Improving Sound from Preliminary Task

The sound from our preliminary was not good: the non-diegetic music when the students are leaving school is too jolly, and includes a woman saying "audio jangle" which may mean it is copyrighted. Also, the diegetic sound of the girl being hit over the head was too loud and not very realistic. However, one thing that worked was the school bell sound was realistic and was the right volume.

From this, our group learnt to include non-diegetic music which is appropriate for the genre and the plot. Also, we learnt not to make diegetic sounds too loud and put them at precisely the right moment as the clip so the sequence seems as realistic as possible. The feedback we received from our first draft of A+E told my group that the diegetic noises (eg squelching) were very good which proves that we have improved. Also, the feedback told us that some enjoyed the non-diegetic music, however some said they did not like it (eg they said the initial chase scene music was not appropriate for a scary/dangerous chase). However, as a final tweak, my group changed the music that did not work so it was more appropriate to the genre and plot.

Lastly, in the preliminary task we included diegetic dialogue however this did not work well because at times it was hard to understand what the characters were saying. Therefore, in our film opening we did not include any dialogue because we wanted the mise en scene (the opened stomach, the killer's forehead, the dolls, mask and so on) to have the most attention.

Evaluation of the Prelim Editing

For our preliminary task, we created a short video about a bully and a geek, where the geek became an "avenger" and punished the bully for steeling her lunch money.

Once we had filmed our scenes, we needed to edit them, to link them all together so that the story we wanted to represent in the video would make sense, adding appropriate transitions between shots and music where appropriate. We used iMovie to do this.

As this was our first experiance using iMovie, it gave us a chance to play around with the program, seeing what features it offered to us to add to our short video, and on the whole, get to terms with how to edit a set of scenes.

The first step was to cut down all of our shots to the correct stages, so that they all flowed onto each other, and put them in order. This stage took a little while to do, to get the clips at the correct lengths and to figure out how to cut them down to size.

When editing the shots that we had taken, we added a fading out effect to the end of some scenes so the transition from that scene to another would be smooth and swift. This helped the video look more ordered and professional.

We also added an opening title to the beginning of the short video to let the audience know what it was called, and to start off the video professionally, and gradually, not pushing the viewer straight into the scene that then comes up.

To some of the shots we added sound. We used sounds from You Tube, which we converted and inserted into iMovie appropriately. For the dramatic sound at the beginning when the title appears and when the bully wakes up, we used one long dramatic sound clip and cut the bits we desired. However, as we weren't content with each individual cut sound, Annie thought to overlap 2 together - this became our iconic The Avengers: Schoolgirl Edition sound.

This process of our first editing session was really valuble for us as a group, allowing us to really get to grips on how to edit footage that we have planned and shot- giving us an idea of what editing our final film opening courswork will be like.

Our Preliminary Task!

Our Preliminary Task final edited video is shown below as a YouTube video:

Evaluation of Filming the Preliminary Task

During the course of this first trial filming session, my group and I had our shots planned out according to the story board that we had made, making it much easier to know what we were shooting to complete the “story” that we had made up. With this created story board, it also allowed us to film shots in different orders when the location, of which they would need to be film, was being used.

Easiest Aspects-

During the filming, the easiest aspect, that I found, was the creation of the scene, with all of the “good ideas” my group and I kept having of where people could stand, how things could be arranged, such as furniture etc, what editing could be done in different places, and locations of different scenes, etc. We needed to stay realistic and stick to a simple plan for this preliminary task. The idea development of our film opening, however, is not an aspect that I am worried about for our real filming.

Harder Aspects-

The harder aspect of the filming, that I found, was getting the camera angles correct, visualising the shots being placed together and getting a level shot, all of which my group and I were able to eventually resolve. The only issue with it was the time. We had the whole idea in our heads, with exactly what to do, but we had to rush the last few shots, making them perhaps have errors that were not seen within them. Timing will defiantly be a big thing for our group to manage in our actual coursework based project.

Problems-

We had to re-shoot a couple of times to get shots to be as we had visualised, but altogether, the filming of this first piece was very interesting, giving us an idea of what obstacles we will have to overcome when doing our coursework, such as the timing, and what extras we could add to the scene to make it look more authentic- within the mise en scene. It was also a successful first try of using the video camera and the tripod while looking at camera angles, lighting, locations and the story line, but with plenty of improvements still available to be carried out as we develop our skills in filming.

Reflection-

We now know that when doing our film opening, we would have to have every detail from the mise en scene to the lighting of the set planned and tested so that when it comes to editing, all the material that we need will be there, and we wont have to re-shoot.