Editing Week Commencing 5/03/12

Our film is almost complete. We are making the finishing touches such as titles, and the blood splat.I had quite an important role in the blood splat. Our technician gave us a tutorial and afterwards I started working on selecting the areas where we wanted the blood to go, and choosing which one of the stock blood splats we wanted, as well as what direction it came from.

Our work on After Effects


I also helped picked the font and style of the titles on LiveType.
The main thing I worked on during this week though was the grading. As well as conducting some research into grading for our group (group blog), I also spent several hours working through the shots and colour grading them.

Colour Wheel on Premiere

We are now almost finished and the final film is looking great!

Editing: week commencing 27/02/12

During this week our group captured all our footage, picked the best shots, and edited them into a continious sequence.
My individual achievements this week include:
Editing sound behind titles to achieve a continious feel.
Working on slowing down the beggining shots to give a more calm and relaxed feel.
Working on the new ending with the assasin leaving in slow motion.
As part of the group I also helped select and organize the shots into an order, decided where to put the titles, and worked to resolve issues in the sequnce e.g We had a nice low angle shot where the assasin wipes the blood off her face, but the blood was not applied to her face properly and therefore we decided to cut the shot, as it would build more tension seeing her face at the end anyway.
I particularly like the slower pace to the beggining and the slow mo at the end of the sequence, as well as the titles Natasha has started to work on and the new choice of music by Nico particularly at the end of the sequence as it makes it a lot more dramatic.
As a team I think we are working well and the edit is really taking shape.
This week we need to complete our opening sequence and I would especially like to work on the titles and the after effects of the blood splat as these would be useful new skills to learn.

Me and Natasha editing our sequence



Re-Shoot

Our re-shoot happened on Friday 5th March. During our media lesson we got a lift from our technician Chris up to my house to shoot two shots that we realised we needed to re-shoot after working on our final edit. These two shots were:
The picking up of the briefcase. In my opinion this shot really needed to be reshot becuase there was a light meaning we had to cut the beggining of the clip which meant the character jumped a bit. Also there was a shirt hanging out at the back which didn't suit the character.
The shadow shooting shot. This needed to be reshot due to the fact that the guy's head falls into shot without a wound from the gun and trying to cut his head out just didn't work.

Therefore we had to practice the make-up the day before on my hand. Natasha was responsible for the make-up as she did GCSE Art and in my opinion she did an amazing job.
Earlier in the morning Chris had bought all the equipment down to my house so when we arrived evrything was ready to go. We shot the head wound shot first and took three takes, with the blood dripping further down my face in each one. It was quite a challenge to shoot without getting any blood on the sofa however we managed to do it and it looks a lot better. One issue might be the fact that, to reduce mess, we didn't run the entire shot three times and instead went from when my head hits the sofa which might mean that matching up the shots in editing will be hard, however only time will tell.
We then completed the briefcase shot, which, apart from a brief reflection of the light in the glass in a few of the shots and a continuity error with the drink, went well with at least one take which was error free and looked good.
This re-shoot completes our shooting and now we have all our footage. We are continuing work towards the final edit.

Real Shoot

On Saturday we had our real shoot. We implemented all the improvements we had decided to make after the teacher feedback. This meant several new shots as well as the added task of setting up the lighting. However the lighting made it look a lot better and the more realistic props also contributed to a much better mise-en-scene. The introduction of Lotus via the shadows in the window also looks a lot more dramatic as does the slow reveal of the man in the sequence.
Therefore I think the shoot went well.
My particular tasks in this shoot were:
Dressing the Set
Playing the role of the man
Setting up different shots and lighting
Checking the shot log to decide on the order of shots
Here is a behind the scenes video of us on our shoot:

Unfortunately I was only able to shoot a few shots as I was in the vast majority of them, however I checked all the set-ups and ran through the camera movements in rehearsals and was part of the decision on how the shot would be filmed.

Now we have to get on with editing our final piece...

Test Shoot and Edit

Our initial test shoot had to be cancelled due to issues with snow however this gave us time to work properly on our shot list and all the organization for the shoot. With the extra time given I created a shot list (to be scanned.)
As we were all away on a school trip to Hollywood over the half term we had to do our shoot two weeks later then our original date. Therefore we ended up doing it last Sunday. The shoot went well and we have since edited our footage into a rough cut.


The rough cut threw up a number of issues, the main one's being:
How we were going to make the gun sequence more dramtic/believable (script, sound effects, special effects, mae up etc)
The obsession with knives at the beggining
The breaking of the 30 degree rule
The placing of the titles and the fact that it should feel like the action is still happening behind the titles.
Correct Props and more shots e.g CU of money in briefcase (this also gives a match on action shot)
We are now working to correct these problems for the real shoot next Saturday.