Another Outside Location

As the school is closed on Thursday due to an insect day we
decided in the time our lesson would be to get some more filming done. We had
originally planned to film in Fanham’s hall as this is where Paige works and it
has extremely pretty grounds although this wasn’t possible as they didn’t get
back to her giving us permission. As our schedule is tight and we couldn’t afford
to miss this filming session we decided to re-locate to another location so we were
able to replace some of our Hanbury Manor shots. Therefore we decided to film in the grounds
of Hertford Castle as this isn’t private land and has pretty grounds. We used a bridge which we believe fitted in
with our mise-en-scene, we also used and old building which had an outside
doorway which we believe would produce interesting framing.

New Production Schedule

We have refined our production schedule to make the most out
of the time we have left to complete our production. It includes the rest of the
filming and editing, we have left a little extra time to at the end of our schedule
in case we haven’t realised we need an extra shot or a different angle so we
have time to do this.

First Cut - Feedback

We were able to show the first cut of our
production in Tuesday lesson allowing us to be given feedback from our teacher
and other students in our class. This was extremely useful as not only did it
inform us what bits were bad but also how to improve it and even some new idea which
we haven’t thought of before.
On our first shot of Paige, the shot the camera isn’t
steady which is noticeable therefore this will need to be re-filmed in order to
improve, also the mask flutters and isn’t as accurate as we hoped it would be
so we will need to alter the mask we use in order to make it more precise.
Our shots in Hanbury Manor which is one of our
outside locations aren’t very strong as the framing and background of the shots
is not very interesting. To stay in control of our shots in future we will need
to use “Manual Zoom” this is especially important when we zoom in on Millie’s
eye and then zoom out on Maya’s.
Relating to appropriate material our teacher said
that our three shots at Hanbury Manor were “Nice but unexciting” therefore we
are planning to re-film these in another location to make it more exciting. Our
teacher also said we had a good idea with the “shoe shot” but we needed to make
it more convincing therefore we are planning o re-film this using bigger shoes
so you can clearly see the difference in Millie and Maya’s feet.
When thinking about our mise-en-scene we have made
a decision to re-film all the shots of the masks as we believe the transitions between
them are not clean cut enough as different people are holding the mask in
different ways meaning the transition is as precise as we hoped. Therefore we
are planning to put the mask on a stick so everyone’s hands are out which we believe
will make it look smoother.
In the shot of Maya reading we have decided that we
are going to make her read a fashion magazine so this helps to create right
mise-en-scene fitting in with the song, as she is self-conscious about her
looks. We were also given another idea by one of the students in our class to
behind one of our green screen shots a montage of images from different magazines
or make one of us look like the front cover of a magazine.
We were also told that we had editing for meaning well
in relation to the dissolve used between Millie and Maya.
For our variation in overall shot transistions,
caption and other FX: We were told that there was a problem with the green scene
which we had already realised when we came to edit it as there was shadow
behind us. We are also going to try and use a different effect for our second
crowd scene in our chorus to make it more varied and less repetitive.
After receiving all the feedback from our class and
teacher we have decided to improve on the following aspects of our production:
1.
Re-film green screen
2.
Re-film masks
3.
Re-film the shoe shot
4.
Film more shots of Millie and Maya so
the background story is carried on throughout the production
5.
Re-film outside locations in a
different location

Week beginning 31st

The deadline for the first draft of our production was on Tuesday however we didn’t manage to meet this deadline so we were allowed another week due to the fact that when we went to film in one of our outside locations it was almost dark by the time we had set up!
We knew when we finally manage to show our production to the class we will received advice on to how to improve our production, for example what bits were working well and what bits weren’t, in relation to the lighting, framing and if the shot portrayed the right mise en scene. Although the only slight problem with this is the students in our class and our teacher were not our target audience, as our target audience is young adult females. Although It still will be beneficial to hear what they have to say.
On Thursday we managed to meet up and film the rest of our outside locations in Hanbury Manor, we believe the location was extremely pretty and helped to portray the right mise en scene. On Friday me and Millie met up after school to edit what we had filmed to finish our first draft.

A disastrous half-term

During half term Millie went to New York and didn’t come back
until the Thursday so we had planned to film towards the end of this week,
although we couldn’t find a time when we were all free so it ended up that we
had to film on Monday. We met up after school and decided to go to one of our
outside locations but we hadn’t thought it would get dark as quickly as it did
therefore we managed to film a few shots but there wasn’t enough lighting to continue
filming.