I recovered the holy relic!!

Ok, enough bizzare game references. My edit is currently being burnt onto a dvd. I sneakily tweaked it a little and did the things I ran out of time to do last week. I may not get graded for it but it'll be great showing it to my family and friends (the documentary I made last year put them all to sleep). I feel so acomplished! I don't even care anymore that Khyan's edit got picked cos I am still awesome!
So final thought time: All things considered, I loved making this film. There was stress, disagreements and dissapointments but we pulled through. I learnt a lot and acomplished a lot and had a good time with everyone. I know this all sounds cheesy but it's true. This is a great first step for my future and I think it'll lead me to great things.
And now the dvd is done and it's so shiny!! It feels like the end of a long hard quest...

And now we all get ice cream

The day has finally come- We finished post production!!
But it's not all good news. I ran out of time to do everything I wanted and am worried that it might be terrible. But that editing book said that you never really finish an edit, there will always be things you want to change. That's the same as writing a novel or doing coursework. You just have to do the best you can in the time you're given.
In the end we picked Khyan's edit for public viewing. I liked his edit a lot but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't dissapointed. It feels as if all my hard work counted for nothing.
But at least I worked hard on something I can still be proud of. And I learnt a lot about film editing and learning is why I came to university. I've been considering becoming an editor so maybe that's why I feel so peeved that my edit wasn't chosen. It wasn't really the edit anyway, it was the music. Khyan has better taste in music than I do.
So apart from the evaluation, nothing left to do but sit back and wait for the grades.

It's all coming together

Being a swot has paid off, the film is looking great! All the problems I've been having are being sorted out one by one. In most cases it's just a simple case of knowing how the final cut tools work. Maybe I should've read a little more about that...
Of course it'll be much more effective with the music, which we should have soon enough. Other than that, I just have to lighten up the shots that are too dark, add a few sound effects and put in an annoying phone voice. Oh and the titles. And I think the final scene rushes past too fast.
Even so, I might just be able to finish this without having a total freak out.

I'm in the publishing lab again, taking a break so my brain doesn't overheat. I've got something that could be called a rough cut done. Right now I'm just watching it over and over again and making adjustments.
There are still a few problems I need help with. Well actually 'a few' is an understatement! I can't get the titles, cropping or swap tool to work and I still need to figure out how to insert just audio over a shot.
Everyone else seems to be having just as many problems as I am. I feel better that it's not just me. Yeah I know that's sadistic...
Edit: Something that occured to me just now- I think what sets this film apart from other student films is thanks to the writer and the actors, the characters are very real and believable and the performances are excellent. I didn't notice until I started editing that Rich does the best facial expressions ever!! This type of thing makes editing so much easier too.

I'm back!

Over Easter I managed to tell all of my relatives about the film and convinced them all to watch it when it's done. I'm very good at blatant advertising.
I also spent my time away reading a book called 'Editing techniques with Final Cut Pro' which has actually caused more problems than it's solved. Now I'm so pressured to edit like a professional that I'm panicking about the film not looking good or that all my edits are wrong.
This is a common problem for me. I need to step back and remember 1. I'm not a professional editor, 2. No one expects a student film to look like a hollywood blockbuster and 3. This is just a rough edit and after Easter I'll have Richard giving me advice.

You know you're in trouble when 10am feels like 5am

Came in to do some more editing. I'm still getting my head around Final cut again but I think I'm doing ok. I even put in a cross dissolve. Go me! (It's not that impressive really). I found that the dialogue scenes seem harder to edit.
I came up with a good idea but then forgot it and by the time I remembered I'd already put the sequence together quite well. So it took me a while to figure out what I should do. In the end I decided 'it looks good, why change it?' I supposed if I'd gone with my apparently brilliant idea the edit might not look as good.
So now I'm going back to my family, who are totally ignorant to what editing is, and will most likely forget how to use final cut once again. That's why I'm going to book plenty of time for the week and a half over Easter when I'll be back here. When that happens, I'll have to bring a script with me because....I sort of forgot how it went...he he...
I'll be back!!

The film is now 100% digitised. Horray! I think either technology doesn't like me or tape decks are just awkward. As soon as they reach the end of the tape and lose the timecode they don't know what to do.
So I started editing and considering it's been almost a year since I edited something using Final cut, it went quite well. I got a whole 40 seconds done!! Woo!!
I've booked some time for friday and I'll soon book some more time over Easter.

Weekend round up

Last weekend was...uh....eventful....
Saturday was definatly not fun. First it was freezing, then it kept hailing on us then it was cold, wet and windy all at once. This is what turned me off a career in science.
Thankfully sunday was much better. The sun was out and we were shooting indoors. It may be painfully unfair but there wasn't much we could do about it. In fact, sunday had to complet opposite effect on me, when we were shooting in Sydney office I felt really hot. Luckily we finished a little early.
Aside from the weather and the parts when we were working, the weekend was fun. We all got on great together and Harry and Chloe brought us lots of snacks and food.
One thing I have learnt from this weekend- Never give your crew Doritos. They are far too addictive...

I can't think of a title

I successfully digitised all the footage from the first tape onto the computer. It was much easier this time since I'd gotten into a routine. I did have a few panic attacks with using the tape deck but managed to solve them after a little fiddling around. Film making is bad for the heart sometimes...
I ran out of time to do the second tape but there's only about 5 minuits of stuff on there so it shouldn't take too long. Other than that, we're all set to go with the editing.
Another busy weekend. *sigh* At least the weather forecast seems to have improved. Although it was pretty grim today.
I'm off to do a weather dance for the sun gods.

Post production begins

I've just spent several hours logging clips from the tape onto final cut. I think it hypnotised me...I got really into the routine after a while. But eventually It got so I was depressed after every clip because I had so much more to do. I've got about two thirds of it so I'll get the rest some time this week. I'd do it all now but I'm afraid of being kicked out.
Also I did an evaluation of what I've done and what I've achieved. I think I've gained something very important- not only experience but confidence. Now I've seen how it's done I think 'hey, I could do that.' If Khyan can do it then I should have no problem! (Just kidding, Khyan's awesome).
Plus I did evaluations on the other two and they were both very good. They were both fantastic, in my opinion. I feel they did way more than I did but that is apparently not true.

Feet hurt = sucess

As expected, I am completely exhausted. But despite everything, I think the shooting went very well. It did take waaaay longer than we expected. Khyan's idea of getting everything in one day seems laughable now.
As the day went on, I got more and more settled into the routine of of setting up and shooting the shot. All of us got on really well together so there were no disagreements or bust ups. There were a few shots that took several takes and some that took a long time to set up or we had to work around to make them work.
But still, just a few weeks ago it was a pipe dream. Now it's all done and it's all there on those little tapes. Everyone I talked to said 'so it's all done now then?' But that's not how film making works. There's still the long, hard process of getting it onto a machine and editing it over and over again until it's perfect. Plus we need to get some music. Oh how endlessly hard life is....
I'm still happy though. It could've gone a lot worse.

The Eve of War

Ok so the equipment is all here and the living room is all set up. My housemates got mad at me for leaving litter everywhere so now I'm hiding in shame.
How do I feel? Well a mix of nerves and excitment. I have no idea what's going to happen. The weekend could be lots of fun or it could be a total disaster. The thing I'm most worried about is that I run out of energy easily and the room is going to get very hot. But I've stocked up on cereal bars and energy drinks. We were advised to film on both days until about 3 or 4 to put less pressure on us. I'm glad about that, my body tends to give up completely at around 4pm.
As is usual for me, I'm worried about not doing a good job. But everyone there will have trained with the Z1 camera so someone will know what to do.
Nothing left to do now but wait and see what happens.
Me, Genie and Khyan all have the feeling that once the shooting weekend is over, we'll be free. But we have no music and there's the editing and we're crewing next weekend. It never ends....

The Final Countdown!!

Sooo, next weekend is the shoot! I like to think we're all ready and well prepared but it rarely works out like that completely so right now I'm living on hope.
I feel bad for Genie and Khyan, they have tonnes of stuff to do and I have next to nothing. I really would share the workload if I could but it's all stuff that really needs to be done by the producer and director. I just need to make sure I'm prepared.
What I have done is make a fake gas bill by scanning in one of our British Gas letters (we don't have any unpaid bills cos we're nerds) and editing it in paint, which was a little difficult. The logo doesn't look that good but it does have 'Outstanding Payment' in big red letters which the eye is drawn to. Just as long as no one actually sees the rest of the letter...I hope it doesn't show up too much on the big screen. Also I put the words 'Number one in customer service' on it, even if not many people notice it, I think it's a nice touch.
Also I got a french dictionary from the library. The only one they had was huge.
Khyan was supposed to come over today and take pictures of the living room for the storyboard and pick up the landlord's letter for the production folder but he never showed up.
On friday we're picking up the equipment, bringing it over here and setting up the living room. It's going to be weird seeing it completely transformed.

Week 4- What, already?!

Only a few short weeks until shooting! It feels like there's so much to do and we'll never get it done in time but we have a good team so I have confidence that we will make it.
I spent about half of today's meeting trying to get my university e-mail fixed so Genie could send me the script. It got through in the end and I've just now used the script to write the step outline and sent it to Khyan for storyboarding. I've also just bought the giant dominoes off e-bay. Now we have to pray that they'll be delievered in time. E-bay isn't exactly the most reliable method of getting props but we can't afford it otherwise.
Genie wrote out a permission letter to send to my landlord as we've decided to use my house for filming. Now I just need to speak to my flat mates and double check that they really are ok with their house being taken over for a whole weekend.
As for casting, today was auditions for the part of Lucy and we have the perfect person. Her performance really was phenomenal and I even laughed when she was yelling and swearing at Khyan (who was reading Tom's part). She captures the small angry woman image perfectly.
But on the down side, I have to break it to my boyfriend that he can't voice act in the film. I should have known better than to tell him about it before.
Memo to self- Learn how to spell dominoes.

Bleugh...

Ok, right now i'm supposed to be meeting the others and discussing script changes but instead I'm at home cluthing a hot water bottle. They said they'd keep me posted but I always feel guilty when something like this happens. I guess I can't really help being ill at the worst possible time and I did at least try. I made it all the way to the bus stop.
I've spoken to my flat mates and they're fine with us filming here so it's not all doom and gloom today. And although I haven't told the others yet (was supposed to today, of course) but I've found a potential voice for the phone operator. My boyfriend wants to be a voice actor and something to start off his portfolio, even this small, would help him a lot. He seems very excited about the idea despite it only being a few lines so now I really hope the others will agree. He lives in Finland so I hope there's no problem with him sending sound files. He's sent some to me before.
Well the pain's starting to go now so I'll do something constructive with my time and work on the step outline.
Oh yeah, in my last post for some reason I said that Genie is the director. She's not, she's the producer. I hope I get it together at some point...

Week 3- Riding into battle

Whew, it's been a hectic few days. And it can only get more hectic from here. But for sanity's sake let's not think about that now.
Last Wednesday I took the Z1 camera training and on Sunday me, Genie and Khyan did a 15 shot exercise which went very well, even if it was very spontanious.
I'll go over today's production meeting based on my very haphazard notes.
We've been put in touch with some potential actors to play Tom and Lucy so we've sent them an e-mail asking them when they are free for an 'audition.' We plan to meet them first individually and then get whoever we choose for Tom and Lucy together so we can see how they interact. But if they're drama students they should be pretty used to acting with others.
Next step was the arrangements for the re-write. Apart from the ending, there's very little that really needs changing (thank you Steve!). Up until now we've been saying 'it would be good if we did this' but we've realised we now need to be more certain about what we're going to do. So this Thursday we'll all be meeting up to discuss script changes.
Everyone in the team now has their official roles. Khyan was selected as director as he showed a lot of potential during the 15 shot exercise. Genie is director since she is more practically minded. So I'm filling the dual roles of director of photography and stage manager (I get the clapper board! Yay!) To be honest, I would have liked to direct but I'm very reserved and don't feel I'm quite ready for it yet. But hopefully some day in the future I'll get a chance to direct something.
There were a few other small things we brought up like where are we going to get a fruits basket and what costumes will we use.
So now we all have tasks to do by next week. Genie is writing up the re-drafted script after the meeting on Thursday, Khyan is doing character profiles and I'm doing a more detailed step outline, based on the basic one I've already written, which will be used for the storyboard.
Ok then, from here it's onwards and upwards and straight to the moon!!

Week 2

Hello and welcome to Jessica's blog for the Making a Film module! Here I'll be recording all that happens during the film making process. The title says week 2 not week 1 because there wasn't that much to write about last week.
The script I'll be working on is called Hold and was written by Steven Sutton. It's a very basic plot about a man, Tom Vale, being put on hold for a long time while trying to pay his gas bill and coming up with stranger and stranger things to entertain himself. I remember talking to Steven about it last semester and he said it's based on an actual incident that happened to him. I think that's what makes the story so great even though it's so simple. It's a situation that almost everyone has been in and the humour and race against time element makes it interesting and hopefully it should be fun to watch too.
Although it seems like an easy film to shoot (one of the reasons I wanted to work on it, but don't tell anyone!) we found a few problems in the first team meeting today.
We seem a little unsure about the ending. In Steven's script Tom makes a long line of dominos that is knocked down when he finally gets through to the operator on the phone. An alternative is the dominos knocking the phone cord out the socket just as he reaches his deadline. The prospect of setting up and filming lines of dominos seems very daunting. Giant Jenga was another idea but we found out it costs about £60. Another option would be giant dominos that are about 10cm tall.
This week all 3 of us will be working on the treatment so by next week it'll be solved.
Also, I should say that there probably won't be any pictures on here for a while because I can't find my camera's usb cable.