EDITING SO FAR

Last week, we uploaded all our footage onto an iMac and onto its programme iMovie Hd to start this editing business. We proceeded to edit out all bleeps and bloops and were able to roughly finish the continuity process of each scenario we have done so far, all they need now is any effects they may require.



Upon watching the footage of Julia, we realised it is not as good as we thought it was: the lighting appears to be dark (in the footage shot from the camera that was mainly stationary, she is just seen as a dark figure and her face is not visible) so we will try to brighten up the visuals through the editing programme. There's a strong chance it will look unnatural like that though, but we could try adding lenses flares and spotlights which would be more in the style of a music video. If we are unsuccessful we will have to re-film this sequence.

Another potential problem which raises eyebrows is that the cigarette scenario simply does not fit with the flow of the other two scenarios. The phone mugging and bike stealing scenes are somewhat fast and furious, whereas the cigarette scene is kind of slow and spaced out. Also that scene looks quite strange; it looks rather dodgy the way my character just walks on and sits down to watch the kid playing football (why would he do that?) and when the kid is forced to get down (to pick up the cigarette) it can be easily misinterpreted. We'll see if we can speed anything up. However, the scene does contain an interesting shot from the football's POV as it is kicked around. Also, we have added effects to the cigarrete to make it look alight.



There is still a fair bit of filming to do: the rapping scene with the policeman, the scenario involving the pregnant woman, the characters meeting up at the beginning and taking off their masks at the end, us leaving our 'homes' (so far only done this with one) and the post-modern reference to Taxi Driver. I was supposed to film the mirror scene during half-term with my friend Joe; because we have still not done the pregnant woman scene and he remains the character we have not filmed yet, this by default makes him the person in the post-modern reference scene. However he was really late and by the time he arrived at my house it was about 6pm and too dark outside to fit with the narrative's continuity, which annoyed me a bit as he also went away the days after as we are in the half-term holiday.

So far, the length of footage of the three scenarios on the iMacs add up to 3:07 minutes. The song is 4:30ish minutes long so we don't have much time left which is inconvenient as there is loads more to add, including Julia's footage. We have thought about overlaying Julia onto the narrative scenes, that way we can save us some running time as well as still include her 'singing' and it would look kind of stylish anyway. We will see how our running time problem goes as we add more footage. Pablo out!

CIGARETTE-JABBING SCENE

On Tuesday morning we filmed the scene in which one of the characters jabs a kid in the eye with a cigarette with me as the offender. We used a friend as the younger boy who is kicking a football against the wall where I come to sit down whilst smoking. Unfortunately, we then ran out of battery; this is strange because I had the camera charging all night so I can only assume the socket I used was faulty. Anyway, we were thankfully able to swap it with one of the school's batteries (which was full) so we carried on filming. I am then hit by the ball which knocks the cigarette out of my hand. The boy comes over for the ball and I order him to pick up the cigarette with which I then 'jab his eye' with.



For the jabbing, we filmed a couple of shots/angles of me holding the unlighted cigarette an inch away from his eye - for these the cigarette will appear to be alight and his eye burned after editing effects. We then filmed another couple of shots of me actually jabbing him in the nose but from behind and the side so that it looks like its in the eye. We will edit the angles together later on to make it look as realistic as possible.

AIDEN STEALS A BIKE

Hola mi gente!!

So on Friday we filmed Aiden's scenario: him stealing a bike off Ali. Thankfully, this time we found a nice young lad willing to lend us his bike. We filmed by the school: in the road behind it, and the road opposite the local newsagent. We got some shots of Aiden walking and kicking a dustbin. We then filmed him seeing Ali on a bike, jumping in his way, throwing him off, kicking him, and then taking the bike as his own. All this with different shots/angles including a POV shot from Ali riding up on the bike.



To our mild surprise, a real policeman came along towards the end of filming to tell us someone had reported us because they found Aiden intimidating and asked us if the mask was really necessary. We said it was and he walked off, it seems he did not mind at all once he realized we were filming for an A2 project. Anyway this incident can be taken as positive feedback that the use of masks is successful in giving an intimidating look.

FILMING THE SINGING PART

So on Thursday at the end of the day we stayed in 6th form to film our friend Julia singing/miming the verses sung by Beverley Knight in the song. We did this in the photography room, where we cleared the tables and had Julia stand in front of and on some white canvas type of thing so that everything around her was plain white. This way we can add effects to the background during editing with Ali's programmes.

We placed one camera on a tripod directly in front of her which we never moved, then we used another for close-ups and different angles. We only had about 30 minutes because we were ushered out of the building by the receptionists (they were leaving themselves). I don't actually think this was long enough as it took a while for Julia to get confident and move around. We actually sang along with her and danced behind the cameras to encourage her. We were very grateful for her co-operation. I think we did good enough though, we have loads of footage of each verse so we should have a good selection of what to keep in during editing.

DAY 3 OF PRODUCTION

Today we were finally able to film some actual people. Albeit not much. We filmed a couple of shots of our actor Francis (as one of the criminals) leaving a house (his in the video, a random one in real life which we were able to use). We then looked to film the bike-stealing scene but we asked about eight people or so from our 6th form and they all said that they could not be bothered to take out their bikes. How dare they those uncooperative pigs.



So we did the scene which was originally the criminal jabbing a cigarette into the eye of a kid who runs into him playing football. We got a ball, but couldn't find our actor so we went around looking for short boys in our 6th form with kiddy faces (mostly year 12's) to ask if they wanted to play the part but most refused either because they were camera shy (gah!) or busy with work or just unpleasant human beings.

Our actor Pete turned up but he was wearing a suit (as it was national suit day for some reason and loads of people were wearing suits) so we decided to change the scenario that instead of him being a kid, he's some kind of businessman who gets his phone mugged. We filmed him walking and talking on his phone and Francis attacking him and taking the phone off him. I think the whole thing with the suit worked nicely as it gives a nice commentary on the innocent successful man being attacked by the inferior criminal who is in turn doing nothing good for his life.

SHOOTING SCHEDULE

Okay here is our shooting schedule. It's the third we've done I think, as the other two included dates for filming which never ocurred for reasons I stated earlier.

FIRST DAY OF FILMING. AYYY

So on Monday we did our first bit of filming! It was hardly anything but it was a start. As the masks had not yet arrived, we decided we might as well go see what we could film without them. We considered filming the bike scene showing our actor as the criminal from behind only (then during editing we'd mix the scene up with close-ups of Aiden once the masks had arrived) but when we finally got someone to bring out their bike, we realised we didn't have any tapes on us for the camera.

We solved this problem by going to Asda to buy some (they only let us buy a packet of 5 so we had to spend a tenner gah!) but then we had no bike. So we decided to go film the establishing shots we'd use for the start of the city. We went to this hill where the was a view of some houses and the river; while it wasn't a city skyline like we had imagined, I think it is good enough. When passing the church by our 6th form, we decided to film a couple of shots of it as we could insert them at some point during the video to contrast with the guidelines that the four criminals are living by and perhaps symbolise their 'cleansing of wrong-doings'.