Editing - Day 4

Well this is my finished piece. I went into the lesson at lunch time, though didn't really do much until the lesson actually started. When the lesson did start, i deicded i would messa arounf putting credits and stuff on because that is one of the more annoying and dull tasks. Once i had finished with all the credits, i realised i had put half of them in the wrong order, so i then had to go through and reorder them all. I didn't really do much witht he music as given how little time i had left i figured it was probably a better idea to get what i could finished and see what was left.

When i had finally figured messing around with credits and names and things i set to work on music. I tried ots of different music to go with the latter part of the film, but none of htem seemed to fit - so i decided not to give it any music and just elave it how it is. I think it works quite well, as there is a fair amount of talking in the latter part, even if it does seem un-important.

If i had another lesson to work on my film, i would probably sort out the sound that i do have, as parts of it are out of place or seem to cut out halfway through - i'm not entirely sure why this is, but i didn't have time to figure it out on friday so i just let it slide. It's not that bad, people i've shown it to didn't really pay attention to it, but as i made it i find it a massive problem as i don't like things being wrong.

Other than a few sound problems, and a couple of other problems, overall i quite like my film opening and think it is quite good.

Feedback

We watched all the rough cuts and got some feedback from each member of the class.

My feedback was mainly that the shots were held for far too long, and there were not many close ups, or shots from different angles.

My rough cut was basically 4 shots, all held for abour 30 seconds, which got incredibly boring. So i changed it and during the credits, the image faded in and out of close ups and different shots of what was going on, so there was close ups of the fire, then a med shot of the monk digging, then a long shot of the people running, and these were all interchanged until the monk ran off and got chased off screen. This pleased people as it included close ups and the shots were much shorter so it kept your attention on the film better. Unfortunately it didn't include many shots from different angles as we tried to get the fire shots done as quickly as possible so we didn't set the incredibly dry floor on fire again, so we got the necessary shots and moved on.

I then changed the second part so instead of having the annoying zooms in and out on my characters, i had it fade out so it simply faded back in to the zoomed in shot, then faded and zoomed out again. This was good as the inital zooms were quite sloppy and i think it looks better without them. This pleased Pete as he also didn't like the zooms, but did like the shots they zoomed in to. So instead of cutting the whole shot, i just used the bits we liked and made it look better.

Editing - Day 3

Today was alright. We started off watching all of the sequnces so far, unfortunately the speaers had broken so we didn't have any sound. After a while, someone got some portable speakers out of the cupboard and plugged them in and they worked - yet for some reason they got unplugged after another of the videos so we went back to no sound. This was terrible as watching the sequences with no sound simply seemed pointless - especially when it came to Xander,Mike's and Mine, as ours are heavily based around sound. For some reason, after watching ours silently so they made no sense, they decided to plug the speakers in again so some of the others had sound. I got annoyed after a while of this so when it came to editing i was more than happy to listen through mine with sound again.

After we watched each clip we had to give feedback on a certain area and then give them to the person at the end - using this we were supposed to change our film in order to make it better. The basic idea of mine was that the start was simply a guy digging. Then it showed people chasing him. The guy walked over and suggested i mix it up a bit by cutting bits and swapping them around so it wasn't the sae shot for a minute, but different shots all put together. After i did this, i started to put some music on. Initially it faded in and out with the heartbeat, but after i put some music on your couldn;t really hear the heartbeat so it just seemed random. Then this guy suggested making it fade in and out with the music so i tried that a bit and it seemed to work.



Tomorrow i simply have to finish the music and touch up a few bits here and there - I am confident i will get it finished in time.

Editing - Day 2

Today was marginally more successful that the previous. I started to edit all the footage and put it all in order, only to remember i had actually just put it backwards. But that made it much easier to edit and make right, in my opinion. After a while, i realised that i should probably be using headphones to make sure the sound all synced up and everything, so i plugged my headphones in and waited. I then realised i had no sound. Hoping it was only on Final Cut, i loaded the raw footage from the folder on the desktop and alas, i had no sound. I screamed at the machine some more, then told Nick. He suggested i should go ask Kirk if he still had his camera so i could get the files again, but we then decided it would be easier if we just put the files on his laptop (where we knew it worked) and then cut the audio.

So what we ended up with was one MP3 file of all the sound to the movie. Once i had copied it across and synced it up with the actual footage, i though "Great finally i can start" but when i started cutting the footage, i forgot the audio was not cutting with it, so i had to undo it all and resync everything.What i ended up doing, was cutting all the audio where the movie clips began and ended so they were all split up into 30 odd files instead of one big one so i could move and delete them appropriately. This made it slightly harder, but also saved a lot of time i think. Once i started to put the files in the right order i got the hang of it again. While it's not as good as i'd like it to be, it's alright. Though there are a few errors and jumpy bits that i can't do anything about as i don't have enough footage - which is a mistake on my part i will admit.

Once i finished putting all the files together in an order i am content with, i realised it was incredibly boring. I really hope that this is because currently it has no music. If my sequence dsoesn't get better with music i will be incredibly disappointed. I suddenly had this idea that instead of the beggining simply having some guy digging, i should have a heartbeat sound and the image fading in and out accordingly. I quite like this idea, but i will wait for some feedback before deciding if i will keep it in or not. Another problem i have to deal with is the fact that the camera picked up a lot of wind, so the voice track is quite distorted, but i'll try and sort that out later. That's about as far as i have got today. I shall do some more tomorrow.

Editing - Day 1

Today was awful. It was out first day of editing, and when i put the footage onto my laptop it didn't work. After screaming at the machine for a little while i deicded it was probably better to ask Nick for help than to try and figure it our myself, and so i did. He came over and was like "Umm, ask Rik, he'll know what to do". So i did. Then Rik came over and told me that it had been recorded in MPEG2 or something, which was nearer professional standard and our machines didn't have the programmes to work with them. So after he yelled at the computer for not letting him get on Gmail, he wandered off for a while. I was quite worried i was going to have to re-shoot, as that would have been a real problem - but luckily he came back with some program and installed some things that made it all work again. Then we realised i had copied the wrong footage onto my machine, so after that we copied the correct footage onto my machine and the lesson was over. That was all i got done for the first lesson.

Titles and Fonts

Grave Danger.

Part of filming i'm happiest with.

The moment i thought i was most in charge of my filming, was when we were making the flaming torches. Whilst we were just filming the guys digging and finding the treasure chest, it was fun, but it was, like, anybody could have been doing it. There was nothing special about that scene. I could easily have shot that scene anywhere, and while it would have looked out of place in most environments, nobody would really have given us a second thought. When we got ready to do the torches, however, when we were trying to figure out the best way to coat them it was great. Once i decided to just throw it on the floor and pour it on, then tie it to the sticks, there was a sense of accomplishment. A lot of people i talked to didn't think i'd do it because it's kinda hard for a 17 year old to get bottles af parafin nowadays, or they figured i'd just do something easier, so it seemed like i had proved something. More to myself than anyone else but it was great. But the bit that made me feel best was when we lit them. As we only had 6 matches we were completely counting on at lighting quickly, and the minute it did i was overwhelmed with joy. I couldn't pull my eyes away from the massive flame it gave off, and when i managed i was just sat there thinking "Yeah.. None of the other guys have done this!". While everyone else in the group did their own thing, and the ideas all sound very good, i couldn't help thinking that mine, in my opinion, was the best. Which most people would say was obvious, as everyone thinks they're better than other people, but it's very rare for me to tihnk i have done something incredibly well, so i'm just hoping that i can edit it all together and make it work.

Future Changes

When i go to the next project, i will have to ensure i plan my time better. The footage i have is very good, but we had 3 hours to kill halfway through filming waiting for it to get dark. Fortunately we found things to do while we were waiting for this project (we planted some 20ft tall dead trees) but if i i am filing somewhere were there is nothign to do it will be much less fun trying to pass the time.

I would also spend more time planning costumes and props because, while the costumes i had worked very well, it was really a coincidence that i had them, and the cast are wearing trainers in the bit set in medieval times or whatever, which obviously if it's really obvious is a continuity error that i shouldn't have though of before.

I also need to put more thought into the music, as that will be the hardest part for me, i think. To get osme inspiration for the music, i decided to watch Bonekickers, which i thought was probably as close as i was going to get to a similar thing to my film. This might have been helpful, i can't decide. In the show they don't use that much music, which either suggests i don't have to, or was no help at all. I need to spend a lot of time making the music as i am not very good, and thus should probably have starteda while ago.

Characters

This section is about the characters you have seen in the film so far, i may talk a little about some characters you have yet to meet, i haven't decided yet.

This character is David Jones or "Maddox". He is not in the least bit interested in archaeology or history or anything. He joined the group simply because of his brute force and he likes to beat up bad guys and save the day. He is the leader fo the group, mainly because nobody dares challenge him. He basically hangs around with the group so he can tell them what to do and beat up anybody that gets in the way or threatens them.

He was raised in a town riddled with crime and corruption, yet excelled in nearly everything he did. He was a straight A student and had a really bright future, until one fateful day when his parents were murdered infront of him. He was saved because he heard a lot of noise and decided to hide in a cupboard and try to see what was going on. Unfortunately, this meant he saw his parents getting dismembered by the sword wiedling posse, an incedent that scarred him for the rest of his life. He started missing school, simply because he couldn't see the point anymore. This is when he started to take as many martial arts lessons as possible, so he could defend himself. Unfortunately, he didn't really like the whole punching and kicking scene and preferred to simply beat beat down with whatever he happened to find in the surroundings, be this a small rock or a TV. As he is so distrubingly violent, he is wanted by many countries all over the world, but as he is capturing bad guys and killing them, he is really doing the world a favour and nobody really wants to arrest him for it, so they find reasons to keep him out.

Unfortunately as he gets older, hid enemies don't but they do always think of more crazy and elaborate ways to try and stop him and his team of archaeologists from discovering anything. Maddox fights for revenge, not justice as many do. He doesn't care about catching the bad guy, just ensuring nobody hurts anyone wthat doesn't deserve it. The traumatic experience he faced as a child has had it's effect on Maddox, who is now quite mad.

The name "Maddox" was given to him after his therapist told the newspaper he was "As mad as an Ox". While this phrase doesn't really make sense, the media licked it up as soon as another case was racked with the headline "Mad Ox Kills Again" all over the news. The team simply stole the name from that.

This section is about the character George Fothering Smythe IV. - A.K.A Squinty.

This member of the group is the more sciency person. His main area of focus is running tests and all that jazz, like they do on CSI when they're looking for DNA or fingerprints. While he has an interest in archaeology, he is also more interested in the sciency side of things so he can find out new and exiting information that could be valuable to the case. As the name suggests, he was raised by a very wealthy family Squinty is rarely violent, but should he deem in necessary or important that he gets his hands dirty and beats the hell outta some people he will. While not as angry as Maddox, nor as pacifistic as Matt, he is the sorta of middle-man, that will help when he has to ort thinks his friends are in danger. He, however prefers to use the weapons he was given naturally as uses his hands and feet more often than physical weapons.

This section is about one of the characters known simply as Matt. At the beggining of the film you know nothing about this character. You continue to know nothing until about halfway through the film. This is entirely intentional. It is meant to make the viewer come to their own conclusions about who he is working for and what they think about him with no knowledge of his, simply jedging by his actions and appearence. He never talks about his past, and the only thing anyone knows about him is that he tells people to call him Matt. He admits this is not his real name, but will not reveal what that actually is. He has no interest in archaeology or history, and is a pacifist, so it is unclear why he joined the group until you find out some more about him. He seems realtively normal whilst on digs, he talks freely and openly to the other characters but if anyone tries to bring up his past he simply ignores them for the rest if the dig.

Despite being the most mysterious character in the film, you are given the most insight into his personal life as the film progresses. After the dig, each of the characters goes home, and you are shown their daily routine very briefly. Cup of tea, watch the news, go to bed etc, whereas 'Matt's' night is different everyday. This means you are shown what he gets up to, not in any great detail as that would give away to much, but you are shown brief parts of his evenings to try and sway you opinions one way or the other. Despite being a pacifist and not caring about what he does, he is a vital member of the group for several reasons. I am not going to explain these as that would ruin the film, so you'll just have to watch the whole thing to find out.

The final character in the group is known as Skully, due to his love of archaeology. He was not featured in the opening scene, because of an injury he sustained during the last case. He was caught in a car while it span out of control after getting shot at and blown up and stuff. Unfortunately for him, he is the only one of the group with a worthwhile knowledge of preserving archaeological finds, and therefore when the team find the chest in the opening, they merely pick itup and throw it around as if it is worthless.

Raised in a small village away from the big suburban areas of the country, Laurence was born to a middle class family and discovered his love for archaeology when digging in his garden. He was trying to plant a tree, when accidentally hit a smooth round white stone. He tried to dig it out, and realised it was a skull. Any normal child would have screamed and been scarred for life, yet he was fascinated. He kept digging, carfeul not to break anything and eventually uncovered an entire human skeleton. He watched from his bedroom window as police swarmed the garden taking notes and photos, the whole time simply amazed at what was going on. From then on, he decided that is what he wanted to do - dig holes and find cool things that people would want to look at.

He met the rest of the team at a medieval dig, when they tried to get past the guards and see what was going on. These guards tried their best to stop this 'gang' getting in, and yet two unarmed people managed to knock out 30 armed guards, while one more simply stood and watched. While confused as to exactly how these men had done such a thing so quickly, he soon decided he would probably be better off with them, instead of trying to fight them, so they joined forces and started doing things. He has no problems fighting, but obviouly would prefer it if he didn't have to.

Cast and Crew

So we had a small cast and crew of about 6 people. 3 of these people were in the film, i filmed it and Kirk and his brother were there helping out. This was a good amount because more people would have got in the way and less people would have made it very hard to shoot the film properly. Having two people who were not in the film and weren't doing vital roles was quite useful as i could ask them to do things and help out in other ways that wouldn't necessarily be able to be done by me or the cast as we would be pre-occupied by filming.

Filming

We went out to film my sequence today, and it went amazingly well. Once we had picked up the cast and driven down to Kirk's house so we could walk to the set we started to film the second half of the film. We had to film the second part because it is set in the day, and the first part is set at night, so we decided to record it backwards.

It started out a little badly, because the cast weren't exactly sure what was going on, i had given them the idea and shown them the storyboards and whatnot, but it's a little different when you actually try to record it. So after we had recorded it all we went back and decided to record it again as now they knew what they had to do, they could do it better and more proffesionally. This would then look better when i come to edit the footage and wouldn't look so 'studenty', although i wasn't sure what archaeologists wore so i told them to turn up in casual clothing and gave them some archaeology hats to wear.

I spent a while looking for the mise-en-scene i would need for this scene to work, and while not perfect i managed to find costumes, a sword, and a tresaure chest. Luckily, i also managed to get hold of some cloth and some parafin so we could make the flaming torches, we found suitable sticks on the way to the set. Unfortunately nobody bought any string so i had to sacrifice some of my hairbands to help the cloth to the sticks, though it was totally worth it! Also, we only had 6 matches, and i had lost my lighter, nobody in the group smoked and we didn't have any spare matches, so we were counting on the parafin catching first time.

After we filmed the initial footage, we decided to do it from some different angles to make the film more interesting, unfortunately, we got most of the film done in the first few takes, so turning up at 2 was possibly not the best idea as we then had 3 hours kicking around until it got dark. We decided we should change some of the scenery around to kill some time. Unfortunately as we were in a forest there wasn't very much we could do to change it... Or was there? As we had so much time we decided we would put some extra trees in the film. As the beggining but was set hundreds of years ago they would probably have been cut down anyway as they were in the middle of the path. They also made it look much better when the soldiers ran towards the monk guy as they had to run around the trees instead of having a clear path. I think this looks much better than it would have done.. It also killed the time quite nicely as we had to dig holes about 2 foot deep so the trees wouldn't fall over.

When it got to about 6 o clock, it wasn't really dark, but dark enough for the camera to think it was and give the much desired effect i hope the torched would give. We weren't quite sure how to get the parafin onto the cloths we used as torches without setting ourselves on fire, so somebody decided to dip the rag into the bottle, but that didn't work. In the end i threw the cloth on the floor and pured some on that way, then tied it to the stick and lit it. Luckily the parafin lit with the second match, and we lit the other from that same torch, which was a good idea. The container said you should use dirt to put out the fire, should it get out of hand and we had been digging all afternoon, so we had plenty of dirt and were right next to a lake - so we decided it was safe enough. We set the first one alight, and it looked amazing. It gave a better effect than i could have hoped for - or at least i think it did - i won't know for sure until i can edit the footage but from the cameras perspective it looked amazing. We then proceeded to light another one for the soldiers to carry while they chase the man, this worked quite well but then fell apart as was tied on with an elastic band which melted. So we gave them another one and re-filmed it. It looked fantastic

New Continuity Task

We recreated our continuity task using the nice expensive cameras.

This is the one using the normal camermas



This is the one using the HD cameras



Honestly, i can't see much difference when it's on YouTube, but hopefully you can see a difference when it is actually full quality on the laptops. There are a few, like, continuity errors such as my arm being up and down with no evidence of me moving it, but this was more to get used to the new cameras than anything so it doesn't really matter. obviously anything like that in my opening will be terrible and could ruin it.

Props, Costumes and Location

Right. My films is going to be hard. This much i know. I need various things to make it work, many of which i don't have, but i shall make do with what i have.

Costume wise, i have a few suggestions, many of which it turns out i have had for years, and must have been massive when i had them because they are still a fair size now, i just need to find people to wear them.

You probably can't see this, but it is a brown top and white trousers.. I guess this may be the kind of thing peopl eused towear, and if not, that's what they wear in this film. I have no idea what the white square thing is, but i'm sure it goes with the outfit somehow.

This is some sort of long shirt... I have no idea if this is anything similar to what they would have worn but it is now.

Depsite just looking like a large brown sheet with a bit on the end, this is infact some sort of cloak with a nice hood. This is kind of thing i think a monk or someone would wear, again, probably not but who cares... Nobody cares about historical acuracy anymore so y'know... The person burying the rteasure at the beginning of the film could wear this

This is my brothers sword. He said i can use it, providing he is there, but i'm pretty sure he'll let me anyway. Many people seem concerned about me using a sword, but i am only going to use this one, and i'm pretty sure it's not sharp enough to do any real damage without intention.

This could be wielded by one of the people chasing him. I am still working on flaming torches, i can go but some parafin tomorrow..

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Location-wise, Kirk says i can probably use some land near him, which simply means travelling to Babraham for filming, which although potentially annoying, not too bad. After looking at this piece of land, i realised it would probably be very good for filming, and isn't too hard to get to - although we later realised that if you are carrying lots of things it makes the walk seem much longer. But it was very good, it had holes in the floor already, which is great as we would have had to dig a really big hole in order to bury the chest we used, and was very out of the way so not many people bothered us apart from a few people walking their dogs. We got some very odd looks when they walked past.

If you look in the film, there are two trees that we planted right in the middle of this path :D

Potential problems with my film

Nuisances:

I need contact details of the people who are going to be in my film so i can get hold of them and find out where they are and stuff.

I also need basic archaeology type things, such as digging stuff and brushes. General things that archaeologists have when they are digging stuff up.


Minor Concerns:

The weather could pose a potential problem, not so much in the first bit, in fact if it raining that would probably look even better, but it is unusual for archaeologists to dig in the rain unless they know they have found something, and thus would look a little weird in my film. But if that's how it plays out..

I need to dig a hole to bury the chest in, though i really can't be bothered to dig a hole big enough.


Major Issues:




Realistic performance - To pull off this film, the acting has to be real. There is a shot were the guy look really scared and fearful for his life, and this isn't going to work unless the actor can pull off 'scared'. Again, while chasing them guy the people chasing him need to look angry, or at least purposeful. There is another less important part where they find the chest and need to look exited.




Flaming torches - An important factor, even though it doesn't seem it. to give the viewer the idea that this part of the sequence is set in the past, i want them running around with swords and flaming torches. The main problem with this is that simply setting fabric alight doesn't burn for nearly long enough, so i will need to cover it with something. In the movies they use pitch, i believe, but that is going to b quite hard to get hold for so i will have to do something else. For my photography project last year we poured some diesel on an action man and that burned very nicely, so i may have to cover the fabric with diesel before setting it alight, i will test this at the weekend.

Location - This is very important. if i don't have a suitable location(s) the film will not work. I need somewhere i can run around in the dark with swords and flaming torches, and not get yelled at. I have a location that i can dig a hole in the dark, but it is quite a long way away and difficult to get to, so as the fist part of the scene where the guy is digging only has one person in, i may use that location for that scene. As it is going to be dark, nobody will realize that the chasing has been filmed in a different location, or that when it is dug up i shall be somewhere else. I am still working on location.

I need costumes - As this sequence begins set in sometime in the past, i need costumes that emphasize that. If i have people running around in jeans and a shirt, people are not going to look at and go "Wow, this bit is set in the 14th century". I'm not sure what people wore back then but i'm sure i can figure something out.

Swords - At the minute, i have one sword. If my sequence sticks to my storybopard and animatic, i need more than this. Unfortunately, people don't seem to like me running around wielding swords and flailing them around like some sort of crazy ninja. To get past the lack of swords, Ash said i could borrow his, however i think an easier and probably more sensible idea would be to not physically show swords, or just use the one i have and pretend to have others but ensure they stay in the little holdy things people had on their belts back in the day. This way i just need a sword like looking handle, and something that i can make look like a sword holder. I can probably make these easy enough so may try and do this.