Finishing Our Print Preliminary

Once we decided which pictures we want to use, we had to upload them onto Photoshop. We could then adjust various aspects of each picture, such as the contast, brightness, and size. Once we had edited the picture to look how we wanted, we could then also use a tool to outline the outside of our picture, leaving no background colour - perfect to put as the background of our magazine. Now the picture was complete, we had to start adding text. We decided on the name 'Chic', the price of a £1, and what special feature articles we would advertise. We chose the colour scheme of blue, purple and black as we thought they suited well and would appeal to women, and also chose easy to read modern fonts to appeal to the target audience.
We continued these colours onto the contents page to show continuity and also used another girl to model, so then we had more variety.

Print Preliminary

To start our magazine cover and contents, we had to figure out the main features of what makes a successfull magazine. We analysed different magazines and then planned our front page and our contents page, using inspiration from other mags to help us do this. Then we had to go find a model, someone to be the face of our magazine. Once we had collected a wide range of different angled/different posed shots we could then upload them onto a PC to decide and short list our favorites.

Film Prelim Evaluation

For my preliminary i worked with Katie, Kam, Tommy and Rob. Kam took the role of camera man, Tommy figured out the dialogue and helped Kam, Rob starred as the man, Katie as the woman, and I helped organise the shots and drew the storyboard. To plan our short peice we drew up a storyboard with our ideas, we made sure our peice would meet all the criteria and all came up with the idea of a scary peice. We used the video recorders and the Macs to finish our films, the Mac allowed us to cut our footage and to rearrange different shots. When shooting we had to make sure that there was no background noise, being in a large school this was diffult, and needed to make sure the lighting in the room was how we wanted it to be. The film conventions we have followed is using background music, using the 180 degree rule, match on action (with the door scene) and used a variety of lots of different camera angles. Before filming we had to make sure everyone was in place, we made sure the lighting was dimmed to make a scary atmosphere, that we had the right props to make Katie looked like she was tied to the chair, and used costume on Rob to make sure he looked intimidating and like a clear 'baddy'.
We can apply Barthes's codes as we have the action code of Rob looking scary about to open the door, and als0 we have an enigma code as we see Katie tied up and wonder why she is in this situaton.
I feel our video went well as we have achieved a quite good film that is interesting. Some things i would change are the fact our clips are a bit jumpy and didnt flow, to fix this i would of filmed more of each scene in one clip, rather than lots of little clips. Also, i feel our dialogue wasnt very clear so i would make sure the camera was closer to the characters so that we could hear what they were saying more easily. I felt out props and costume worked really well as it was obvious that Katie was in a awkward situation and that Rob was the badguy.
Producing a short peice of film was a lot harder than what i thought it would be, as i didnt realise how much i would have to take into consideration. Also, by working in such a large group, we had a lot of clashing of ideas as people wanted things doing their way - leading to disagreements. Im pretty sure at this point that i would like to do a Film as my coursework, but i would want to work in a smaller group so i could use more of my ideas and get more involved in the filming.

Filming/Editing our first short film

When filming our first short film, we had to take a lot of things into concideration. Firstly, lighting, setting and props. We made sure we had a quite dark room to film our peice in to make an eery environment, and also made sure Rob was dressed intimidatingly in a hoodie and balaclava. Once these were all in place, we could start filming. We did each shot 2/3 times to make sure when it came round to editing our peice, we had a variety of shots to chose from, just incase some of them didnt turn out how expected. Also, we made sure we followed our story board, therefore helping us know exactly what we wanted to do for each shot, meaning we could get the job done quicker. Once we had completed all our filming, we went onto the Mac iMovie program to edit.

Once we had uploaded our movie onto iMovie, we went through all our footage and picked the best clips. We then deleted the unwanted excess. After that, we made sure all our footage flowed properly, so that the story followed on and to make sure we had included all the criteria.

In my opinion, i feel our first short film went ok. Some possitives were our planning, we knew exactly what we wanted to do before we set out, therefore we had no arguments or disagreements on what we were going to film. Futhermore, we made sure we followed the criteria, making sure we had included the necessary camera shots etc.
Some negatives were the way our film flowed. I feel it's a little jumpy and maybe we should of filmed some of the segments all at once, rather in lots of seperate takes. I feel like this would make our film flow better. Also, we ran out of time in editing, so it was a shame we couldn't add music to it, to add drama and more pace to our movie.
Overall im happy with our peice, as we have met up to the criteria and thought up a good interesting storyline.