Filming and Editing

The next piece of work I shall do is to write up the process of my filming and editing of my film opening and what I did in what order. This should give a clear order to my work and what I completed when.

I was one of the last people to start filming because I took a lot longer to finish my storyboard as I found it hard to visualise and draw my ideas but I eventually completed it and filming began. The issue that I had with filming was the availability of my two actors and after sorting out a day with my actor Callum, we did our first film session which took around 2 hours. I filmed each shot three times so that I would hopefully have a successful shot which I could use and I managed to get all the shots for what was going to be the first part of my film opening.

I took the pieces that I had filmed back to school and started to edit them straight away which wasn’t too difficult and I managed to edit together some match on actions and completed the editing for this part of my film within in a couple of 1 hour lessons. This was the easiest part of my film to complete.

My next piece to film was the flashback sequence which involved Jez and Callum and after arranging a convenient time for all of us we went of to film the flashbacks. The first part we filmed was them eating chips in the park which I filmed all of and edited it down later into the bits I needed. The other flashback was the walk on the moors one which we went and filmed and that completed what I thought would be all of my film. I took this film to school and started editing again moving the flashbacks around and deciding which ones would work the best. This took a lot longer and I spent many lessons trying to figure out what I needed. There were many shots that I deleted because they didn’t work but I managed to find some that did.

This was when after a discussion with my teacher I decided to add in another shot at the beginning of my film of Olivia writing the letter. I filmed this myself by using my table in my kitchen to film what is meant to be Olivia’s hand but is actually mine to get the beginning shots of my film opening which once I edited it into my film looked a lot smoother and made the narrative clearer to the audience. After this last piece of filming it was all down to the editing stage. Even though the basic editing did not take long at all once I had my basic film opening the most time was spent moving little bits around and changing things in detail so that the film could be improved even more.

After I had edited my film all that was left was for me to add titles, music and narration. The titles took no time at all and I managed to complete them in one lesson, the music was easily put onto my film but the hardest part was finding a piece of music which fitted into my film and sounded right. After a lot of searching I found it. The narration also wasn’t easy, I knew what was being narrated but finding someone who could narrate what I wanted with the right emotion was difficult but I found a friend called Jess Batten who did it wonderfully. Once this was completed all that was left was to adjust minute details in my film, make sure all the music was in the right place at the right volume and make sure the narration fitted with the shots perfectly. Once this was done my film opening was completed.

I did face some difficulty in making my film opening but everything worked out in the end and I managed to find a solution to every problem such as keeping the music under the narration but getting rid of the vocal which I managed to find a way to do.  

 This piece of work shows what took longer, what was easy and what was hard. It gives a clear view as to how my film took shape and in what order. It allows me and the reader to understand how I shaped my film opening and what troubles I had.