DEADLINE DAY..... progress?

Against all the odds, we have managed to finish the whole of our footage today and are extremely happy with the end product. However, there were a few of problems which we came across today:

• First of all, when we had all the footage edited, we realised that there was about 20 seconds of the track which had not been filled yet. i.e. we had too much footage. However, we came into the media studies room at lunchtime and were able to cut out some of the footage in the middle. This was a heart-breaking process, as we spent hours planning and shooting these shots and didn't want to get rid of them, but we overcame our frustration eventually. Now, the video fits the song perfectly and we are very pleased with the synchronisation.
• Another problem was the rather complicated process of converting the footage to widescreeen mode. It turned out, that we had to go through every clip that wasn't widescreen, and convert it seperately. However, thanks to my partner's ingeniously quick thinking, we were able to create a preset which we simply dragged onto each clip and it was all widescreen within 20 minutes.
• But that isn't where the problems end. Having converted them all to widescreen, I tried to render the whole video to improve the quality. After the computer 'rendered' for about half an hour, it displayed the message 'error occurred while compiling move.' At this point, I called in the technician, Jason, who was very helpful and after a nail-biting hour of fiddling with the preferences, we were able to export the final piece

So , after a rathe stressful day, the video has been transferred to data disk and we are extremely happy with how it has turned out. (Bring on the oscar!)

Progress with editing

We are half way through editing our footage and it is going quite well. At the moment, it is clear we have plenty of footage, but we are unsure weather it will all fit it onto the track. This is because although it fit in the storyboarding stage of uor planning, we have filmed several extra shots which we really want to include. So it is just a matter of editing it all into the correct order and then taking out any parts which we feel are unnecessary.

The footage from our last filming day (Saturday) has turned out extremely good and we couldn't be happier with it.

The only problem we have come across at the moment is that some fo the footage is in widescreen mode while other parts aren't. This is because we used a personal camera as well as the school's camera. However, we know roughly how to sort this problem out and plan on doing so once it is all edited.

(We were unable to post this entry earlier due to problems with our blog.)

Second day of filming

Our second day of filming was on Saturday 24th January. The day was extremely successful as we were able to shoot all of the most important shots that we were unable to film on the last filming date. Also, we filmed the vital 'custard pie death,' which i feel could not have been done any better. We didn't come across any major problems (other than the freezing cold) and i hope the footage comes out okay on the computer now.

(We were unable to post this entry earlier due to problems with our blog.)

Progress made in filming...

Having filmed about 60% of our footage on Sunday 18th January, we had a lot of editing to do, which we started on monday. It was obvious that we had plenty of footage and were happy with how most of it came out.

All in all, i believe our first shoot was a succcess, we stuck to the storyboard, while also filming any extra shots wherever we felt necessary. Although it was tiresome, as we in town for nearly seven hours, we managed to get a lot of footage and i am pleased with the quality of most of the shots. (However, it was very embarrasing walking around town with a man dressed as a clown...)

One of the problems we came across was that both our batteries ran out. Luckily, we had a personal camera with us which we could start filming on. We are now in the process of converting these files onto the correct format so that we can edit it on the school's version of premier Elements.

Luckily, on the day, weather was on our side and we did not run into any faults on that note. Also, there were not too many people getting in our way (probably because they were scafred of the clown). Transport was not an issue either as we had access to a friend's car, which we later used as a dolly as well.

The only shots that i feel we may need to re-shoot are the scene in the alleyway, the 'running around car' scene and possibly the shots of the man running up the stairs. (Mostly because i believe we could have made these shots slightly better in terms of angle and lighting). We can easily film these in town on Sunday though, as we are going to shoot the ending anyway.

We also filmed all the shots in Theo's house today (Scene in which they run through a house) and will see tomorrow if we need to re-shoot any of it. Though i feel it went very well and i donn't think we will need to reshoot any of it. (That reminds me - thanks, Theo, for letting us use your house.)

As i mentioned, we will be going into Tunbridge Wells on Sunday 25th January to film any re-shoots, filler shots and the ending. We hope to start very early again, hopefully, this time my lazy companions will wake up early enough ... :p

First Filming Date.

We will first start shooting on Sunday 18th January, early morning. We iwll shoot nearly all the TunbridgeWells shots. (Meet 8:00 in town.)

After Animatic!

Upon completing our animatic, we now have a solid structure to our video. We knew the general order of all our shots and most of the cuts. There were however, a few things which we were still uncertain of. For example, there were still some shots which we are unsure of how to shoot. To counter this, we did some practice shots and edited them. This was a useful excersize because we now know what shots we will film and how we will edit them.

Our animatic also helped us to establish some 'key shots' which we will synchronize with certain points in the song. For example, when the clown first appears, the slow motion sequence and the confrontation.

Now we have a much better idea of what we need to film and how will approach the editing stage of our project.

Animatic!

• The purpose of the animatic is to allow us to identify and correct potential faults before it becomes too late.
• First, we storyboarded the idea in some detail and individually filmed each image for a few seconds, we would then use premier elements to edit them into the particular sequence we intend to film our video in.
• It enables us to see if our concept fits with the song and how much of we need to change any of it.
• So far, the animatic has allowed us to realize that we need more filler shots and some sort of major event which will maintain the audiences attention in during the video.
• One possible problem that we could encounter is that the song might be too long for the ideas we have got.
• If this happens, we can easily overcome the problem by storyboarding some more ideas and fitting them into the animatic.