PowerPoint Presentation

Editing Diary - Week ending Friday 5th November 2010

This was our first week in the edit suite, so it consisted of logging and capturing all the shots we are using.  It was a good opportunity to watch all the footage back as a group, making a mental note of where we want each shot and what we want to do with it. We named all the shots and I began to make the opening titles on Adobe Photoshop. As I feel most confident with this programme, the group nominated me to do this. I opened the film and video pre-set template and downloaded a suitable True Type font and carried it into Photoshop. After creating a piece of text that coincided with the themes of our short film, the most important aspect was making sure the background was transparent. This was important as we plan to have it over an existing shot of the piggy bank. I had a lot of problems with saving it as different file formats to keep the transparent background, in the end the PNG file worked, so hurrah!

How the filming process went

It was one of those mornings... I woke up late, everything was going wrong. Also, I kind of left Kai and Darren at the station for an hour, oh well! We made our way to Natasha’s house (location 1) and began to set up for the first part of “Take Note”. This involved the opening pull focus shot of the piggy bank, leading into the tracking shot downstairs to when the piggy bank is no more, and gets smashed to smithereens! We had to get this absolutely perfect, as we could only film it once! We used a conventional office wheeley chair to get the desired track effect. Darren sat on the chair and held the camera as I dragged it from behind, pulling in the right directions. The smash of the piggy bank went perfectly, exactly how we desired, so by this time it was time to brief out actors and actresses and head out on the streets. 

The most difficult part of the day was finding a convenience store that would let us film inside. We must have asked about twenty shops, until we found the perfect one, which had odd, but ambient lighting inside, emphasizing the oddness of our narrative. We briefed the shopkeeper as to what exactly we would be filming and how we would need him to cooperate, he was exceedingly helpful, and eager to help us young students out. The main problem was dealing with customers in the shop, as of course we could not just kick them out, so we had to be immensely patient, and increasingly flexible. Unfortunately, we attracted a lot of attention whilst filming the homeless scenes outside as it was on a busy main road. Thinking back, maybe it would have been best to film in a quieter location, although we wanted cars to be passing in the background, and we had to keep near the shop for continuity purposes. After filming everything, we thanked the shopkeeper, grabbed some chips and headed back to Natasha’s to watch the footage back, making sure we had filmed our desired shots before it was too late. 

To conclude, the day was a success, despite constant bickering in the group, and dealing with bewildered members of the public. Regardless, I still believe we should have filmed over two days, filming alternative endings and varying shots, leaving us with more choice when it comes to the editing process. However, as our short film happens in realtime, continuity is a real issue and is what will make our film look professional and clean. Filming over two days may sabotage this as the weather may be different, there will be different people in the shop and things that were in the shop the day before (coke cans, cereal boxes etc) may not be in there the next day, diminishing the continuity completely.