Solace, Edit 2

This is how far we are at the moment, we still need to include our credits, title and production company. We also intend to include a kind of white flash to indicate where the flashbacks are. Furthermore, although we are happy with our voice over, we have recorded it again where we have cut some of it out, due to an issue with the length of it, and also included some more pauses in it so as to provide some breaks.

Solace, Edit 1

This is the stage we are at currently, we still have a couple of other frames to add, filmed in school, as well as include the voice-over and text.

Editing

First Editing:

When first looking at what we have filmed we weren't surprised that many of the shots were dark and virtually un-usable. We tried to play around with them on iMovie however we weren't very successful and editing some of the frames made them look unnatural and have an almost greenish tint. Despite this, we have picked out some of the shots that had the best lighting and we feel that it's fairly atmospheric and inevitable when filming at night. As we haven't filmed everything yet (our flashbacks still need to be done and also the voice over recorded) then it is quite difficult to put everything together in chronological order. We have added the music which immediately enhances the whole thing and have done a lot of splitting, and cutting the frames to try and get it to 2 minutes. We are over two minutes currently but this is cut down from over five minutes so removing any more might cause a slight issue.

Second Editing:

As we now have our voice over in our opening sequence, we currently face the challenge of arranging our various shots in accordance to the words being spoken at the same time. It is proving very tricky as the shots are all of varying lengths and must also fit together coherently. What we are finding at the moment is, despite the shots being individually good, they don't really flow together very well in a way that makes them all seem connected. We always knew this may be an issue as the plot consists of her just walking around different parts of the city but we have to put it all together in a way where the audience understands her journey and what she's saying.

Third Editing:

We recorded our voice over again and thus are having to re-arrange our frames. We are also including our credits over the top of frames which is causing a slight issue in the fact that we don't want the text carrying on to another frame but often a frames' length isn't long enough for the text. Furthermore, due to a problem with our desired fonts not being compatible with iMovie, we are having to re-consider our choices with font for the text and the film's title.

Fourth Editing:

Our opening sequence now has the text included with it, however we are still exploring different ways to include the font we want for our title or which other font we could choose instead for it. We are now having to play about with different lengths for shots, as we are still just over the requested opening sequence length, also the contrasting volumes for the voice over and soundtrack need to be edited, as well as a production company ident.

Filming our opening sequence

Filming in Bristol:

On Saturday the 5th we drove to Bristol to film the scenes we needed for our opening sequence. We arrived at around 4:00, hoping it'd still be quite light but wanted to be able to film a couple of films while it was dusk. However, it was dark almost immediately resulting in very low key lighting. Originally we wanted to film in smaller and less busy side streets but the light was non-existence so we had to film in larger streets where there was more lighting, albeit artificial, such as street lights, traffic and shop signs. It was very busy and thus many of our frames contain the public acting unnaturally due to the camera and so we have to cut and delete many of the rushes. Furthermore, we wasted a lot of time wandering around trying to find places where we could film and also our main actress wasn't always completely focused which caused the filming to take even longer. Despite this, we went to plenty of different locations to get a variety of shots, the only trouble we may face is getting them coherent and to flow together. If we did need to re-film anything it may be slightly tricky due to the location but there might be a chance to re-film a couple of location shots on the following Saturday.

Filming in school:

The filming took place in three different locations in school; walking down the corridor, standing at a whiteboard and in a corner writing. The filming went very well, however some of it was a bit rushed as we were trying to do it before other students finished their lessons. Near the end of filming we did run over time and thus had the slight issue of other students being in our shots but we have just ignored the original rushes and luckily the majority of people were very patient and waited for us to finish. We were worried about lighting as we had no equipment to create artificial lighting and the school is often quite dark but in the end we found the lighting we had adequate.

Typography

From the website 'Dafont', we collected a variety of different fonts that we liked for both our film title and the credits and asked our target audience which they liked. They could choose three and then we tallied to find out the favourites:

We asked our peers which fonts they liked because they're who our target audience is and their opinion is vital. We, as the creators, have an opinion but it is for the audience that we are making it for, thus we want to find out which types of font they like for both the title and the credits.

This is the font we decided on to be for our title:

We have chosen this font because we like the elegance and sophistication to it. We also feel like it fits with our genre and overall feel of the footage in our opening sequence. I think that it would appeal to our target audience, particularly females, due to the pretty style and overall look.


This is the font we decided on for our opening credits:

We like this font for our opening credits as it is quite simple and so don't distract from the footage playing, however is also quite classy and sophisticated. This again fits with our footage and voice-over, and I particularly like the overall shape of it with it's curves and edges.


This is the font we decided on for our production and institution credits:

We also decided to use a different font with the text for the credits about the production and institution. We have used a simpler and more bold style due to the importance of what is being said, and also because it is the only text that has only a black screen behind and thus your whole attention is on it.

Sound

Originally we were going to create our own music with either a guitar or a keyboard. However, this proved to be more complex then we thought and therefore we have decided to go with music already made that is copyright free. We found three songs we like and feel would fit well with our overall theme, feel and genre of our film.

 

We have decided that we like the song 'Better Days' most of all and will most likely use this as the soundtrack playing behind our voice over in our opening sequence. This is because we like the slow pace and ethereal sound to it and feel that it would compliment our footage and genre of film really well.

We are not having any dialogue within our opening sequence, however we are having a voice over. This will be in the style of a spoken word poem and will be along the lines of gender equality and teenage pressure in society. We will write this poem ourselves and it will be crucial to our whole opening. Due to having a voice over, our soundtrack has to be fairly quiet so as not to over power the words being spoken. It also needs to compliment the soft-spoken tone and pace.

Risk Assessment

It is always crucial to produce a risk assessment when doing any form of filming. this helps to point out and then minimise the risks that could occur. As we are filming in a city with expensive equipment and unreliablitity of the weather, we need to consider precautions we are going to take as this could affect the quality and process of our filming.