Filming Experince

During the filming our footage that was set in the riverside, I came across a problem due to the pillar that was next to where we were shooting. We didn't realise it could come in the way of our footage until we did the long shot that pans up. This made it difficult to pan-up and still look ok. In order to avoid filming the pillar during panning, i panned slightly to the side and panned up from there.

Farjana Begum

Filming Experience 2

During our filming experience, we added a few things that we didn't have in our rough cut.
For example when the girl is in the doctors and just about to find out she has terminal cancer, we show her shaking her legs.
This connotes that there is something wrong and that she is nervous about finding out the news.
We added a close-up shot of the doctors hand on the girls shoulder, this implies to the audience that this is a serious matter.
Also we got a few more shots of whip-panning of the various different restaurants and sites.
However i don't feel that we got enough various different shots when filming and this is something we should have focused more on and kept it in mind.
Moreover the filming had to be based on the weather and we had problems with the filming because of the weather change, for example when filming next to the canal, some shots of the sky was a different colour to another shot of the sky because on one of the days the sky was quite dark and on another day the sky was bright and sunny.
Therefore when we came to editing it together, the sky shots did not match and the edit did not blend together well.
One part that did go well when filming by the canal was when we did the eye-line match of the girl looking over to the other side of the canal.
Another problem i had when filming was that i found it hard to keep the same frame when moving around the camera.
Furthermore when we did some of the shots without the tri-pod, i found it hard to keep my hand steady.
On the other hand we were more successful when filming the girl walking into school, because the action match worked well.
Overall i had a good filming experience, but i do think i need to improve my technical skills.

Joygun Yasmin Nessa

Feedback!

When getting back our feedback, we got mixed responses. We realised from the feedback that we could have improved our opening with or by adding, little things. For instance, some said that the titles would look better on the actual footage rather than on a black background. However, if we were to have the black background, it would look much better if it where to come after some footage and not all at once. Also, one person said that we could make it better by adding a eye-line match on what the protagonist is looking at, to show the flow on continuity. A positive feedback was on the setting, it was a nice setting to establish the drama genre, however, it was particularly difficult to get the actors expression because of the restriction of the railing and the actors position. Our peers, also liked the idea of having a voice over to introduce some of the narrative with dialogue, but found it sounded like an echo and it distracted the audience and didn't feel smooth. Taking on this feedback we are also going to re-shoot some footage, for example, the end of the film where the actor changes from the future to the present to start the story and have the title of the film before that frame, to make it look more like the beginning of a film then an ending.

Farjana [Reshma] Rahman

Rough Edit

This is our rough edit, however, there where many changes made during the rough edit. Mostly changes in the storyboard; for example, we didn't have a shot of her walking away and we couldn't get the shot the panning to the sky to pan back down correctly, so we couldn't add that in. So, this is what we edited from the footage we had.

Music

Whilst researching into music and possible music that I could use in my own work, I noticed a common theme that run in drama based film. That was the music was usually calm and peaceful, a score, with the majority of the instrument playing being the piano. Seven pounds opening is really effective in grabbing the audience attention, the dialogue inform the audience that there is a great twist in this story. However, it was the score, the soft, slow, sad but dramatic, piano playing in the background that signifies that the film's genre is drama. In My Sister's Keeper, it also introduced the Drama genre to the film, however, the music was much tenser in Seven Pounds in contrast to My Sister's Keeper, it is carefree and cool. So, when I researched into song choices it was based, it was crucial that I look at areas that create the atmosphere i want, that where calm and carefree, nevertheless, introduce the genre of genre Drama.

Farjana [Reshma] Rahman

Practise Titles

We did some rough titles for our film opening.

We experimented with different fronts,sizes and colours.

When practising how to make titles in Boris, we learnt a few new skills we could use when making our actual titles. 

We practised making these titles so that we were able to establish what we needed to include when making our final titles in Motion.

Doing this practise of titles has helped us to learn better techniques when making titles and also we learnt how to use new programs such as Boris and Motion.

Overall i think it was a good experience practising titles.

Joygun Yasmin Nessa & Farjana Begum

Changes made to our storyboard

While we were filming our film opening we realised that some changes had to be made to our storyboard.
Some of the changes that we have made from our original storyboard is that we have changed some of our shots.
We have done this so that we could include more of a variety of shots to our film opening, for example, graphic match, eye line match etc.
This had to be done because we did not have a god variety of shots.
We have also included another shot right at the end of the film opening.
This shot shows that the girl has now taken the risk and has now changed.
We did this because it sums up the ending and makes the story more easier for the audience to understand.
Moreover we have changed the one of the scenes when she walks off with her friend.
Instead of the girl walking off with her friend, she will walk out of the scene by herself as we think this works better and shows that she is in this on her own and only she can make the changes in her life.
These are the changes we have made to improve on our film opening.

Joygun Yasmin Nessa