Completion

We have finally completed our opening sequence!! Today we worked on getting the credits done and I think they are really nice because the fonts are all different colours which suit our genre of a coming of age/ romantic movie. The music is also very effective as it creates a sense of exciting and happy atmosphere which is exactly what we wanted. Overall I am pleased with the finishing opening sequence and am glad we have completed it after all the hard work we put in :)

Progress

Today me and my group stayed after school in order to complete our editing and make sure we get it to a high standard like we had before the burglary. We had struggled over the past few days with maintaining all the work we had to do in such little time. In terms of editing our sequence we are half way done, so we mainly worked on sound  and Nicola started editing our behind the scenes footage. We created good music for the part when the main girl and boy are getting ready but we struggled creating music for the party scene as it kept turning into too much like club music, and this is not something we wanted for our opening sequence. Therefore, we have tried to find some copyright free music which is more of a party sound than a club, which would also suit our genre of a coming to age/ romantic film. 

The music we had found for the girl and boy getting ready I thought was well suited because it was not only ideal for what a boy may listen to, but also a girl. Originally, we had created music similar to Legally Blonde but we were not happy with it as it turned out to be too girly, and therefore when inter-cutting with the guys parts, the music did not appear to suit with his actions. Therefore, the current music we created is much better and fits in nicely with our footage, shots and genre. 

Over the next couple of lessons we are aiming to complete our editing of the opening sequence and edit the sound onto our footage. We also need to compete our credits and figure out where they would be best to put into our sequence (i.e.. the beginning or just before the end of the whole sequence). 

Update

We have been unable to do any group work for the last 2 weeks because the Macs got stolen. This means that our editing work is lost and so we need to re-do this again which is annoying as we did finish it the first time round. However, now that the Macs have arrived, tomorrow we will need to start editing again in order to get this finished and to the standard we want it to be. This does mean that we have to work as harder and have more lunch/ free periods/ after school sessions in order to get this done in time and as good as we had it before. Despite this, I think we all know exactly how we want the sequence to be as we have had it completed the first time, and so it wouldn't be too much of a hassle. 

Feedback

One of the lessons we had to peer assess each others opening sequences in the classroom and see what he have produced so far. The overall feedback we got was helpful because it helped us to improve. For example, we have re-filmed the part where I am at the phone call and we are also re-filming the main girl, Ruby's phone call, as it was slightly of the frame. 

Here is the feedback we got from people in our class: 

What we still need to do...

Overall, I am happy with the progress we have been making so far and I think that our opening sequence is nearly completed. Tomorrow we have a final thing to re-film which is the phone cal,l which I will be doing and also  Ruby's part as she was slightly off frame on one of the shots for the phone call.

Next week we will be editing on Garageband our music because although we have experimented a lot, the music sounds like something you would listen to a club so we have been trying to find some vocals to go alongside the music. We also need to complete adding the credits over the boy and the girl's products.

Editing

During the last week we have focused our attention a lot on focusing both during the lessons and some of us even stayed after school in order to finish the editing and make sure that we finish the opening sequence before showing it to everyone as a rough cut next Thursday ( 7.2.2013) 

What I like so far...

So far I really like how the opening sequence has turned out, but I like our graphic matching the most because it turned out just the way we had hoped. It really does make the whole sequence more interesting and it shows off some of the techniques we have learnt during lesson. As our target audience is younger people, it is important that we have interesting shots like these ones but also have a relatively fast pace of editing in order to create a sense of excitement and I think we have definitely done that in the inter-cutting of the 2 characters. Some of the shots which are less important but needed i.e. showing the boy put his hand on his ipod to change the song, these type of shots are perfect to put the credits over them. 
When the main girl, Ruby is walking to the house party, some of the shots we had I thought were really good because we had varied them a lot from close-ups to long shots. This establishes were she is but also again showing the close details of the girl such as showing her pretty shoes; an important aspect in order to fulfil our target audience's expectations, who are mainly girls.
 When the girl is getting ready the shots we had are really good because we have maintained our aim of showing only close details of her face such as her eyes and lips, in order to not reveal her face until the actual party. However, some of the times we do show her face so those will need to be re-filmed otherwise this effect would not work.
 The party scene I thought also had good shots, especially at the beginning where the camera moves along the dolly across the room to create a very flowy feel, which makes the viewer feel as though they are there, which is important as we want to make the viewers part of our opening sequence and not bore them. 

31/ 01/ 2013

Progress-
Today we spent editing our opening sequence and continued working on making the footage flow together nicely. We need to still re-film some of our footage because of lighting issues so we will hopefully do it on the weekend.
Overall, today was successful as Nicola and Kirsten spent time finding the right music and have tried to create something on GarageBand which would fit when the girl and boy are getting ready. We have all decided that it would be best to have different types of music on the boy and girl so it appears like realistically what they might listen but also looks like diagetic sound i.e. they are actually listening to this type of music whilst getting ready.
Meanwhile, me and Natalie carried editing the sequence together; I think that the graphic match from the girl's red dress and his red bottle works really nicely and is visually entertainer/ creative. 

 

 

29/ 01/ 2013

Today in lesson we were beginning to edit all our footage together. We split our group up so half of us were editing our opening sequence and the other half of us were trying to create some music on Garageband. While editing some of our footage we found out that some bits were good but too dark so we shall need to re-film those over the next couple of days using the lights this time in order to see the characters more clearer.
Here are some pics: 

Editing opening sequence

On Garageband

At the end of the lesson we managed to complete a rough draft of what our music for the party scene would be like which gave us all an idea of what it would sound like, what we need to improve/ add in future lessons. 

Our first draft of music we completed

Progress

28/1/2013- So this weekend we have managed to film all of our footage and this lesson we were looking through it to make sure we have captured everything we needed or whether we need to re-film. We have started to edit some of the bits of the footage and some of us are using garageband in order to create the music for this opening sequence.
We are planning to edit as much as we can all week, swapping around so everyone gets a turn to edit and have an input in this project. 

Filming Day 2

On Sunday we completed out filming by managing to film the boy's and girls parts with the party scenes. Overall I think it was a successful day because we managed to get a variety of different camera shots and varied them in order to apply what we had learnt.

On Saturday some of the girls in our group had to 'dress' a room in order for the mis- en- scene to look like it's a boy's room. I think this was effective because we wanted to make sure that all the details were correct and it was realistically a room which a boy would be in. Here is a pic of the room: 

 

For the girls part, again we tried to stereotypically create a room which would be ideally for a teenage girl in order to fulfill out genre of a romantic/ coming of age film. We made sure the props were suited for this so we placed a lot of makeup, magazines, perfume, etc which helped us achieve this aim. 

 

For the party we had to dress up a living room again and make sure that there was enough props in order to make it look like a real party. Here are some location photos:  

 

Overall, this weekend of filming and setting up the rooms was successful because we managed to get a lot done and the pre-planning (pre-production stage) of storyboards, costumes, lighting  was helpful because we know what we had to do or the types of shots we wanted. Now we will be editing this and hopefully we have done a great job! 

Filming Day 1

We did some filming on the 17/ 1/ 2013 which was quite successful as we managed to film some great shots of the main girl, Ruby.  

What went well? : We had really good close-up shots of the girl such as of her eyes, close detail of her answering the phone etc. We had also filmed half of her face when she answers the phone because we didn't want to reveal her full face or outfit yet until she finally arrives at the party, which is why we filmed a lot of variety of extreme close-ups, close-ups and medium shots. We have also managed to film a point of view shot of her spraying hairspray on her face but towards the camera so its as if the audience are the main character. We will inter-cut this with the main guy as he is getting ready in order to make this more visually interesting.

What could be improved?: Whilst filming the main girl walking outside and going to the party, when watching this back it was quite dark and not as we hoped. To improve this we have arranged to re-film this on Monday the 28th of January in order for the viewers to see it clearer and improve the quality of our footage.



Here are some of the 'behind the scenes' of us filming for the first day:

Filming

We filmed last week the first half of out whole filming project which was the girl getting ready such as putting on her makeup and doing her hair for the party scene.
We decided that it would be best if we didn't show too much of the girls face but only extreme close-ups of the details of her face such as her eye. This would be effective because no one would have seen her yet until the final reveal at the party- building some tension.

Some shots we had done were like those:

For one of the shots we are filming the main girl, Ruby put her shoes on which would be a similar close-up shot like this one

Opening Sequence

What is an opening sequence?

Title sequences are extremely important for many reasons, such as the following: 

·         They introduce us to the main characters which will be involved in the film

·         Main people of production are also introduced in the opening sequences such as a director (i.e. Steven Spielberg), the names of actors, sound editors, etc.
·         They introduce the genre of the film- whether it’s a comedy, romantic, thriller, drama, adventure, documentary, Sci-Fi etc.
·         They can introduce us to the key plot, such as a happy even (i.e. winning a lottery ticket) or sad (i.e. death of someone).
·         Opening sequences show the company logos which are the production and distribution organisations that the film has. Some major and popular production company logos are below:



·         Sound is extremely important in any opening sequence which may introduce what the film is going to be about and make some people feel a range of different emotions. For example, if the genre of the movie is a Thriller, the opening sequence can introduce us with eerie music which makes us feel tense.
·         The way the shots are presented is something also very important for an opening sequence. If there are a variety of different shots used which are all fast paced, this can create a sense of urgency and even an excitement for the audience, compared to if there are a few, making them feel more relaxed and can draw them less.
·         Some opening title sequences can mainly focus on the title credits which are longer than other movies which have embedded them in the movie, such as presenting the name of an actor while we are still looking at the action, making it less boring for the audience.