outside shots and also cutaways in the basement. I will watch this outage back at some point and review it.

Monday 28th April 2014

I wasn't need for this shoot as James and George went out and just got cutaway filler shots for the trailer, that only took 10 minutes. I also had other work to do that had to get done, but they said that they went to an abandoned alleyway and that the shots looked really good.

I have looked over the footage and it looks really good for filler shots. We discussed as a group about how we need filler shots for this trailer, as 2 minutes 30 seconds is a long time, and it will help create the pace of the trailer a lot more. We have also duplicated on opening shots of the actual building, as the first ones aren't as good as the new ones.

Tuesday 29th April

Today, we had our final shoot day in the studio. We shot from 10.00am till 1.00pm and shot in the studio. We had to move certain things around in the studio as there was an art exhibition, so we took down a couple of stands and made sure that we put them back up after we had finished filming, as we only needed a conner of the studio.

We filmed the shot of all of the characters in a circle first. We did that shot quite a few times, as we wanted it to look good. George was the camera man, and the camera work was quite difficult as he had to walk in with the camera and pan around the characters, so we needed to get that shot perfect so it wouldn't look wobbly and unprofessional. We just did a normal lighting set up for this shot.

In the next scene, we had Donovan (the killer) sat in a chair, with old work clothes that we managed to get from the props department. We wanted the 'killer' to be taken away into the darkness, so we got Jmes behind a black curtain, to put the curtain around Donavon's head, and we shot it so it looked realistic. We had one light on Donovan's face for the effect (almost like a spotlight) and had the main lights switched off, so it was darkness. This looked really effective.

The final shot of the day was Katie and Kausar running through corridors and stairs for more pacing shots. We did wides of Kausar and Katie running, and we also did close up shots of Katie and Kausar's running up the stairs of their feet that looked really effective.

I have just looked at the footage and it looked really effective (the lighting set up) on the shot of Donovan. We have now finished filming and are ready to edit.

Studio Shots

Running through corridors shots - Kausar and Katie (Tuesday 29th)

Unit 21 Task 2 Editing Log

Unit 21 Editing Log

By Kirsty Richardson

Editing Plan

I want my edit to start off with establishing shots of the grounds and some of the close up shots we got of detail of the college e.g. stairs. I want this to make the trailer more clearer in what the story is about and when/where it is set.

In my edit, I also want captions at the beginning to introduce the characters clearly (real name and name in the film). I want the overall look of my trailer to look well structured, so you could have a clear idea of who is in the film, what it is about and the structure. 

I also want titles to tell the story, rather than a voiceover. I think that if I don't have them, the trailer's story won't be that clear. E.g. 'three students' 'one college secret' etc..

Editing Log

2nd May 2014 - I watched all of the footage through, as I was not present at 2 of the filming slots because of illness. I needed to familiarise myself with the footage so I knew roughly where I wanted clips of the movie trailer to go.

I also found out that I needed to convert the footage from .mts files to .mov files. I asked one of the other students in my class to help me, as I didn't know which was the best way to convert the footage. Leroy helped me and I used Adobe Media Encoder to do this.

However, it took longer than expected because we had a lot of clips so I had to convert some of the footage today, and will convert some one day next week.

6th May 2014 - I finally finished converting all of the footage and started to go through and make an edit decision list.

 I went through each clip and deleted the clips from FCP that I didn't want (but I still had the original files in case I wanted to get a clip back).

12th May 2014 - Today, I started my edit. I had to familiarise myself with FCP as I hadn't used it at an advanced level for a while. I did the first 30 seconds, but I don't really like it that much and I don't really know how to move forward with it. I am going to leave it for a day and come back and edit tomorrow with a fresh mind and try to think of new ideas to make the footage more interesting.

13th May 2014 (AM) - I have re edited the first 30 seconds again as I really didn't like how it looked, it didn't set a pace or theme like I wanted it to. I found a song online to edit it to, so this helped me have more of a focus with the edit and helped to create more of a pace and emotion within the edit.

PM - I have now got copyright free tracks from Nik that I could use on my trailer. I have decided to use a song called 'Black Assassin', as I feel that it was the best track for my trailer, because it did what I wanted it to do. I quickly re edited the first30 seconds to the beat, and exported it so I could show the class what I have done so far.  I decided to show the old and the new version, and everyone in the class said that the new one was a lot better than the old one. We got feedback and this will help me carry on with the edit.

FEEDBACK

19th May - Today, I carried on with the edit of my movie trailer. As I was editing, I had a few ideas on what the titles could be and where I could put them, to help make an effect. I made sure that I left black gaps to fill for the titles whilst editing.

21st May - I carried on with my edit, about three quarters of the way through.

23rd May - 2nd june half term) - I did not do any work on the edit on these dates as it was half term and I did not have the mac facilities to edit with at home. I need to make sure that I finish it on Monday so that it will be ready to show on the Tuesday we come back.

2nd June - Today was the first day back from half term. I spent most of the day editing, as I had time in the lesson to edit and also did it at break and dinner. I only now have a few more finishing touches and it should be done in time for tomorrow.

3rd June AM - Today was the final day of working on the edit. I put the finishing touches on the titles and exported it, ready to show to the class this afternoon.

PM - This afternoon, we showed our movie trailers to the class and gave informal feedback. Everyone said that mine was at a high standard and even though the music was very dramatic, it worked really well.


                                          Final Edit

This is my final edit. Overall, I am quite happy with it, as I was finding it hard to edit at first. I feel that this resembles my editing plan and my initial plan I had for the whole trailer.