Making the Disributer Logo

 

We ended up taking the "Entertainment" out as we wanted to use this word for our production therefore we left it as TNJ, however, "TNJ" is catchy and surely could be a company name you cannot forget.

Storyboard Update

This is our storyboard update after finishing our filming. We decided to cut things out in some places as we thought that it would make our opening too long.

Editing Day 3

EDITING DAY 3

In today's lesson it was much more productive, as we had alteast 3minutes of the opening sequence done. However we had to take out some parts and edit it futher to detail to makesure it didn exceed over the maximum which was only 2 minutes. This was fustarating as we took out scenes that we would have liked to have included in our final opening but changes have had to be made.

We managed to also download 2 soundtracks for the charaters Cassie and Trevor. "Beyonce - Crazy In Love" from youtube and another remake of a song from creative commons copyright free for Trevor which is is an urban beat to suit his character. The soundtracks have been cut down and edited precisely to match these two particular characters properly.

Using more tools from final cut pro, we added slide transitions on some of the clips which were called "cross dissolve" for Jakirs characters Trevor scenes. Later we will be adding more slide trasitions on some other clips to make it more entertaining for the audience to look at. As Jakirs scene was quite long, we decided to use "cross dissolve" about 4 times to show that time was passing instead of showing a long boring scene at one angle. We also fiddled with some setting to zoom into Trevors face whilst talking on the phone to show that this was the focus of that part, the conversation on the phone with his mum.

One thing that my group are proud of and happy with positive thoughts is Cassie's scenes of the "popular girl" it was fun shooting this scene and even more entertaining watching it back. We had good comments from the rest of the students and teachers who watched this bit. Connecting all the clips together was easy however the difficultly of this was making it smooth flowly as they were shot at different angles and framings.

• Nadia and Thahmina getting carried away editing, working together as a team

Day 3 of editing was the most intense out of all the other editing sessions we had. The reason for this was because we had more scenes added to Final Cut Pro and more and more of it was getting and we faced problems of our footage being too long.

In this editing session we added on the soundtrack for Cassie's bedroom scenes. The soundtrack we used was Beyonce - Crazy In Love and we were allowed to use this because we showed that Cassie had played the track on her phone whilst getting ready for college in the morning. We had positive comments for this particular section of the opening as the scene really emphasised her girly character and the shots had good timing with the music. 

For Trevor's scenes we realised that there were not enough shots in different angles which was a problem because it would bore our audience if the scene is just still on one angle. We found a solution to this which was that we edit the actual scene on final cut pro and zoom the whole scene in to his face to make it appear as a close up. Also, to make the scenes seem as though Trevor was taking his time in the morning after telling his mum he was not going to be late, Marissa advised us to use transitions to show a series of shots whioch would show that the time was passing. We used a transition called 'Cross Dissolve' which we found was the perfect transition to show time passing as it looked like he was fading through scenes as well as overlapping. We have still not yet found a soundtrack for Trevor's morning scenes but our plan is to find an urban track that would reflect his character. We did look through creative commons to find one but unfortunately we have not selected an overall one yet. We know that we have to find a soundtrack which is copyright free as we would get into trouble if we use an artist's music without their permission.

We also have to find an overall soundtrack which plays in the beginning and during the scenes where characters are walking up to the lift in which they get stuck so that the audience is not bored watching silent scenes. We wanted general instrumental music so it relates to all the characters including Maya who is very different to the other two characters.

•  Jakir with the headphones on, putting on the soundtrack whilst Thahmina is blogging away in the background
  

Also my group and I have been staying back for workshops getting extra help with our opening sequence so that when we came to lesson we had less to do each time. I found workshop very helpful and I was able to get a lot more done as there were no distractions of the other students holding me back. WORKSHOP IS AWESOME!

Rough Cut Feedback

NOTE: Our Rough Cut accidently got deleted so it is now with more recent posts but it was originally uploaded before this blog post. 


FEEDBACK

From Merisa, the feedback we got was overall ok, we did have stuff we need to improve on but they were not as bad as we thought they would be.

The things the need to be improved are:

• Feels like a commerical advert with all the zooming and quick scenes.
• Too much movement with the camera
• Reshoot the street name 
• Change the clock time to a still image
• Too much jerking in some of the footage
• Theres a gap
• Reshoot Jakir's scene or add in video effects/transitions to change up the shot angle a little bit
• Showing passing time through lots of cross dissolves 
•  Jogged in the hair bit
• Need to shorten scenes
• Idea is good 
• Tweak it need to make it excellent 

From the feedback it is evident there is still much to be improved on however, they are not drastic changes. They are mendable and with a couple of tweeks I believe our opening sequence would be very good indeed. fingers crossed.

Editing Day 2

EDITING DAY 2

In todays lesson, my group began adding more scenes on such as the Scenes of the other 2 characters Cassie and Trevor. Luckily due to use organising the clips on our first day of editing it was alot easier to locate the clips we needed.It took quite sometime to make the clips flow smoothly, but we got there in the end. We also added the clips of the people who are mentioned in the voiceover of nadia which were things like "the asians", "the geeks" etc.While doing this we had to make sure we were not upsetting anyone and that we had explained the situation to them and gotten their permission before filming them.We used the slide effect of black and white this was to help demonstrate the types of people who would be found at a college without it being actually part of the main scenes. The black and white effects was an clever idea to put on as it shows this isn't the main focus of the story however could foreshadow what might later happen in the story if we was to make a whole movie.

In this lesson we also managed to insert the first part of Nadia's voiceover. Where she starts of saying "Dear Diary, it is 7.43am..." at the same time we showed the alarm clock with the exact same time as this is said. Putting on the voiceover at first I found slightly difficult as the noise from the actual clips kept playing out loud and I didnt know how to make this slient for the voiceover to be heard. After fiddling around with the sound a little I was able to turn the clip sound off and made sure that the voiceover was heard instead.

Some difficulties we faced with certain clips was that they were out of focus or the camera had jogged when we tried doing a pan. Therefore we again had to reshoot these scenes and it was time consuming. It is very fustrating with editing as the final preview of it has to be perfect. Although we had to reshoot some scenes we made space for them to go on the final cut pro and continued editing with whatever else we had shot.
With alot to do and such little time we had to make sure we were using the time we had effieciently or we would end up with an unfinished opening scene.
 

 

We could see our footage slowly coming together as an opening sequence and things were looking good. We started off from where we left off which had most of our scenes in order. This time Jakir had filmed Trevor's scenes in his bedroom, so we added his new footage onto the video drive. We then continued with editing all of our scenes. In Dan's lesson, we added the voiceover so we could fit in all the scenes which matched the script.

 

 

• Nadia looking tired, but hard at work determained to finish the opening sequence

In the voiceover, it talks about the different types of people in college and I thought that it would be a good idea to make the different shots black and white as they were not actually part of the whole opening, they were just quick representations of people in college. My group had agreed on this idea as they also agreed that it would seperate those scenes from the characters in the opening.
Overall feedback from Dan was that our editing and scenes were going well so far and he suggested that we also make an additional scene black and white to show the past of Maya getting bullied. So we decided to take on board that advice and use a pan shot of Maya sitting on the toilet writing in her diary to show her loneliness in her previous school.

Editing Day 1

EDITING DAY 1 PROGRESS



To edit our footage we used Final Cut Pro which is a software used to edit and put footage together.
Our first day of editing was difficult due to the fact that we had so many clips and wasn't sure which ones were the actual footage we were happy with,this meant we had to go threw the clips one by one separating them from the unneeded clips.Although this helped us organise our work and make it easier to edit,one of the drawbacks was that this was very time consuming and wasted valuable time which we could have spent on editing.

After sorting out the clips it was time to start putting the footage together and make sure the scenes go well with each other and look perfect.While doing this we realised we have some footage that we were not happy with and because they were simple scenes we decided that me and Nadia will go out with the equipment and re-shoot the required footage while Thahmina stayed and carried on editing.The footage we were not happy with include the sign of the street name which we realised wasn't shot from the right angle and didn't look professional.

 I forgot slightly how to use final cut pro, however when I started to begin editting the footage, all the things I had learnt previously came flooding back.

We began importing all the footage that we had already shoot and started grabbing the clips we needed to use. We cropped scenes using the letters 'I' and 'O' to do this crop for us on the Mac. I started the editing for my group as I was most familiar yet advanced and felt as though I was the strongest to start us off. Evenchally I gave my group the chance to edit also we me beside just helping them if they got stuck with anything. It was helpful having them around as it was more effient, as we sort of started a production line. For example Jakir would be handling the blog making sure we were upto date and if we wasn't he would do a post tag it draft and later the rest of us would go back and make sure we had done that post. Another example of teamwork would be Nadia using the storyboard and telling me when to insert the recording when.

We managed to put up the first 50 seconds of the footage up already and had it cropped to our standards. This included the bus driving past, name of the buildings and an alarm clock and the first proper scene of Nadias character Maya writing inside her diary. The shot of this was a mid shot of her body on her bed yawning. This was all done in Lesson.

New scenes we filmed:

- A scene of a group of asians we found in the library to show the different kind of groups in college. 

-A close up of Jakir smoking to emphasise the addiction teenagers have on smoking drugs. 

- A signs near the college of the area of where the three characters lived. 

• Heres Thahmina gathering all the video footage together and checking throught to see if anything is missing. Also she helped get the group started in beginning the opening sequence and after we helped her doing different things.We have started using Final cut pro to edit our footage and put all our work together!

So far we have put in the clips we think are suitable and the ones that were recorded the best.
Difficulties we experienced during our first day editing involved making sure the footage links in with each other as we didn't record the opening in one scene but in different scenes.

This was difficult as we realised some scenes didn't go well with each other therefore we had to cut scenes out which we would have liked to include,another difficulty we experienced is some of the footage wasn't straight so we were forced to go back out with a camera and record these scenes again. This was very time consuming and fustrating but in order to proceed with our film we would have to do scarafices to make sure it is upto good standards
 

• Here is jakir making sure our posts are up to date and well as adding and improving what we need to write.

 

Filming Day 2

FILMING DAY 2

During the holidays as a group we went to each others houses to shoot the inside scenes. This was a struggle at first as we had to decide how to tackle this without the scenes coming out dodgy. We angled the camera in the corner of the room which captured the entire room, this helped as it demonstrated the characteristics of our characters having an insight of what their room looks like, e.g. hobbies, clothing styles etc.

We recored each scene at least twice so that if one did any how come out weird we would have a backup footage that we could use to replace the bad scenes. We needed to film the bedroom scenes of both characters Maya and Cassie getting ready for their first day of college.


For the character Cassie we did her scene inside Nadia's bedroom which is very girly and pretty. We showed Cassie (Thahmina) getting out of a shower in a bath rope and towel around her head, shortly followed by me plugging in her phone on to speakers so that music is being played whilst getting ready for college, the soundtrack we decided to use is "Beyonce - Crazy in Love". After this shot we took it of me taking off the head towel and a switching on a hairdryer and then searching through the wardrobe looking for an outfit to wear. With the camera we captured Cassie throwing out clothes onto a bed showing that she have a lot of clothing and is in touch with fashion. Following from that it shows her putting on her ID card to show she is going to college and she then unplugs the music. For this, Thahmina (Cassie) went over to Nadia's house to film the scenes. Finally, we used shots of her putting on make up to show she is very focused on looking good. We also showed shots of her plugging in her phone to speakers as it gives a teenage atmosphere if music was played in the morning. This had allowed us to use a youtube song for her scene.

•  Little goofing around pose for the camera, after we had finished recording the bedroom scenes for the character "Cassie".

• Nadia Shooting Thahmina getting ready in the mirror, the close up shows the pretty girls face, this is so the camera captures what the voice over says about desginer handsbags and shoes and popular girls looking after their appearances

For the character of Maya, we shoot her scenes in Nadia's grandmas house, we used her aunties room which was rather plain and tidy in contrast to Cassie who has a girly yet messy room.
The next location we headed off to was to my nans house where we filmed Maya's scenes. We filmed several shots of Maya writing in her diary to show that it is a very important thing to Maya in Trapped. We then showed scenes of a candle lighting and an alarm clock to show the early time of 7:43am which is usually when teenagers start to get ready for school and college. We also showed pictures of Maya getting ready before college but it was very quick compared to Cassie's scenes as Maya is not very focused on her physical appearance. or Nadia we showed from varies angles of her writing inside her diary. We also captured her getting ready such as packing her bags ready for college and putting on her coat and ID card which is significant as for all the characters the ID represents them attending the same college.

•  Nadia as "Maya" writing inside her diary, this would be connected with her voiceover, as while whatever she is writing in her diary would be said out loud on a voiceover for the audience to hear.

• A shot from Maya's bedroom scenes of her putting her books into her bag ready for college and also putting on her coat holding her maths textbook.

For the character of Trevor, we shoot his scenes at Jakir's house, we used his bedroom which we placed the camera near the doorway as the room was not as big to get a lot of angle shots however we was able to show the main scenes in that one angle shot.

• Getting ready in Jakirs Bedroom for the scenes of "Trevor". Putting the camera into postion
  
  

For all character scenes, we showed each one of them putting on their ID cards for college so it shows that they are from the same college which connects the opening.

Finally, our last location of the day was the filming in WMC college toilets to show a scene from Maya's past where she is sitting on the toilet eating her lunch. We thought that this scene would highlight her lonely character back in her school days and really bring out her past to the audience. We are thinking of making the scene black and white to show it is from her past life so the audience do not get confused.

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• Nadia sitting on a toilet in WMC college, this part was going to represent her being bullied previously in another school, and on the voice over it says "why will it be any different" she feels as if though history will repeat itself therefore she isn't so excited for her first day back.