Filming- Day 12

After 12 evenings of filming, we finally reached the final day!- well, unless we have to reshoot. Today's filming was extremely short, as we only needed two shots. We filmed a low angle shot of Elliott unlocking his phone; we had originally planned to do this as a high angle from over the shoulder, but this proved difficult with continuity with the time on the phone. To combat this, we used allow angle shot of our protagonists face, which lit up in a bright white after what would be him unlocking the phone and going to messaging. Although the audience will not see the phone unlock, it is reflected in his glasses enough for thereto not be any ambiguity of what is happening.

The second shot we needed was Elliott leaving the room after grabbing his emergency supplies.

Feedback Questionnaires

As a way to ensure all our titles were noticeable and easy to read, we used created feedback questionnaire below to give to our audiences to fill out anonymously. The aim of these forms was to make sure the titles were easy to read and on the screen for an appropriate time. The results of this questionnaire will allow us to edi t anything changes that need to be made before our deadline.

Choice of Sound Effect

In order to create verisimilitude, we decided to put a sound effect on the music once Elliott had been seen to take his headphones off- this was to make the sound non-diegetic and also to enable the audience to hear the sound of the video playing. We used the audio effects supplied by iMovie to create the desired sound, and after listening to all available, we were left with a choice of either Muffled or Telephone.

After much deliberation, we decided on using the Telephone effect as it gave a more electronic sound to the song, and helped to give the impression that it was coming from the headphones. It also had more of a sound change than Muffled and therefore emphasised what was happening to the audience.

Half Term

Rachel and myself spent a few hours today in school editing some more of our opening, as we would like to be able to show the finished piece to the class next week. We decided that our priorities for today were to focus on sound editing, as the class was quiet with hardly any other noise to distract us. 

By the end of today, we had:

1) edited the sound completely by adding effects to make it sound muffled when our character removes his headphones

2) chosen the video we wanted to be heard and Foley-ed it on top of the video

3) and lined up the beats of the music to certain shots, as they had moved from where they were previously, due to us having to cut down some shots by a few seconds.

Alternative Tripod

During filming, we discovered that some of our shots could not be taken with the tripod we had as, even positioned into its lowest, it was still too high. We realised this whilst filming both money shots from the various shelves, and the closing shot of Elliott's feet leaving the room.

Fortunately, we had decorated the set with small plastic ornaments of varying shapes, one of which perfectly fit the iPhone we have been filming on. By using this we enabled ourselves to film much closer to a surface and therefore bettered our shots.

Closing Shot

The last few shots of the opening sequence on our storyboard show Elliott leaving the garage after receiving a text message, and then closing with a floor level shot of his feet leaving the room. Originally, we had planned to see Elliott drop a packet of crisps earlier on in the film, and see him tread on one as he left the room- however we made the decision to have him put the crisps down on the table, rather than drop them on the floor, as the position in which we needed them to fall looked very unnatural. Because of this, the shot we thought we had decided upon using saw Elliott's feet leaving the room without crushing a crisp.

Although this shot would have brought a different angle to our film, we made the post-production decision to use footage captured on the last day - a mid shot of Elliott going out of the door in a hurry, and having the Pringles (that were packed in his rucksack) fall to the ground. We decided to use this shot as we believe it really represents the character well, as he is clumsy and it brings a comedic feel to both him and the film. This shot was completely unplanned, as we aimed only to have a shot of Elliott leaving the room. However, it really fits well with the film and have decided to include it.

Filming- Day 11

After today's filming, we are now really close to wrapping. We didn't film for particularly long today, as the main focus was to film the shot with Elliott taking his headphones down. Now that we have this shot, myself and Rachel can work on our sound editing, where the music drops as to make it diegetic.

The only other shot we filmed today was Elliott leaving the room- although we already had a shot which showed just his feet leaving, but during our last editing lesson we made the decision to use a full shot, rather than a focus on just the feet. The lighting in the room, especially close to the dark floor, made it look like there a continuity error in the light, as contrast from the shots before and after was highly noticeable. We thought it would flow better if we used a full shot.

Audience Reception - AS First Look

During today's lesson, we showcased our unfinished product to the rest of the class and recorded their feedback on what we had achieved so far. The majority of our film is complete, but there are 2 shots we need to add in for cohesion, and we are yet to finish editing the sound. 

The feedback we received was positive, and a lot of the comments were made in regard the the missing shots and sound, problems we will be able to rectify once we have shot the missing links. Once we have finished our opening, we will show the class again and ask for their feedback on the final piece.

Audience Reception- A2 students

In order to gain feedback from a variety of people, we showed a group of A2 students our film opening so far. We thought it would be interesting to hear the views of people who had done the same course, but also never seen any of what we had so far produced, as they would be able to pick up on errors we may have missed. 

Their feedback was greatly helpful, especially the comments regarding the missing title shot, and making the acronym 'UFO' stand for something other than 'unidentified flying object'

Filming- Day 10

The focus of this evening's filming was to shoot

all the shots which involved text messages. Unfortunately we have been having difficulty with iMessage- the phone is not responding well to receiving so many messages, as we are constantly redoing the shots, and adjusting the time. Due to this, we have decided to try to use WhatsApp for these shots, and will edit them into our project

next lesson, to see if they work better than using iMessage.