Cameras: In my opening scene, I was restricted to being in front of the camera rather than behind it, as I was one of the main roles in the film. Fortunately this did not stop me from learning about how cameras work and how to use them, as there were many times where I would step behind the camera to record a take of one of the others in my group filling in for my character - just to demonstrate how the shot should look once I step back into the character's shoes. This can be shown below:
This helped me with concepts of how to get a great shot, and even down to just how to hold the camera to keep it steady for a take. There were instances where we were stuck on how to stabilize our camera (such as on our slow paced start, where we filmed a long tracking take (which was then cut up by opening credits) that tracked backwards from the door and then moved sidewards). We found ideas on how we could achieve a steady camera and settled on using a trolly before overlapping audio WITHOUT the trolly to eliminate unwanted audio of clanging. I also tinkered with the white balance on the digital cameras as I attempted to perfect the cooler lighting of the scene that we wanted to establish. An advantage of this equipment is first of all that the cameras are capable of pulling off some good shots - vital for our film. And vitally, digital cameras are cheap for film makers like ourselves to use. Yet a disadvantage we found is with the often poor sound quality that would prove to be difficult to get round when it came to editing, with lots of fuzzy grainy background noise and often quiet recordings of dialogue.
Lighting: We also had to learn to get to grips with lighting in our opening scene. Despite our scene literally being set in a lighting shop, it proved very difficult at times to perfect lighting conditions in the set. We ended up having to try different combinations of top lighting through the actual ceiling lights of the shop before we were able to find a sinister looking top lighting effect - which emphasized the physical features of the teenager. We also used key lighting in places, shining a light at a certain angle directly onto our actors faces. Lighting is something I have learnt a lot about through the construction of my opening film. I have recognized how important it can be, and also how difficult it can be to get right.
Live Type: In the construction of our opening sequence, Live Type was something that I struggled to get along with. However, this wasn't through a lack of understanding. Most of our group's ethos was always to create as professional and non-intrusive an opening sequence as possible - we found that the possibilities that Live Type offered us in terms of opening credits or the film title (which other programs did not) felt out of place, unprofessional and unrealistic in the context of our film. While we could have persevered with the Live Type program to create our title or credits, we decided to invest our efforts elsewhere. However, I did find out why film makers might use LiveType, as it can be used for many different purposes including impressive animation - as shown here:
Pixelmator: While I was not fond of Live Type as a possible way to create our film title, I found Pixelmator matched our ideas of a more professional looking and less-the-top film title fairly well. Pixelmator allowed us to easily create a design for a our film title in ways that Live Type would find difficult to match. The process was a simple matter of steps and took no more than half an hour to perfect from scratch by Phoebe Davies. Phoebe had even found tools that would make the second boot imprint to look somewhat degraded - as if blood or dirt was covering the shoe and was coming off with each step. This is shown below. While we didn't use them, we found tools which might be helpful in the future which allowed us to freely crop images, create sci-fi-like effects and more.
Blogger: After having gone on an English lecture school trip this year, it somewhat emphasised how enjoyable the experience of using a blog for learning and working can be. The pressures of having your work easily found by others all around the world were a definite positive to me, as it encouraged me to create more polished work. I found that working with blogger was also a pleasure due to the many different ways that you can choose to work. Although your standard blog post could just feature text, there are also many ways to create more interesting content by embedding different formats such as a 'Prezi' presentation, or YouTube videos or even gifs. These all allow for excellent ways to get points across.
At the same time, the pressure of having a blog can weigh you down a little. I might feel a need to update my blog when it might be unnecessary at the time - and the vague nature of how to approach different tasks through a blog can be difficult to decipher at times.
From cameras to Pixelmator, this project has taught me excellent skills on a variety of different areas, which I hope will come again to help me in the long term future. While tasks like editing were at first difficult, it now comes fairly naturally as I feel as though I could edit scenes even just by myself, and while I might not be fond of the Livetype program for this task, all that I have learnt about it could help me in the future.
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