My Film so far

Obviously the sound needs messing with, but this is the basic film. Let me know what you think.

2009 is here!

So Christmas is over and the year has changed, but the project continues. I didn't really spend much time editing over the holiday as i dedicated it to my dissertation, which i hardly got started. Although i worked on it pretty much every day. 

Anyway, i've been into uni yesterday and today from 9:45 - 5pm. I've edited the whole film together finally and i'm currently uploading it onto you-tube as i type. I haven't started with the music/sound yet and i still have a lot of 'keying' to do to get rid of the green outline on the characters. Also i need to sort out the colours to make the background and characters match.

I'm heading in again tomorrow for another full day. 

Only found out today that our professional practice module has to be handed on at the same time as this project, so more stress to be had. Gotta find me a practitioner quick smart.

Anyway, that's where i'm at at the moment. Hope everyone is well and a happy new year to you all!!!

Location Shooting

This morning i got up at 8 am and went out to film the locations that will be the backgrounds in my film.

I planned to shoot them in the correct order, so that the lighting conditions would be correct in the timing. 

Park Bench

First i headed to the park to shoot a park bench background. There were 2 to choose from, one with a road behind which was quite interesting, but i thought that it might take the attention away from the characters. Also this bench wasn't straight and so when i had straightened it in the viewfinder, the houses were slanted.

Therefore i chose another bench, which just had trees behind. Nice simple trees. I paced out 18 feet (as this is the distance that the seat in the green studio was away from the camera). Then i filmed about 3 minute chunks of footage about 3 times just to be sure.

I decided to start the scene with a pan down from the white sky. I did this because the bench scene is the opening scene of the film, so i thought it would give the film a bit of movement before the motionless backgrounds kicked in.  

I also set the exposure to manual, so that the light didn't change at all on the pan down went i came to add the characters in. Another reason was to make the sky bright white, which would make the opening of the film more aesthetically pleasing.

Cash Point

Next i scurried over to my local Co-op to film the cashpoint background. (There is a scene in the film where the characters are queuing at a  cash point.) 

Again i shot 3 minutes of footage a couple of times at 18 feet. It was quite busy and people kept on walking through the shot which meant that i had to keep the camera rolling until i had 3 minutes of non stop cash point. 

(Also i switched the camera off when people tried to get money out as i didn't want to look too shifty!)

Bus Stop

Finally i shot the Bus Stop background, which was just opposite the cash point. I had chosen to film a different stop than the first one is filmed in my tests, because the first bus stop was next to a bank which i had to film from. This meant that the camera was too high. Also there wasn't much walking space as the path was narrow.

The Bus Stop took the longest to film, with people coming and going off and on buses. 

Was pretty frustrating, but i got my 3 mins footage in the end. Woo!

FINAL FILMING

I got the filming done!!! 

On Tuesday I filmed in the Green Studio all day. With just 45 minutes sleep from completing the final storyboard, the night before. 

I was still coming up with new ideas at 4 in the morning, but decided that it was too late to start anything new. So i chose to refer back to one of my earlier storyboards and just enhance and tweak the ideas a little.

What i ended up with was a flowing story looking into the personal spaces of multiple characters, which entered into three different locations.

I started by filming each of the 3 scenes separately, with the adjoining characters going off screen, then coming back on in the new scene to create cuts in the footage.

However, i decided to go risky and attempt to film the whole film with no cuts from start to finish. This meant that the actors had to come on set at certain times, usually when one of the other characters was 'in their personal space'.

Amazingly, on the 2nd try of this mammoth shoot, i got a perfect take, with all the characters remembering when to come in and when and where to move to and from.

Thanks to the help of Margarita, Lexi, Duncan, Caz, Steve and Maggie, i have a seamless 6:30 minute take of my film. 

I'm feeling 90% less stressed now that i have all of the footage i need from the green studio.

I just have to go out and re-film some of my backgrounds, then it's edit, edit, edit!!!

Faded Background

For this test, i tried fading the Bus Stop background out and the white (personal space) background in. 

I like the fact that you can see what the other characters in the scene are doing and that life is actually continuing while the main character is in their space.

However, this style would make it a lot harder to cut between backgrounds and the surprise of a new character entering would be lost.

Dancing Space Cont...

These are the same videos as the one that i posted before in 'More Ideas!!', but with modifications: 

This first modification is the i gave the 'personal space' colour. Although i think this makes it look too similar to the Ipod advert.

Ipod Advert

This 2nd video has actual footage of the bus stop as a background instead of a photo.

However, the sound from the background is a bit too loud.

Stressy Stressy Stress Stress

Hmmm, i've just found out that my home version of Adobe After Effects does not have the 'Keylight 1.2' Effect on it. This is the main effect that i have been using at uni to key out the greenscreen background.

So uber frustration has set in and i am currently trying to reinstall my version of After Effect. 

ARRRGGHHH!!!