Screening

We had our screening yesterday lunchtime and we had a really good turnout, which was great as this means more feedback to use in our evaluations. We gave a questionnaire to everyone who came and Bisma will soon put up our findings on the blog. Our feedback seemed to be generally quite positive. Our audience was made up of 16 and 17 year olds of both genders, so we have received feedback from our target audience. More importantly we have got feedback from non-media students who will have looked at our sequence from a non-media perspective. They will not be focusing on continuity editing for instance, but will watch it as they usually would watch and enjoy a film. - Bhavika

Definitely Finished!

Right we are now definitely finished! It is official (I think!) The credits have been sorted and now appear throughout our sequence. Ms Blackborow was happy with them so it should all be fine. The screening will be tomorrow during lunchtime, which I am very excited about! Hopefully we will get a good turnout and lots of feedback. - Bhavika

Finished!

We have now finished all our editing! I have to say it’s been lots of fun and our group in particular has learnt a lot! I will just add/emphasize a few things to the list that Bisma made and Mia added to. - We definately have learnt that it is SO important to keep filming after the action you want for each take as this makes continuity editing so much easier. - The storyboard is REALLY important and really does save time when on the actual shoot as you know exactly what needs to be done. - Lighting was a big issue. Perhaps could have been avoided if we had planned for it in advance. Or we could taken some shots in a variety of different light intensities on our first re-shoot so as to avoid another re-shoot. Now it’s time for one last regretful goodbye to my amazing group. What good times! I will miss all our shoots and the much time spent editing! -Bhavika xx

FINISHED PRODUCTION!!

Firstly, 100% agreed with Bisma :)
Good reflections too - other things I'd say I think would be that in the future, we should always properly check our footage whilst still on the shoot - and STORYBOARD PROPERLY!! Then maybe so many reshoots can be avoided - we had 3 'final' shoots!! But it was all a good learning experience, and I'm actually quite sad we won't be having any fun editing sessions together any more!! What are we gonna do with our time??? Haha
But I just wanted to say, good work everyone :) We're finished!!!! I know we're not done yet with all this evaluation stuff etc., but it's been lovely working with you all and I'll miss it!
Love you all!
Mia xx

FINISHED - reflections

:o
can u believe it guys? The practical is all over! The many, many, many shoots. The happiness, the tears, the revolting amount of outtakes! WOW...
Well done guys, I'm pleased that we managed to do EVERYTHING on our to do list, and all the final changes that Miss Blackborow suggested.
I think now it's high time we start thinking about question 2 of the evaluation, and tomorrow's lesson should get the ball rolling quite nicely! Also, i have compiled a list of things to reflect upon, irreversible mistakes and vital lessons, in our evaluation. Here it is!
-Sound! We needed diegetic sound on every shot, which didn't seem important when we were filming but turned out to be QUITE necessary!
-In a few places continuity was tricky (RE: stairs sequence) because we needed to have started filming a bit before the footage we needed.
-Keeping lighting consistant! We managed to deal with this pretty well by editing, but definitely something we faced a problem over!
-Sound! (again)...I know this wasn't our fault, but the whirring of the camera was quite difficult to edit down. Still quite nicely dealt with.
Overall a great success forty4 productions.
I'm so proud of us!

Yesterday's Shoot (Friday 13/12)

[Twelve Days Till Christmas!]

Unfortunately, Bhavika was unable to make it to the shoot yesterday and we wish her a speedy recovery - hopefully she'll be well enough for our shoot tomorrow.

Despite the absence of Bhavika, filming was really successful - hopefully there won't be any problems when we look back at our footage on Monday. We got all the shots we'd planned completed - the dialogue between the killer and the housemate and the shot of the housemate knocking on the door and going into the room - we also shot the killer saying "Come in", which we hadn't planned to do but realised it would be a lot better to... We reshots the shoes shot with different shoes too, and hopefully it'll all fit together nicely :)

All that remains now are the pre-entering the bedroom shots for Bisma - going up the stairs and across the hallway, with the crane/HA shot, and the killer picking up the knife from the drawer and something along the lines of caressing it fondly and creepily. And then that's it, unless we need to reshoot but here's hoping we won't!

- posted by Mia

Comments and Reflections

Yeah I've just read over the many comments/reflections that have been put up on the blog. We definitely need to do something about the emptiness of the draw and I'm up for trying out the paper idea. Aghhh reflections in the window! Did you guys find out if we can do anything about them yesterday when editing? And yeah Mia's idea about having the flatmate watching the film - we might be overcomplicating things again! I'm not sure if it is needed unless you guys all really want to do it. Plus we don't have to have the credits coming up onscreen over the shots we have filmed now. We can have then on a black background that comes up in between the shots or something if you get what I'm saying...

- Bhavika xx

Test Shoot and Real Shoot (Friday 28th and 29th November)

Reflections Both shoots took place at Mia’s house, as this is now the location for all of our opening sequence. We tried out plenty of different shots on Friday and did some planning. We got a lot of planning done on the real shoot on Saturday. We did all the planning and decided on the actual shot order in the first two hours and then filmed all of this in the next two hours. All in all it was very productive and loads of fun…I can’t wait to see the footage and actually edit it! Good work guys! - Bhavika xx

THE REAL SHOOT - Bisma's Thoughts

Helloo all! I just returned from the REAL SHOOT! WOOHOOO
I'm so pleased to tell you, it went AMAZINGLY. As soon as Mia, Bhavika and I came together, we began writing out a shooting script and arranging our mise-en-scene. By the time Mary arrived a few hours after, we were ready to shoot and everything was going smoothly!
We worked together incredibly well and the mise-en-scene looked SOOOO convincing! Luckily, as aimed for, we managed to finish shooting everything from this scene. I just hope the footage is as good as I'm expecting!
Well done guys! Great job!!

Bisma

Music AND Test Shoot

Hey guys! Music I really think The Tender Trap could work. I listened to all the ones suggested and like them all but think this one would work best. So unless we find anything else, a definite yes to this one from me! Test Shoot – What Did We Learn?? Although it was loads of fun J we have all realized there is a load of stuff we have to take into consideration/prepare for when we do the actual shoot. I know Mary has already covered some of this, I just thought I’d add my thoughts too and kinda summarize it. Firstly, next time we need to check the weather forecasts and prepare for the shoot according to this. We also need to think about the lighting and need to bring extra sources. Linking to that, we need to decide an appropriate time to film (when it is dark enough) and also when there will be less people and cars around so that we don’t have to keep stop filming. That is if we actually use this location. I liked the car park as our location but if someone finds something better I’m all for it. To sum up, it was all in all a very interesting and fun test shoot. And Finally, I think we all need to make sure we have set our alarms for the right time the night before and haven’t gone to sleep ridiculously late so that we only get like an hour of sleep!! (not naming names you know who you are) Bhavika xx