BLOG FINISHED!!

The time has come to say goodbye to my AS Media blog. Over the past few months I have learnt a lot of new skills and I'm very proud of how my skills have developed over the course. Here is a final link to my final piece Rosie. I hope that you enjoy looking through my blog and reading over my journey from beginning to end. Enjoy!

Rosie- Final Piece Cut from Laura Greenley on Vimeo.

Evaluation Q7

Continuity Task from Laura Greenley on Vimeo.

Rosie- Final Piece Cut from Laura Greenley on Vimeo.

Evaluation: Q6

Evaluation Q6

Evaluation Q4/Q5

Evaluation: Q3

Evaluation Q2

Here is the link to my second evaluation question. For this question I chose to present my work in a Prezi format as I felt it would look best as an interactive presentation. 

Please Enjoy

http://prezi.com/iq-sejfwlp29/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Evaluation: Q1

The time has come to start evaluating my final piece. I need to think about the whole the process of this project, from the initial planning stage all the way up to the final product. 

It is important for me to think about the areas of my title sequence that I think went well and the areas that I think I could improve upon. I need to give an understanding of how my product relates to existing media products and how I have used a range of technologies to engage my intended audience. I will be answering 7 different questions throughout my evaluation using a range of different media and programs. 

This is my first question: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Q1 from Laura Greenley on Vimeo. 

Here is my broken down, 9 shot title sequence as inspired by the Art of the Title 

Final Cut!!

This is my final cut, after many weeks of editing and filming it is finally finished and I couldn't be happier with the outcome. I can now start the process of evaluating my work.

I hope you enjoy!

Rosie- Final Piece Cut from Laura Greenley on Vimeo.

Re-writing voice over

Now that I have added new footage to the beginning of my title sequence it became very clear that the voice over that was playing over the top of the footage was both too short and didnt show enough of the characters personalilty. Therefore, I have decided to re-write the script for my voice over, making it longer so it develops Rosie's character in more depth and gives the audience and insight into her personal life and why shes ended up in the state she is now in. I've tried to make the speech more defiant and aggressive to portray the negative stereotype of her character and the rebilious nature of the clips that are shown in relation to this. I also needed to remove one of the last sections of the voice over that claimed Rosie didnt take drugs as on monday night we shot Rosie taking pills and cutting fake drugs as one of the flash back shots. With this new voice over I aim to build a stronger relationship between Rosie and the audience so that they can understand her more as a character, hopefully making her contreversial as to whether she should be liked by the audience or not. I hope that some viewers will be able to relate to the lifestyle she lives and for other viewers to be shocked by what she gets up to. This will then provide contreversial opinons on how teenagers act outside of school and the effects of their social lives. I think it's important for me to represent the negative protrayal of teenagers to show just how dangerous young peoples lives can get at such a vital stage in their lives.

‘Rosie’

Second Draft

Rosie (v.o)

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life. I wouldn’t say that I was proud of them but at the same time I wouldn’t say that I completely regret my actions either. When I was five I stuck a crayon up the nose of Jamie Smith because he stole my bracelet and made me cry, when I was 10 I punched the lollypop man outside of school because he didn’t tell me to ‘have a nice day’. Now I’m 17 and my life is still a mess. But I make my own choices, I live while I’m young, I’m not meant to stay at home and be quiet and shy, but go out and be daring and wild partying all day and all night… But I guess you can get away with things when you’re young can’t you? When I was little everything was just rainbows and those stupid gold stars you’d get of teachers for good work. You can’t exactly get a gold star for drinking 3 bottles of wine each week, or going out each night to a party of someone you don’t know just in the hope that you’ll get off with them. I’ll have my late nights and I’ll come home on a high, I’ll drink till I’m sick and I’ll live till I die. At the end of the day, I don’t give a fuck if people think I’m a mess. I’m not pregnant, I’m not a criminal and I’m not in some messed up, violent gang. I’m just Rosie… and this is my life.  

Shooting more footage

 

Last night I got back together with my actress Erin to shoot the final footage for my title sequence. It was suggested that their needed to be more of an introduction and development of Rosie's character in the first section of the sequence, showing why and how she goes 'off the rails' and portrays the negative stereotypes of young people. I have decided to show this by incorporating flash back style shots inbetween the footage of Rosie walking down the street. Ive included shots such as Rosie taking drugs, shots, smashing a bottle in an alley way and being passed out in a drunken state. With a further tweaking of the voice over script and the inclusion of these shots there should now be a greater connection and engagement between charatcer and audience so that they understand why her life has been turned into such a mess.

It was also suggeted that I needed to include a wider range of shots that were taken from further away than a long shot. We therefore shot two more pieces of footage of Rosie walking down the street from and extreme long shot position. This should hopefully increase my range of shots.

 

Rough Cut 3

This is rough cut number three of Rosie. I have changed the music at the start of the opening introduction scene and added some freeze frames to combat the issues of credit running times. Hopefully this is will be a slight improvement to the last rough cut and shows some development of ideas.
Enjoy

Rosie- Rough cut 4 from Laura Greenley on Vimeo.

Rough Cut 2

This is the second rough cut for my final piece. Here I have changed the order of my sequence, added some addisive dissolves and tested out some darker music for the voice over to contrast with the upbeat backing track that has been used for the title sequence. There are still features that need to be changed but these should not take long to do.

Enjoy

 

Rosie- Rough cut 2 from Laura Greenley on Vimeo.

Additive Dissolves

In today's lesson whilst editing we decided that something needed to be done to improve the quality of some of the shots and to tackle the major issues with focusing. The problem with a lot of my shots was that because I didn't have a a professional Steadicam to be able to use the shots were incredibly unstable and this showed up very obviously when they were put onto the editing software. I decided that to cover this problem up, and to improve the potential of the piece I would cut the footage and place in additive dissolves between the cuts to act as transitions and to cover up the focusing mistakes. This worked really well and I really liked the quirky effect that it gave to the piece. I added this throughout the title sequence and within the opening scene too. It became the key transition of the piece. 

Here are some shots of where I used the additive dissolve. 

Switching scenes

Here is a sound cloud podcast of my decision to switch around the opening scene and title sequence of my final piece, enjoy! 

The BBFC

Mr. Mudd Ident

It became apparent from the rough cut that I was missing a key ident from my title sequence. One of my chosen distributors is Mr. Mudd productions, that doesn't have an official ident for their company as they are usually associated with small budgeted films. As a result of this it was highlighted that this feature was needed before my titles so we decided to create our own. This is the outcome of the ident

The ident itself is very simple and shows a pair of heavy duty wellies walking through mud. The title 'Mr Mudd Productions' then flies in from the left hand side of the shot and finishes in the middle as the ident fades out into the start of the title sequence.

Rough Cut 1

Here is the first rough cut of my opening title sequence 'Rosie'. There is clearly a lot of editing work that needs to still be done on the sequence and experimentation that can be removed/altered if needs be. This is by no means the finished product, but please enjoy! P.S there is a lot of black screen footage at the end o f the clip, this is accidental and will be removed before the final cut is posted.

Rosie- Rough cut 2 from Chris Earl on Vimeo.

Update on editing

The editing process appears to be going well so far and soon I will be ready to upload my first rough cut (woo) of course at this stage there are a lot of rough edges and the editing isn't as tight as it will need to be for the final cut, but by uploading the rough cut it allows me to receive some useful and critical feedback by which I can improve from.  

Anyway, more progress as been made in terms of editing. Today I looked at inserting the soundtrack and voice over into the sequence and looking at volume levels and possible fades in and out.  

The image below shows me adding key frames into the soundtrack 'Changes of season'. I decided to gradually lower the volume of the track just at the point that the voice over will come in. By doing this I can layer the two tracks over the top of one another- as inspired by the 'Easy A' title sequence. I had a challenge ensuring that the soundtrack was at the right level of volume and had to play around with the levels of volume on both tracks to deal with this. I needed to lower the volume on the music and increase the volume on the voice over whilst making the gradual change between the tracks subtle enough to work properly, therefore creating the effect of the first scene beginning. 

The image below shows the final arrangement of the tracks on the timeline.

Editing process

Today I have been editing more of my final sequence. The main focus of today's lesson was working with the outfit change shots of Erin and playing around with different effects to see how they could best be fitted into my sequence. Originally I had shot the footage in portrait mode so that all of Erin's body could be seen in the shot. However I came across an issue when putting this into my sequence as it was rotated the opposite way round to all of my other footage so it didn't fit into the sequence correctly. I decided to make the decision to rotate the shots round by 90 degrees and chose to only use the top half of the shots as not all of the shot would now fit into the frame. As this would create a dramatic difference within shots going from before the outfit changes to after them, I decided to experiment with layering the shots. I put different shots on different video tracks and placed them over one another so that two shots would show up next to each other at the same time. As one shot ended the next shot would then show up next to the old one and so on. This gave a snappier effect to the shots and sped up the tempo rhythm of the piece whilst still fitting appropriately with the backing track. Overall, although I lost part of each shot I believe that the outcome from this edit- which I hadn't before considered- adds an effective atmosphere to the sequence and has taught me new techniques for editing footage. The screenshots below show part of my process.  

Action Match discussion

Whilst editing today I was playing around with three pieces of footage that were intended to be used as part of an action match sequence. The action match involved Rosie going in from the left side of the screen to pick up her full glass of wine. The clip would cut three times, each time the shot would be zoomed further into the action, moving from a medium shot to medium close up to finally a close up shot of Rosie's hand on the glass. 
I played around with cutting the clips on the editing timeline trying to achieve the perfect cut so that the shots flowed smoothly. However, the action match just ended up looking jumpy and didn't add any significant effect to the overall sequence. I wanted to achieve a sense of alcohol abuse with this action match. Since I wanted to represent Rosie as a stereo-typically 'alcohol obsessed' teenager, I wanted to use the image of the wine glass as a symbolic representation of her addiction- however it became clear after multiple attempts to try and cut the shots together that this was not going to be achieved through an action match.   
As a result we decided it would be unnecessary to include an action match for the sake of using an action match in the sequence and instead I will just use a singular shot Rosie collecting the wine glass in order to show her addiction. I may also play around with this and experiment to see whether it would be effective to repeat this imagery multiple times within the shoot, but we will see after the first rough cut has been produced.

Second Shoot!!

Before the shoot
It's the day of the second shoot!! (AHHH)
So finally I am able to re-shoot my footage for my final piece. My actress has been prepped, the props are ready and in position and my ORIGINAL location has been tided and transformed into an even more teenage-like teenage girl room. I aim to get the shoot done as quickly as possible with the aims of shooting the second scene that takes place outside first so that the lightning is of the best quality before moving inside to shoot the rest of the footage. I have my self made Steadicam at the ready so that my follow shots will hopefully run smoother and steadier and I have two different sized tripods so that my camera can be supported from a range of angles and heights throughout different shots.

After the shoot
The shoot is finally over (WOOO). It's been an incredibly long shoot tonight lasting from 3:30-7 pm. Whilst the shoot took much longer than first anticipated I am happy with the new shots that I've produced and feel confident that they will look professional and appropriate within my sequence. Reflecting on the shoot, I realized that I had to change some of my original ideas for shots, for example my first two frames. I was originally having this shot as two separate shots where the first credit would be established in the first shot and the second shot would consist of Erin pouring wine into the wine glass and showing the label with the second credit in shot. However, whilst shooting I realized that the shots I was imagining in my head just weren't do able with the technical equipment that i had and whilst they looked good on paper I couldn't find a way to effectively put them into practice. Therefore I made the directorial decision to change the shot and combine it into one cut where three credits would be show instead of one. As a result this actually looked better and took less time to shoot than the original idea.

Overall I'm very happy with how my shoot went, the shots on camera look great and the credits are all in the right order and visible. Whilst it would have been nice to finish earlier, I'm happy that we didn't rush through the shoot and ruin the hard work that both myself and actress put into the shoot.

Next step is editing!!

Research into Steadicam's

What is a Steadicam? 
-Steadicam is a brand of camera stabilizer mount for motion picture cameras that mechanically isolates it from the operator's movement. It allows for a smooth shot, even when moving quickly over an uneven surface. The Steadicam was invented by cameraman Garrett Brown and was introduced in 1975.

 

As a lot of the shots that came out of my first shoot were unsteady tracking shots, it was suggested to me that the best option to achieve smoother shots would be to use/ find some way of making a Steadicam. Of course I wasn't going to be able to use a hi-tech heavy loaded model (like the one pictured above). But there would be some options and ways that I would be able to create something that would acted in the same way as a regular Steadicam would.  

What were my options? 

- The most obvious option I had was to buy or try to find a small, professional Steadicam but I knew that this would be near to impossible or wildly expensive. 

-My second option was to look online for tutorials on how to make my own Steadicam out of wood and plastic piping, but again this option was going to take time and money (two things I did not have a lot of) 

-My final option was to find something that I could use that would act like a Steadicam. It didn't need to look the part but it just needed to act as a weight on the camera to balance out any unnecessary movement that would be translated into my shots.  

The outcome

- In the end after looking all over online to see if there were any tutorials or DIY's showing me how to make a Steadicam for no money at all I decided to make my own extremely basic but rather effective model. 

- My model actually consisted of a plastic shopping bag which inside held my rather bulky and heavy denim jacket. To attach this to my camera I used some ribbon that was attached to an old top and tied the bag to the bottom part of my camera. 

-Believe it or not this actually worked wonders at cutting out the shaking from my footage and helped my tracking shots appear smoother and more fluent. 

- Deciding to use this technique definitely paid off and my footage in comparison looks much better.

The decision to re-shoot

Having filmed my footage on Saturday and importing it onto the computers at school I realized that the footage that I had shot turned out to be completely disastrous!! The framing and mise en scene of the shots were mostly effective and worked really well in my piece but the steadiness and focus on the shots ruined the entire sequence. I had originally thought on the day of the shoot that this wasn't an issue as the shots appeared steady on my camera and it was not until I watched them on a larger screen that I noticed the obvious flaws. As a result I have decided that the best and only option will be to re-shoot my entire sequence. This time I will look into a way of making my own steadicam so that the shots are smoother and also I will film in my original location so that i can follow my storyboard more accurately. I know that I am able to produce better, more high quality shots than the ones that had been produced in my first shoot and it would be damaging to silly of myself not to try and improve on my work so that I produce a high quality sequence.

First Shoot

The first shooting of my title sequence took place on Saturday. I had a bit of a nightmare with the original location that I was going to use for my shoot as the room was not organised in time, I also felt that there wasnt enough space in the room to be able to set up my tripod and camera to be able to get right the shots and good framing.  For this reason I decided to change the location for my shoot to take place in my mums bedroom. The lighting and space in this room was much more appropriate for my shoot and allowed for my shots to be of better quality. Below are a few shots of the location that i changed to and some of the credits that I created. Creating my own credits was a harder task than I first anticpated and I didnt think they would take me as long to create as they actually did. If I had been more organised with props and location I would not have had the issues that I encountered and perhaps my first shoot would I have gone a lot smoother and produced a higher quality outcome.

Shooting day

It's shoot day! Ahhhhhh!! Today is the day I finally shoot my final piece title sequence for my film 'Rosie'. The shoot Id scheduled to begin around 12pm and should hopefully take no longer than a few hours to shoot. Since my actress isn't arriving until just after 11am I am spending the morning getting props and location ready for the shoot. As you can see I am starting to paint on the titles for my shoot onto my props. 

Once the props and location have been completed I will move on to preparing my camera and tripod for the first shot. I plan to shoot my footage in order according to my story board but I can easily switch things around if problems occur. Taking into account health and safety I plan to remove any possible hazards from my room that could potentially cause my actress to hurt herself. This includes wires and any electrical appliances that aren't needed for the shoot. I hope to have a successful and hassle free shoot today and for the shots that I capture to be of a high quality.

Credit creating

I have started to experiment with creating some of the titles for my sequence. This particular title will be created using 5p coins. I have a slight issue at the moment with the fact that I don't actually have enough 5ps to created the last name of the director (myself). However this issue should be sorted by Saturday as I will be scouting 5ps to make sure that I have enough to create the rest of the credits.

Update of final piece

At this current stage in the process I have completed the necessary steps in organising my post production documents. This includes research that I have made into current title sequences from my chosen genre that have all had some form of influence into my final piece.
The story board that I have created provides me with a clear outline of the shots that I am planning to create with a range of angles and movements involved to for the marking criteria. In terms of continuity I have mapped out the steps I will take to achieve my action match shot, which will be of Erin's hand reaching out to grab a wine bottle. There will be three steps within this action match and i aim to be precise about the cuts that I make with these in the editing process so that the action match is as effective and professional looking as it can be.
Due to actress availability I have had to push back the filming for my piece to Saturday the 24th of January, whilst this is a pain as it gives me less time to be able to edit my piece, it does mean that i should be able to get all the shots I need in one go and I know that the actress I have choosen will work effectively and proffessionally.
Hopefully all my shots will be completed and ready to import on the editing software by the beginning of next week.

Types of Shot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Official Studio Ident

As one of the institutions of my film, 20th Century Fox has a very distinct ident that is commonly shown at the beginning of their films. To give my film more verisimilitude I feel that it would be appropriate to incorporate this ident into my piece of work.

 

Above are the screenshots of this ident being placed into my work.

Mood Board 2

Here I have created a second mood board for my film. This board focuses more specifically on teenage rebellion which is something I feel links strongly to my film sequence.
Enjoy!
http://www.pinterest.com/lauragreenley/2nd-as-media-studies-mood-board/

Props list

Here is a list of all the props that I will need for my shoot. As the location for my shoot is based mainly in my bedroom, there will be basic bedroom items that will automatically be in the shots. I feel this adds to the shoot and makes it more realistic rather than just stylised.
Here is the list of all the props I need:

• Wine bottle
• Wine glass
• Bedside draws and containers
• posters
• Makeup bag
• Makeup
• Mascara
• Desk
• iPod and headphones
• Sunglasses
• Purse
• coins
• Outfit 1: denim jacket, black boots, band shirt, shorts, tights
• Outfit 2: wooly hat, gloves and scarf, big coat, wellies
• Outfit 3: baggy white t-shirt, 'nerd' glasses, leggings
• Outfit 4: hoop earings, tracksuit jacket, tracksuit bottoms, bandeu, trainers
• Outfit 5: little black dress, heels
• small bag/clutch
• mirror
• small vodka bottle

Production Schedule

I have created a production schedule for my title sequence shoot below you will find a copy of this. 

Date	Scene	Location	Overview of Shots	Cast
Monday 12th January	1	Bedroom	CU (iPod, sunglasses, coins)	No cast required
Saturday 17th January	1	Bedroom	MCU (Institution (fox searchlight), approach to bag, approach to mirror) CU (Institution (Mr. Mudd), grabbing of wine glass, mirror) Over the shoulder (grabbing of wine glass, follow to grab bag) MS (grabbing wine glass, mascara from left, front and right view, track to alcohol bottle, alcohol bottle) P.O.V (title of ‘Rosie’, pulling mascara from makeup bag) Establishing Shot (items on desk (including zoom from prev MS)) LS (all five outfit changes)	Erin Convery
Sunday 18th January	Any fixing up of 1 and all of 2	Bedroom and Street	For bedroom shots this will be any shot that did not go as planned or needs redoing from previous shoot, this day can also be used incase we run over on Saturday. MS (follow out of house and onto streets, swig of alcohol, end shot at door) MS to CU (knock at door)	Erin Convery

Script

This is the first draft of my script for 'Rosie'. I've decided that the only dialogue in the opening sequence will be a voice over from the character Rosie as she makes her way to her 'party'. In this voice over she goes into brief detail about her life and who she is. By stating this at the beginning of the film the audience have a chance to immediately connect with Rosie's character and understand her background and current lifestyle. It also helps to explain the reason why in the titles she is getting ready in her room and looking as if she is about to go out. Obviously this is just a first draft of the script and could change depending on how my actor decides to read the lines. I will only adapt the lines if I feel that they don't sound natural or fit with the footage I shoot. 

Here is the first draft of the script for 'Rosie':

‘Rosie’

Written by Laura Greenley

First Draft

Rosie (v.o)

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life. I wouldn’t say that I was proud of them but at the same time I wouldn’t say that I completely regret my actions either. When I was five I stuck a crayon up the nose of Jamie Smith because he stole my bracelet and made me cry, when I was 10 I punched the lollypop man outside of school because he didn’t tell me to ‘have a nice day’. Now I’m 17 and my life is still a mess. I guess you can get away with things when you’re 10 because everything is just rainbows and those stupid gold stars you’d get of teachers for good work. You can’t exactly get a gold star for drinking 3 bottles of wine each week, or going out each night to a party of someone you don’t know just in the hope that you’ll get off with them. I enjoy my life and at the end of the day I don’t give a fuck if people think I’m a mess. I’m not pregnant, I’m not on drugs and I’m not in some messed up, violent gang. I’m just Rosie and this is my life.