Uploading our Main Task footage onto Premiere Pro

Today we uploaded our Main task footage onto the school’s program of Premiere Pro and watched our media opening of a film. Overall, we were pleased with our work as we felt we had filmed to a high standard and included some effective shots which we wanted. However, we also knew from watching the film that the editing would be a long process as we had a number of shots to choose from.

Filming day with our new cast

Today, we spent the day filming with our new characters. They proved themselves to be alot better than the other boys we were going to use as they took the filming seriously and they were successful in their facial expressions and acting. They were very professional and they acted convincingly. For example, there is a part in our opening when the popular boy knocks the unpopular boy out of the way. Romano and Ena made this very convincing through their body language and facial expressions which emphasised their dislike of eachother and feud over the girl they both like. Furthermore, it was a long day which required many re-takes. For example, sometimes someone would walk into the shot accidentally or look at the camera. Also, there was a moment when we were filming Romano, the boy listening to his ipod walking along the main road; we were situated across the road and a bus passed meaning that our reflections were seeable on the camera from the bus. Luckily, we noticed this mistake and filmed the shot again.

The filming overall was successful as we had our storyboard to guide us on one shot at a time. However, we did make some changes to our storyboard and did not always abide by it as we found ourselves at times improvising. For example, we decided to show a shot of Ena, the popular boy on his phone at the beginning and this zoom-in was not included in our storyboard. Also, we found ourselves simply taking a number of shots. For example, we took a close - up of the unpopular boy, a mid-shot, a shot of his feet walking, a full shot of his body as in our storyboard we wanted these shots to flick from one to the other in the opening so that it looks professional and the audience know that Romano is the main character. Overall, we tried to divide out the filming process. Sometimes Anna would film and Francesca and I would observe, discuss and instruct the characters and other times we would swap and I would film and the others would observe. We became a little conscience of the timing as we thought our film might be too short so we tried to prolong the process of Romano walking.

New actors for our film

Since our last filming session concluded to be not as successful as we had hoped we decided it was crucial to film seriously as soon as possible. In class, we continued to analyse the openings of different films to show us the standard we are aiming for. We looked at films such as Wild Child and Saint Trinians which all use very effective shots and facial expressions and body language. At the end of the lesson we discussed our opening of our film and went through our storyboard. We decided we would next film with our new characters in the February halfterm with our storyboard as the storyboard would guide us and show us which shots we have to do at a time.

Practice filming with our cast.

Today, we decided to have a day of practice filming with our cast. This was useful as it enabled us to consider our ideas further and enabled us to see what would work and what wouldn’t. For example, we decided that our setting we intended to have would not work as the town was too crowded and people kept walking into the shot. Therefore, we decided that we would change our setting to somewhere less crowded and quiet. Furthermore, we decided that the two boys we were using in our film would not work as they could not take it seriously and we decided to change them as they could not emphasize facial expressions and could not fit the genre of comedy. Therefore, we concluded we would use two other friends for our male cast as our aim is to achieve an opening of the comedy genre but we want our characters to be sincere as if they don't know their being funny to reflect the British humour.

Second lesson at the CLC. Using Premiere Pro.

We recently had our second lesson at the CLC. We used the footage we had produced in class to upload and edit on Premiere Pro. We were also given the opportunity to view other people’s work saved on the program Premiere Pro and we were given the opportunity to listen to music and sound affects used from previous groups. Overall, we were given the chance to use the tools of Premiere Pro, explore it's features and it was beneficial as we became more familar with it.