EVALUATION: Q1. 'In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'

EVALUATION: Q2.

EVALUATION: Q3.

EVALUATION: Q4.

EVALUATION: Q5.

EVALUATION: Q6.

EVALUATION: Q7.

I have combined both my prelim task and my final film opening in order to compare and contrast what I have produced from the beginning of the project until now.
As a start, the preliminary task was a 'warm up' of how to use technology such as Final cut pro and JVC cameras for different camera angles and movements.
As a result of the prelim there was minimal planning as to what was going to happen such as locations or props however it was scripted which did give a sense of direction of what the end product was going to be like.
Camera work: comparing the two clips camerawork was a big difference although the techniques from the prelim helped when filming our film opening.
Mise-en-scene: the appearance in our filming opening was more planned and specific to our characters personality whereas in the prelim there was no planning involved when it came to wearing a specific costume.
Editing: Editing was more crucial in our teen opening as we planned our croos cuts, transitions and still flash shots to emphahsise on our story whereas my prelim rarely included this.

To conclude there is a big difference between my prelim and final film although the prelim was a big help for me to widen my creativity skills when filming or editing.

Production Progress 9

Our final outcome is now finished. From the recent feedback we received, final changes and edits were made in order to better the final outcome this included changing the soundtrack, creating our own idents and changing some shots around which we successfully managed to acheive as a group.

Throughout the project, we grew closer as a group the more we invested our time into the filming and editing. Although at the beginning it was a struggle being introduced to a new scheme of work that included a new range of techniques, as research and tasks were completed our stability as a group grew stronger which helped us produce a strong outcome.

Our teen opening, strongly reflects the storyline of the film which allows the viewer to have a clear understanding of what the movie will be about. As a group we are very confident that we accomplished  everything we needed to do in order for our opening sequence to be successful this was produced by including different camera angles, transitions and soundtracks.

To conclude, the teen film project was a success and as a group we are proud of our final outcome as well as each of us learning new skills in teamwork, creativity and motivation which reflects all throughout our blog.

Final Product

Production Progress 8

In todays session we received feedback from the rough cut which has been included in the previous blog post. As we received the feedback at the beginning we used the rest of the lesson to work on the feedback and incorporate it into our teen film opening. We were initially really really happy with what we had and where we were heading, but after progressing further with the feedback in mind we have found that it's made quite a difference and made it much better and we are now all excited to see the final outcome.

One of the changes we made was adding out own production and distribution ident instead of using one that's already in use. To do this we explored the app 'Motion', which had many effects which we found with add that extra 'greatness' to it. It was a new program and added to our collection of skills which we found useful as well as amazing to an extent. So we created out idents and added them into our footage.


We also took into other parts of our feedback and worked with those, e.g. we got rid of the reverse on the car and added an extra transition during the library scene to show time passing. Next lesson we are confident that we will be able to completely finish it all ready before deadline day which is 12th March 2014.

Rough Cut Feedback

Rough Cut

Production Progress 7

In today's lesson we carried on cutting down our footage and in the end we managed to get to about 2 minutes and 40seconds. We changed our music as well as we found we got pretty annoyed of the repetition of the first one that we had. This time we decided to cross fade between two sound tracks, one before our flash shots and one after. We also decided to add something with rap it emphasised our narrative. We also changed the positioning of our titles and decided to have them throughout the whole 2 minutes instead of just the first section.

We knew that we have a long way to go still however we were ready for our rough cut at this point in time and decided that we will be ready for feedback next lesson and including this with our own improvements that we came up with as a good. Not long to go now but we believe we are above task and will be all ready for deadline day.

Production Progress 6

Today we worked on perfecting the cuts and watching it over and over to check that we were happy with the clip. We had Marissa watch over the clip and we realised it was really really long. It was about 5 minutes and our target was 2 minutes, this meant that we had a lot of work to do and we had to cut more than half and as we were already happy with what we had we did not know what to cut. Also at this point we had more footage that we had to gather as well so we were in quite a dilemma.

However we found that some clips were unnecessarily long and would not change the narrative it we had cut some off it down. This was a really long process and it took ages to cut at least a few seconds of most clips. We successfully were able to cut it down to about 3-4 minutes by the end of the lesson and decided that we would carry on cutting next lesson before we started to fix the fonts on our titles and the finalised position.

Marissa also suggested that we cross cut before the night scenes and the day scenes, we thought this to be a pretty good idea that help make the production look better. This also helped our narrative to show the contrast between our main characters day life and night life.

Next lesson we plan to carry on cutting and fix up our titles a little bit all ready for our Rough Cut. We still have a long way to go but we are certainly excited to be in the direction which we are headed.

Production Progress 5

Although according to our production schedule we were supposed to be filming in this session we were unable to as Andres was not in costume and this would have messed with continuity. However we decided that after having a filming session during the holidays we should watch through all the clips we had gather to see what we had to work with and what else we needed to film. As we already started placing our clips in Final Cut, we watched through what we already had and then started to add the rest of the clips we had. This created the initial outline for the opening sequence. Inorder to have every member of our group involved and have them doing something, Andres and Nahida focused on the editing while Lashay and Aneeka carried out more music research to find the perfect song to match our opening.

 

Progress post (3)

As of today the filming of our opening sequence is still in process, although majority of our shots have been filmed in our main locations we will be discussing any other decisions to finalise the film, whether it is a 5 second clip of a scenary or a dialogue shot being filmed of our main character with another person.
18/2/2014 was the last filiming session that took place as Nahida kindly decided to take it upon herself to film 16 shots of London which will be seen as 'flash shots' alongside the title sequences.
However, as Nahida decided to come up with this idea last minute it was unfortunate for myself and the other group members to be unable attend as the original filming date was planned on 17/2/2014. Although we did successfully film on this day, in future as a group we need to work on planning ideas in advance in order for everybody to have participation.

As I review, 'Production progress 4' it seems as if the filming session was succesful and I hoped to be content with the footage I see in tomorrows media lesson.
As a group we will be continuing with filming tomorrow and combine any ideas that may advance this project further.

Progress post (2)

Production Progress 3

Today we filmed all the shots we needed of our character traveling to college. All this filming took place in Stoke Newington (Lordship Road/Queen Elizabeth's walk) as we felt this location best suited our character. Also as our initial character was actually based on Andres and he lived in this area we found it was perfectly suited to our teen drama. The plan was to meet at 3pm however there were some difficulties for us to get to the location as we have never been and were unsure of the exact location. But in the end we did manage to get there and still get all the shots we needed.

As Andres put it 

"Today's filming was a success and we did a lot"

Now all we need is the shots of different parts of London, which Nahida will hopefully complete tomorrow and then when we get back to college we will need few more shots of Andres on his phone at the bus stop and a shot of him just getting on a bus as it drives off. After that we have all the shots we want. So editing will be our next step. We will also have time to collect extra shots we may need and redo any shot in case the camera is too shaky and the footage is not useable.

Success is nearby yet so far...

Production Progress 2

Today (13.02.2014) we did not film although our schedule said we would. The reason for this is because Andres was not in costume and again it was a short session and we felt it would not be as productive we had decided to film. Also we felt we didn't have much left to film so it was okay if we left filming out of this session. Instead we used this lesson to plan where we wanted to go from our current position. We watched through all of our footage and were pleased with most but there were a few we may considering re-shooting if we go ahead with actually using them. We started to place some of the clips together to see whether our outcome would be possible and we felt we were making great progress and were happy with where this project was going. We decided that we would definitely be using the half term holiday slot to get the footage we need outside of college such as the traveling to college. We felt that this would be a more useful time as we are able to choose the date and time which we would want to film. This means that we are less likely to have a time limit in which we must have our footage. Our plan now is to get all the footage of Andres traveling to college on 17th February, and also to hopefully get out shots of tourist attractions of London the day after. Hopefully the filming is a success this holiday, so when we return to college we can watch all the footage and record any extra footage within the college which we feel could've been done better. If this all goes to plan then we will be able to start editing earlier then planned and ace our teen drama opening. 

Production Progress 1

                                       

Today (10.02.2014) was our first filming session. Unfortunately we started off to a slightly rough start as half the group failed to turn up on time due to transport issues, however we used this time wisely to think of what we wanted to film and what shots would be best. Also as we found a shortage of shots in our animatic, this time gave us a chance to figure out what extra shots we wanted to add. We decided that we wanted to film all the shots we needed within the college and just around the area in Angel Islington. We didn't want to go to far out as we were unsure of how much we could get done and still be able to get back into college on time to upload our footage onto the hard drive ready for editing later on. This filming session was a success in our opinion as we were able to get all the college shots we wanted and we think we have set off to a great start and are looking forward to our final product.