Deadline!

Today our editing came to an end ....
We have met the deadline and are happy with the results! :)

Updates since the last blog:
-We have re-recorded Laura's dialogue. Too many people questioned the pause and thought it was a mistake, so we re-recorded it and put it in.
-Tightend up on the dialogue. We cut frames and dialogue to make it tighter and it now runs a lot smoother and appears more natural. We reduced the treble where needed.
-Extended the dissolve from the bathroom shot to the bedroom shot. Slowing it down has really made it look a lot better!

Change of Production Name
KADAM - to ....

PERSPECTIVE PRODUCTIONS
We decided to change the production name after a group discussion about our company and what type of films it would make and what they would aim to achieve.
We chose 'perspective' because our films would offer the viewer different perspectives on different peoples lives in British society today - including different ethnicity's and cultural backgrounds.
In Love You To Death, the main female character is Greek and the rest of the film could potray an insightful look into Greek culture in London today.
Other films the company would produce would focus on differnt aspects of society, for example the life of a homeless person, etc.
We aim to give people a voice in society who usually don't get seen or heard. Therefore, 'Perspective' works and is sucessful as it gives a main stream viewer a wider 'perspective' on British society today.


-Alice, on behalf of the group.

More Feedback

After doing a screening to other media students and our media teachers we got lots of feedback on things we needed to change or fix, and noticed some ourselves these were as follows:
- Make the dissolve from the shower to the room slower
- Slow down the shot of her doing her lipstick as by the time the audience understand what's happening, the shot's gone
- Move the title 'music by...', and lower all the titles
- Increase the sound on some of the conversation shots
- Change the font of the titles either the colour, remove the glow around them, or completely change the font as it looks too 'studenty'
- See if we can do anything about when she lights the candle to make it less obvious
- Change the dialogue when she says 'your late...for dinner'
- 'LOVE YOU' is too light
- Laura's shots looked like they had a yellowy tint

We went back to our sequence and made most of these changes. We removed the red glow around the font and think this makes it look a lot more proffessional, we also changed the colour so it has a slight grey tint to it which makes the font look less harsh. We also slowed down the lipstick shot and think that now its easier for the audience to see what she's doing. We also changed around a lot of the titles.

When we next have the opportunity to edit we need to fix:
- Sound levels in the conversation
- The shots of Laura lighting the candle
- Tighter cuts in the conversation

After fixing these issues we will do another screening and see if there is anything else that can be changed.

Continued...
We had the opportunity to edit for a bit today (Monday 12th) and have realised that we need to rerecord some of Laura's dialogue, when she says 'it's almost time for dinner'. Although initially we had wanted a pause between 'time' and 'for dinner' we have realised that it didn't really work and although we have edited it, we think that it will work better if we rerecord it.

- Mel, for the group -

More Feedback

Today we got some more useful feedback from Miss Blackborow which means that we need to change quite a lot of things in our sequence. She has said to:

- make the first fade-up to house longer
- get rid of the fade-down from house
- make the cross-disslove to shower bigger
- change the font of the credits to make it more curlier
- take the picking up photoframe shot and clock shot out because they are too boring and not subtle enough
- replace these shots by the lipstick popping shot
- move the tying up dress shot to later on in the sequence so it makes more sense
- move the 'based on a novel...by Sandy Winters' down slightly
- the final title distacts th audience from the knife so maybe we could fade to black and then have the title come on.

We now have lunchtime and after school to work on these changes and i think it will really help to improve our sequence. We may even have time for a screening today which will be helpful!

-by Aarti for the group

Editing

Over the last few days, as Alice and Aarti have said, we have been getting feedback from both Miss Thrasher and Mrs Blackborow as well as feedback from other media students. The feedback that we recieved was as followed:
- The clock ticking is too loud
- Sort out the music so that the sequence ends at the right point with the music
- Sort out some of the sound, including Barney's voice being out of synch and making the ring of the phone slightly longer.
- Make some of the cuts tighter
We fixed all the issues that we had and have also deleted the shots where she puts her lipstick on as we felt that that part of the sequence looked bad and would ruin our sequence.
We are going to have a screening to see what other students that we haven't asked think and also to see how it looks on a big screen, this should help us see any major issues that we haven't noticed before.

- Mel, for the group -

Last few days of Editing
Since getting feedback from both Miss Thrasher and Blackborow we have made quite a few changes to our sequence. With the help of Mr Deans, we have managed to brighten a lot of our shots, and we also tried to get rid of the grainy-ness as a result of zooming on the lipstick shots. The grainy-ness has now gone but we still need to adjust the lighting to match other shots. Although we shot Barney's street shots on different days, we have now adjusted the light so that it follows the continuity of the sequence.

We have also made the first cross dissolve that establishes the scene longer.

To make the ending more dramatic, as Miss Blackborow said, we have also adjusted the speed on the shot so that Laura picks up the knife really quickly, and then walks round in slow motion bringing up the knife as this makes it look much more shocking.

We also added the clock ticking sound as a sound bridge which sounds really good!

For the final title 'Love you to Death' we downlaoded a font called inkedgod off dafont.com to make it look more proffesional and unique. We may experiment with the title by adding a whispy effect to make it look more mysterious. We still need to sort out the final shot, and we are considering getting rid of the evil smile shot as it looks slightly amateur after the knife shot.

-by Aarti (for the group)

An Update

We're back from the xmas break now and started up the project again! One week to go ...

Yesterday I was able to spend some free periods in the editing suite and got some feedback from Miss Thrasher. She suggested tightening up some shots, making them shorter which she said will really improve the quality of the end product. She suggested adjusting the brightness and contrast levels in some of the shots to try and maintain light continuity.

Mr.Deans also highlighted the problem that the titles were not within the specific 'boxes' and therefore won't be seen on some screens and cinema screens. I was able to move them into the correct area. As a group today we are trying to rectify the problems Miss Thrasher pointed out and will get some feedback from Miss Balckborow. Yesterday I also added more titles and credits using key frames to fade them in/out.
post continued ...

Miss Blackborows Advice:
-She suggested the fade from black should be slower, and we should consider using a dissolve at the beginning. We have used a cross dissolve today and think it looks good - we have also slowed the fade at the beginning, it looks a lot better now!
-She also felt that the sound on the dialogue needs to be brought up because the soundtrack almost drowns out the dialogue - again we have fixed this today by adjusting the volume levels on the dialogue, as the soundtrack is the lowest it will go without becoming inaudible.
-Alongside issues with lighting which has been a constant problem, she suggested slowing down the shot where Laura picks up the knife - we all really like this idea and are putting it into practise now!

-Alice, on behalf of the group

Christmas Break

The blog will be taking a two week break due to the Christmas holidays.
We are all feeling very positive about the project and left it at a good stage today with positive feedback from Miss Thrasher and friends in the class. The soundtrack has been added and small things need to be changed here and there to make the sequence sharper, but all in all we are well on the way.
Really looking forward to more work on it next term,
Merry Christmas everyone!
-Alice, on behalf of the group.

The Editing Process

Aarti and I have been busy editing and we have made great progress.
Today in the one free period we had together we were discussing the dialogue and we were having difficulties with differences in weather with the scenes with Barney outside.
ALSO - issues with the dialogue. The sound is terrible at the moment, there's a lot of camera noise in some shots, and little camera noise in other shots - i'm not sure why.
Sometime this week at lunchtime we will have to record dialogue, preferably when Mel is back and well again because i'm not around most lunchtimes this week due to the carol service and dentist appointments. So ... we need to get that done urgenetly.
Also - we need to really think about the soundtrack and try and get that sorted by the end of the week. Foley effects too, i was thinking we could have the "beeps" of her dialing the phone or something? And a scream at the end?
I really hope the soundtrack will help add to the eerie inside mood we were trying to create.
I really hope everthing will start coming together this week.
- posted by Alice on behalf of the group.

The Third Shoot

Today we managed to finish shooting all of the outside Barney shots despite the poor weather.
Hopefully the footage will be fine, and we will be able to edit it into the sequence we've already started, next week.
When we edit we need to take care with putting the recorded dialogue to the image because we will need to get the timing right.
I was thinking we should record the sound of dialing on the phone as she dials the number.
We also need to re-record Laura's dialogue because we changed the time from 7:00 to 5:00.
We also need to record the two laughing together.
Since seeing the footage, i'm not sure if it will work having the laughter as she looks at the photo, but i think it would be a good idea to try it out.
-posted by Alice on behalf of the group

Reflections on Teacher Feedback & on The Second Shoot

Today we managed to edit most of our sequence from the footage we shot last Saturday.
By doing this we were able to see which shots worked, and which didn't and we can therefore re-take the shots. At the end of the day, we were able to Show Miss B our sequence and she gave us useful feedback, suggesting ways of improving it and calming our nerves as we were very worried about a lot of our shots! Especially the outside shots of Barney.
Unfortunately, due to ill health, Barney was unable to come to the shoot tonight so we were unable to shoot what we had planned. Despite this, Miss was able to give us some advice on how to really improve our insdie shots of Laura.
Firstly, lighting. We all agreed that our shots look flat and we re-took these shots with lights from differnt angles in order to provide contrast. I think this was quite sucessful, and we managed to create intersting shadows with the bannisters in some of the shots and we'll see how effective these are when we capture on Monday. We also added candles to the Hallways shots and we think this really adds to the mise en scene.
Miss also had another really good suggestion - a steamy bathroom shot.
Initially we had the outside establishing shot, which then cut to the bathroom window, which then cut to an opening pan of the bedroom.
Miss said this would work, but then after watching the rest of the sequence we all decided that it would be a LOT more effective if we made Laura seem perfectly normal without revealing that she's slightly odd (by showing the candles and photoframe) until later on in the sequence.
To make this possible, she suggested including Steamy Bathroom shots! We managed to do these tonight, and we are all quite happy with the footage. We filmed through the shower screen her showering, with all the steam etc, and then her stepping out the shower. For continuity purposes, we had to make sure the back wall wasn't seen because the next shot is her leaving the bathroom and it's a differnt bathroom, where the walls are white - NOT bright blue.
Other shots we re-took are the last two shots, because we felt they were too dark.
We are lot happier with the footage now, and we plan to shoot the outisde shots with Barney next Saturday (13th) so we have all this week to edit the insdie sequence with Laura.

-posted by Alice on behalf of the group

Friday 5th

In today’s lesson we continued editing our sequence together concentrating mainly on the girl, walking out of the shower and getting ready, and a few of the kitchen shots. It was good as it helped us realize what shots need redoing due to continuity problems, or other things such as the shot being too dark, and objects in the background that shouldn’t be there. It was also helpful as we saw that some shots were unnecessary and took up a lot of time so we decided to get rid of them (for example picking up lipstick). We also played around with the sound testing our shower and doorbell sound bridges and we’re very pleased with the way they bring our shots together. Overall we found some shots like the pan of dressing table or putting on towel need to be a bit quicker so that it doesn’t get boring to watch.

Although we had planned to do a full reshoot of the street shots with Barney after school, and a few of Laura’s shots, unfortunately Barney became very ill and had to go home which was a bit of a problem as we need to reshoot nearly all his shots and we don’t have the weekend to do this. However, we managed to solve this problem deciding to use our back-up weekend, next Saturday to reshoot instead. We are still planning to go ahead with tonight’s shoot however so we can get all of Laura’s shots done.

Here’s a List of things we need to Re-shoot

-Establishing shots (2)
- Shot of upstairs corridor and bathroom door
-Barney walking in the park (towards, low level feet, pan through gate)
- LS of Barney walking down street
-CU of Barney on the phone
- Still of Barney walking into frame towards the front door
- Side of Barney at the door, waiting/ringing the doorbell

-CU of Laura’s scary smile (without lights on ceiling)
-Laura picking up knife from behind (more light)
-POV shot of the kitchen clock
-Laura stepping out of the shower
-Laura leaving bathroom

I’m sure today will go well as we are very clear on what we need to get done as we met at Lunch to make a shooting script, and we have done it all once before. We will definately get all Barney’s shots done next weekend.
-Aarti, for the group

In our lessons yesterday and today we watched through our footage and started to edit some of it. This helped us see the issues with the continuity of light in the outside shots, and a smudge on the camera that we didn't notice while watching the footage on the shoot, so therefore we're going to have to retake a lot of the shots of Barney. We're also going to have to retake the establishing shot. In Friday's lesson we're going to see if we can edit the part where Laura takes a match out of the box and lights it, as at the moment the way we have edited it, it doesn't work very well. If editing it differently doesn't work either we will have to reshoot those scenes of Laura as well.

- Mel, for the group -

First Shoot

Yesterday (Saturday 29th) we had our first real shoot and we had some big problems at the beginning because of loads of cars on the road, and other irritating background sound. The worst was heavy rain that you could really hear hitting the umbrella we were using to protect the equipment. Apart from this the shoot went quite well.
We solved the problem of the rain on the umbrella by recording some atmospheric sound of outside to replace the real sound of the outdoor shots. After having a well deserved break we got started on our indoor shots. These worked a lot better than the outdoor shots as we didn't have the weather, or other background sound, to worry about. The lighting all worked well for us and although it meant we left Alice's house at 10.15 (the shots took a lot longer than we initially thought they would) we managed to take all of our shots, exactly as we planned them, which will mean that if anything has gone wrong which we didn't notice while filming, we will have time to reshoot them on Friday.
We were also lucky to have actors who played their characters well and who didn't complain about being cold, although we had them outside in the rain (Barney had to film in the rain without an umbrella for quite a while), and who didn't complain about the filming taking longer than expected.
There are still some things that we need to do (which we will do as soon as possible this week):
- Recording the sound of Laura and Barney laughing together for when she 'hears' the picture
- Recording Barney's side of the dialogue
- Check the lighting, the footage for dialogue and her leaving the bathroom for continuity (we will do this in our lesson on Tuesday while we capture the footage)

- Mel, for the group -