3. Things we found helpful:
The main piece of equipment that we found really helpful
throughout filming was the tripod. We wanted all our
shots to look professional however when we filmed just
holding the camera the shots were incredibly shaky
therefore we used a tripod for every single clip we
filmed. This helped keep the camera steady and overall
improved the quality.
We had some ambitious shots we wanted to film for our
opening therefore it was helpful to get creative with
filming techniques. For example we wanted a birds eye
view shot of credits written on the road. The road we
were filming on had a tall bin on the pavement therefore
we climbed up onto the bin to get the right angle, it was
tricky as we didn’t want to ruin any equipment however
we managed to get the camera and tripod on top of the
bin and achieved the clip we wanted.
After the whole filming process the one thing that came in useful a lot was
the original storyboard we had created. This was extremely helpful when
we had to upload all the clips onto our editing software, Premiere Pro. By
using the story board we knew in which order to upload the clips and what
parts needed editing first. We had to change a few things as we did not
manage to film all the clips on the original storyboard however we stuck
to it as much as was possible.
4. Things we found difficult:
One issue that we had with our equipment
throughout the process was that our tripod was
incredibly stiff. We had planned on including some
pan shots in our film opening however the tripod
was so awkward to move that trying to pan the
camera was almost impossible and it looked awful
when we watched the clips back. Therefore we
had to change the pan shots to still shots however
I was pleased with how the shots turned out.
Another thing we had a huge problem with was the editing software we used.
Premiere Pro was really good for adding the effects we wanted and it was
easy to crop our shots and move them to where we wanted however our work
was not getting saved every time we made progress and because we had so
many different clips uploaded it slowed the programme down a lot. If I was to
use this software again I would work out how to make sure that work was
definitely saved and I would also try to not take as many different takes of the
same clip as it meant that there were too many clips to sort through and it
became very time consuming.
6. We only included non-diegetic sound for our film opening. We knew right from
the start of the planning process that we did not want any diagetic sound
such a dialogue as we wanted a soundtrack that people would focus on fully
as some of our favourite indie dramas, such as Juno, are extremely well
known for their unique soundtracks.
We did not have any idea what track we would use for the clip until we were
nearing the end of the editing process. We looked for the perfect song on a
website called ‘FMA’, which gave us access to free tracks by independent
artists. We looked under the ‘folk’ section as we thought folk music would
have the right pace and atmosphere for our film. The song we agreed upon
was called ‘Kitchen Morning’ and is by the band ‘Birds are Indie’. This song
really made the film come together as its pace fit so well with the clips and
the lyrics were all about a girl and a boy so it helped make it evident what
our film was about. Overall the music was one of the aspects that our whole
group was completely happy with.
8. My media blog has been done on ‘Wordpress’. I
have found this website very easy to navigate
and enjoyed trying to make visually interesting
posts for my blog. I used a range of presenting
technologies for posts. The one I used the most
was ‘Prezi’. I loved using this for posts as it
enables you to essentially make a presentation
however you can use a range of styles and it is a
really fun, unique way of presenting information.
The first time I used it I was slightly confused on
what to do as I had never used a website like it
before, however once you know what you are
doing it is actually very easy to use. I also
embedded a lot of YouTube videos onto my blog
to make it more visually interesting and to help
support the points I was making about different
films as I could include the clips I was analysing.
10. Research was a huge part of the filming process therefore many
technologies were used for this aspect. One of the main things we did
as a group was research lots of indie dramas so we could recognise the
main elements of the film genre we were creating. The website
www.imdb.com was a great tool to use to research different films. The
Film 4 website, www.film4.com, was also a great tool for researching
films as they had produced some of our favourite indie dramas and had a
lot of information about them on the website.
YouTube was again a great website for research as instead of having to
watch whole indie dramas to do research, which we did not have time
for, we could just watch clips. We mainly watched the openings of the
films to get an idea of how they in cooperated credits into their films.
