Our Final Video

Here is out completed video, I hope you all enjoy it. Thanks to Mr. Earl we have now got our video ready and the issues have been resolved. As I stated before there were some script changes in order to add more drama to the scene. Overall I think the result turned out well, I feel we could have done better if it wasn't for technology getting in the way of us earlier however I feel the shots turned out just as well as I planned them to. I am slightly disapointed that there aren't any titles within the whole movie because we simply did not have time and we were too busy making sure everything in the video was ready. The "Landscape" scene was shot just outside our school, this was done in order to save time and aviod us travelling far distances. For more information about the reasons for the places amongst other information regarding the Mise-en-scene we used look at some of my earlier blogs where I go into more detail. The music was Katie's choice, I was suprised by how well it was done and I'm ultimately very happy with it as I feel it created a very creepy and disturbing yet also intrigueing atmosphere to the audience. The transitions from the scens as you can see are 'fade out and fade in', this was done to add drama to the scene and make it seem more serious. I was adamant that these were the right transitions to use as I have seen in movie trailers and short films that this is commonly done to add drama, the most notable trailer I have seen that cuts to black regularly is 'Hancock' to add drama to what is being shown. I have looked at some other people's work in my class and I thought they were all very good; in particular Kelly Senior and Louise Browbank who I think used an incredibley good choice of location for the interrogation scene and actually used a place which I was thinking of shooting the scene earlier but cancelled because Katie would not be able to travel there so frequently. Some very good camera work was used in there project as well, a similar shot in which one characters face turns is very similar to our shot in which Barry (NUMBER 2) looks up to me (NUMBER 6). It took us 3 days in total to shoot these scenes and involved me and Barry wearing the same clothes each day in order to avoid continuity issues. As you can tell from an earlier blog of mine there was a '180 degree' continuity issue however this was resolved after we flipped the shot the opposite way. The whole atmosphere that we planned to create was supposed to be disturbing, confusing and creepy. I think we did this very well thanks to the music in particular. If i were to critisize the video I would say that the fight scene in which me as NUMBER 6 is punching Barry as NUMBER 2 did not turn out well, this was because I obviously could not literally punch Barry so I had to try and pretend, the end result I think does look fake and it is disapointing however I did not want Barry to get hurt so I did not punch him which I have found is very difficult to make look realistic but overall it is relativity realistic and by all means isn't dreadful. In order to save time there were a lot of shots that did not involve any edits, we chose this to suit time ranges when we came back to the editing and in order to add realism to the shot and make it more dramatic. I think the long takes were made very well and were a very good and positive feature of our video.

Annoying Technology!

It has come to light recently that technology has become one of my most complicated and hated foes. We seem to have rendered our video into a different file size which ultimately has made our video look very small when its played. Hopefully this can be resolved soon so that we can continue to complete our project in the right format and get it uploaded onto here so everyone can see. It shouldn't take long however I am unsure about the full scale of the problem but maybe, hopefully, possibly it can be completed soon. Fingers crossed.

Random Pictures

Here are some images that have been taken from our project, the first was meant to be an introduction to our project as a video however I could not say the lines properly so it ended up being a simple screenshot. The second image is taken directly from the interrogation scene when I am telling Barry that I need information. Katie was adamant to include these and came up with the designs almost entirely on her own, I was sceptical at the beginning but she convinced me and now I am very pleased she did as I think the pictures, in particular the second one are very well designed and are done well.

Received our Landscape Shots

Our landscape shots have now been given to us, so far I've done the majority of the editing on the landscape with some contribution from Barry whereas Katie has done the vast majority of the editing for the interrogation scene on her own with some contribution from me. It's been very good I think, there is still some editing to do but hopefully we can complete that on Friday; there was at one point an issue which sir picked up on as we broke what's known as a "180 degree rule" however we have solved this issue by flipping the camera angle so that it is in the right place.

Editing Starts Today

Katie has brought in her personal laptop today which has a different editing software to the schools, this will hopefully help us finish editing our video quicker as originally we would only have 3 hours to complete it.We can also help eachother within our free periods. I have just been told that our landscape shots are on a hardrive which Mr. Earl should put on the Media server soon.

Nostalgia Critic

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic

This is a link to the Nostalgia Critic, his name is Doug Walker and he uses a persona called the Nostalgia Critic who is a man that predominantly reviews films that are considered terrible like The Room among others. You will see on this link a load of other links which show the video, the links follow to the video however be wary that the Transformers, Kickassia and Suburban Knight videos do not link to the Nostalgia Critic as they are different persona's, also anything that says "Angry Video Game Nerd" or "AVGN" are also not film reviews. If you look on the website you can see that there are also "vs" videos, these are always my personal favourite episodes because he compares a old film and its remake to decide which is better, these old and new film reviews consist of "Batman vs Dark Knight" and "Lord of the Rings vs Lord of the Rings Animated". There are also "Top 11" videos which you may find interesting. I recommend you try and find a film you have seen as these tend to be the funniest. In case your wondering my favourite episode is "Batman and Robin" which is a film I watched as a little kid and hated even then for the exact reasons he points out.  Also be wary because there are a lot of jokes which happen frequently which you may not understand so if Caspar appears for no reason in the middle of the review, don't blame me. I have posted this because I think he uses great analysis of detail, especially at the end of his reviews when he sums up it all up, it is also very very funny and keeps you entertained throughout so I hope to incorporate certain aspects of this into my Exam for media to hopefully gain a good overall grade.

We Have Our Media Files Now

we have just been given our media files of our scene 2 shoot which are rendered in the right files, unfortunately we do not have our scene 1 files yet thanks to idiotic technology, however we will edit our scene 2 and our 'making of' video for now and then edit scene 1 latwer once we have our files for it.

Every frame is a picture...Every picture tells a story.

Every frame is a picture...Every picture tells a story.
Random quote I thought of to motivate me for when I come to analyse and create my own camera shots, obviously the essence is for me to remember that every picture in film or T.V drama will use the frames to create a picture in which tells the audience about what is happening, very often this is on a subconscious level like using particular mise-en-scene like clothing or lighting. I really enjoy writing about this as I have done it watching films and TV ever since I was very young. This might sound slightly pointless but I just thought I'd post it because I've been repeating this phrase in my head for the past 2 weeks now!

Looking At Random Music Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6m03FUYaTM Great song by Noel Gallagher's new band, I've put this on because although the music video is very strange I think some of the camera shots and notably the editing done to them afterwards do a fantastic job of creating a drug-like state, hopefully you will see what I mean if you watch it. Bear with it, the music doesn't start until half way through but I think it's a good song and music video nonetheless, even if it is incredibly strange but hey that's me. And please watch it all the way through, try not to judge it on the first 3:35 cause it gets a lot better after that point when the music plays.

Scene 2 shooting finished!

finished the shoot for our project today, i think it went well, hopefully we will be able to edit it exactly how we want it. Instead of the shed which was originally planned as the setting we instead chose the back of the stage within our school, it is very dark and reasonably claustrophobic, the only things that should be seen are the the two people sitting on chairs and talking with a small desk separating the two, annoyingly it might be possible that the audience can hear a very loud class in the background but hopefully we will be able to edit this out later. After filming, Katie thought it would be a good idea to make a 'making of' video which can be played after our real project, we don't think we will have time to edit this video as well as the actual video which is why we completed the 'making of' video in just one take. We done this because we finished filming much earlier than we originally planned and we thought it would be more fun and we might be able to scrape a few extra marks out of it. Overall I am looking forward to the editing stage of our project, I really hope it goes well for us because it's been very fun and I have enjoyed it much more than I thought I ever would.

Landscape/Scene 1 scene shooting finished!!

just shot the first scene of our project, the main gist circulates a man who is grabbed and taken away by another man, one man is wearing light coloured clothing whilst the other is wearing very dark, we specifically chose this to emphasize who the 'good guy' and 'bad guy' is. I am the 'bad guy' whilst Barry was the 'good guy', if the viewer looks closely they will be able to spot that the clothes I am wearing as the 'bad guy' are all rebellious and resemble the army. The way to spot this is by looking on the writing of my red shirt that I am wearing which clearly states "university of life" showing a rebellious side, also there is an RAF symbol on the side of my jacket which shows the aggressive war persona my character has. This corresponds with the very white and clear clothes that Barry is wearing which are very white and also have yellow around the neck which shows that he is of good nature whilst my clothes are black and red emphasizing the danger my character brings to Barry's character. We shot this just outside our school sports hall which is completely different to the area I was originally planning on shooting which was on Canterbury Road outside of the school. We chose to change the setting because it would be far easier for us to complete it there as opposed to outside of school. The reason it would be easier is primarily to do with Katie, she is in charge of our camera set-up and also took the role of the cameraman and she said it might be difficult for her to get home late at night because of the bus timetable so me, Barry and Katie quickly decided that the area we should choose is in the school grounds and can be completed during our lesson time.

Modified script

This is the script that I made myself as i thought we might be able to add to the dilemma of the situations. The locations we chose to use i think benefit better from this script as it is much more aggessive, this was the main reason i chose to do this. The dialogue changes on every line however the context of whats being said is very similar and follows a very similar story. Hopefully this will make a much better result when we are finished. (IMPORTANT NOTE: The characters names for the description of SCENE 1 and the beginning of SCENE 2, are switched around.  However in the beginning of SCENE 2 when the script states "he is not happy with NUMBER 2" is correct and from then onwards the information is fully correct and accurate. I only realised this recently and apologise for any confusion and take full responsibility myself. 

Starting a new project soon, we have to follow a script Mr. Earl gave us, I'm thinking of modifying the script slightly. Initially the script was supposed to show a lone figure walking across a landscape which then jumps to the same figure intimedating a man to gain some information in a darkened room. Instead i intend to change the script so that one of the men is laying beside a tree who then gets dragged to the darkened room by the same man who intimediates him for information, the location I think the landscape should be at this point is a large field on Canterbury Road where very few trees are which will make the lone figure stand out more. I also think the darkened room should take place in my shed in my back garden of my house, the reason for this is because it is reasonably small which could make a much more claustrophobic atmosphere and matches the criteria from the script exactly apart from the button which originally is used to open the door. I think the dialogue should stay roughly the same as in the original script although I may change certain aspects to make it suit the story I think is being told. I feel Barry should be the kind of 'good guy' persona and I should be the more 'bad guy' persona as we have both asked people around us and the majority feel as though I naturally look like "a person who is in the shadows" according to Richard Flower, not one of my best compliments but i have to say one of my favourite ones I've ever heard. Thats if it was a compliment.

http://katiesawesomeasmediablog.blogspot.com/2011/09/production-team-opening-adapt.html This is an adapted version of the opening of "Dynamite Kitty studios" as you can see the only change is a large explosion at the end of the video, it was both mine and Katies descision for this and Katie decided to get the explosion from YouTube and apply it to the clip.

http://katiesawesomeasmediablog.blogspot.com/2011/09/dynamite-kitty-productions-title.html We considered many names and varities for what to call our production studios, eventually Katie came up with idea of "Dynamite Kitty" which she uses for her online Xbox tag name, me and Barry adored the name and we have chosen to use this for our projects

http://katiesawesomeasmediablog.blogspot.com/2011/09/media-shots-project.html These are the shots for the first part of our media project, the shots we completed were given to us by the teacher and we were told to complete them by the end of the lesson. Some examples of shots used include close-ups, establishing shots etc. I took charge of what shots should be done and what order we should complete them in. I tried to think of different locations we could base our shots in. Katie as the editor made the shots into a specific order and added the titles and transitions for each shot afterwards on Adobe Premiere Pro CS3. Barry also helped by helping both Katie and me as he thought of some locations as well as some additional shots which are sadly now deleted because of a computer error, he helped Katie during the editing by suggesting what order the shots would be best shown in. I also helped a little bit admitedley on the editing by keeping notes on which shots were in which specific files, the notes were detailed enough to use throughout the first project so overall i am proud about our result as we included nion all the shots that were asked and then edited the shots in a consistent and coherent manner.

Me and Barry have now completed a edited version of our project, it doesnt follow a narrative like Katies however it does show all the shots we created and has titles to show the name of each individuel shot, overall i think its ok, a good practice and now i can safely say me and Barry are capable of editing

had a try at editing today, wasnt as good as Katie but overall i think i understand everything nessecery for the job

I have just seen another shots video that me, Barry and Katie have created; me and Katie took control of where the shots were set and which shot would be done. Katie decided it would be best for the group if she took the project home and completed it on Elements as the software is much easier for her to use. The result i think is excellent, we tried to focus on a storyline of a man being stalked and i think this came out well