Final Post

So here is my absolute final post! It's quite sad to think that this year of media is finally over, I've had so much fun with not just the people in my group but with all of the the girls in the rest of the class too! We've had some good laughs, many involving small insects, singing old chart toppers to get us through the editing stress or just sitting back and watching a film to help us relax. It's starting to feel like we're a large family, of sorts, and it's sad when I realise that not everyone will choose to take media again next year. I want to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to Miss Foster for all of her help and guidance throughout the year, without her offering all of her 'constructive critisism' I don't think we'd be where we are today! As a group we've gone for a very bumpy ride to say the least. However, I don't think I'd change Khadija or Eleanor for the world, even through all of our creative differences we've still managed to come out as close as we were at the beginning of the course, if not closer! 

Question Seven

Question Six

Question Five

Question Four

Question Three

Question Two

Question One

Deadlines

So this is what our deadline countdown looks like now, nobody panic! It's bank holiday Monday tomorrow and I'm going to the beach so fingers crossed it stays sunny. 

We all had a very eventful editing session on Wednesday when a wasp decided to join in all of the fun. Let's just say the majority of the class ran for their lives through the door! Me and Rachael decided to stay and try and waft the wasp back through the tiny media room windows and then we lost it... Everyone came back in and it was all well and good for about ten minutes. I then went home and on my way out heard a huge commotion, so I can only assume the wasp came back to exact its revenge.

Everybody was frantically still writing their evaluations or editing their evaluation videos during Friday lunchtime after our lesson. Hopefully everyone will be done in time! I still have four evaluation videos left to edit so hopefully I'll be okay if I stay after school on Tuesday!

Recording my evaluation videos

I am now recording my evaluation videos. It is becoming very stressful because I have very little charge left on the camera and the memory card has decided it wants to lock itself! I am finding it hard to remember what to say so I have resulted in sticky taping my answers to the tripod!

Evaluation

I have finally finished writing out my answers to the evaluation questions, it took a lot longer than I had anticipated and it involved a lot of trips running down to get feedback from my mum!

These are the questions we were asked:

• In what ways does your film opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• How does your film opening represent particular social groups?

• What kind of media institute might distribute your film opening and why?

• Who would be the audience for your film opening? 

• How did you attract/address your audience? 

• What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this film opening?

• Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your final film opening? 

Final Film

Here is our finished product! As a group we've had many ups and downs over the past year. It was incredibly stressful trying to get our filming and editing schedules sorted but we still managed it, next year we'll spend time organizing everything much further in advance so that no excuses can be made! I am so very proud of what we have achieved and I wouldn't have wanted to go through it all with anyone other than Khadija and Eleanor so hopefully we'll all get onto the A2 course next year! 

Countdowns

So this is what the countdown now looks like, this both worries and excites me. It's hard to think that only a few months ago we were making a preliminary video of me running through the door screaming "I'm going to have a baby", we've all come so far! 

Final Film Outtakes

Luckily I had study time this afternoon so I spent my time watching through all of the footage to find all of the funny bits! It was really hard to choose what bits to add in because I think we had more shots of people laughing and joking than actual footage that we could use! There was a lesson going on while I was editing this so I was trying really hard not to laugh too loud :S. After watching this through a few times I'm starting to feel all nostalgic, I can't believe that this is the end! Now for the music videos next year, I can't wait! 

WE HAVE FINISHED!!!

Background sounds

These are the two different background sounds we have chosen to add to our film opening. Luckily we managed to find the perfect music! We have aquired permission from the owners of the sound (refer to screenshots)

Vlog

Vlog

Vlog

Outdoor scene draft

This is some of the footage from our outdoor scene, Khadija has edited it to save us some time. On Wednesday's lesson we just need to tweak the footage to make sure we're using the best parts of the filming session, cut the edited outdoor footage down so that we can put it with our indoor scene (40 seconds) so that it isn't too long! Oh, we also need to get the sound organised. I'm really pleased with this footage, even if I do look a bit gormless in most of it. It's such a relief to have finally managed to get it together. Commence stress of trying to film the actual title of the opening...

Stress Over!

Photos from the filming!

Clark, the first to be attacked by Khadija

From the left: Bradley, Ryan, Toby, me, Emily, Tara, Elena, Clark and Katherine 

Destroying the dress (I was crying inside!)

Tara looking delightful...

Clark's wounds :S

Bradley and Tara with their battle wounds

Ryan and Tara

Khadija's proud 'slit throat' on Clark

Finally on location!

Vlog on the filming of the outdoor scene

This is me when Elena and Khadija decide to fight over the camera angles...

Filming tomorrow

We've FINALLY organised everything for shooting the scene in the woods. We now have eleven of my friends that are willing to get slathered in liquid latex, bruise pallet and all sorts. We're all going to head over to Forty Hall dressed like dead people, hopefully we won't get carted off to a mad house... We are no longer using Elena's aunts house because Elena might not have been able to make it tomorrow so we thought it would just be easier to walk over to Forty Hall where there are loads of empty forests. I had a little adventure today walking up to the fancy dress shop, let's just say trekking up the hill made me feel as though I was climbing Mount Everest or something... I then had an intense conversation with the shop keeper, trying to find the right make up products *sigh*. I only ended up getting fake blood because the scar wax was £10.75 for a tiny little pot, how ridiculous! Anyway I'm going to stop rambling now, hopefully we'll have some vlogs and photos up tomorrow! 

What we are doing today...

Today we have decided to make the signs for out titles, we are covered in tea!

Weekend footage

So here's the footage we've decided to use from the weekend, overall we are very pleased with the outcome! We have decided to use different titles but we added the production company name anyway, I'm not really sure why :S

Quick update!

Here's a few quick updates on everything we've done and things that are in the process of being sorted out:

The filming:

• We've managed to get a list of people that are willing to get attacked by Elena's make up, heaven's knows why or how they are okay with this. Elena STILL needs to ring her aunt to make sure her house/field is okay to use this weekend, if it isn't there will be hyperventilating and tears involved, mostly on my part. 

The editing:

• We edited the footage from last weekend during our lunchtime today and we're finally satisfied with the outcome. Last time we shot the footage indoors quite a lot of it was shaky and we weren't very happy using it. We've decided to start the whispering sounds when the camera zooms in on my eyes because we feel it is as though you are really starting to feel what the character is experiencing.

The sound:

• It's all becoming very exciting! Not that it wasn't before... It was. Khadija is heading off to her youth centre again tonight to re-edit our sound. She's going to hopefully create something amazing with the whispering sound by adding wind noises quietly in the background. I'm very excited to hear it all later tonight! She also says that there are a few musicians at the centre that may be able to make some sort of eerie piano-y type sounds for the title sequence/beginning of the film opening because we don't think the whispering sounds very good when it starts straight away.

Titles:

• Being quite a creative group we weren't totally satisfied with the dull and boring title options on iMovie, so we wanted to come up with something a bit different and more interesting to look at. After much deliberating about our titles I finally came up with a good idea, well it sounds good in my head anyway... I thought that it would look quite cool to draw up our titles on pieces of paper that we will have sponged with teabags/partially set fire to, then pin them up on random trees during our outdoor scene filming this weekend. 

We've still got so much to do and I'm trying not to panic. To my great horror I went on our media fronter page to see that Miss Foster had decided to put up a MASSIVE countdown for our film deadline (see picture). I am not sure that I'm okay with this guys..

Just to be clear that this countdown is. To. The. Second.

This was my reaction

Ringing

We're also thinking of layering this into certain parts of our sound because if our character is hearing this noise we think it's a bit more believable that she's going a bit mad. We don't want to add it to the whole of the film opening because it's really annoying and I'm pretty sure no one would want to watch our opening!

Spooky wind

We're thinking about layering some of these sounds onto the people whispering because we thought it would give our sounds a bit more of a sinister feel.

Photos from yesterday's escapade

The field!

 

Back prancing around in the dress!

Another view of the field where we'll hopefully be shooting our outdoor scene

Elena and Khadija doing what they do best

Khadija being all technical and such

Update Vlog

You would not believe the hassle I go through to record a solo blog! 

My makeshift tripod...

Can't do a vlog without my trusty post-it note reminders

WOW REVELATION

PRAISE THE LORD. I have finally worked out how to add an introduction to my blog. I am so happy right now I do not think there are words to describe it! I'm not usually this technologically challenged either so.. I think I deserve a trophy or a medal or something though, or at least something equivalent in status to the Nobel peace prize, maybe the Nobel technology award, that should exist. Okay I'll stop now....

Vlog

This is mine and Khadija's update vlog about our filming session last weekend!

Sound!

So last week Khadija, Elena and I ran around the school, like crazy mad women, trying to find people that spoke different languages. Luckily for us we go to a language school so it wasn't too hard! We managed to get a wide range of languages from Croatian to Swahili or whatever language it is that Khadija speaks :S. Khadija, being the goddess she is, took all of the individual sound clips to the studio at her youth centre and merged them all together adding creepy echoes and all sorts of fancy stuff like that. We asked everyone to whisper the phrase "they're in the woods" or "they're coming for you" in whichever language they spoke.We thought that this would be a good idea because we don't want people to understand what the voices are saying until the voice at the end whispers "they're in the woods" in English. This part will hopefully be at the very end of the film opening! However, I don't think woods exist where Khadija is from so she said "they're in the jungle" or something along the lines of that, fingers crossed none of the examiners speak Swahili... 

Photos from our filming at the weekend

The table of goodies

The mirror

Discussing Khadija's camera skills

Me being all bride-like and Khadija doing her thing

Me looking cool in the wedding dress...

Khadija getting angry :S

Me getting angry back :S 

The face time conversation we had to have so that Khadija could direct us from outside!