Monday 14 March 2011

The titles

Today me and Kieron had some spare time on our hands to do a little more on the title. It isn't the easiest thing to complete and we still need to get Jessica and Melissa's views on it. We used Photoshop to cut out the text and insert it on a blank frame (we may take a still frame from the movie). There will be some screen shots to come.

Evaluation Questions

There are many questions that I need to cover in order to complete my evaluation. These are:


1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience of your media product?
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Tuesday 1 March 2011

Jack Cardiff (1914-2009)

Jack Cardiff: Britain's greatest cinematographer?This man was called Jack Cardiff. He was and still is deemed to be Britain's greatest camera man and cinematographer. Born on the boards – his music hall parents put him in the silent film ‘My Son, My Son’ in 1918, aged four – he progressed through runner, clapper boy and camera operator, often under Alexander Korda, until two big breaks: being taken on as the first British trainee for Technicolor and embarking on a globetrotting colour-documentary career culminating in the Oscar-winning ‘Western Approaches’ in 1944. Then, magic happened. Second unit on one masterpiece, ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, he was invited by its director, Michael Powell, to film the whole of a second. His work on ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ (1946) – incredibly, his first complete credit – ‘Black Narcissus’ (also 1946) and ‘The Red Shoes' (1948), with Cardiff’s versatility and pioneering experimentalism dancing perfectly in tune with the Archers’ own, produced a trio of achievements of beauty, impact and emotional meaning that are unsurpassed in British film.
Through six decades it was concluded that Jack Cardiff's energy never dimmed. He worked up until he was ninety.

UPDATE

At the moment we are almost finished with our editing, we are in the final stage (woooo!) and soon our results from our questionnaire we did a while back will be posted on each of our blogs.
Kieron: Update on sounds
Jessica: Detail on styling
Melissa: Finalising editing.

Final Filming

Before half term, the girls all got together to film the beginning of our O.T.S. Unfortunately Kieron could not join us as he was on an educational trip but however, we have made sure that he was updated with every detail that we did. We filmed some establishing shots of Jessie's house and a friends house: followed by some varied shots and angles of our femme fatale. Overall, a good day of filming I reckon!

Thursday 10 February 2011

Cropping Shots

Due to one of my camera operating mistakes, there was one shot in which Jessica was sitting in the corner. At the time we were so fixed on getting the lighter drop right that we didn't notice. However, by looking at Final Cut Express HD I managed to crop the shot.


 Here I used 'Motion' above the preview of the video and I simply clicked 'Crop' and I kept moving the picture left and right and then using 'Scale' to make the picture fit. 

This is the result of cropping the shot.


After scaling it, it looks perfect as Jessica is no longer in the picture.




However, the main problem that we faced was that by cropping and scaling the shot, the lighter does not fall centrally so as a result, this method cannot be used. Also, due to scaling, most of the quality is lost. We have decided as a group that we will re-record the lighter dropping as we want the 0.T.S to be perfect.
At least the cropping was better than the original...



Camera Operator

Since I was the camera operator I decided to do some more detailed research on what a camera operator should do and whether I succeeded in that task.

"The operator is responsible for physically operating the camera and maintaining composition throughout a given scene or shot." 
File-Riot_PetionVille.jpgI personally think that I did this well and maintained a careful shot balance. I didn't think I shook the camera too much but this wouldn't have been an issue if we didn't forget the tripod (oh dear!). 




"Important camera operator skills include choreographing and framing shots, knowledge of and the ability to select appropriate photographic lenses, and other equipment (dolliescamera cranes, etc.) to portray dramatic scenes. The principles of dramatic story telling and film editing fundamentals are important skills as well. The camera operator is required to communicate clearly and concisely on film sets where time and budget constraints are ever present."
Looking at this description makes me realise how under-equipped we were - we had no camera cranes, dollies etc. but for what we were doing I think that it came out perfect. Well, nothing is perfect but it was to the best of our abilities. Looking at the last part of the quote, I personally think I communicated very well with my group and the actors (as you can tell on some of the out-takes I like to make myself heard..)   and this did prove successful as we managed to get everything done in good time. 




Source: http://en.wikipedia.org