My final cut

Final Changes

After getting the feedback I knew exactly what I needed to do. I found that the feedback helped me. I went about making the changes that I needed to. I undid quite a lot of the editing, for example there was a page curl. My feedback told me that this detracted from the professionalism, so I deleted it. I also changed the titling. Ive had quite a lot of trouble with colour and font of titling. Also some of the feedback I received said that my opening looked a little bit like a trailer, trying to amend this  I put the 'Dear Diary' on top of some of the image, this helped it to look less like a trailer. Also I added in some more titles. All this helped me to make my opening look a lot more professional. 

Audience Feedback on Rough Cut.

In class we had a showing of all the rough cuts that had been completed. Luckily my rough cut was pretty much done, so I was willing to show it. 
Once I had got my 11 feedback sheets back I was very happy with all my comments.
8 out of the 11 gave me a Level 4 ( 48-60 marks) and the remaining 3 gave me a Level 3 (36-47 marks).  
Some of the good comments I got was:
"very moving" 
"very believably put together"
"wow, its really good. Very poetic" 
"overall very interesting, great shots used and makes me want to carry on watching it" 


Some of the criticism:
"Little noise in the sound" 
"opening is a little unclear, but the useful visual helps to get marks up"
"page in the corner detracts from professionalism". 


I am extremely grateful to the people that gave me constructive criticism because it now gives me an idea of how I can pull up my marks ever so slightly. 

Final Editing.

After I'd finished filming and uploading the footage onto Primier Pro, I need to think about where the appropriate moments were to put in the new footage. Luckily I quickly found my favourite clips and cut them down to manageable sizes. I found that one of the clips worked incredibly well and it was just down to luck. 
I had a few problems with my audio, the poem narration kept cutting up when I moved things, so that took quite a lot of extra time just ensuring that it was all in order. However I needed to be extremely pedantic to get the best results possible. I found that for some reason some of the audio was louder than other bits, so i had to keep cutting it and adjusting, which was fairly time consuming. 
After showing Miss my (what I thought was ) finished work, she gave me a few more ideas. She told me that to create a better effect I should merge each clip together. I tried it and it actually worked really well. It made the whole thing run a lot smoother. 
Also, I had only put in about 3 or 4 credits in my opening. She told me that because of the nature of opening, it made it look more like a trailer. I listened to her advice and began to add in more credits. I also thought that by putting the name of the film 'Dear Diary' a the end of my two minute opening this also made it look like a advert. I moved my title a little further forward to remedy this.
When adding my titles in, I found it incredibly hard to find a colour that was visible. I wanted to stick to pastel colours however in the majority of scenes I wasnt able to, because they didnt show up. I tried to switch all the titling to black, however in some cases even this didn't show up. It was going to have to be a long process of trial and error. 

Emergency Filming.

Once I thought that I was pretty much finished, I showed my teacher. He said that he liked my idea, however there was more I could probably add to it. At first I didnt really know what more I could add. However I then came up with an idea of including  intertexuality. I remembered that my mum had an old home video of her when she was younger, originally taken on sini-film then converted on to VHS. I decided that I would film the television playing the video. This was a fairly quick task, I made sure that I had a lot of excess clips, so when I got back to school to edit, I was able to choose from a wide range. I tried to get my mum from various different ages, and in different places. I thought that it really fitted in with the genre of my film. 

Editing.

After I had looked through all my footage and ensured that i was totally happy with it, I could finally was able to get on with my editing. I was a little bit apprehensive that I wouldn't have enough footage and also that it would take a really long time. I begin the editing my putting everything in order. I found this quite hard because I wasn't sure about how it would look because whilst filming I went away from my storyboard and begin to improvise. This is something that often happens, as i get more ideas as i go along. Once I had fiddled around  with the order and cut the clips down to the appropriate length I was finally clear with how my film would look. During the filming i ensured that i had a lot of different shots of similar things, so that i wasn't short of options. This became very useful during the editing process because I had plenty of different ways to portray what I wanted to. Whilst editing i had to cut a lot of shots right down and cut them so i could add them in later etc. This proved to be fairly time consuming, however i think it will be worth it in the end. Once everything was in place, I twinned it with my audio, which is eve reading a poem in an Irish accent and some music. Once this was in place it seemed to pull everything together and gives the tone of the film. It took about 4 hours to edit everything into my rough cut. Towards the end of the editing i realised that some of my audio seemed to have moved and cut itself, also the poem wasnt quite long enough. I had to fiddle with it for a long time, in order for it to make sense. I repeated  the first half of the poem then half way, cut through to the second half of the second clip. This made it sound more like an ending, this was difficult because i had to edit Eve's voice so that it sounded like she was just continuing, not that it was a random clip. Finally i managed to perfect my audio and i am incredibly happy with it. I realised that when I finished my rough cut, or thought i'd finished it, that it was only about 1 minute 20 seconds. Sir told me that this was to short. I struggled along trying to place other clips into my filming, however i wasnt happy at all with it. Ultimatley i decided that me being proud and happy with it is of equal importance. I got my teacher to watch it and see what he thought. Thankfully he gave me some great ideas. At home theres a home video of my mum all through her childhood, which was taken on sini-film at the time, then later transferred to VHS. Im going to try and film the television with the video playing. I know that of course the quality wont be perfect, but thats the kind of look i was going for. If i add short shots of the home video inbetween the running of the girl in my film. Also after watching my rough cut copious times, i realised that the constant running was a little bit mundane. Although at the time I did get other angled shots, I didnt really end up using them that much. So to improve it further I may get some shots from the floor of her feet running, this adds to the range of different shots and just makes the whole thing a lot more interesting. So during half term next week, those are the improvments i am going to make.

The Filming.

It finally got to my designated filming day. Firstly I got fellow A-level drama student Eve Silver to read my chosen poem. She did it in an Irish accent, which gave a new edge to the film and made it a bit deeper. 
Once this was done I had a few hours untill i needed to film. So I decided to put all the audio on the computers and edit it. I twinned the narration with the Soundtrack that I chose. Janes Escape from Jane Eyre. The editing process was very easy and I didn't have any problems. Once the audio was finished, I was able to really have an idea of what my finish film might look like.
Later on the actress I was using was available. We walked to location, which was a track next to some fields behind Wymondham Rugby Club. I needed to direct her running down the track and me filming her from different angles. Because she was a few years younger than me and my friend who was helping, I think she was a little bit nervous. Luckily this didn't affect her performance at all, I made sure I had her running from many different angles, so that if one didn't look right during the editing process, it wouldnt be the end of the world. 
We finished the exterior filming within an hour, which is a lot less time that i originally scheduled for. 
The next day was a Saturday so i was able to have as much time filming the interior section of  my opening. I originally set out to film a door opening with the diary being in the cupboard, then zooming in, then the shot going to the exterior section of film. However the morning of the interior filming, I watched the film, 'The Reader' this gave me a lot of last minute inspiration, because the film is about books and reading etc and mine is about a diary, i was able to use shots they did, and interpret them in my own way. Because of this, I filmed someone writing in the diary at an interesting angle. I also filmed pictures and things, im hoping that this will emphasise the time period and theme of the film. I also used a hairdryer blowing on the diary, so the pages would flicker. 
All in all, so far I am very happy with how the filming has gone. Now i just need to wait and see how it looks when I edit it.