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Evaluation Question 7

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 5

Evaluation Question 4

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 2

Evaluation Question 1

Evaluation Vlog

Evaluation Outtakes

Evaluation Filming

10 videos, 7 questions

Further Notes

Setting

Rachel and I decided to film in the school hall all classrooms seemed to be in use but it worked out well. The filming took a little longer than expected (1hr 20 minutes) but we're glad it's filmed and uploaded onto imovie now. We're planning to edit this lesson so it'll be ready for blog deadline!

Final Film Feedback

Post showcase, we got some audience feedback for our film opening. 

Film Outtakes

Half-Term Filming

Last Monday our group went to the car park location where we scheduled to wrap up filming! After a freezing cold morning all made up of a trolley tracking shot, various outfit changes and an overload of filming we managed to finish getting all of the footage we needed to complete our film. Now for the laborious task of picking and choosing the right parts of the footage to put into our final film. 
I think this is one of the best times we've had filming as we felt very productive and were all on the same page in terms of what we wanted to film and what frames would be best. We also had a chance to experiment with a few shots including a 360 tracking shot which didn't go as well as we had hoped it would. 

Evaluation Prep

Rachel and I have printed out our questions and answers on separate sheets just to help us memorise it slightly easier. They're all generally the same length but some are a little longer than others as we felt we needed to explain ourselves in further detail.  

Showcase Vlog

Our thoughts before the showcase later that night and how it could help us in our evaluations.

Evaluation Notes

A massively condensed version of mine and Rachel's evaluation questions and answers. Just in note form - our first draft. We're still making adjustments to the written answers before we jump straight into filming it. 

1. In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 
-Sound
-Genre
-Costume

2. How does your film opening represent particular social groups?
-Student
-Teenager
-Females
-Young Adults

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your film opening and why?
-Working Titles, Genre

4. Who would be the audience for your film opening?
-Females
-Young Adults
-Action fans

5. How did you attract/address your audience?
-Costume
-Genre
-Sound
-Character 

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film opening?
-iMovie
-Camera Work
-Editing

7. Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the final film opening?
-Technologies
-Filtering Ideas

Evaluation Vlog

Checkmate FINAL

Finally uploaded onto youtube!

Deadline

It was the deadline for our two minute film openings on Friday and we're all so glad to have it finally exported onto the mac ready to be watched! We started editing our outtakes already and look forward to getting those up! It's been a great learning experience for all of us and seeing everyones films on friday really helped to see just how far everyone has come.

Production company name

The unedited version of our production company name, filmed on my phone!

Music

Sinead managed to find the music we wanted on youtube and luckily it wasn't copyrighted. We're all very happy with the music and it fits our film opening perfectly in terms of length and genre.

Final Editing Time

It's coming up to the deadline for our film openings and we're doing well! Hopefully everything will be finished in time and we'll be happy with the result. Glad we didn't have to worry about the copyright for our music.

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Production

We've finally come up with our production company name! We first thought of rocky, inspired by our prelim, then rock and roll and then onto rolling-thinking of camera rolling as well.
Lucy and Sinead created this little CD and I just filmed the intro where the CD rolls back and forth. The editing is coming along rather nicely and hopefully we will have perfected everything by next Friday!

Update

Just an update on how the editing and the final product is going. We've all been spending quite some time in the media room trying to perfect the film opening and as we've got so much footage from the last scene we're constantly thinking about the different shots and angles that could possibly be better than what we already have. The last week and a half is going to be hard work making the finishing touches but we seem to work really well editing as a whole group and completely trust one another with it as we all seem to have the same vision in mind.

Also, we've finally decided on a production company name! -Rolling Productions has been created, the opening credits filmed thanks to sinead and lucy. We decided on something short and effective. Rolling makes us all think of a camera rolling which clearly links in with the media and everything. 

Hopefully we don't have too much to do now, just to incorporate our names in the film and which shouldnt take up too much time. Hopefully the finished film opening is what we expected!

Surprise vlog!

Whilst we were editing yesterday after school Sinead decided to make a vlog just to show a little snippet of our editing process. We do face a few problems every time we edit, only because we all seem to be perfectionists. However, on discovering the stabilizer button on imovie we've become more happy with some of the shots we were previously unsure about. Now we just have a few more things to perfect as well as adding the production company name and music we have FINALLY decided on.

Final filming vlog

Before we started filming in the car park!

Music

Some inspiration we could get from Taken 2. We all liked this type of music as it creates suspense which we wanted to achieve in the last scene of our film opening. Hopefully we can find something similar as we cant use this exact one.

Vlog

Another update

LOCATION

Rachel and sinead managed to snap a few pictures of the location for our last scene today. This car park is perfect as it is a large open space which provides us with great lighting and the ability to focus on the characters car (which will probably be the only one parked there).
The black car will definitely stand out in this car park which is just what we wanted to achieve. To make an impact with the last scene.

VLOG

Just a little vlog on our updates, we're on track so far but we still have a few things to sort out for the final scene i.e : When, who will be the 'thugs' who pull me out of the car and the sound we will be using in the background of our opening.
We have found choosing the sound/music the most difficult I think, so it will be interesting to see what we finally come up with.

Title Sequence

After discussing the titles and title sequences we came up with the title 'Checkmate'. Lucy and rachel thought this made them think too much of chess so i thought it would be effective in including the definition of the word. Rachel instantly thought of the Beyonce 'Diva' music video which shows exactly what we want to use in our title sequence.

check·mate  (chkmt) tr.v. check·mat·ed, check·mat·ing, check·mates 1. To attack (a chess opponent's king) in such a manner that no escape or defense is possible, thus ending the game. 2. To defeat completely. n. 1. a. A move that constitutes an inescapable and indefensible attack on a chess opponent's king. b. The position or condition of a king so attacked. 2. Utter defeat.

Title Sequence

I found this video on Petes blog and liked the title sequences with the effect of being typed. The sound is also effective as it gives a more 'spy-like' atmosphere to the opening. 

Filming in the snow

As soon as it started snowing we thought it'd be nice to film as the character would stand out in the blanket of snow. A vlog to follow will explain all the goings on of this delightful experience.

SNIPPET

Here's our little snippet of the final film so far. The different shots of the bracelets are all of the same thing happening as we didn't want to reveal much but from this you can see the various amount of shots we have included in our final film. We're all happy with the product so far and we have just one or two scenes to go so hopefully we're ahead of schedule and everything will go to plan (probably won't).




Also, I've added a snapshot of our final film at the moment. We have 57 seconds so far with a couple scenes to go so which should be perfect. We're thinking of cutting some more off this part of the film just so it will all add up to 2 minutes.

Editing New Footage

On Tuesday after school we all went up to media and edited all of the footage we filmed the Friday before. It didn't take as long as we thought, which surprised us and we all love the product so far! As we've all gotten used to working with iMovie I think we find the editing side of the practical much easier than filming. As you might see in some of our outtakes!

Here's a picture of our little media family editing and hard at work! Can't wait for the final product now! We're all as excited as ever now!

Filming

We still had to redo a shot from the toilets which we managed to do ever so efficiently on Friday, and we decided to experiment with some more new scenes.

Here is Sinead putting the mini tripod her mum got for Christmas to good use!
Added scene: walking into and inside lift. I personally love this new addition as we made it seem as if it was from the perspective of the lift camera CCTV type thing. The character also glances into the camera at one point to make it seem all the more suspicious.

Update: Locations

On our first day back to media from the christmas holiday we decided to do an update vlog on the goings on so far as we've made some changes to the ending of our two minute opening. 
By changing the London locations to closer to home we can focus more on the cinematography side of things instead of worrying about whether the character will be seen amongst the crowds of Londoners.

Editing

I decided to research how to add the stopwatch we wanted on our film, expecting it to be a complicated process but i found this easy tutorial. The countdown will be at the bottom corner of our opening and will end when the character is in full spy costume. I'm sure a few tweaks will be made during editing but here's the video that will help us make the countdown. 




Link to the countdown website