Keeping Up To Date

Time is against us while were making “There’s Something Up With Jack”, by the end of this week we will need to be ready to shoot, were finishing off the rest of Pre-Production this week and shooting next week then working on Post-Production the week after. So we are working pretty hard to get the film done, but I don’t mind because I love being mad busy and I have complete confidence that we will get it done on time and it will be fantastic. We are all really happy with the script and all the Pre-Production work so far and we all cant wait to sit down and watch the finished film. 

I also have to edit a feature film into four mins for Post-Production, I’m looking forward to getting started but I’m struggling to find a movie that I could sum up in four mins. I’m thinking of doing something like Transformers but I don’t think that would be much of a challenge to be honest but maybe I will surprise myself. I think that this could be an interesting exercise in editing and I think that once I start to edit I will surprise myself as to how much really docent need to be there and how much is “Filler” for lack of a better phrase. 

Poker Face

In Post-Production we were asked to create a short 1 min chase scene and shoot it entirely on an iPhone. We did it and I found it very interesting how quickly it took us to shoot in comparison to the See Green film. We shot See Green on industry standard camera equipment so it took us all day to shoot one short sequence, where as we shot this entire scene in about an hour and a half because we could move around freely. Thats why the industry is constantly trying to make equipment smaller so you can shoot things quickly and at a decent quality. I still think that on the technology side of things it still has a long way to go because if you look at this film the light is off in a couple of the slow motion shots, I’m sure if we had more time we probably could have fixed it but I think that soon enough they will release cameras in iPhones that will be able to shoot at such a higher resolution as 2K or even 4K eventually, its just a matter of time. Its interesting to think that this short film witch is shot on a modern day iPhone is shot on a better camera than say The Godfather or The Dark Knight Rises or any other classic movie, so in say 10 years will we have better cameras in our pocket than they shot Avatar or The Hobbit movies on? We just got back from our lecture where we watched each others shorts and I’m quite happy with the way this came out, it was quite well received by our tutor or the rest of the class. They asked us what we felt was wrong with it and I said my opinion of the light and they agreed. They also commented on our choice of the music (Bring Me The Horizon – The Sadness Never Ends Skrillex remix) and said it was very well cut with the chase and our shot variety was very well done. So overall I’m very happy with the way this came out and I’m looking forward to making more short films like this in the future.

See Green Film

https://vimeo.com/87892306

At long last our See Green film is completed, it was finished on thursday and handed in on Friday. I have to say that myself and the other guys in the group are rather proud of it and are all looking forward to showing it to the rest of the class and seeing there work.

But for now there isn’t much else to say other than we hope you enjoy the film.

Where were upto

I haven’t posted anything on here for a while, but that’s because we have been hard at work finishing our see green film. Its due tomorrow at midnight and I can say that I’m very happy with the way its turned out. We went back and re shot allot of footage that we felt didn’t 100% work and it looks allot better in terms of lighting and composition. We have also added a very effective and funny voice over which I think brings another layer to the film whilst also making it more enjoyable. At the moment we are just having a blast putting final touches on the film and are really looking forward to everyone watching it in March and seeing everyone else’s work.

We have also began pre-production on our next film, which is going to be very dark and disturbing. We finished writing recently and are all very happy with the script, we are doing the occasional re-write here and there with a few lines but nothing major left to do. However we are hard at work location scouting and the casting process begins next week with casting calls gone out today. This project will be finished at the end of march so as you can imagine it is quite hectic getting everything done in time but I’m fairly confident that we will as there aren’t that many locations or anything to complicated. We will begin shooting over the next few weeks and if we are on schedule we will finish in a couple of days leaving us with more than enough time for post-production. 

This project was something I wrote a while ago but put it aside as I thought I could use it for my coarse and when they said we could make any film we want to I told my fiends about an idea I had and they all loved it, thinking it was dark enough that it would make an excellent film. Unfortunately there is no way I can tell you the plot with out giving away too much so closer to the time I will tell you but the working title is “There’s something up with Jack”, so make of that what you will. 

But for now, I’m going to post on here more often, the next time I post it will be sharing the “See Green” film so I look forward to that and I will post right through the making of “There’s something up with Jack” which is a project I feel really passionate about and I’m hoping will make an excellent short film.   

The best films of 2013

Back To Work

I’m not back at uni yet but over christmas I have constantly been thinking about our “See Green” (working title) project and the amount of work that needs to be done to it when we get back. So today for the first time over the holidays I sat down and re-watched the “See Green” film in a very rough form. The film currently hasn’t had a sound mix yet and that is one of the first things that we are going to work on when we get back. But I felt like I should get a head start so I have been working on mixing together some royalty free music that I found on the internet for the soundtrack. 

Making this soundtrack is one of the hardest soundtracks I have had to make, because say for example a horror film as a distinctive sound to it. So you would know what to expect from a horror film soundtrack, or a comedy, or even a war film. An informative documentary about energy saving on the other hand is a completely different matter. It is interesting because I was playing the film through on one file then on another I was playing a piece of music to see if it fits, whats weird is you forget how much of an impact the soundtrack has to a film. I tried some happy music and the film felt a bit camp, I tried some darker doubstep music and it took away from the film and felt really distracting. It is quite a challenge but we still have quite allot of time before the film is due to be handed in to be assessed, so fingers crossed we will have it figured out by then, I am fairly confident I am going into the right direction. 

I am looking forward to posting the finished product online and seeing what the public thinks about it, what other students think about it and most importantly, what the moderators think about it. No only joking, to be honest I would rather make a film that I felt was brilliant and was really proud of, than get good marks for it, to me its the same as a professional film-maker making a film that he loves but isn’t financially successful, to a real film-maker money doesn’t matter and they are only in it to make the films they want to make, but to be fair most professional film makers have had allot of success so they get the best of both worlds. Anyway signing out for now I will be getting back into posting twice a week now, may review some movies and give more updates on the making of “See Green”

Thanks 

Sean

Our Preview Screening

Today we screened a very rough cut of our See Green film project to our lecturers and the rest of our class. I understand why they would want to see a rough cut of our film, to make sure that we are on top of everything and we are going in the right direction.
Firstly to a certain extent this helped us, they told us a few things that we forgotten to add into the movie so we are going to add that stuff in. I’m glad that happened because we would have been marked down on it and its something very minor. But you will see that when its finished.
Attached is the video that we shown to the class, firstly might I say please ignore the audio, its a very early cut of the movie and we still need to do an audio mix. Secondly, we only got this task a couple of months ago, our film is only about 50% done because there is still stuff which needs to be filmed let alone edited.
Thirdly, I felt the whole time that our film was being assessed and they where judging us quite harshly on things that still need to be fixed. The thing is that we know that they need to be fixed, the film is in Post-Production and this is a very rough edit thrown together in time for the screening. We thought that they would understand because it is a rough edit and not everything is going to be finished for this screening. So don’t criticise/review our project when its unfinished, you wouldn’t read half an essay and then fail them because there is stuff they haven’t included, they will get to that point later.
Fourthly, did the whole class really need to be there. I thought that our film wouldn’t be shown to the whole class until the end of the project, that would have been a nice way to relax and watch/discuss the films that we have made. All that we are going to do is make our films like each others now and not stick to our original vision. This is through no fault of our own and if you look at the attached video (bearing in mind, thats just a segment there is still some footage missing/footage that needs to be changed because we are going into pickups in January) our film still has a long way to go, but I’m going to try my best to stick to our original vision and not make my film like every other video that the class is making. I get the vibe that thats what they wanted us to do, just make the same film over and over. Our film is different and I intend to keep it that way whilst also sticking to the criteria that has been set.

I hope that the attached footage makes you excited to see the final cut of the film.

UFO Conspiracy Theory

This is a video that me and my friend Christopher Taylor edited as a part of our corse. We needed to make a video that was between 3 mins and 5 mins long and couldn’t film anything. The idea was that we make a video convincing people of different conspiracy theories and we could only use existing footage. We decided to focus ours on UFO sightings in the UK because we got ourselves watching a bunch of YouTube clips and where fascinated by the subject. I think it came out really well and we are both quite proud of it.

The Lives Of Others

Today we sat in the TV studio and watched the critically acclaimed movie The Lives Of Others. I have heard both good and bad things about this film for a very long time and I have wanted to check it out prity much since the films theatrical release.  

The reason we watched this film in uni is because of the sound. The lecturers said that the sound is really noteworthy but to be honest I have no idea what all the fuss is about. It didn’t grab my attention or inspire me like other films have and like I expected it to. To be honest I thought that if they wanted to show us a film with a decent sound mix there are plenty of Japanese films that have a way better sound mix than this one. 

I consider myself an open minded person but I thought this film was prity dull and tedious to be honest, but maybe in a few years I will go back and give it a second viewing because that’s the case with some films. 

Filming

This weekend we went over to Tom Davenports house to film scenes for our untitled energy saving film. We where all supposed to be up for 8:00 and in the car park ready to leave for 8:30. However our team leader was late so this put us immediately behind schedule. We didn’t end up leaving until 10:00 and didn’t arrive at the set until 11:30. As you can guess this put us far behind schedule but we worked around the clock filming in order to stay on-top of what we where filming. I feel that we did ok given the circumstances, we still have a cupple of shots left to get in Toms house which we are going to get later on in the week. 

Today we are filming in the Student Union bar. I’m looking forward to this because its a wide open space that we have thought of some interesting things visually that we can get in the bar.