The other guys...

The other guys...

Recently as our filming has been coming to an end, I have been attempting to keep a close eye on how the other groups are progressing. 

Something I am noticing from almost every other group is the fact that they are now doing the final tweaks to their editing, which worries me quite a lot. The fact that we are still doing the 'primary' editing when others are doing 'tertiary' editing makes me think we are quite a fair way behind. We are finding out that this software is quite a challenge for us, when none of us are real IT experts. Another worrying thing is the fact that everyone else seems to have mastered the software when we are still at what can only be described as amateur level. 

We have been asking for quite a bit of help from other groups and out teachers. I hope we don't get too dependent on help from others, rather than trying to learn for ourselves. I do feel we are beginning to get there with it all. The level of which we are using the program at has improved from before, and we are even beginning to whip in some keyboard shortcuts!

Gathering opinions from others has also proved to come in very handy, because after all, the film is for the audience, so their input is vital. Some things we didn't even consider when we done some filming has been brought to the audiences attention, which they have then brought to ours. We are very thankful for everyones help on this, as it really helps us nail the editing! The main thing that has been picked up on, was the lack of closeups we used. In all honesty, the reason we couldn't do some closeups, was we forgot the pocket-watch, which is a key to our film. But apart from that, we have decided to go and do some re-filming of some close up shots, for instance my feet and the killer. These will be great shots mainly due to the fact that this will add tension; the main point of a thriller. 

Everyone has been really helpful due to the fact we are struggling. They could just have left us, but their important input and constructive criticism has been very valuable to us to help us get to where we are now - much much further than we were a month ago when everything looked like it was going to be a massive flop!

Update 13-12-12

Update 13-12-12

Here is a video update of how things are going. 

Filming: The Final Sprint

We are pleased to announce that our filming is just two scenes from completion. Following our filming last Friday we now only have to film the scenes involving the pocket watch that is central to our plot. The filming i am pleased to report went brilliantly save for a few mishaps involving a stray piece of bird feces and someone calling the police on us. We weren't in any trouble and the rest of our filming went perfectly. Main editing may be done by the end of this week with small parts of editing and the soundtrack hopefully by the end of next week. While we may have taken the longest with our filming, we are satisfied with what we have accomplished and have hopes for our final product.

My editing contribution

I have edited the middle scene of our film, in this scene we see Danny our victim running away from a mysterious man. I used a radial blur for Danny's POV shots of him running and of him hiding under the bridge this effect makes him seem fatigued and lets us know the difference between his point of view and normal camera shots, but I would say the best reason to use this effect is so that when we see the killer for the first time he is blurry and hard to see and so this give the character an element of mystery. By not directly showing the character to the audience it makes the audience more interested in what is happening in the scene, this is a technique used commonly in thriller films they always obscure cover or never show the villains face to keep the audience of edge and to create an element of mystery. Then today i helped ben with his editing of the first scene as the scene was almost impossible to recognise as it was too dark and so we worked on that together.

Editing: First Attempt

I am pleased to report that i have done my first lump of editing using final cut. I helped edit the timings of a scene where Danny's character is running and the majority of a Pipe scene. I managed to crop this scene and add some video affects with minimal problems excluding not being able to find certain scenes in the video database. I am beginning to understand how to use and implement video filters and effects and am gaining more confidence with final cut.

Editing issues

When we began to edit our videos everything was running smoothly, however when the opened our next piece of film it was way more dark than we expected and so we have to now correct it by decreasing the contrast on the video. This does cause an impact on the style of the image but in the grand scheme of our editing the impact is not a burden. The change in contrast makes the image more lively and actually visible.

Update 6/12/12

Update 6/12/12 

This is an update by myself and Ben about all the ups and downs we have encountered since the last update!