Film DIary

DAY 1
We began filming on the Monday in our hour and a half lesson. We choose to do the outside shots first as we didn't have much time and we knew where we wanted to shoot. We took 6 or 7 shots from outside Anglia Ruskin uni building, walking out of the front doors and putting my umbrella up. Unfortunately it didn't rain, and so we looked at effects on the editing programme to see if we can fake rain, however we have not yet decided what looks best. We did a long shot from outside the door then the camera panned as i walked up the stairs. We also did a match on action as i walked round the corner. Although what we shot looked good, when we came to edit it on the computer it looked too dark and therefore we shot it again.

DAY 2

The next day in our Tuesday lesson, which was only an hour we went back and did some more outside shots, this time of me crossing the road. However this is was not that easy, as its hard to time when the traffic is coming and when we should start filming. The continuity was hard to keep, as the cars where different from shot to shot. We also wanted a busy area where there were lots of people to make the film look more realistic as the film is based in London, again this was a slight problem as the traffic and people made the shots harder to take. Many of the shots we took were too long and we will have to cut them. This scene was me walking across the street and crossing the traffic lights, we did a close up on my face but mostly long shots, as we wanted to show the whole area.

DAY 3
Wednesday afternoon after college, we all went to Andys flat for the flat scenes, which worked out well. The flat and the location was ideal for how we wanted it to look, as his flat was modern and in the city. Our first shots were of me entering the flat and a close up of my keys, which was later edited out as we thought this clip wasn't really needed. When we looked back on our filming, we thought the area just outside the flat was too quite and lifeless, so we are thinking of re-taking that part. Next we did match on action from the inside of the flat, this was a fairly long shot and we did around 4 or 5 takes to see which looks best.
Then moving into the bedroom, we did a close up of me kicking my shoes off and throwing the keys down and then walking into the bathroom, that was a mid/ long shot. Next in the bathroom, where again we did match on action and a close up of me crying in the mirror.
Finally we jumped to me sitting on the sofa, starting with a close up then Andy zoomed out, so there was enough room above my head to fit the title.
Then kuan had an idea that when i pressed stop on the on ipod player that the music stopped altogether, to show the end of the opening and the start of the film, so we did a close up of the me pressing the button to stop the music, bringing the opening to an end.

DAY 4

Then on the Saturday, we all met up and collected the camera to do the office scenes and the outside scene of me walking out from the doors again. We did the outside shots again fairly quickly as we had done that once before. We just wanted to improve the lighting as it different match compared with other shots we had taken.
Then we went and used Sophies dads office, well we actually used two rooms. His office is not situated at the front of the building and so it will be hard to match a window that matches the office window, therefore we cut the window out as it didn't look right when referring back to the storyboard. We did a close up of the window then as the camera zoomed out it panned towards me, looking at my work. We looked back and we agreed that there wasn't enough sound in the background, so we made the phone ring and Kuan was typing on the computer for background noise, and it sounded more realistic and busy. Then we did a match on action with me walking into the room and walking across the room to put the paper on the desk. I had to act upset and annoyed which i found hard in front of the camera and we had to take this shot a few times.

DAY 5
The following week we did some editing on the apple laptop, we imported the clips which we needed in sequence and then cut them to a reasonable length. Our film intro has to be 2 mins max and we needed to ensure we had enough time to put the raindrop at the very beginning, so we left space for that. We also thought we needed more and bigger close ups and so on the Wednesday morning lesson we went to Andy's flat. We re-shot a close up from the mirror and a tear falling into the sink, however we did not use this clip. We felt we needed more of an impact to show the real emotion of the character.




DAY 6
We also needed to shoot the raindrop, we left this part till last as it was the most difficult. We were still not 100% sure how we were going to achieve this effect. After college on the Tuesday evening, we met up and went to the photography room with our ideas, the help of our media teacher and the photography teacher we managed to get some interesting close ups. We tried splashing water into a bowl low down and then from high up, that was inside with the photography light on a white and then black background. However what we tried didn't look right, and the next Friday lesson we shot some more falling and splashing raindrops, this time outside.
We tried to catch one single rain drop falling, but because it was so fast and small we found this hard. We used mirrors and different instruments to drop the water from but nothing seemed to work, so we later wanted to look at animating a few drops of water to made it look as if it was falling.
Luckily it had rained on the Thursday and there we many puddles to choose from. We put the camera nearly on top of the water and Kuan dropped the water droplet from a pipette that we borrowed from the science department. We finally got the close up we were looking for, after about 40 tries.


DAY 7
The week before half term, we still had not captured the raindrop falling or the clouds from the grey sky. We tried to film some clouds, however is was too sunny and hard to film as we were so low down that buildings were in our view. We thought of going to a high building and filming from there such as a car park, as we will be able to see more clearly. The best car park for us to use was the Queen Anne Car park next to the swimming pool over looking Parkers Piece. Therefore in that time we had we looked at cutting and editing the parts in which we hard. We also added the fake rain, which was changed and wind and speed of to make it fit well with our film. The rain didn't look fake as the sky was very grey anyway.

DAY 8

Recently in class we have been editing our film, making the length shorter as we only have 2 mins as a time limit. We added transitions between some clips to make then look more smooth, such as fade in and out and dissolve. We also needed to add our titles, and have been trying make them appear longer on the screen same they can be read. We also have been trying to move the text up, to the top of the clip however we can not do this and have had to use a different effect to try and get what we truly want.

Day 9

The second Monday back from half term, we wanted to capture the external shots of the office. However we wanted a high shot so we used the public car park, filmed from the 8th level and zoomed in over Parker's Piece onto a hotel, which looked like an office, the building in the picture. For the external shot simply zoomed in on over the park onto a window, which matched the following clip. We also wanted to capture clouds but we couldn't as it was a too grey of a day.

DAY 10

In our free time, on the Wednesday afternoon we all met up in the photography room to try and capture the falling raindrop. We tried outside and inside and took a lot of photos, we achieve some decent photos inside and later edited them on photoshop and on moviemaker, but we had a problem as we were not sure how the images from moviemaker would load up on the programme on the apple mac. We manged to edit 10 single rain drops and made them look as if they were falling perfectly. We faded, re-shaped, re-coloured and re-sized them. Once we up loaded what we had done onto the mac it had undone what we had early done on the previous programme, meaning we couldn't use it. Although this is disappointing we we very happy with the splashing drain drop as that made a big enough impact on the rain focus.


DAY 11
We then had to a lovely day to take some photos and running clips or clouds as we hadn't had a chance before because of the weather. We went outside close to college to film a few clouds, we zoomed into one single cloud and made that the very beginning of our film. We also had film from a window cleaner which came to our college and we filmed him, as that was what we needed and it would have been hard to find the props and act as a window cleaner. We got some outside clips of him up the ladder which we used, and that them followed on to the office inside where the main character was working. And a plus was it was raining!


Day 12
By this time we had completed the filming and were happy with the lighting and had solved any problems, we were just focusing on editing and titling on the programme on the apple mac called Imovie. We added title where we thought looked best and fitted with the pace of the music and film. They were very simple and neat because we didn't want to much attention on the title out main focus was the film. We originally, looking back at the storyboard had the title Moving On? and the end, however we thought it looked better at the beginning on the cloud background.

Story board

For the storyboard we wanted to illustrate it, similar to a flow as if a story was being told. We filmed the storyboard from the original paper and simply added fade clips between each picture. It was hard to follow the storyboard at points when we were filming and sometimes the pictures became more or a guideline.

Moving on?

We picked two films as a class and my film intro was chosen, which is a rom com called Moving on ? The people in my team are Andy, Sophie and Kuanduan. We each have a separate roll to play within this production. Andy will do the camerawork, using a tri-pod and possibly hand held camera. Sophie is going to be looking at set design, setting and and props. Kuanduan will be bringing in a selection of music to see which one we think as a group fits the intro the best and will be helping each of us is we need help or some new ideas. Also as we all feel we are not the most confident on the computer, we have decided to help edit and produce credits as a team, to ensure everyone helps out. I will be the main actress, if we need some extras Sophie and Kuanduan have said they will be, if more are needed than we can ask people at the college or friends. I am also in charge of costume design and helping with the credits and editing as well as using to computer to create the raindrop.

We feel our biggest challenge is the raindrop sequence at the beginning of the intro, which involves following a raindrop fall from the sky to another surface. Talking to others and with some help from a student for does graphics and photography i think we should be able to produce a realistic falling raindrop.

i think our team will work well, and we have already planned dates to start filming.

The setting that we are using are busy streets in the centre of Cambridge, Andys flat, the hallway, bathroom and sitting room and also Sophies dads office and outside buildings.

We have very simple props that aren't a problem to find, umbrella, bag, keys, and window cleaner things, and what we think will be needed to be added to the settings.

Costume design, as we don't have many people it will mainly be myself, i will have to be dressed smart for work and the extras within the office will have to be as well.

My Film Introduction

The genre of the film i would like to produce will be romantic comedy, films similar to Failer to Launch, Hitch and The Break- Up. These American films are light hearted, funny and easy to watch, they have fun and well known actors and actoress' in them making them popular and usually successful.
I want to produce a romantic comedy set in a city, London, this is going to be an British film, with British Actors. The main setting will be in a flat in the centre of London, the surrounding area such as bars, restaurants the streets and the tube. The setting with be busy as London is a city.
The narrative of this film is a typical romantic comedy, however instead of the man chasing after the women, the feeling for both of them is the same and they do same amount of chasing.
A women in London working in an office, she doesn't really enjoy her job and is having a really hard time as her boss isn't understanding and puts her under alot of pressure. She lives on her own away from family, as her job is what moved her to London, as its good pay and she thought she would love it. She decides to give up her job as she becomes so unhappy and her parents have invited her back to stay with them. She doesn't want to do that and feels annoyed and alone. She puts her house up for rent, as she thinks this will be her best option, she advertises in bars and public places, for weeks and weeks she hears nothing. Until one night she gets a knock at the door, and he arrives however she doesn't yet know she is going to spend the rest of her life with him. He looks round the flat and leaves a number, she gets no other offers and decides to go with this offer. She regrets backing up and leaving as she really wants to be with him, they get talking and find out that he has replaced her job, he seems outraged at how she was treated and suggests she go back to the company in a different department.
As she begins to pack and leave, he suggest out of the blue that why don't they just stay here together and he will get her job sorted, she takes up the offer.
The target audience for this film would probably be female teenagers and above, it is open to a wide range of people as it will be funny, romantic, offer some good actors and an interesting story line. I wouldn't think it would interest males, unless the went to see it with their girlfriends or family. Because i am targeting a female audience, on of the key factors to attract that audience would be to have a well known attractive actor playing the lead roll.
The style of my film will be light, alot of colour and interesting busy settings. Happy people, smiling, laughing and joking in bars. Showing London at its best, all its attractions and high young vibe.