My Contribution to our Production

Director-

• Me - Deputy director
• Alex- Director
• Tom- N/A
• William- N/A

Cinematography-

• Me- Co cinematographer for the chase scene and main cinematographer for the gym scene.
• Alex- Main cinematographer for the chase scene and co cinematographer for the gym scene.
• Tom- N/A
• William- N/A

Editor-

• Me - Main co editor for the Gym Scene
• Alex- Main Editor for whole production + input into the Gym scene
• Tom- Main co editor for the Gym Scene
• William-N/A

Music- 

• Me - N/A
• Alex- Found music from other sources
• Tom- Found music from other sources
• William- N/A

Actor-

• Me- N/A
• Alex- N/A
• Tom- Protagonist
• William- Antagonist

Pre Production work-

• Me- Location scouting, 
• Alex- Shot list 
• Tom- Story Board, Call sheet , Team manager
• William- Screen Play

What Roles did I play and what did they involve?

I was working in a fairly big group while creating my production. We decided it would be best if we allocated each other different roles of which we were most comfortable with, this would hopefully result in no one doing nothing and everyone having a fair contribution. The roles and my contribution which i had in my group were:

Director:

While being behind the camera i felt it was easiest for me to direct because i could see what looked good through the camera and what worked and didn't better than the actors. I was the main director for the film as i had to vision of what i wanted on camera because i could see the shots and how they would look. Robbie joined me behind the camera and would input his ideas to each other and decide what would work best. It was good to have someone else with me because it meant that we mixed ideas to get the best output altogether. I was the main director for the chase scene. This meant i gave orders to the actors (Tom and Will) told them what looks best and if what we filmed was good enough. For the gym scene i shared my role with Robbie and i took the role of Deputy Director. This would consist of me adding to Robbies ideas and helping out.

Cinematographer:

I took to role of cinematographer for the chase scene and then for a few of the shots for the gym scene i was in charge of and for the rest of them Robbie was the cinematographer and i gave Robbie help and ideas for what shots would look best while he was in charge of those shots. Being a cinematographer resulted in me having to set up the shots in different angles and trying out different angles for each shot to see which is the best. It meant i had to be always thinking about how the shot would look in the edit and if it will match the rest of the clips.

Editor:
The role of editor was my main role in the group and the one which i enjoyed the most and also think was my best attribute. I was the main editor for the whole production and edited almost all of the film opening, this consisted of doing the titles, trimming clips placing them together, seeing which shots worked best which other to make sure that there was a story coming out of what we shot, also adding the sound effects and making sure the sound fitted the production. For the main part of the production i edited it all which some input of what worked and validation of Robbie. For the opening scene in the gym i handed the role over to Tom and Robbie to co-edit some of the gym scene, they put the clips into the timeline and trimmed the clips down to suitable lengths. I then took over the job of actually editing the cllips so that they fit and created a narrative and also edited the clips together to the music so that the scene was fast paced and matched the music and fit together as a complete scene. Some other things which were involved in the role of editor was trimming down sound files and cutting parts out so that the sound would match the video footage and adding in the small sound effects such as footsteps and also titles.

Music:
The original plan for the music was that Will would create a full piece which would fit to each scene and continuously run for the whole production. The music was going to be created on garage band. The music on garage band wasn't successful and as a group we did not believe it fit into our production and didn't follow common conventions of films in our genre. This meant we had to resort to a plan b which was finding music online which we had permission to use. So i went onto the internet looking around on different sites to find some music which i believed would be good for our production. I came across two different tracks one on the website youtube and one on soundcloud. Both of the tracks gave permission for us to use them in our production which was perfect. The music turned out to fit brilliantly into our film and was just what we were looking for.

Shot list/planning:
For the planning aspect of our production i was in charge or creating the shot list. This was a good role for me because i was also the director it meant that it linked to my other role.
For the other aspects of planning i was involved in the creation of the story board,  i would input some of my ideas and views while Tom was sketching out the story board. I also was involved in planning, we would all contribute our ideas for what happened in each scene.

Overall i believe i had a significant role within my group in this production. I contributed a lot to the main aspects of film making. I am happy with my contribution and overall how my work has turned out altogether.

Balancing Colour

When editing our opening scene and watching our rough cuts i realised that the colours could be improved. I know that colour balancing is very important in films and it is a small detail that if done correctly results in an improved film. This is how i balanced the colour of our clips in final cut.

• This is what the shot looked like originally, It looks too blue. it does looks good but it can be improved. 

• So to improve the clip you have to select it. To select a clip all you have to do is click on it and it will be highlighted this is how you know the right clip has been selected.

• To balance the colour of the clip you have to click the magic wand tool and this will drop down a list of options. To balance the colour of the clip you have to click the first option on the drop down menu or press alt+cmd+B.                           

• Then if you look back at the clip you selected you can see that there is a change in the colour of the clip.

This is a comparison of the original clip (on the left) and the new clip (on the right)

It is also possible to balance the colour of all the clips in the timeline rather than just one. To do this you have to drag the mouse over all the clips so that it shows they are all selected and then it is the same process.

The Brief Rough Cut 3

This is the third rough cut for our film opening. I am happy with how our filming is going so far and feel like it is heading in a good direction and we all have a clear idea of what we want from this. This rough cut includes all the match cuts that we have filmed so far (4), it also includes a scene where the actors run down an alley which is filmed from a low angle. The last scene is a much improved version of our first rough cut, this version includes more shots in-between others, we did this because we felt for the story to make sense and for the audience to understand what is happening these shots were necessary. In this last scene we have also included a few re shots, this is because we were not happy with what we had and we felt the shots didn't fit the flow of the film so we reshot them and we were happy with how the second ones came out. We are also very happy with how the second scene down the alley turned out. We first shot that scene and were happy with what we had then realised that we were missing a vital part of our film, the bag. This was frustrating because it meant we had to go back and re shoot it all again but with the bag on. We tried to film every shot exactly the same and we feel like that was a success. In this rough cut i have removed the music we had in the first rough cut because we were never going to use that music because we are in the process of making our own and the audio clip was to short for the whole video.

What next:

The next thing we are going to do is film all our connecting shots so that everything connects and the opening makes sense because right now it is all a bit random. We also need to shoot our opening scene, we will do this when the weather is right and we have all recovered from our illnesses. I also want to experiment with colour grading and matching colours because i feel like this is a very important part to all films and would like to be able to do it successfully, i believe if it is done right then it can improve the film a lot.

Tyrannosaur Swede Final Video