Another Draft, or 2

This third draft was manly changes that Dom suggested during out tutorial. I went and adapted the sequences to create a better pacing throughout the entire film. As Dom suggested cutting down the beginning as there was a lot of unnecessary shot that although they looked nice meant nothing to the narrative so these got cut down or out entirely. As the editing was done on my Mac the footage, up till this point, was still the footage that I copied of Ed, this meant it wasn't very good quality. So I went through and replaced it with the higher quality footage I had from when we uploaded the initial footage.  

Once we had agree that this new pacing work I went through and colour corrected it making the colours in the sequences more contrasting. I really liked this as all the greens and brown from the trees, grass and leaves look more vibrant. I watched a short film called 'Colour Bleed' by Peter Szewczyk and really like the use of colour and how he has managed to portray emotions through the use of dull, eery settings agains vibrant colours of the girls hair and cloths. As ours has such vibrant colours with the greens and brown the white plastic bag stands out that much more. This is good as we was trying to make a point that a man made plastic bag doesn't fit in with all the natural beauty of the peak district.

This is the last Draft that we have done before we submit it, the only things I change is the titles slightly but other then that this is our finished piece. Both Ed and I are really pleased with how its turned out as wasn't sure whether our storyline would be clear but I think we have managed to portray it in a very understandable manner while still capturing creative and artistic shots with the use of depth of field and rack focus.

Second Draft

As Ed had created a first draft i copied this version and developed it further using Final Cut Pro. The main changes I made were in the sequence at the pub and the ending. During the pub scene I just rearranged the shots in order to make the sequence flow better and show that the character  has been drinking in the pub for a while. While uploading the footage there was a short sequence that didn't upload so I went in on Wednesday and uploaded this footage in order to be able to show the bags floating off together. This then gave us our Second Draft to show Dominic in out tutorial on Friday.

During our tutorial Dominic gave us good feed back about the narrative and that it was very effective. The only criticism is that the opening sequence leading up to the pub scene was slightly to long. He said about thinking about the shoots and whether they were actually important to the narrative rather then just a shot that looks nice. He mentioned about the pace of the piece and that we should try and create three different paces, one for the intro, one at the pub then a third pace towards the end. Also he mentioned about just making a few tweaks to the edit but other then that he liked it. 

First Draft

On Monday 31st Oct Ed and I took the equipment back to stores and while in uni we uses the edit suite to upload and review our footage. looking back at our footage i feel please with what we have and i think we have a lot that we can work with that should hopefully make our narrative clear to the viewers.

After uploading all our footage Ed created a first draft of our finished piece in order to get a sense of what the finished piece would look like. looking at this shows a clear narrative following the plastic bag. i was pleased with this as i was unsure whether the narrative would be clear enough for viewer to follow, but watching the draft indicates that it is.

Ed came up with the title "The Existential life of a Plastic Bag". I thought this goes well as has the meaning behind it as it relates to the reasoning for the existence of a plastic bag and the whole concept that plastic canvas bags are suppose to be better for the environment rather then plastic bags.

Parashoot

Prior to our shoot we have to fill out a Parashoot Risk Assessment regarding all aspects of out shoot. Here is a copy of ours that I filled out before filming:

Further Preparation

When we received our brief we were given an overall schedule for the day. This then meant we were able to create a call sheet. Here is a screen shot of the Call Sheet devised for our production.

During the shoot we stuck to our devised schedule as this meant we had completed the necessary shots to be able to portray out narrative so we then had extra time to gather more GVs and experiment with focus and depth of field.

Heres a scan of the Talent Release for out shot. As I was the only person featured in out film we only needed me to sign one saying that the footage of me can be used without me be able to argue about it.

Preperation for the Shoot

Ed had the main idea and narrative for our film so I'm happy for him to take a more dominant role in the production as I have a better understanding in using Final Cut pro. The only prop we need for our shoot is the plastic bags. These would have to be plain white and then one canvas bag. Ed managed to find a takeaway and got hold of the bags before drew the faces on. Here is an example of one of the bags:

As Ed is away I have booked out and will collect our equipment prior to Thursday morning. We decided on using a Cannon XM2 as i have used one previously at college so was comfortable using this. Ed bringing along his 7DVL1 64 LED light to help us in dark areas such as scenes in the pub, he is also bringing his Cannon DSLR as a backup incase there is problems on shoot when filming in Edale.

Ideas

Last week we got brief about our trip to Edale, in the Peak District. In pairs we have to create a 3 minute silent film that portrays a portrait of a place or person. My pair for this is Ed, to start of with we couldn't think up any initial ideas so investigates Edale as neither of us had been there. we had a quick look at Google Maps and saw that there is very few houses, 2 Pubs and one small local shop. 

during our discussions we were trying to come up with something that would be interesting to watch and be portrayed to the audiences even without the use of sound. we somehow got onto the idea of a rubber duck as this was an usual object to come across in Edale. I then thought about what if we was to show a plastic bag that is floating around in the wind then can use that to move around and follow. We went away and decided that we had to develop this idea further. 

I thought about this idea and thought up a few shot ideas and sketched them out.

For some inspiration i carried out some research by searching online and found a few videos of people filming a bag as it was floating around in the wind. Here is an example :

I really liked the concept of this but think that if we are to use a bag we are going to have to experiment with interesting shots and angles to create a more interesting film to watch. Ed had messaged me on Facebook with a good ideas about developing the idea so it not focused on just a plastic bag.