Post-Production: Sound Effects & Extra Ambiance

Throughout our project, particularly when it comes to post-production/editing stages, we will almost definitely come across at least one piece of footage where the sound we captured may not be clear enough or perhaps has someone producing undesirable sounds such as talking in the background or maybe even mic faults that create...

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Post-Production: Importing Our Logo

Importing our company logo sequence into the beginning of our short film was very easy; with a simple click and drag maneuver, we placed it at the very start of our project using Final Cut Pro on a Mac. We also applied a slowly transitioned fade to and from black transition between the logo sequence and opening clip to provide a smooth transition into our film...

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Post-Production: Music Choice for Scene 3 & Argument Opening

During post-production, we had to create two extra pieces of audio to apply and place in to our film. The first was to choice a song for the bus scene of our film and create a headphone effect to this MP3 file. I decided to create a tutorial on how to do so, along with a compilation of songs that we had considered for our short film product. To create...

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Production: Rule of Third

Rule of thirds is another aspect I had previously learnt from my own personal video recording activities that can play a significant one for producing nice quality clips. The rule of thirds system is splitting the visuals into 9 equal squares in a grid shape. I drew a diagram below to explain. The visuals would have this overlays over it during...

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Production: Final Set of Footage (External Shots: Scene 6-7)

By the time December came around, we had to hurry up with filming and get our last shots done before our chosen environments began changing due to seasonal changes. By the time we had gotten to filming, people had already began hanging Christmas lights up, so we had to make sure we hid this time elapse as much as we possibly could. However, it could be argued that you can't...

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Production: Textures

During our shoots, I decided to take some photos of textures that could be used during post-production or even extra tasks such as posters. Textures are used to give an image or film a little more depth and adds additional atmosphere to it. Here are some examples of textures I found on the internet; We took some of our own textures on set though rather than using external...

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Production: Third Set of Footage (External Shots: Scenes 5-6)

The third day of filming involved a lot more travelling, as we would be travelling around via train. We had to create internal footage of the train stations and train, then also external footage of the travels and any other footage that we would need involving the train stations. We had to act fact on these shots because we need the time to look just before evening, so we had to make sure we filmed everything we needed before it got TOO dark. We did however let some of the later filmed clips run into night time as we...

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Production: Second Set of Footage (External Shots: Scenes 2-4)

Our second day of filming was where we would have to start filming external shots; some easy, some complicated. Because we couldn't get all of our footage shot in one day, we aimed to film at least scenes 2 to 4, thus giving us at least half the footage we would need for our final piece. We stayed in one area location (between Carshalton and Sutton) to get this days shots....

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Production: First Set of Footage (Internal Shots: Scene 1)

The only equipment we used for this recording session was a Cannon 550D EOS camera and and on-board external microphone. We decided not to use any additional lighting as the scene already had enough lighting to work with (and could be manipulated at a later date if we desired too) and it may have made the scene seem a little too vibrant and unrealistic. We...

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Production: First Attempt Issues

We all attended our arrange date to begin film production, however we came across a few issues and did not gain a lot of footage from our session. Our first issue involved the camera being faulty. It repeatedly told us that our SD memory card was full, regardless to the fact there was not one piece of content on it. Our second problem involved the tripod; it's plate that...

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Production Meeting: Plan Of Action

On the 22nd November 2012, we made a plan to meet and begin filming our projects external shots for the 25th November. We chose to do the external shots first because we felt they would have required a lot more effort and had a lot more that could go wrong with them, so we had to make sure we took a lot of time to produce the shots to how we wanted them. We agreed to all...

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Planning: Script For Opening Arguement Scene

In the opening scene, when our actor is sitting on his sofa looking frustrated, there will be an argument happening in the background between the boy's parents. Although recording the argument using improvisation might be more realistic, it will cause a lot of hesitation and confusion on what things to say. So, with this in mind, we had to create a very brief script...

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Pre-Production: Costume & Character

The next stage of pre-production, which would lead to creating our film, was to plan how we wanted our characters to look. We only had one main acting character in our film, thus meaning we didn't have to plan a costume and personality for a whole cast; just one person. Any one else in the film would be purely dressed as they are; in what they would wear...

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Planning: Script & Storyboarding

One of the most important stages of the planning was to write a script. Katie produced our script for us. Anchored Renegade To also aid us with our project, we had to create a storyboard to know exactly how and what we were going to produce. So, following the script that Katie had written for us, Matt and I began to create visual image versions/format of the script. There were around 16 pages and 30+ different shots, I have scanned and placed them all into a PowerPoint presentation to view. We will carry these sheets of paper, along with...

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Research into Environments of the Real World

Before we began our project, we wanted to explore different settings to see which would be appropriate or interesting yet realistic for our project. One of the ideas that we discussed and had to consider was that in order for our film to be realistic in Britain, it is likely the weather and overall atmosphere would have to be cloudy, dull and almost miserable due to...

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Creating A Production Company Logo

For this group project, we felt we needed an identity or logo to represent our 'short film company'. We had already had a production meeting organizing and deciding on a name (Makley Productions) but we also felt a visual presentation of this identity would have been appropriate to include as a credit in our final piece. We began looking into different film production...

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Production Meeting: Synopsis & Planning

In our second production meeting, we began to produce ideas on what our film was actually going to be about. We began to write possible synopsis ideas using Pages on a Mac. Te following screenshot shows our first synopsis idea. Matthew also produced this video to create a visual version of ideas that we had come up with in this synopsis. Fellow classmates puts comments...

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Pre-Production: Working With Focus

Focus is something that we wanted to experiment with and use in our short film product. Focus can be used to create a depth of field and point of focus. We all decided to practice the technique. Matt and Katie filmed some footage exploring this camera visual technique and I created a video that includes notes and possible uses for this technique. Here is...

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Research: Camera Angles & Distances

We didn't want to walk into our project completely blind on how to choreograph and set our short film, so we looked back on some research that Katie had created that describes the different uses and advantages of different camera shot styles. She uploaded this research presentation to SlideShare. Camera angles from KatieeBeth...

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Assembling Equipment

In order to even attempt to film or create any sort of  movie image product, you need to have certain pieces of equipment and a knowledge of how to use them. These range from power sources to suitable lighting to sound equipment and more. I created a basic Powerpoint Presentation to show any equipment that is essential (or optional in some cases) to filming. This was...

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Project Practice: Creating A Scene

As a class, we were all assigned different roles and were set the challenge of creating a piece of footage that we would all later, in our groups, edit and render to post as a short film scene. Although I was not assigned an official role, I decided to personally focus on and take notes on continuity and how the actors were set out, which would be called choreography on...

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Production Meeting: Starting Off!

Today in Media Studies (4th October 2012), we began to take action on our projects by choosing our team mates/groups of which we would work with through this project. I am in a group with Matt Martyn and Katie Jones. Our first meeting consisted of thinking of a production company name for ourselves and discussing the possible future ideas we could use for our short film of the social realism genre. I created a presentation on Prezi to present a summary of the meeting we had. Please view in full screen in order to see details in the...

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Common Features

I then created a diagram that explains the main points and aspects I have gained knowledge of from researching the social realism genre. ...

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