DIFFERENT EFFECTS ADDED IN WHILST EDITING

In order for our media piece to run as smoothly as possible we had to insert transitions and non-diagetic sounds, this would make the piece look and sound more realistic. All of these effects were added on Final Cut Pro which is the software that we used to edit our media piece together. This meant that we didn’t need to search for different transitions that would be suitable for our piece, which ultimately saved us a lot of time.

THE DOOR SOUND EFFECT

At the beginning of our piece we show Becka’s character walking into the room and shutting the door. When we filmed this and imported it into Final Cut Pro we felt that the sound of the door closing wasn’t really loud enough and you would not be able to hear it along with the music and voiceover. As there were also sounds of people talking in the shots, we needed to mute the sounds on the clips, which meant that we had to use a non diagetic sound. So we decided to flick through the various sound effects on the software we were using, most of these sound effects weren’t suitable as they sounded like they would be the sounds coming from an old styled door as the door we used was fairly modern we needed a sound that went along with what the door looked like. This left us with a few options but none that we were particularly happy with. The sound effect that we eventually used didn’t sound very realistic to Becka but when we adjusted the volume on the software we all agreed that it worked well. We could have recorded the door slamming shut but we were unable to because of timing issues and issues with filming. The sound of this effect contributes greatly to the overall authenticity of the piece as without it, there would be no sound of the door as we had to mute the initial filming shot. This would have made it sound unrealistic as the audience would have seen that the door closes but would not hear any sound. This sound also emphasises that she is alone in the room which makes the overall media piece more personal to the audience as this will allow the audience to connect with the character a she is the only character in the whole opening sequence.

CROSS DISSOLVES

We felt as a group that using cross dissolves at different moments in the opening sequence would make the piece flow more smoothly and would reflect on the situation and make it look more graceful and flowing. As dissolves are usually used to make a piece look slower we felt that this would be appropriate. With jump cuts, these are usually used with movement and give a piece a faster pace we felt that this would only be appropriate to show movement as jump cuts wouldn’t be suitable when showing the pictures as this might look insensitive. We used cross dissolves mainly when showing the letter and the pictures as this is the most sensitive part of the opening sequence and we felt that it would show the topic in a smoother and slow paced way. I also feel that the cross dissolves make the overall piece appear more sensitive. If we had only used jump cuts in the opening sequence it would make the piece look more blunt and plain, and wouldn’t show very much variation, which might offend some audiences as it might make it look as though we haven’t put much thought into the piece. We had to make sure that we got the transitions right as this would make sure that audiences weren’t offended as cancer is such a broad topic and affects a large majority of people.  We added a lot of these in but took some out again while going through it as we didn’t want it to look so full on and wanted it to look subtle. Our main aim of this was to make it barely noticeable to the audience but make it look as though if it wasn’t there, it wouldn’t look right. This is often done in many filming projects. Cross dissolves also made the match on action look better as in some places it didn’t flow very well with jump cuts and fades made these look a lot better.

REC OUTLINE IN FLASHBACK

When the flashback begins we felt that it didn’t look right as it didn’t look as though it was a normal meeting between the two characters. We saw other groups using an effect that makes it look like a home video. This was exactly what we needed as, this flashback is supposed to be a home video which contributes to the idea that the two characters have been friends for a very long time. The group felt that this looked very different from the rest of the piece as we didn’t use this kind of effect in the rest of our opening sequence. This effect would have been used more if we added more home videos which was our first idea, but not only would this have added more time onto our piece and affected other aspects of the opening sequence, but Mr Zaidi felt that more home videos would look inappropriate and felt that the one home video looked better alone. We went along with this idea and we felt that less is more in this case.

CLOUDED EFFECT IN FLASHBACK

The original footage for the flashback didn’t look like it does in the opening sequence. This is because we added a clouded effect to the piece of film as it made this part look more like a flashback. We felt that the clouded and blurred effect made the flashback look more like a part of the characters memory and that it was a part of the past that the character remembers when she looks at the picture that was shown just before the flashback. This effect contributed to the flashback idea of this part and made it look more like it was a memory from the characters mind. This effect also made the piece look a little brighter as the original footage looked a bit dark as it was filmed in the evening and the actors didn’t appear very clearly in the original footage.

STATIC TRANSITION

I had the idea of adding in a transition at the end of the flashback as I felt that what we originally had to separate the two shots was a little too blunt and didn’t suit the piece. The group went through various different transitions that we could use instead as the other two girls were not entirely sure of what I meant. When we found the static transition we felt that it fitted with the flashback perfectly as it made it look as though the video camera had run out of tape. It also went well as just before this transition Becka goes towards the camera and says “Abbi stop filming” and then moves the camera to one side, we felt that the static went along with this as it sort of applies with the match on action rule. We also felt that this could also apply to the storyline of the opening sequence because as the flashback ends, the characters life ending is soon to follow, we felt that this gave the opening sequence a form of pragmatics and makes the way the opening sequence is put together more clever.

EDITING – PART 6

On Wednesday 4th April all of the group met up to try and finish editing our opening sequence. Me and Becka has originally planned to meet up at midday to try and get on with filming. Unfortunately Becka was delayed as she had to do extra work for her French A Level in school. So, I took this time to do a little extra blogging and added the rest of our titles that we agreed on before hand. I added the titles and put them where I felt would be best and would allow the rest of the group edit these when we were all together.

Abbi also came in for a little while whilst I was waiting for Becka, but had to leave soon after as her relative was waiting to pick her up. During this short time we discussed and finalised the titles and agreed on who was going to go underneath which title. We also ran through the title sequence so far, as Abbi was not there for filming the day before, so we checked that she was happy with the progress so far. We agreed on the title sequence and then Abbi had to leave and said that she would be joining us later

Becka then arrived at around 1pm and we began to edit. We started to edit parts of the footage so that they would run in time with the music. Our teacher then arrived in the editing suite and had a look at our footage. He thought the overall opening sequence was good but also said that there were a few aspects of it that could be changed. He believed that the voice over should be changed as he felt that Catherine’s voice didn’t show much emotion and thought that it should be changed and show more emotion such as breaks in the voice and a more sombre tone. As Catherine recorded the voice over first me and Becka tried to get in contact with her to see whether she was available to re-record the voice over. Unfortunately she wasn’t so we had to rethink our strategy. This was when Abbi arrived to help us out and we all tried to think of ways in which we could record the voice over.

RE-RECORDING THE VOICE OVER

After discussing what we could use to record our voice over with our initial thoughts was with my iPhone. However, this would have been an issue as the mac wouldn’t allow us to take the voice recordings off of the phone without wiping the apps and music off of my phone, this would have been extremely inconvenient but I would be willing to do it if we had no other option. We then remembered that another group on this course did their voice over using (the technician) Michael’s Apple Mac. This groups recording was very clear and high quality so we decided to do this. Seeing as Catherine was unable to join us to re-record the voice over, we were left with a few options. We could either wait until Catherine was available to come in and record, ask her to record the voice over herself at her own home or we could record someone else’s voice instead. With the first option we didn’t particularly want to come into school on another day as we had already given up the majority of our week and we also had to do work and revision for other subjects. We also didn’t want Catherine to record the voice over herself as we wouldn’t be able to give her our opinions which would lead to inconvenience for her as we might have had to ask her to record her voice again. So, we decided to go with the last option as we wanted to get it done and out of the way. When deciding on who to use for our voice over we had a little bit of difficulty as there were not many people in school and those her were were mostly males, this wasn’t convenient so we had to think of someone else. I offered to do the voice over and the rest of the group agreed. We felt that this was the best option as I knew most of the letter off by heart so it wouldn’t sound as if it had been read like it did on the previous voice over. I also knew what sort of emotion to include in the voice over and how to do it, we all agreed and we went into a quiet room to record the voice over.

We managed to record the voice over all in one go, which was very good for us considering the original recording of the voice over took a lot of practice and a long time to record. We recorded me and Becka reading the voice over a couple of times as we wanted to make sure that it was as good as it could be. Of course we made a couple of mistakes but we were overall happy with what we produced. Michael put this recording onto a memory stick and we imported it into Final Cut on the Mac.

CARRYING ON EDITING

We cut and added more voice overs so that we could make sure all of the mistakes were deleted and we were very happy with the final voice over. We felt that it was better than the previous voice over as we thought that it sounded like there was more emotion in it and it was read slower which exaggerates the mood of the opening sequence. We also heard that it sounded more echoed. We originally felt that this wasn’t a good effect and said that we would try to edit it out. But when we added it to the opening sequence with the music we felt that it worked well. One of the students in the room at the time said that it was effective and sounded as though it was her imagination and sounded really effective and worked extremely well with the rest of the opening sequence. This enhanced our decision to leave the echoed sound as this student was included in our target audience so we felt that if she liked this effect then the majority of our target audience would.

After this we felt that the majority of the opening sequence was done and all we had left to do was to edit the title sequences that were done earlier. This was done fairly quickly as the rest of the group were pretty happy with the titles I had already put in. It was just a case of changing the order of the titles and changing the times in which they appeared and where they appeared in the frame. We then ran through the opening sequence a couple of times and made a couple of extra changes. We needed to get Michael to render our opening sequence onto a disk and unfortunately he had left the editing suite and gone home. But fortunately for us Abbi knows how to render the opening sequence so she has told us she will do this tomorrow when she goes into school tomorrow to do work for other subjects.

WE’VE FINISHED!!!

We have now finished the whole editing and filming processed and we are all very happy with the final outcome of this. Today’s editing session has been extremely successful as we have managed to redo the voice overs and have also edited the rest of the opening sequence considering that it had taken us a long time to do the rest of it before today. We were all very happy with the final opening sequence and were happy with every aspect of it.

ADDING OUR TITLES

The title sequences in films are essential as they establish directors, producers, writers, actors and other titles to show the audience whether the overall film will be high quality. For example, if the audience saw that a film was made by a company such as Warner Bros. they would immediately assume that it was a high quality film as they would associate this brand with other films made by this company such as, Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes. After discussing what titles we wanted to include with the group we decided on these titles: director, producer, actors, cinematography, writers, music and costume. So, we will add Film4 in our titles so that our audience will associate our film with other films such as “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” and “Slumdog Millionaire” we will also include “Fox Searchlight” in our opening sequence.

When deciding who in our group to choose to have these titles we considered who deserved to have which title based upon what their main role in the production. We decided on myself and Abbi to be the directors as we both did the majority of the filming, we felt that all of us should be the producers and responsible for cinematography as we all put in an equal amount of effort in to the production and editing of our opening sequence. We also felt that the writer should be Abbi as she was the one who wrote the letter that is used in the opening sequence. For the music title we thought we should include the artist who actually played the music we used which is Birdy. We also decided that Becka should have the costume title as she came up with what the actors should wear. The actors will obviously be Becka and Catherine.

When we add the titles we will use the full names of those involved as it sounds more professional and more likely to be seen in a high quality film.

CHOOSING OUR TITLE

Our main priority before finishing editing was to insert a film title. In order to do this we had to come up with a name for a film first. We started to gather ideas from our target audience, this was students of our own age. We asked them to watch our opening sequence so far and asked them what they thought the title should be. Our first suggestion was “Ashley” as it linked in with the letter that is read out in the opening sequence, however, after some thought we believed that it was too short and blunt to be our title. “In Memory” was also a suggestion but we also felt that this sounded too much like something you would see on a gravestone which isn’t particularly what we had in mind. However, it does tie in more with the theme of loss in our opening sequence so it wasn’t entirely inappropriate. After thinking about some of the suggestions that were given to us we thought that the letter was the most significant part of our opening sequence, so we tried to look through the letter that was written for the opening sequence and tried to pick out phrases that would sound good as a film title. Looking through the letter we couldn’t find any phrases that would be appropriate as a film title apart from the end when it reads “with all my love.” We felt that this phrase would serve as a good title as it emphasises the friendship between the two characters and emphasises a sense of loss and exaggerates the feelings and emotions experienced in the opening sequence. We all agreed on this title and edited it into the opening sequence and were all happy with the way it looked.

After this we asked a couple of the students in the editing suite at the time what they thought to the title and all who watched agreed that the title went well with the opening sequence and added to the sense of emotions in the opening sequence.

TYPOGRAPHY

When choosing our font for our opening sequence we initially wanted to choose a font that was fairly hand written as this would tie in with the idea of the letter in our narrative. After looking at all of the fonts we found that hardly any of them looked as though they were handwritten. The fonts that we found that looked handwritten were “Noteworthy” and “Signpainter” however we thought that these fonts looked too causal as it doesn’t really go along with the emotions and feelings that are felt in the opening sequence. As there weren’t any other fonts that were suitable and looked handwritten we had to rethink our strategy. We thought we’d go for a fancy looking font. After looking we picked another two fonts; “Gabriola” and “Sinhala” (the bottom text) me and Becka both preferred Sinhala as it was quite small and simple and gets the message across very easily. We also thought it would be easy to read for our audience as it is a simple serif font but still looks quite professional. We will make this text white as we thought that black made it look too blunt, we decided on white as it is a simple colour and looks graceful and delicate, which will reflect the way we have created the opening sequence and how we have tried to convey our narrative.

EDITING – PART 5

On 3^rd April me and Becka arranged to meet in school to try and do more editing so that the final opening sequence can be ready for Michael to render tomorrow. Unfortunately, Abbi couldn’t make it because of transport issues, this was a bit of an issue as it would be difficult to get her opinion on some of the editing that we had done, however, we tried to keep in touch with her as much as we could, however, when this could not be done me and Becka had to make decisions based on our own initiative. Me and Becka met up at around 10.30am and finished at 4pm. During this session we managed to put all of the clips together and time them at the right pace so that they would go in time with the music. We also sorted out transitions and fades between shots, this proved to be quite difficult as we were unfamiliar with this software so had to ask other students on how to do certain things. Luckily, these students knew exactly what to do when we asked and we were very happy with the outcome of this. During this session we also decided on the typography of our opening sequence and managed to put those into place. We were unsure on what titles to include so researched on the internet and looked at different title sequences on artofthetitle.com we looked at films such as ‘Catch Me If You Can’ and ‘Se7en’ and were able to get a general idea of what titles to include: we decided that we would include these titles, director, producers, actors, cinematography and writers. Of course we will also add the titles related to Film4 and Fox Searchlight.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to finish, so we have arranged to meet up again tomorrow and get our opening sequence finished and rendered onto a disk.

EDITING – PART 4

On Friday 30^th March me, Abbi and Becka met up again during a media lesson to try and get as much editing done before breaking up for the Easter holidays. On this day, we had two lessons of media, however, I was only available for one of those as I had to leave school as I had to go on a fieldtrip for my Geography A Level. During the lesson I was available for, we managed to put together all of the clips that we wanted in the right order. There were a few disagreements when editing due to different opinions in the group, but overall managed to put together an opening sequence that we were happy with.

Unfortunately, by the end of these lessons out opening sequence was not ready to be rendered and put onto a disk as we still have to add titles and do a little more editing so that the sequence runs as smoothly as possible. This means that the group will have to try and meet up during the holidays to complete all of the tasks that need to be finished.

RECORDING THE VOICEOVERS

When we met up to film on the 27^th we found that we also had time to record the actors reading the letter for the voiceovers. We did this using my iPhone and Catherine’s too. We did this as we found that the microphone on the iPhone gave us a very high quality sound and was also convenient for us as a group. This picture to the left is the software that we used on the iPhone. We planned on making Becka read out the first paragraph and then blending in Catherine’s voice so that it made it sound as though the letter was coming from Catherine’s character. At the end we then planned the voiceover to blend from Catherine’s voice back to Becka’s voice. Doing this proved to be quite difficult as we had to record the two voices blending into each other, this took quite a long time as it was difficult for the actors to sync their voices. It took a couple of practices in order for us to produce an outcome that we were all happy with. We will then edit these into the opening sequence when we next meet up for editing.

THE FINISHED WALL

Here is a picture of the finished wall that we filmed for our opening sequence. We found it quite difficult to put all of these photos together as it was quite time consuming and difficult to edit. With the photographs where Catherine is ill we felt that it would be the easiest option to Photoshop these pictures, but this proved difficult, which is explained in the post below. However, we felt that our final decision to take the pictures of Catherine with her headscarf on was more realistic of a teenage girl. Doing this also made it easier for our group as we don’t have to worry about Photoshopping photos which will be time consuming and might not turn out the way we had wanted.

FIFTH MEETING FOR FILMING

On Wednesday 28^th March me, Becka, Abbi and Catherine met up after school to finish filming our opening sequence. We needed Catherine to be there for a couple of reasons. The first one being that we needed to film her walking up to the house to show that the film has gone back in time to a year before, as Catherine will be healthy in this part of the footage. The second reason is so that we could quickly take a couple more photographs of her when she becomes more ill. This meeting was extremely successful as we finished all of our filming for our opening sequence.

We had originally planned to use Photoshop to make the non-stereotypical teenager look bald as this would give the audience a big clue as to what her illness is. However, this proved to be difficult as none of us had a particularly good idea on how to use Photoshop, we tried to look at videos on Youtube but this didn’t provide us with much help. Abbi then told us that one of her relatives knew how to work Photoshop and said that he could edit the pictures for us. Unfortunately, Abbi’s relative was in the end unable to do the pictures because of other personal issues. As we knew nobody else who could work Photoshop in the time we needed, we decided to make other arrangements and take more photographs of Catherine with a headscarf on. We felt that this might be a little more appropriate as we felt that a teenager in this position would feel more comfortable with her head covered when she is around friends. So, we felt that this was more authentic. These pictures show me taking photographs of the two actors in different areas of Becka’s garden. We decided to take pictures in Becka’s garden as we felt that it was very picturesque and would look a lot more effective. As it was also sunny we could use the light to our advantage by taking pictures from different angles to change the lighting on the camera to make it look as though the pictures were taken at different times of the day.

Before taking pictures, we had to make sure that Catherine’s head scarf looked realistic and we had to make sure that all hair was covered. We did this by scraping all of Catherine’s hair back into a tight ponytail. We then wrapped the head scarf around her head and tied it back and used small hair grips to stick down any loose hairs and to make sure that the headscarf was firmly on and wouldn’t come off when taking pictures. When we had finished we felt that Catherine looked as though she was ill and enhanced this appearance by making herself look weak. As Catherine is already a thin person, her appearance looked more realistic when she tried to make herself look weak.

When we had taken all of the photos we printed them out and stuck them on the wall to fill in the gap. We then filmed all of the bits we needed to and completed filming!