EVALUATIONQUESTION 6

Filming and editing techniques/equipment

Things we found helpful:

- The main piece of equipment that we found really helpful throughout filming was the tripod. We wanted all our shots to look professional however when we filmed just holding the camera the shots were incredibly shaky therefore we used a tripod for every single clip we filmed. This helped keep the camera steady and overall improved the quality.

- We had some ambitious shots we wanted to film for our opening therefore it was helpful to get creative with filming techniques. For example we wanted a birds eye view shot of credits written on the road. The road we were filming on had a tall bin on the pavement therefore we climbed up onto the bin to get the right angle, it was tricky as we didn’t want to ruin any equipment however we managed to get the camera and tripod on top of the bin and achieved the clip we wanted.

- After the whole filming process the one thing that came in useful a lot was the original storyboard we had created. This was extremely helpful when we had to upload all the clips onto our editing software, Premiere Pro. By using the story board we knew in which order to upload the clips and what parts needed editing first. We had to change a few things as we did not manage to film all the clips on the original storyboard however we stuck to it as much as was possible.

Things we found difficult:

- One issue that we had with our equipment throughout the process was that our tripod was incredibly stiff. We had planned on including some pan shots in our film opening however the tripod was so awkward to move that trying to pan the camera was almost impossible and it looked awful when we watched the clips back. Therefore we had to change the pan shots to still shots however I was pleased with how the shots turned out.

- Another thing we had a huge problem with was the editing software we used. Premiere Pro was really good for adding the effects we wanted and it was easy to crop our shots and move them to where we wanted however our work was not getting saved every time we made progress and because we had so many different clips uploaded it slowed the programme down a lot. If I was to use this software again I would work out how to make sure that work was definitely saved and I would also try to not take as many different takes of the same clip as it meant that there were too many clips to sort through and it became very time consuming.

AUDIO

We only included non-diegetic sound for our film opening. We knew right from the start of the planning process that we did not want any diagetic sound such a dialogue as we wanted a soundtrack that people would focus on fully as some of our favourite indie dramas, such as Juno, are extremely

well known for their unique soundtracks. We did not have any idea what track we would use for the clip until we were

nearing the end of the editing process. We looked for the perfect song on a website called ‘FMA’, which gave us access to free tracks by independent artists. We looked under the ‘folk’ section as we thought folk music would

have the right pace and atmosphere for our film. The song we agreed upon was called ‘Kitchen Morning’ and is by the band ‘Birds are Indie’. This song really made the film come together as its pace fit so well with the clips and the lyrics were all about a girl and a boy so it helped make it evident what

our film was about. Overall the music was one of the aspects that our whole group was completely happy with.