Mr D's comment

Good post Sam - well done. It's good to see detail on how you're responding to feedback.

Week 8- Improving Our Video

  At the very start of our day we watched the other groups films. They weren't near finished so not much feedback was given to them, but since our film was mostly done we got a lot of feedback and ended up doing a lot of improving in our video.
  Here are some feedback we got from our film:

•  Possibly too long
• Good flashback scenes/ black and white colouring works well
• Music adds depressing feel/ works well with film
• Good acting e.g. acting with feet and hands
• The scene of moving in towards keyhole good, but gives off an uncomfortable vibe. *Main Issue
• Overall good piece of footage

  After getting the feedback our group went on and dealt with the keyhole scene issue. We decided to cut it out of our film and and put a filming of a dripping tap that we happened to film that day. Replacing the keyhole scene was quite difficult since it could have messed up our in sync music(which I was concerned with because of a very well timed "ding" sound when he actors first step is taken). So we had to deal with the dripping tap scene being completely in time with the music so that every drip would have its very own "ding". It took us a while to deal with that, but we managed to edit in perfectly. Now we had to deal with shortening some parts of the film. That was also going to be a difficult task since we had to keep the music in sync. We shortened the some parts of the film, but not many since we would completely messed up the timing of the music so we left it as it was. The film itself ended up being cut down by 15 seconds which out of the 2 minutes 45 it was is now 2 minutes 30. Which turned out a bit better since one of the main problems was the film was too long.
  I did some editing in shortening some of the scenes and also gave out ideas.

  This was the keyhole scene that we cut out of the film and was replaced by the dripping tap scene.

  This was the crucial step I was talking about that was right on time with the music.
I fixed quite a few problems that we had and we are going to hopefully improve the rest of the film next week.

Week 7- Editing the Final Pieces!

  We started editing our film straight away. After getting the music exactly in sync with most of the transitions we thought we were done, but we spotted some continuity errors so we started fixing them, but at the same time we had to manage and keep the music in sync too. I did more editing than I did in our last session and contributed a lot more too.
  When we finished editing we asked for the credits and later on found out that in one of the credits it said 2010 instead of 2011 so we had to ask Mr. Durran to fix it.
  I didn't get a response from childline so we decided to go ahead with our film anyway. We added the childline logo to the end of our credits to kind of sponsor them in our film(since we used a childline poster).
  After all that we found a few more continuity errors and I fixed a couple of them. After finally finishing editing our film we went on and did some folder work till the end of the day.
   I learned that I can fix a lot of continuity errors and edit pretty well.  I also contributed a lot more than I did last week and helped the group a lot.

   We used colour correcter to fix the white balance issues we had in parts of our video. It worked really well and brought the quality of our video up.

   This is a camera effect that Ben did to kind of bring the sense of blinking and weariness and also fits in perfectly with one of our scenes in our film.

Week 6- Editing and Filming

  We headed off and started filming the rest of the scenes of our film. We headed out to the front of Coleridge to film, but then we noticed that a Parkside Federation sign and we decided best we not film because of that sign and went to the west side entrance to film there instead. It took us a while to get set up and the cold windy weather didn't help us set up any faster. We took multiple takes because in some of our takes a reflection of me and Ben could be seen on the glass. I took some ambient sound of the area. After filming Ben went to get ambient sound from the Coleridge Field( which would not go in our video since we added music throughout the whole video), so me and Ellie headed back to the CRAM room to edit the footage we have.
  When Ben came back we gave him some editing to do and we also saw that we made this really cool effect with the camera while taking some ambient sound and he edited in with the rest of our video.
  Ben did most of the editing from there on out while we suggested what to do. After finishing the editing the video we had to put in some music so we went on incompetech.com to get some royalty free music. Then  Ellie started to play around with the music we put in the video so that it would fit in with the transitions. She tried to match it for about half an hour, then Mr. Durran came and helped and managed to fit in the music with the transitions perfectly!
  After that we were basically done with editing our film with probably a week or two to spare.
  I contributed to the team by doing some editing and also filming some parts of our footage that day.
  I should have contributed a bit more in the editing of the film.
For next week I'm hoping to get more involved in the editing and contribute a lot more.
  Here are some pictures of the timeline of our edited piece and of us working on the editing:

Week 5- Filming

  I had to catch up on some of the work that we didn't manage to finish. I had to finished up on my risk assessment and our groups screenplay. After finishing all that we got ready to go film. We headed out to the Coleridge Field to film some of our flashback scenes and it was very cold and we managed to get set up and only film about 5 seconds of useful footage in about 45 minutes. I had to handle the boom and sound equipment while Ben did the filming.
  We then headed out to the staff toilets to do the main scenes of our film. A few teachers passed by and where a bit disturbed by having people setting up film equipment and filming from above the toilet cubicle. We had to recruit another member from a different group to handle the sound equipment while I got another camera kit to film with, so that we could limit the amount of shots we need take, because we didn't have many sandwiches to use for our scene. It turned out that we didn't use much of the second camera at all and actually had more than enough sandwiches, so I stood there and directed some of the shots. Though one hard thing about the filming was how saddening it was to watch Ellie sit there eating a sandwich crying.
  The utensils were as needed for the filming in the toilets listed: sandwiches, eye drops and sanitizer for hygiene.
  After finishing filming the toilet scene we carried on to get some ambient sound of the corridors after the bell rings. We got some questions like "is it filming?" or people just acting in front of the camera. I was using the sound equipment and managed to get a good 3 minutes if ambient sound. Then we carried on with the poster scene and managed to finish it fairly quickly. After all that we tried filming the bullying scene in the school playground, but with all the commotion and noise of kids running around and going home we couldn't so we headed back to the CRAM room after a successful day of filming.
  My goal for next lesson is to finish filming the flashbacks and the rest of the film so we could go on and edit it.