Editing Preliminary Evaluation

Editing: 

Firstly we went through the footage we had collected and drop it into the timeline. This is to display the moving image and make it look like better and more professionally. We had to cut clips so they flowed correctly and looked professional. In order to make sure it had no jumps and ran smoothly with parallel action we had to edit the footage by cutting parts of the video that weren't needed it order to make it more smooth. We did this effectively as there were no obvious jumps and we had a rich amount of footage to use.

We put a security camera shot on a frame where I walk out the building and down the stair case. It is well placed as we used a high angle shot so it actually looks like a security camera placement. The way we did this was just to put a filter over the actual shot.

After we did this we then went on to insert the title into our opening sequence, that read "Drug Deal – Double D”. This was quite effective and gave a little twist to normal titles. Title with black background fly’s onto the screen, Frame behind is the actual sequence and opening camera shot.Finally we had to edit the sound for the rest of the sequence. We conducted this by deleting the background sound for parts of the videos were we wanted to add non-dietetic sounds. We left the dietetic soundtracks in scenes where we needed the conversation/ dialogue to be heard. 

Planning preliminary

Planning Preliminary 

Storyboard

Planning: During the planning stage, we very quickly came to the decision of what we were going to do. This is very good as we only had 3 lessons to finish the preliminary task. By the first lesson we had already decided that we wanted to do a opening sequence in the genre of urban drama. In the first lesson we were set the task of drawing a storyboard, before we went straight into writing or drawing on our storyboard we gathered our ideas and collectively brainstormed. We talked about having a drug deal as we wanted to do something with only two actors, that could easily be done at school during the lesson we had to film it, and that had a few good action scenes that we were looking for. Filming it at school was easy and effective as we wanted to do it in a secluded and isolated area with no-one around to make it as realistic as we could. Also acting is brief and the props were easy to get such as a phone and fake drugs which we made by putting powder in a bag. Doing our storyboard we had our most artistic candidate draw in the boxes and will and i wrote in the lines describing what we would do in each scene, explaining what would happen and how we would do it. The planning part has taught us that plans can change especially when it comes to filming, for example we couldn't get some of the props we wanted such as a gun.

Editing sound in Bathroom

Sound in Closing stages of my Film

The sound I added in was a neon light flickering this was so useful I used it many times to display how the person was feeling when taking the drugs. This sound effect becomes more frequently used near the ed before she passes out. I bladed the clip and edited the lighting so that it matches exactly the points at which the light flicks on and off. Something that proved quite hard as the computer was beng quite slow.

You can see as I got closer to the end the sound started to layer this is cause the sound needed to pick up so that it wasn't quite in the background. Also alot of layering occurred near the end as that is when the lights start flickering a lot.  You canalso see that there was some long and small pieces of sound. That is me trying to make it match what I have in the clips that I bladed as well as make it sound realistic as after all it is non diegetic. 

In this screen shot you case a much closer shot of the should used when the white screen was going to appear. The lightbulb bursting was again non diegetic and was meant to signal the end of what happened in this scene. Then it cuts to a few more credits and then another scene and the main title. To get through the first set of title was I added in a flash bang this last for a long time however fits into the end of my scene very well. Then I kept the sound going on for longer so that the titles were not empty of sound.

 Overall I am happy with how the has played out. Especially at the end as the layer of sound makes the situation seem all so real something which I didn't think was possible at first. With all of the layer the sound makes this better and more interesting to the audience something that only sound could achieve.

Editing the Lighting in Bathroom

Editing the lighting final change before Finish

This changes the colour the saturation so how bright colours are and exposure is how much light is let into the shot. When I was looking at the shot of her walking into the public bathroom I wanted it to be a lot darker. However, what I noticed the midtones sharpen up the images.

You can see in this shot the image is much darker than it was before hand. I only use exposure as that darkens the image as well as saturation and colour don't assist with the lighting only the colour in the background which does not help. This also means that I had to keep the same sort of lighting for each shot in bathroom for continuity error. This includes the rewind.

This displays the exposure of the highlights being really low this is because I wanted the shot to being like the light is flickering so I lowered the highlights less than the midtones that way the lighting or exposure doesn't increase and it is only getting darker. However, I did lower it a little bit as that way some colours stand out at least. 

As you can see the lighting is far different to what it was in the image above and makes this situation that she is in far more dramatic than what it was originally. This is going to be combined with a flickering neon light sound to make it like the bathroom is falling apart sort of representing her life at the moment. 

This shot has a high exposure and more vibrant colour this is cause I decreased the midtones tat make it darker colour this makes the shot more vibrant. This is also very good in this shot as the lighter combined with this level of exposure looks a lot more realistic. However,  I still had to darker the image due to continuity so I decreased the highlights a little bit.

On the shot to the left you can see it during one of the flickering areas as it is darker than usual tis means that on the right you should see low highlights and midtones to make a well balanced section with very little shadow as that makes the shot brighter and more faded which is something that I don't want. 

The two shots side by side you can clearly see the difference in what I have done and this just further proves what I can do with the exposure. The timing for these shots had to be good so that it matched the sound that way the drop in lighting made sense.

 What I also did was bladed a single shot about 10 times and increased the shadow in the positive direction and I ddi this because I wanted it to fade. For every clip that I bladed I increased the shadow by 10 that way you could see a natural progression to the end that way it is not suddenly white. This was a new skill because as I increased the shadow if I decreased the other too much you would be able to see the body behind and it looking metallic which I had to avoid whilst maintaining its darkness when looking at the shots in between.

Sound

The sound we used in our short film opening was from a  none copyrighted sound found on sound cloud. As you can see below I had to layer the sound so that it seamlessly faded and was linked between other sounds. this is because certain parts of the soundtrack didn't sound right and other also were bad quality and audio beeps could be heard in some parts of the raw sound. To get this transition we had to layer the sound in the order if its peaks and troughs so that both pieces of sound spike at the same time. This means that you will be able to hear two different pieces of sound at the same time. I used a fade effect so music could gradually fade out and in so would be acoustically pleasing.

I cut and Shorted the song many times but overall the song used was very effective. It had many intertwining polyphonic melodies and tonal integrity. The slow winding yet exaggerated tones from the timbre made the song perfect for our heroin scene. I chose this very well because of my long time playing musically instruments and listening/composing music.

One of the pieces of feedback was that the sound volume was too quiet which we took on board as the start takes a long time to pick up in volume. we did this by raising the disables to 12bd which is quite loud and you could hear lots of different notes which was very effective. Some problems that we also faced with sound was when the pitch off the sounds were too load. We made sure that no peaks off the music were coloured red because this means the sound quality would be taken down because the pitch was too high. we made sure off this because we wanted our sounds to be effective

How I Manipluated the Sound

This none copyrighted sound that we used was found on sound cloud. As you can see I had to layer the sound so that it transitions into the next piece without it beeping or sound like the track is changing as the music picks up in certain sections without notice. To get this transition we had to layer the sound in the order if its peaks and troughs so that both pieces of sound spike at the same time. This means that you will be able to hear two different pieces of sound at the same time, but not notice when one drops off. Thus creating a seamless transition. This is a skill I had to do in another activity so I could so it quite easily.

But then I had layer some of the other sound as it did not last the whole two minuets this would be a problem however, the sound that we used repeats the part I was using as well as other so that I could find that bit and just play it back from the original until the next transition.    

One of the pieces of feedback was that the sound we use was quiet which we took on board as the start takes a long time to pick up in volume so what I did was increased its decibels to about 12bd which is quite loud and you could hear lots of different notes which was good. However in some parts it is defining so then I reduced the sound to find the equal of which I liked. Moving from one extreme to another helped me find the medium much quicker than if I just chose different point by random.

However on this particular place on the repeat I increased the backing sound a lot and kept it in at 12 decibels as that was the only way you could hear it. As well as in the background of the heart beat this was the only way that it would work.

Feed Back Evaluation - Improvements

when we put up our final piece we were subjected to criticism and also support. To improve on our piece we took some advice from other groups in our class and friends a family too see what we could do to improve. Here are some other screen shots of what people said about or piece.

Here are some of the things we need to improve on to get a higher mark in our piece and make it more professional then it already is:

The first thing we need to improve on is our sound. People said the effect were good about the volume of it needed to be worked on more. Some parts of it were too quite whilst others were to load. We need to get a balance of it so audio doesn't have to be changed whilst playing manually.

Another thing that we need to do as a group is cut some off the walking scenes. In our feedback from many sources people say we need to cut the footage down from the walking parts. They say it is very technically and professionally well done but the long amount of screen time of just walking bores people. We need to choose what shots need to be removed so that it stays interesting for the viewer.