Filming and Editing of Opening Sequence

Filming our Opening Sequence was relatively easy as it only took about 2 hours on one friday night. this meant that we didn't have to try and replecate the room and costume and lighting again to achieve continuity, we just did it all at once which made us achieve continuity. We managed to capture enough footage that we could just piece it together and turn it into a film. Another advantage of filming in one night is that we didn't have to try and find another date where all the actors and everyone from the group were free.

Throughout the opening sequence there we used lots of different camera angles such as over the shoulder, zoom-in and zoom-out, low angle and high angle shots, close ups, panning and birdseye. There were points were the group disagreed on the shots but we agreed that we would shoot both ideas then see which looked best when edited. Because we were using a soundtrack and voice over we knew that we could vocally direct the actors as we filmed because we wouldnt hear the voices in the final piece. Before we went to film, it was just a case of getting some cool shots to add into the piece to make it more entertaining.

The editing phase was alot harder than filming as we as a group were not as confident as this than at filming. Gregg was the best editor so we tried to get him to teach us a little bit but made him the 'head editor'. The editing As a group we spent alot of time in free's media lessons and even lunchtimes to make the piece perfect. We made it black and white and had to get the balance right for the different shots. I did alot of this because I worked out how to do it at an earlier stage. Gregg cut and pieced together most of the video and Alex and Tom told us what looked good and bad as they had a good eye for seeing mistakes and what looked good. Our whole group worked brilliantly together through the editing stage even though we were't the most confident at it.

We were having real trouble with finding a soundtarck to go on top of the film, in the end we decided on the theme tune to scarface. The song as an Italian speech in it so it fitted with the piece nicely, and it was also the same length as the opening sequence. After such a long and painful process of trying to find one we were thrilled that we found this and that it was so perfect. Fiddling around with the settings we found that you could make some parts louder and some quiter this was helpful as we had voice overs that were drowned out by the music so we made some bits louder and some quiter were appropriate. The voice overs were also a bit of a pain as we had to find someone with a good American accent, we tried alot of people because no-one in our group thought they could do the American accent. But in the end it was Alex (the person in our group who played the character) who had the best accent. The accent needed to be American as the character is American this establishes characterisation.

We posted our video on Fcebook, these are some of the comments we got back:

Danny White- "Thats pretty sweet"
Shaun Bladen- "Love it. The soundtracks awesome"
Jack Travers- "I'd go watch thatat the cinema"
Sam Jones (fellow media student)- "Love the camera angles and effects, looks very proffesional"

We were happy with these comments obviously and knew it was a hit with friends. abaut wanted to see what people who weren't our friends thought. So we published it on ayaouTube, these were the comments we got back:

"This really works, well done guys"
"Not sure on some of the editing, but overall very good. Well done"
"Love the actors!"

We were even more hapy with this feedback as people were telling the truth as they did not know us, this was good for us and boosted our confidence in the piece.