Editing Software

I came in today to do some editing but unfortunatly adobe premier pro decides to freeze everytime i try to open any kind of footage, this is really frustrating me now as this continues to happen everytime i try and edit. i feel as though no software has 'played' the game right, this tied with a lack of comitment from the group has convinced me that we will not be ready at all for the deadline. I have had no contact from Alice for over a week now and i am getting increasingly annoyed with our project i feel as though after a mishap from both girls they haven't shown the drive to repair our project and we are now aimless and motivationless. i will continue trying the editing software but what can you do when it freezes repeatedly?

Problems with Editing Software

We have had some footage for a while now but everytime we go to put it onto the computer by capturing it on Adobe Premier Pro each of us had the messege 'the disk drive is full' so we had to call in the computer technition who told us we had to save it on the C/ Drive and then transfer the data to the Fs6 which is making the process seem on-going and slow which raises further concern for the deadline coming up.

Thursday

On Monday we decided as a group that friday is the deadline for ALL filming to be complete, this will hopefully enable us to edit the film in a week, adding to this is the Ancillery tasks we need to have drafted by next friday (16/12/10) so i am very worried that we will not have enough time to complete it all, we will all have to be in the media department for the majority of this next week.

Today the girls did thier filming involving thier make-up, i am yet to see the footage but i'm sure it will be fine and we can capture and hopefully start to peice together a few things in the editing process. Every second has to be used!

The Weekends Footage

this weekend the plan was to film at a party that i was Dj'ing at on Saturday night which would have got us a lot of useful footage however the event organizers decided on saturday afternoon that the music would have been to loud and the party was called off.

Instead of the party i had a few friends at my house for a drink and a spin on the turntables, over the course of the evening i got some useful footage and some not so effective stuff but at least it wasn't a wasted night. What i filmed at my house includes a panning shot showing the entire of my bedroom focusing on beer cans and the general messy'ness showing what kind of character i am and I also managed to film my friend on the turntables and my other two friends Mc'ing. Later on in the evening i got various convosations on tape including one between my two friends bantering about buying cigerettes, admittadly the footage might be useless but i have a hope that we can incorporate it into the film as really i filmed a teenage saturday night which is really what our projects all about.

I didn't just wait until the evening to film - during the day my friend ben who also featured in the evening footage came round to lend me a hand and took the role of a camera man, i was happy with the shot of my jeans being picked up, my t-shirt and the waking up process where i answer a phone call using a technique of filming me first in my mirror that is opposite my bed and then secondly panning the camera across to see me sat up in bed on the phone discussing whats going on.

On the Friday before the weekend (19/11/10) Myself and Alice filmed An 11 a side game that the football academy usually do on a friday morning conveniantly in my media lesson, i think there is potential for this footage but I'm not sure how to incorporate this into our project. This weekend as the party as not been re-organized there will probably be a second attempt at filming people at my house but this time i'll learn from my mistakes and film the footage i want before i start drinking i think that would be much more efficient.

Audio Recorded!

There are more posts to come after this that i completed over the half term and are saved on my laptop at home.

Last lesson we agreed the girls costumes and in honesty i had little to do with it adding just the occasional input when i understood what Alice and Rachel where going on about.
We also managed to complete the Phone call between the girls that will open our film, for this we asked media teacher Andrew Miller if we could get a crisper recording by using the radio studio rather than record it off the camera and risk having a 'tinny' sound. With Andrew helping us we had a 'proffesional' opinion with every clip that was recorded, he then emailed it to myself and Rachel.
Here is the script that the girls had to base the conversation on, we had a script just to make sure certain parts where said however they did have the opportunity to wander to make the phone call sound a bit more authentic:
R: Hey babes
A: Heya, you alright?
R: Yeah I’m good hun, how’re you?
A: I’m good thankyou have you been up to much?
R: Watched the lads play football, chilled out but I had to work which is a bummer.
A: Yeah I know what you mean hun I had to work to. Anyway you coming out later up
Tim’s, be a good laugh.
R: Yeah I’m still going – wanna come round mine before hand for a few pre drinks.
A: Yeah that’d be good babes, have a catch up.

Progress So Far

In the time from our research a lot has happened and we are filming on tuesday and wednesday of half term (26th/27th?) so if we need to re-shoot any shots we can do that later on in the break, Alice will be getting picked up by me on tuesday afternoon and taken down to Salisbury.

We produced a document with the narrative on which is detailed and has been highlighted for each member of our groups role in the film. We have also included a basic script on the same document with key phrases or lines that have to be said to link bit's of footage together. We felt that this was important as on most of the trailers we have seen we have realized that a fast paced multi-story narrative has been the focal point and as it works well we can use aspects of that for our inspiration. Also in the trailers there has been a featured 'voice over man' which we indever to incorporate but whether we will have the resources for it i don't know, but we can see and if necersary we can add it at the end of the editing process.

As for Locations admitadtly it has been down to Rachel and I as Alice doesn't live in Salisbury and all filming apart from maybe one or two shots is done there, We have selected a range of locations stretching across Salisbury from the Suberbs to Parks and Underpasses. I have also started to notify the actors of the basic story and what parts they will be in and what they are required to do. We have also done 15 shots on storyboards to make filming smoother and hopefully better, always keeping in mind though that we can wander from the template if a better shot presents itself.Finally We still need to record Rachel and Alice's phone conversation which is to play at various points during the film.

Looking ahead to the task now i believe that we are ready to film however i am apprehensive of the team's willingness - i just hope that we ALL have the determination to get everything filmed on time and effetivly, i don't want a repeat performance of last year where our group failed to care enough about the project and despite the outcome being okay i'd rather do it without as many hardships due to underplanning this year

We realized after only a lesson that we needed to be realistic about what we could film - we saw no point in trying to film something incredible if we didn't know how to. so this led us on to think about a soap opera trailer as you see at least one advert for one a day, or if not you will over hear someone talking of a soap. We then thought about the easiest approach to create the idea and narrative and it became apparent that the best thing to to would be to create a trailer for a teenage soap opera as we are teenagers and it will be more a case of applying our life to film but a bit more glamarized. So to research this and form our ideas we started looking at 'Skins'.



Skins has shown us that we want to incorporate a voiceover to the trailer as it is very effective and just makes the idea more proffesional. Also by adding in samples of character's dialogue into the trailer it shows the audience what the program will be like and what it will incorporate.

Research and Inspiration

Our group have looked at short stories so we can focus on our understanding of the three acts of any film. When coming up for the narrative for the film i'm glad that we did this research as it was made a much easier and efficient task and i anticipate this years film to be much better than last years.

First of all we looked at a short film called The Black Hole by Phil and Olly.



Here the three act structure is clear - at first the character realizes that there is a black hole in his peice of paper. The second act is him realizing that he can put his hand through the paper. In the 3rd act the character uses his paper to open doors he never could and rob what he would never be able to, at first he is sensible however equilibrium is re-established when he puts his whole body into the safe and is trapped in there showing the lesson of not to be greedy.


I really liked 'Pound' by Evan Bernard as it has such a unique narrative.



It starts with a character walking down the street when he is met by his friend where they engage in an 'impressive handshake' for nearly a minute, once this stops they exchange pleasentries and then proceed with another long handshake. Equilibrium is re-established when the initial character walks off once again.

Groups and Ideas

A lot of confusion was had over the group formings this year as our class was smaller than last year and the 4 to a group limit made selection harder. As it stands my group is Rachel Singleton and Alice Manning who was in my group for my AS Production. Rachel is in the middle of a transfer to our class so our idea brainstorming hasn't been as efficient as it could be.

Myself and Alice felt that this peice of work gave us more scope than last year with three choices but still we have struggled so far for a definitive idea however we have decided on a soap opera. We think that by basing our project on 'Skins' we can bring our own experiences in to help write the script and shoot the footage. We also like the way the 'skins' trailers are made, the makers tend to show footage of a certain character or party and add a voiceover to it to give the details of when the program is airing.

Outline of Coursework Unit A2 Media Studies

For this year's coursework unit students have a choice of 3 main tasks and have to choose 2 further ancillary tasks.

- A promotion package for the release of an album, it must include a music promotional video aswell as two of the following three ancillery tasks - A website homepage for the band.
-A cover for its release as part of a digipak(CD/DVD package).
-A magazine advertisement for the digipak(CD/DVD package).

- A promotion package for a new soap opera, including a TV trailer, together with two of the following 3 ancillery tasks - A listings magazine front cover feautring the new soap.
- Two hyperlinked webpages (with video extract) for the soap's website.
- A poster for the soap.

- A short film in its entirety lasting around five minutes, it can be live action, an animation or a combination of the two, again with the choice of two ancillery tasks. - A poster for the film.
- A radio trailer.
- A film magazine review.