Post 20: Final Products

In Post 20 I have all of my finished products. This includes my short film, postcard and film review. 

POSTCARD:

Posted below is my finished postcard front & back. The front of my postcard shows Isabel playing with her train set and the teddy bear. I choose this image as it has many key points of the film in the image. On the back it has a picture of the teddy bear with the opacity taken down for effect and the production name with a slogan "they wont find me in here". 

FINAL FILM:

This is our final finished film Synchroncity. 

When we uploaded our short film onto YouTube we experienced a few problems. Firstly the sound has lost its sync and it has changed its format from 16:9 to 4:3.

Film Review:

This is my final short film review page. I decided to go with the Sight & Sound layout that we researched in post 16. I decided to stick with it as it was something I new well . 

I have chosen a picture of Isabel to put at the top of my film review then put the text down the left hand side. On the right hand side I have put a cast and crew list. On the right strip of the film review page is other articles of short films I found on the Sigh & Sound website.  

Post 19: Post-Production Report

Once we had finally finished filming we began to edit in the edit suite.

Our first job was to log all the clips. This was a long tedious task but between our group we each took turns logging in sets of two to keep concentration. This helped and it also got logging done a lot quicker.

We did not really experience much difficulties when logging. The only real problem that we had was mistakes on the clapper board which led us to ponder about which shot it was. This lead to us working it out and eventually we got on top of it and marked the mistake in our logging rushes. I can admit that the mistake on the clapper board was an unfortunate mistake of mine. 

We also had a random unknown footage of a coffee cup in our footage. We did not know how to log this footage so it became a bit of a problem for us. We decided to log this footage as unknown footage and this overcome the slight problem we had. 

We selected all the clips we wanted by marking a yes in the table of our logging rushes and then imputed all the codes of the wanted clips ready for capturing. 

This whole process took us about 2 weeks. 

Once we had finished capturing we started piecing all our clisp together. It did not take us long to piece our film all together. This was because when it captured our clips it pieced it them together like a film. All that was needed was to cut to clips to the length we wanted them. 

Like with the logging we each all took turns to edit. Me and my fellow group member Timothy spent the best part of a whole school day editing our film to give it a good start and to ease the pressure of workload from our director Anton and fellow group member Nicola. Me and Timothy cropped and pieced our whole short film together so that every clip was in order and it was just about ready for us to start editing sound levels and adding titles and any effects.

Before we could add them we still had a few problems to deal with. We had continuity error with the clock when it changed time. Because on the day of filming we used blue tack to keep the positioning of the clock correct but we did not think about the place mat that was next to it. When we filmed the other clips this had somehow moved and left us with continuity error that we picked up during editing. This frustrated the whole group as it was an important part of our film. To overcome this problem we tried adding a cross fade in. We felt this worked as when you watch it through we hoped the audience would only focus on the the clock and not the place mat. 

Once we corrected this we decided to start adjusting sound levels. We made sure everything in the film sounded good and we did not experience any real problems with doing this. 

Once we had all the sound levelled correctly we then added the universal counter leader and the universal indicator. This was to make our short film look realistic. Once this had be done Anton had found some unlicensed music to add to our short film. He wanted the music to be at the start of our film. The music he choose added great tension and overall I felt it gripped you into wanting to watch the film.  

Once this was done Nicola spent some time in the edit suite as it was her turn. 

After Nicola spent a morning editing she was eager to show me and the rest of the group what she had done. When she showed us the group was very pleased with what she had done as it was pretty much completed. Nicola also had written down a list of what she felt the group needed to look at when we was all together.

This list can be seen below:

Nicola wrote a fantastic list and lead a great group meeting about the points she had on it. 

Points we had to think about: 

Points to pull out from the list are. We had to add cross dissolves on the clock on scenes 2 and 3 because of the continuity error of the place mat. In scene 4 the camera had pulled focus because it had been focusing more on stuff in the background. 

One of the main points to bring out of the list was that no one had noticed the camera had changed to 4:3 from 16:9. So we had to zoom in and this made the shot go slightly out of focus. 

Also there was no copy right of ring a ring of roses so we had to record kids and put echoes in. 

Once we had sorted out the problems we had finished editing. The whole group was pleased with the outcome and sighed a great bit of relief as it was all finally finished.      

Post 18: Production Report

We planned to begin our preparation for filming at 10am at Anton's house. We all arrived safely and on time. We planned for the actors to arrive on set at 11am this would give us a good hour to set up our set. Our first group meeting happened as soon as we arrived. As a group we discussed the jobs that needed doing and planned out the best possible strategy to get it all done before our actors arrived.

The Plan can be seen here:

We began by getting our sets ready. As we was filming in someones house it was vital that we made sure that after we had moved all there furniture, personal items and changed any lighting. We got it back to the way we found it when we finished filming. With this in mind we decided we decided to take pictures on the SLR camera of anything we was planning on moving. This would help us get it back to exactly the way we found it.

Posted below are pictures of the office how we found it. We then used these to help us put it back after we had finished filming:

By looking at these pictures you are able to see how it looked when we arrived. This allowed us to get it back to the way we found it after we had finished filming.

The first main difficulty we had to deal with was the news that our actors were running late. After arranging for them to arrive at 11am and for them to tell us they are unable to arrive for a few more hours you can understand how frustrated we all were. With this news we decided it would be worth having a group meeting and talk about what we should do. We came to the decision that we would use the time to set up to the best standard we could make it then have a lunch break to refuel ourselves knowing that because of the actors we would have to stay longer. 

As my job in the production group is to deal with the lighting my role during setting up was to make sure all our lighting was correct. This included setting up all the lighting equipment, cutting 1/4 and 1/2 blue gels, sticking the gels over the lights and making sure the sources and the colour of lighting was correct. 

I began with the lighting in the living room. The first difficulty I was faced with in the living room was with how yellow it was in there. This caught us out as in the location reccee photos we did not pick this up. With this drama in place it was my job to be able to bring the lighting back to how we want it. I decided that we would stick 1/4 blue gels over the lights for scenes 2 and 4 to begin with. Using an 85 filter we hoped to block out all the natural lighting in a hope that it would darken up the room and bring a more colder feel to it. 

After cutting out the blue gels I experienced another problem. The problem I encountered was very frustrating as the gels I was placing over the spotlights were not staying up with the crocodile clips we were using. This lead to me becoming very frustrated and becoming angry with myself for not being able to perform such a simple task. I took a short break to find something else to use to use to help keep the gels up. I eventually came to the decision that changing the direction of the lights to keep the gels up and switching different sizes of   crocodile clips helped and they eventually stayed up.

Posted below are how I had the gels over the lights:

     

After finishing the lighting in the living room I moved onto the lighting in the office. The lighting in the office caused me even more difficulties than in the living room. This was because when looking through the camera from each end of the room the lighting colour was different. This lead to me enquiring some thinking time. I took the time to think how I can solve this lighting dilemma. I decided that if I add an extra light and place it in front of the office desk out of shot and direct it against the wall then the office would warm up. I then looked back through the camera and noticed that it had in fact done that.  

This how I directed the light:

Once I had completed the lighting in the office and Anton, Tim and Nicola had finished there jobs we were almost ready to film. As we were beginning to film in the living room me and Tim decided to set up the train set. It was important that we got the train set out properly and with great care as it was not ours. It was borrowed. 

Me and Tim set the train set out not fully completed as this was a reasons for our actor Isabel's frustration in our story before she runs away. 

Posted below is me and Tim setting up the train set:

   

Once the Train set was out we were ready to film. 

The next problem we had was our actors were not on time and we could not get in contact with them. Anton continued to phone them and we got no answer so we decided that we would have to put a back up plan in place. We decided that we would use Anton's girlfriend Jemmas younger sister as Isabel and Anton's Mum and Dad as Lisa and Simon if our actors didn't turn up by 3pm. 

Just before 3pm our actors eventually turned up. We was now in a rush to get filming as we did not want to take an extra day to film. We knew it was going to be a late one so we all decided to put the shift in.  

Nicola got the actors ready for there roles. This included making sure that they was all correctly dressed in there costumes, making sure all make-up was right and making sure all hair was correct. Isabel caused the most difficulties as she had to have her hair re-done and change her clothing to make her look more like the Isabel we wanted to show in our short film. We also made Simon put wax into his hair as it made him look more professional. 

This video shows Nicola getting Isabel ready:

We finally started filming. We started filming outside and it did not take long at all. We got both scenes of Isabel skipping up the patio done with only a few takes needed. 

We then went onto filming in the living room. With Isabel settling into her role nicely we felt that we could get the scenes with just her in done very swiftly. But how we were wrong. We came across a problem with Isabel continuing to look at the camera whilst filming so we had to take several shots for her to finally get the hang of acting whilst on a set. 

Another difficulty we had was with the parents Simon and Lisa. They struggled to keep composed throughout shots and it lead us to become very frustrated. This is because we had to keep re-filming scenes just because our actors were not composed. Also in between shots they keep moving so this led us to become worried about making continuity errors so it made us re-film shots.

As the day went on it started to become very late as a result from our actors not turning up on time, lighting and actors not staying composed. We decided to ask our teacher on advice on what to do. Whether to stay on and stick it out for the night or arrange another filming day.

We decided to have a group meeting, which would hopefully be our last to discuss these possibilities. We decided as a group to stick it out for the last two scenes we had to film. 

We got on with our preparation for filming the last two scenes. We had to change all our lighting gels to 1/2 gels as a result of the atmosphere in the film changing. This lead to more frustrations with the gels and the clips. Once we had completed this we set about filming our final scenes. We got them done all in about an hour. 

We had a difficulty with filming our final scene outside in the shed. This was because it was pitch black in the shed. We had to use extra lighting and be very careful with shadows from the camera, cameraman and the director. 

We eventually finished filming after a long day at 11PM.