Construction Post 7: My personal contribution to the shoot sessions

I think I made a useful contribution to the shoot sessions. I worked in many different roles while we were shooting: for some shots I was director or camera operator, I gave our actor instructions on costumes, hair and make-up and helped them prep for the shoot, and I also acted in a brief part of our shoot. I enjoyed having a variety of roles throughout the day as it helped me develop all my skills and work together well with my group.

Me acting in the shoot

Construction Post 6: Reflections on edit week 2

Edit week 2 was successful and we met the deadline in good time. Pru and I worked together very well editing our sequence, working with the strengths and weaknesses we both had in particular areas and honing our editing skills.

Overall during the second editing week we:

• Added/replaced new shots and shots that we re-filmed
• Graded the shots
• Fixed the music to the new shot lengths
• Added the final titles (created on LiveType)
• Added effects to the sound and video

We showed our target audience our editing to see what aspects they liked. They gave us feedback on the titles that we used to modify them further.

Construction Post 5: The back-up shoot

Before embarking on our back-up shoot, we reviewed the feedback we had received for our sequence and created a list of shoots that we decided need to be filmed, as well as adding new shots to improve the continuity. This helped us during the back-up shoot as we compared this re-shoot list with our original shot list and helped the back-up shoot ran smoothly

The back-up shoot did not run as quickly as we expected, but we put this down to the fact that we were insistent on perfecting each shot we had to re-shoot so overall this was not too problematic.

Construction Post 4: Reflections on edit week 1

In our first editing week we agreed that we needed to work to our limit and dedicate all of our free time to the project in order to put together shots and organise what needed to be rectified during the back-up shoot that weekend. We filled out an edit schedule and wrote down when each member of the group would be editing and aimed to have as many editing sessions as possible as a whole group so we could make inclusive decisions.

During the edit week we carried out many tasks including:

• Renaming the shots and identifying the best takes
• Editing the shots and putting them together on the timeline
• Adding shots that required special/more advanced editing such as split screens and jump cuts
• Selecting a new music track
• Recording the non-diagetic sound and sourcing other clips such as the Film4 ident
• Creating basic temporary titles

Although we worked quite well as a group during the edit week, we thought it best if we split the group and into two and edit two separate sequences - Pru and I did one and Josh and Gabriel did the other. This was a hard decision but we felt that we had conflicting creative ideas on how to edit the sequence, so rather than spoil the harmony of the group we thought it would be best to just create two sequences. Despite this we still collaborated on many decisions and helped each other to edit specific scenes.

We showed our target audience our edit at the end of the week. They said that we could have showed Grace's anger better, so as a result we planned to shoot a new shot of this in our back up shoot.

Construction Post 3: Reflections on our main shoot session

Overall, our main shoot session was extremely successful compared to our test shoot. We completed all of our shots in detail with time to spare and had far less problems than on the test shoot. As a group we were really pleased with the new location that we had to shoot in and we worked well together along with our actor, Celine, for the shooting session.

When we showed our footage to our teachers, we discovered while reviewing our rushes were that a few shots broke continuity (such as shoes not being on) or some shots were shaky and out of focus. However we concluded that these were minor problems that would be easily fixable in our back-up shoot. Despite these problems after the main shoot our sequence started showing real promise to us as a group.

Construction Post 2: Our post-production kit

At school we were allocated an edit suite for our group to edit our main sequence on. This featured a dual-monitored computer with Adobe Premiere Pro set up on it. We also used a quiet back room to record our non-diagetic sound (such as Grace's friend on the phone) in order to ensure that no background noise was picked up.

The kit that we used during post production were:

• Dual-monitored computer
• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Macbooks/iMacs
• LiveType (for creating titles)
• Blue Yeti Microphone
• Audacity (for recording non-diagetic sound)

Adobe Premiere Pro workspace featuring our sequence rushes

Construction Post 1: Our production kit

The kit that we used for our production were:

• Canon Legria HF G30 Camera
•  Headphones
• Tripod
• Shotgun Microphone
• Clapper board

As a group we agreed that Gabriel was to transport the kit to and from school as his house was the location, but we confirmed that we would help him do this in any way if needed.