Preliminary Storyboard

Here is our preliminary storyboard.

 

Preliminary film

In this report, I am going to be talking about the short film that we recently produced to show off our media skills. For this preliminary task, our brief was to make a short film, at least 30 seconds long, in which a person must walk through a door, cross a room and exchange a few lines of dialogue with another character, but the rest was up to us. 

In our group of 4, which included myself, Dom E, Shannon H and Sophie-Louise C, we quickly decided that we were going to create a film that was both adventurous and comical that would show off the range of camera skills that we have recently learnt. Our final plan for our film came in the form of a storyboard which we all contributed to. The idea was that we create a film about a boy who gets summoned by a Guru thousands of miles away. The boy then runs all the way to the Guru to carry out his wishes, only to be told that all the Guru wants is a pizza. We all really liked this idea because of the way it covered both the adventure and comedy genres, we also believed that we could show a lot of technical skills with the camera while creating this film.

During our film, we were also instructed to include the following 3 shots:

Eyeline Match - When the character looks at something that is out of view from the camera, and then the camera shows what it is that the character is looking at.

Shot/Reverse Shot - Usually used during a conversation, the camera switches from one character to the next and back again.

Match on Action - When the action from one clip is carried through to the next so that it looks as though it was shot in one continuous clip.

My roll during the filming process was mainly acting, but I also had some input in camera angles, shots etc. I also came up with the initial idea for the story. I enjoyed this job, but I wasn't able to show off my camera/filming skills as much as the others because I was in front of the camera, so next time I would like to have a more prominent role in production.

After we had finished filming, it was time to edit the individual clips together. We did this by uploading the clips onto iMovie in the Apple Mac suite. Once uploaded, we were able to put the clips into the right order so that they made sense. We were also able to trim the clips so that they ran fluidly from one to the other without jumping - this is where we were able to make the edits necessary to complete the "Match on Action" shot listed in our criteria. 

Once all of the clips were trimmed and in chronological order, we muted the sound on all of the clips that did not include dialogue. This was so that there was no unnecessary background noises in our final film, e.g, wind, footsteps and camera noises.

We then decided that we were going to add some sound effects and music to our film, to make it more dramatic. We did this using the sounds and music available in the iMovies library so that we were not subject to any copyright laws. 

We decided to use dramatic music because it built up the idea of the film being an adventure film, which also made it very funny once you realise that the main character had run all that way for nothing. This also makes the viewer feel sympathy for the main character, as they watch him run for so long only for him to be let down at the end.

Once we had finished editing the main film, we decided to add a small funny clip of a boy dancing to the end. This was because we wanted to include a clip that we could scroll credits over, which was also funny (to keep with the comedy theme). We then uploaded our finished film onto YouTube. In the editing stage, we all contributed equally, as we all took turns with trimming clips and adding sound, and all made suggestions for improvement.

I think we worked well as a team, but what we have learned is that we must have a tighter schedule and a clear plan, because we started to run a bit late towards the end of filming. Also, we should write an exact script for the dialogue scene rather than having a rough idea what is to be said, as we wasted some time discussing dialogue when we could have been filming. We did plan the whole thing fairly well, though, because we didn't have to tweak the storyline much at all during shooting and editing.


You can see the finished film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXiWNrZcaAE

Continuing Storyboard Work

Today we continued work on our storyboards. We thought up some new shots and camera angles to add into the film to make it look better. We will include match-on action, shot/reverse shot and eyeline match shots. The storyboard is nearly finished, so I expect we will be shooting it next lesson. I'm quite excited about how the film will turn out.

Planning Pleminary Project

We started planning our preliminary projects today. This involved coming up with the idea, and transferring the idea to storyboard format. The short film must include a character walking through a door and talking to another character.
I contributed today by coming up with the original film idea, and also helped with ideas about camera angles and sound.
Our film will consist of a character running for what seems like a great distance, and eventually entering a room and talking to some kind of sensei. It will be a great anticlimax, however, when all his sensei wants is a takeaway.
I'm excited to see how it turns out.

First Blog Post

Welcome to Lester's Media Blog.

 

This is where I will keep and update my Media Studies Coursework.