Final Additions

Final Additions

Although we had the main bulk of our filming done, we still needed to get a few things sorted out before our video was complete.

The first thing we needed was a voice-over of me reading the letter from Jenny. This was quite quick to record and only took about 5 minutes of our time. It took a few tries to get it right but we soon had the recording. Sam then played around with the recording, adding an echo effect to make it sound more dreamy and distant.

The second thing we needed to film was the projector room scenes, with Olivia-Mae watching and manipulating the footage of her and Ruth. After a few scheduling disasters with booking an appropriate room we finally managed, filming on February 2nd. We had a small inconvenience when we tried to start filming as the laptop wouldn't play the video, so we quickly ran over to get the wifi set up and filmed other shots while we were waiting for the laptop to be set up. We also had some problems with a disrupting wannabe singer and some broken lighting equipment, plus the room was uncomfortably warm, but we managed to film all the we needed and left the school at about 5.30. Below is the behind the scenes and some photos Anica took on the day.

The final thing we needed to film were the shots of me and Coral saying goodbye. We had initially planned to film these on the same day as the fire, but as I was busy that day we couldn't. So, after a lot of re-scheduling because of weather, me, Coral, Crystal and Sam (Anica was busy) finally managed to get the shots filmed. At first, we thought we would only need one shot of them saying goodbye, but when filming Crystal mentioned the idea of my character looking back to say goodbye, so we extended our shoot to add that and a few more shots. After these last few things were filmed, we could finally complete the editing and finish our film.

Editing Update

Editing Update

Although we don't yet have all the footage, we have started to edit our video. We are using Final Cut Pro, the software we used last year to edit our AS piece. It took a little re-adjusting to get used to it again but we were quickly editing through our piece. Sam is the main editor as he has lots of experience, with us giving suggestions and opinions on what we think works.

 

We started by cutting the footage together, creating an understandable narrative with the action matching the beat of the music. We found that some of our shots took up more time than we expected, but this wasn't too big a problem as we selected the shots that were most important and kept them. After we had the picture we colour-graded our footage, focusing on warm, orange tones and cool, green tones to make it seem indie. Sam then added some fire effects to our footage, tailoring it to make it look realistic and match what we had already filmed. These effects added to the fire we already had, making it look better and more dramatic.

We also need to edit part of our video before filming the projector scene as Crystal needs to interact with our footage. This means that we have been editing as we go, making sure that we have edited everything in time to film this.

Shooting - Day 3

Shooting - Day 3

Our third shoot was on 2nd January, where we needed to shoot the bonfire scenes outside. Both me and Anica were busy on that day and sadly couldn't make the shoot, but Coral's mum, Nan and brother were there to help. Below is Sam's description of the day.

Day 3 was cold.

The wind was brisk and their hands started to freeze. 'Good thing we're filming fire', Sam thought as he watched his breath float up to the sky. Coral's gran said that she was an expert at pyrotechnics, and so they left the bulk of the fire building to her. Unfortunately, her reputation as a master fire-starter fell slightly short of her actual abilities on the day. Thus, Coral's mum took over the fire*.

The ground was wet and it was very difficult to start a fire - they should have put away some of the logs inside to keep them dry a week before they shot. However, this did not happen and they had to continue to make the most of it.

The shoot was made up of building up the fire and rushing in to film Crystal creating it herself. As they worked, the sun dipped below the horizon and they still hadn't got the fire going properly. The diminished light had to be supplemented by a battery-powered LED light.

After about 3 hours, the fire had gotten to the point of being relatively substantial. They decided to go ahead and shoot, so they threw newspaper on the fire just before each shot to increase its brightness.

Then came the flaming guitar sequence. This worked very well. The original idea was more complex, but Sam was unable to convince the more safety-conscious adults to his idea, so instead of dropping the burning guitar, they would simply place the fire on the fire. Nevertheless, they got a really cool visual of the guitar on fire which Sam enhanced in post with CG fire.

At the end of the day, they had got most of the coverage, although possibly because me and Anica were unable to come and help, they forgot to film some aspects of our plan (for example, footage of Coral and Crystal filming each other on the camcorder by the side of the fire). Nevertheless, in the edit, we found that there would probably not be the time in the final cut anyway to include much more material.


*it is important to note that there are differing opinions on who caused the fire to stop working - Sam believes it was Coral's Nan, Crystal believes it was Coral's mum. There is no real way to know which version of events is correct, and the issue is likely to be debated for a rather long time - basically, the fire didn't work.