Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Here is all the technologies we used while producing our sequence.

The camera was very easy to handle and very portable, and it’s manual focus function, which I had never attempted to use before, was very useful and very easy to use. It helped hugely in achieving a more professional look, and I would definitely advise anyone doing the same project to use manual focus.

The editing software (Adobe Premiere CS3) was very useful and easy to use, and I feel that I have gained a lot of confidence it my technical ability, allowing me to edit much more quickly and efficiently.

I found After Effects much less helpful, which I found difficult to navigate, and didn’t find that I needed to do anything on it that I couldn’t do on Premiere. The one exception to this was tracking the titles, which, no matter how hard we tried, the program didn’t seem to be able to do it accurately and precisely enough. However, in hindsight, tracking titles could have worked, had we left in some longer shots with easy tracking points.

Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The processes followed for this project were largely the same, but the scale of producing our opening sequence meant that in many ways it was very different. Due to the length of the shots in our sequence, we found that we had to shoot lots more footage, shooting 45 minutes on our test shoot alone, and the editing process took weeks instead of days.

I also learnt the importance of having a good plan b if something does not go to plan, as we needed to use our plan b due to bad weather on the day of the main shoot.

I also learnt the importance of storyboarding properly, and referring to it on the shoot. This was especially important for our sequence, due to the number of shots we had, so as not to forget any important shots. 

I also learnt the importance of working for your group as a team player, and how much more smoothly things will run with good planning and communication as a group. And what a group we were!


By the way, here is the finished preliminary sequence.

Final Cut - Blackout

Editing our final cut

Main Shoot

The weather forecasts for the whole weekend were bleak, with on-off showers forecast for both days. We decided that if we got any luck with the weather, and it remained relatively dry, we could reshoot all of the shots with the kidnapper in, so that he could have a different costume, and a couple of the shots of Matt outside. If the weather was as forecast, we would leave me in the same costume, and only reshoot the fight scene, and a few indoor shots of me, for example this one.

On the day, the weather was terrible, so we had to do the latter. Considering the weather, the shoot was successful, and we got all of the shots we needed. We are now onto editing our main sequence, especially the fight scene. Much of our sequence is remaining almost exactly the same, but the fight scene gave us some trouble to put together (both in shooting and editing).

Here is our 'making of' video to illustrate this (particularly 1:55 onwards)

Rough Cut - Reflections

We have completed our rough cut and here is my personal views on what needs to be improved for the reshoot:

• When Matt enters the house (0:22), he leaves the door open, which I think he would not do in that situation, so he will pause for a second to close the door before running up the stairs in the final cut.
• His boxers are showing for the entire sequence - pull your trousers up boy!
• In the shot from inside the car, although its not immediately obvious, you can see some people in the middle of the road. This shot needs to be redone.
• My acting is terrible. More effort is required.
• When I barge the door open, I dont really push it that hard. This was because we found that if I pushed any harder I would break the glass on the door. On the reshoot I think I should kick the door, and we can then lay a sound effect over the top in post production.
• In the final room, when I reach the mirror, there is a cut and I am suddenly walking backwards, which doesnt really work, as in that position you would turn around to walk out
• In the final room, you can see everything that we had cleared behind the bed, door, etc in some shots. This is because we couldnt really be bothered/didnt have time to clear it away properly. In the reshoot we need to clear away properly before we begin

Rough Cut

We all had a great half term and have finished our rough cut. Here it is.