LF:Evaluattion 6

I have found the blog an extremely good way of working collaboratively to feed of each others ideas through our work. We decided that we would comment and use each others ideas in our work to put our own personal touch on the opening. For instance after technically deconstructing numerous film openings we came together and discussed the particular shots we liked and made sure we used them in our opening as we felt they could gain us the top marks. Furthermore it also gave us the opportunity to constructively criticize other members of our groups work and try to improve the standard of work the group produced.

Filming

• From the very beginning of our project we agreed to stick to the boxing film theme as we believed we had a great location to film in, however we still carried out a location recce to the boxing gym.

here is a picture of the boxing gym

What we gained from the recce

• a basic picture of what our final product would look like.
• we took numerous still images in black and white to help us to storyboard our final piece.
• One of the main things we gathered from carrying out the recce was the dilemma of the mirrors. However we overcome these problems by using them to out advantage as seen in the funeral scene and the changing room scene.
• Carried out a risk assessment on the boxing gym to ensure it was safe to film in.
• Trailed specific shots such as POV and shooting through the ropes.

• The equipment we decided to use for our opening was a 1080p HD digital camcorder and a tripod which allowed us to gain smooth panning shots in the running scene.

•  However we also used a lot of handy cam shots especially when filming the POV shot and the pads scene during the montage training. James showed good filming ability to allow the audience to feel engaged in the action. We decided that I was going to be the main character in the film because I have completed some boxing training before, however we wanted to film more footage than we were eventually going to use. We wanted to avoid the risk of not having enough footage however this worked to our advantage because we could pick the best shots and unusual angles to use in our final opening.

Editing

• I found editing one of the most enjoyable parts of making the opening as you begin to see all your work coming together. We used software called Premier to edit our footage and after a couple of lessons learning how to use all the certain techniques we learned how to use the programme effectively. After careful storyboarding our opening it allowed us to have basic picture of what our footage would look like when it came together however we did change the story board around slightly when we put it all together.

• Firstly we put all of our footage on the time line in the order we wanted it to be in the started to reduce the length of all the shots we had because a large number of them were far too long. After reducing the length of the footage to create the montage effect we had to cut and manoeuvre the parts of footage and make sure the clips flowed in time with the voiceover. 

• The final pieces of editing were the finer tuned aspects of making the film such as allowing the gold to filter in through the title at the end of the film. I believe this is a really effective touch we created. 

• Furthermore we also used a white wash when the main protagonist walked though the door of the changing room.

• One of the best effects I fell we used was the time stretch tool of the main protagonist in the changing room; I feel it really slowed the action down and allowed the audience to concentrate on the voiceover. This was closely followed by the POV shot of the fight scene; we added a blurry effect simulating what it is like having a bout. We gained inspiration to use this effect in the film Cinderella man.

Exporting

• We exported the footage through Adobe premier elements, then uploaded the footage to YouTube, from YouTube we were able to embed the clip and put it on the blog.

Production Process

• We believe that the way we produced our film is similar to that of a real film production however on a much less glamorous scale. We believe we put more than enough research to understand the conventions of films in our genre therefore we could follow in the footsteps of the iconic films such as Rocky to create a fantastic film opening. 
• We carried out a substantial amount of audience research in order to connect with a certain audience and to understand what they are looking for. We also had to edit our footage, a technique in which all film producers need to use.
• The soundtrack we used throughout our production was a copyright free piece of music ‘upilifting strings’ that we were given by our school. We also searched deeply on the website http://www.freesound.org/ however we did not find anything we liked.

• However there are obviously aspects of our film production that are not quite the same as major Hollywood films similar to our. For instance the location, equipment, and major actors were not available for us to use. However it was the first time we ever made a film opening and I feel we were successful.