Rough Cut Feedback

Feedback Millie, Gabby, and Paige

Strong aspects

·      You have a range of creative ideas for what you want to do with your film opening by using split screen and still images.

·      The music is appropriate

·      There is nice use of images and graphics

·      The effect of the page turn works well, possibly consider using an effect of having the photos dropping one on top of the other?

Things to improve

Editing

·      The timing of the shots needs to be tightened up.

·      Cut down on the shots – with the girls walking and talking

·      The titles need to be completed and need to be tighter.

·       You also need to have a production company at the start with the directors.

·      You could add a ‘ripple effect’ when the main subject is daydreaming

·      You need to go back to an establishing shot of the subject in the mirror once you have the close up of the lips otherwise this disorientates the viewer

·      You could ‘hold the frame’ on the last shot of the girls together and then have is continue in motion.

Filming

·      You need to consider re-shooting the hair brushing scene and using the voiceover.

Sound

·      The audio levels are not clear where they are talking

·      You cant here the voice over – you need to adjust these levels

·      The music needs to be cut at beginning where the titles are.

·      Use quick shots of the photo sequence, using flashes of white and sound effects of a photo camera.

·      Consider having music and slow motion when the boy arrives and different sound effects to accentuate – look at Romeo & Juliet by Sam Mendes.

Final editing

Yesterday was the last time that i could really get to edit our film, - disaster as both Gabby and Millie were ill,and i ended up loosing part of the voice over and rearranging the film all wrong. It was really hard to try and make it all fit and work with out the two girls input there, also being so close to the deadline i am panicking. I completed the animation on flash and successfully made the sound fit in and fade in and out correctly. Hopefully gabby can do the final cut and put the titles in. All being at different schools is proving to be hard work!!

First Screening and feedback

So today was scary, as it was the first time anyone has seen our production, but overall it was a good way of getting feedback and new ideas on what we could change and do to make this production much better.
The main things we need to do:
Add titles - we despratly need to come up with a Producer and production company - FAST
Cut it down - our film is a bit to long and we need to edit it tighter so that it is under 2 mins

We came up with some ideas of how this film opening could get top marks, we need to add sound effects and different effects into this to make every thing look more profesional. We also need more camera shots and different types of shots so that we can create more scenes, maybe we could even add a slow mo.

We need to sort our sound levels out as we discoverd that when it  was screened, the sound is far to loud and sometimes you cant here what we are saying, if we dont do this we will loose marks so we have to get this sorted., as it is near our deadline !!

Overall today was extremely helpfull, because we now know what we have to do and the targets we need to set in getting this compleated.

Ahh editing!

Today we edited our film again, and we tryed to make everything fit. Its takes a long time to put everything in its place and try to make it look decent! Its hard for all of us to put as much in as we can as there are three of us, but we managed quite well today. I put the music into our opening and made sure that it faded in and out correctly although this did proove to be a little tricky, i used a song that my band had covered we dont know if we are aloud to use this but i have had no problem in the past doing covers of songs. The song we used was a cover of naive by the kooks, this was a good song choice as it fited in nicely with the beggining of the film.We still have a long way to go with editing but hopefull we will get there in the end !

Props

We used a lot of props for our film opening such as
Mascara
Blusher
Lipgloss
Bags
These all added to the total effect of the film, we made sure that there were no unneeded props and that each prop had its purpose.

Film name ideas !

We tried to come up with many ideas for the film name, such as…

The Lesbian

Inside girls,

Girls girls girls!

But we decided that the most appropriate one was

‘The Trouble With Girls’ -As it shows how not every thing is perfect in a girls life.

Main charachter / Friends

We have decided to call our main character Brooke-Played by Gabby Janes. We got our main inspiration from the film 'Mean Girls' to decide what our main character is going to look like we had to base her around the main character of mean girls, ‘Regina’. This was a good idea because the films are quite similar, and girls like to associate themselves with this type of person – a"Queen bee".Costume, make-up and hair all need to symbolize a girly character. In the opening scene the other charachters all play important role in order to make the story flow, and you will see this throughout, these charachters are called nicole and kelly - played by paige weir and millie hicks.We decided to stick to using our group as it would be easier rather than getting too many people involved in our production. Although we have decided to bring a boy into the mix, to give the story a little twist, as Brooke's friends try and set her up on a date with him..(This is not what she wants) We have chosen to use a boy from the year above who also does Media Studies, Will Turner.

'Picture of what our charachters are based on'

First take on filming

 

 On the 23rd of November, we started our filming. We decided to do shots 4,7,8 and 9, which were all of the main character in our opening - Brooke. We filmed it at Gabby Janes house, in her bedroom as we thought this would be the best place to film. She has a large bedroom and sets a good scene for this sequence. Shot 4 was quite difficult to film as we was filming Gabby in the mirror, we had to make sure that we positioned the camera correctly, to make sure you couldn't  see the reflection of the camera in the mirror. The other three shots were also quite complicated as we had to make sure the camera was held straight and that it consisted of the right shots e.g.  An extreme close up of the features.

Animatic

This is our animatic, a few more shots need to be added in as we created more shots, we could change the amount of time each shot was,  they seem to be very long and drag out.  Overall i think this was a good first attempt at our animatic

Production process

Pre-production:           Production              Post production

Pitch                               Location                    Editing

Synopsis                          Sound                        Specail effects

Production schedule         Crew                         Mastering

Location                         Shooting                     Music

Storyboard                      Lighting                      Titles

Script                            Camera                        Sound

idea                              Tape logging                 Capturing

Shot list                         capturing

Summary of film idea

Our group of girls – Gabby Janes, Millie Hicks and Fern Howe-shepherd, have decided to create a film based on a chick flick with a twist. This particular type of film is aimed at teenage girls and to show them what girls can go through on a day to day basis. This genre was chosen as we all like to watch chick flicks and we know a lot on what the story line should consist of. To grab people’s attention we created a twist, the twist being that one of the girls is a lesbian. To create that chick flick ‘effect’ there is a group of popular girls, we used this idea from the film – Mean girls. None of the girls suspect this particular girl to be a lesbian and does not expect it either, so they decide to create a date for the lesbian, throughout this you and see how she deals with this situation and they begin to wonder why she is so uninterested. The main character is the focus of the film and it shows her thoughts and feelings throughout. We hope to end the opening on a cliff hanger to gain the audiences attention.

Summary of Key points - "Watching: Beginnings"

In our class lesson we watched a programme produced by the BBC called watching beginnings, presented by Thomas Sutcliff. We took notes on this film to help us gain some good ideas for the opening of our film. Stated below are a few quotes that i found inspiring, and what these directors think of some film openings.

KEN LOACH - " The most precious moment of the film"

DANNY BOYLE - " An obligation to announce as much ambition as possible"

JOHN SCHLESINGER - " A good sharp shock"

THOMAS SUTCLIFF - " A good film opening must make the audience feel that they dont know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure it doesnt know to little"

DAVID FINCHERS - " Title sequence is prefigureing the events in the film - using titles to becime part of the story"

Assessment notes

Millie, Page, Robert, Ryan

Good clean cuts
Well framed
Good use of timing between the different shots
You didn’t cross the line