Sunday 14 October 2012

BYE BYE KITTY ANALYSIS HOMEWORK

This time we learnt from our previous mistakes and took it upon ourselves to make a storyboard prior to filming and it proved to be a great idea because the whole filming process ran a lot smoother and took a lot less time to film overall. This was our first time recording a conversation and it proved to be more challenging than we had first imagined, this was due to the amount of small technical things that would maintain the shot's continuity; i.e having one actor on the right hand side of each shot (not swapping around).

We started by filming the master shot (from a 90 degree angle of the two actors) and then continued by filming "over the shoulder shots" and experimented with a few close-up shots; purely to see the effect they would have; would they work? After we were content with our footage we went back to the classroom where we edited the shots together to produce our final outcome. However, we had a bit more fun in terms of editing this time as we "played- about" with different editing techniques and you can probably tell from the sped-up shot of James chasing Daniel (and vice versa).

We created two separate videos (both with the same content) except we added different non-diagetic sound to them both. We added parallel sound to our original video as the up-beat, funny, chasing music fitted well with our slightly comical scene. For the second version, we added an eerie  more sinister contrapuntal sound, this created the effect that the situation/ conversation was far more serious and stern than we had intended it o be; yet it was intriguing to see how something as simple as the sound could affect a video so much.

The quality of the footage was actually very high, we used the tripod to film every shot and so this gave room for no errors in terms of shaky hands etc. We decided to film every shots around 5 times, this was purely so that our final shot was as close to perfection as possible. We encountered a few technical mishaps such as zooming at the wrong time, speaking at the wrong time, saying the incorrect lines etc but this just added to the fun of making the video and i'm very pleased overall with the final outcome(s).

What went well?
we had fun
recorded each shot a multiple of times
extremely comfortable with the editing software and use of equipment in general

What went bad?
had to record an extra shot during editing time as we had a bright idea (the chasing scene at the end)

Monday 1 October 2012

Reviewing My Film - Homework

REVIEWING MY FILM

Production Process

Overall, i believe the production process went well as we managed to stick to our storyboard/plan and were very time efficient when it came to the filming and the editing. We had to film a few shots a number of times due to lens flare , poor continuity etc but eventually we were pleased with the footage that we obtained over the filming process. In regards to editing, i took the lead role and took it upon myself to do almost all of it and i am very pleased with the outcome as it demonstrates and displays the hard work that was put in to making our film.

Variety Of Shots Used

- pan (from left to write)
- close-up
- over-the-shoulder
- pan (bottom to top)

Quality Of Footage

For a lot of our shots we decided to use the tripod, simply because if we would have held the camera it would have been terribly shaky. Even when i was moving with the camera (filming the over the shoulder shots) i still kept the camera on the tripod, again just to keep the camera as steady as possible. After creating the film/trailer i think that i probably could have filmed a few extra clips purely in order to make the trailer better, however we only had a limited amount of time and so we felt slightly rushed in terms of recording time. Overall though i can happily and proudly say that i am happy with what my group and i accomplished considering it was the first time we had even used the equipment and software but obviously there are many things on which we can improve upon. Our actual trailer itself has a pretty poor story line and so this would definitely have to be planned better next time as some of our shots were just simply made up on the spot.





Monday 2 July 2012

PROJECT X

The last film that I watched was "Project X", a hilarious comedy directed by Nima Nourizadeh who is also well-known for directing various music videos for artists such as Dizzee Rascal prior to the release of this film.
It is filmed through a home-video camera from the perspective of one of the characters names "Dax" and so it's very easy to forget this as he is very illusive and rarely speaks throughout the film.
The main plot of the story is that three stereotypical "nerds"; Thomas, Costa and J.B,  plan on throwing "the party of all parties" in order to gain popularity among their fellow students. However, a few guests quickly becomes a few thousand and the party escalates and becomes way out-of-hand and turns into a mass riot involving the police and even a psycotic old man using a flamethrower in order to retrieve his precious gnome; stolen by the nerds earlier in the film.
And so after millions of dollars of damage, and possibly the most wild party ever, the boys get completely slaughtered by their parents yet return to school as heroes; a small price to pay for popularity? I think not...