Mock Exam Week
Editing
This week we had study leave due to the week consisting of mock exams in all of my A-level subjects. This meant that we were unable to continue filming until the last day of exams as ourselves and our actors were committed to revision. We filmed more bedroom scenes after our last exam with Jordan. These scenes were very easy to film as Jordan is very co-operative and willing to re-shoot and try different things. These were the last scenes we had to film and only consisted of less than 10 shots. We were really happy to finish filming, but have enjoyed the process and experience of creating this opening. We had one day of lessons on mock exam week so we uploaded our footage onto the iMac which took the majority of the lesson. This allowed us to be ready for the following week to edit our first draft.
Editing
This week our main focus was editing as we have completed the filming process. We had uploaded all of our footage before our first lesson of editing meaning we were ready to start straight away. We edited fairly quickly as our shooting script was really easy to follow, so not filming in order of our shots was not a problem, and we knew what we wanted our opening to look like and consist of. We have edited in iMovie before, meaning so being familiar with the software had helped with editing, whereas with the new software LiveType we used to make our graphics, it took us a while to get used to it. I enjoyed editing with Nicole, as we were able to confer and decide whether we both liked the shot, whereas when working together before we had to edit separately. We both enjoyed editing the footage and were very happy with how the opening was coming together. I believe editing to be a strength between both me and my partner so we were able to make the edit precise so the opening has continuity.
Once we had our first draft, we looked for music and decided on "Tomorrow" from the website: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music
You can listen to our music here:
We then added the music to our first draft on our second lesson editing, and thought it fit really well. It wasn't too dramatic and made the audience feel sympathy which is the atmosphere we planned to create. The music contrasts to the footage, as the rape scenes are extremely rough, whereas the music is quite soft with the occasional accent. The music really brings the opening together in an unexpected way.
We then showed one of our teachers who gave us some feedback on our first draft. The only criticism he gave us was on one of our shots, where the rapist came out and took Becca away. He said it looked like the camera was waiting for it to happen and that a close up of him grabbing her is required to make the screen feel less empty when he takes her off camera. This was supported by our other teacher when we mentioned it so we thought of what we could do to add a close up of the grab and cut back to the original shot without re-filming. Nicole had the idea to crop the footage which worked well, and meant that the shots have continuity as we used the same footage for each cut. The picture shows an example of what the crop tool in iMovie looks like. This saved us re-filming, and looks better as we could edit more precisely with the same footage.
One of our teachers also noted that our music seemed extremely loud on iMovie. She then played it to us using the school speakers and we could see that the music is too loud so she helped us reduce the volume. Where we added our full screen graphics there were jumps in the sound where you could hear background noise from the footage and then nothing. To make this flow easier, our teacher helped us copy the sound and place it on this shot so the shots flow together. She then helped us start adding graphics by rendering them in Final Cut Express. We are now at a stage where we need to add our super-imposed graphics. We are also awaiting feedback from our first draft and waiting to find out what a predicted mark would be.
What we plan to do next?
The next step for us would to be add our credits in Final Cut Express. We have never used Final Cut before therefore need to allow time to learn about the software and what we need to do. This is a vital part of finishing our British Social Realism opening.
We also need to find out our mark for our first draft and see what we can do to improve it in the time we have. Also, if we had time I would like to take a closer listen to our music, and see if we can edit more to the beat if possible, and see if we can make the accented parts of the song occur when the rape scenes occur. Apart from that, I am happy with our first draft, and don't think we need to change much for our final draft. The feedback we got from our teachers has already pointed out some areas that needed improving which we have improved and are happy with.
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