My evaluation and self peformance of the project

This project gave me the opertunity to produce a short film to show the different ways that people grieve when they have lost a loved one. I used my past experince of losing someone to the story in the film, to create a meaningful film that was created by someones on real life story. The story of how and the actors in it were changed to my real life story beacause I didnt want to produce a short film that would be personal to me in which I would feel uncomfortable and upsetting to share.

I think the only thing that I didnt peform well in was keeping my blog up to date, but this is a weak area that I will work on for furture projects and expesically for my third year project where it is crucial to keep a day to day blog updates. Looking at the final outcome, it has small mistakes that could be easliy filmed again to fix them for future development.

Looking at my achievement, I have produced my first short film that tells the story and shapes a narrative form of structure in it. My strong points of the project was the achievement of getting the meaning of the story across from my good control of the camera and angles. I also think that a strong point was the way I edited the film. There are small errors that could be fixed for future work like some shots that are near windows to improve the lighting of the shots. I could also re-evaluate the pace of the film in the beginning. The film showed emotion and feelings through music and a few shots that delivered the idea of lonelyness, but I could think of stronger ideas that I could do with camera work like more close ups and interesting view angles. I think that I could improve the film by adding more short scenes that shows more of the background relationship between the characters physically rather than to much content that the beginning had.

Overall I have produced the film with the outcomes intended, with room for improvements and learning mistakes that I can put right for future projects.

Short film complete

Today I finished editing my film and changed the volume levels for each track in my video to get the balance correct. I used Good quality speakers to do this because from past exerience, using headphones to play audio through doesnt give you the full experience of sound control editing.

I exported my video as a Mp4 and set the preset to HDTV 1080p, 25f becasue this is what I shot my video in. It is a small file size that can be used for the web, but the quality of the video reduced. To display the video for moderation, I exported it as AVI which is better quality, but has a much larger file size that wouldnt be appropriate to put on the Internet.   

Editing Part 4

Today I created a piece of emotional music that will be used in the grieving part in the film. I produced it using the software Garage Band lasting around 15seconds long. It only needed to be a simple melody of a repetitive string instrument, which I choose to use a Piano.

I exported my song as Mp3 file and imported it into Adobe Premiere where I timed it and increased the volume level.

The final editing part to my film that is coming towards the end of this project, is recording the narrator that I have already produced a script for and then put it in time with the first two scenes of the film. I plan to do this on the date 10th of May.

Editing Part 3

Today I matched the sounds of the scenes that needed a buzz track and other main sounds such as the telephone ringing and levelled the sounds between them. This took me a few hours todo in which I had some time left to start the two difficult scenes with the conversations. During the video recording stage, when filming the sound recorder was left on record throughout the whole session of that scene. This made it easier to layer the separate sound audio with the video footage.

Editing Part 2

Following on from my last post, at a later schedule then anticipated originally, I edited the rest of the scenes  for the film. I spent quite a long time on the pub scene because it is a conversation between two people that changes shot angles quite a lot. I had to listen to the conversation a few times to time the angle of shots so that the person who was talking at a certain point had the camera on them and then moved onto the other persons reply back. The conversation in the house with the girl and her friend was another quite intense scene to edit to make sure the camera was not cutting away to fast before the person had stop speaking to give it a realistic smooth flow.

You can see the progress and development made in the editing, which has visually been completed but now I have to import all the sounds and conversation audio that were recorded separately because the audio sound from the video camera was not the best quality.

This will be a difficulty task to do, especially the talking scenes to match the timing of the visual elements with the audio. If it is not done correctly in time, the conversation audio may be a second behind what you can see on the screen which would not be a successful result.

I plan to complete start this on the date Monday 7th of May and complete it by the date Wednesday 6th of May.

Editing Part 1

Today I started editing my footage together in the programme Adobe Premiere. I set my work area and used my storyboards to remind myself of the sequence the shots for the first 3 scences. Carefully I brought the clips together in time and focused using continuity editing from one shot to another. I didnt need to add any effects onto the clips, only a slight colour change and contrast was used to make the videos look better.

My next step is tomorrow is to finish editing the rest of the film using the same process of close editing from shot to shot to produce a flowing film visually with soft changing angle shots.

Finished Filming

Today I was able to film the last two scenes earlier than what was secheduled on Sunday to do it. The weather was great to take advantage of and I can now carry on editing for the next 13days to bring all the
scences together and produce two 10second music tracks during this process.

I also have to record the narrators script soon so that I can edit it in time with my video. But I will finish the visual editing first and then layer the music and narrator over the top.
My plan is to finish the video footage by the date 9th of May and then produce and layer both music and narrator to the video by the date 11th/12th. This then gives me 3days left over before the deadline to change fix any timing or sound problems. Because the timing and layering many sound tracks are crucial to the film, like any film.