Question 7-Look back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt from it in the progression to the full task?

At first I didn’t think that my filming was too bad before my full task however when looking back at previous footage I had filmed for my preliminary task I realized that I’ve improved a lot. I’ve learnt about shot lengths/types, camera angle and in particular framing. I think the framing has improved significantly from the preliminary to full task as in the full task I was far more conscious of how the people looked and were positioned on the camera and making sure that it looked right.

In this screen shot from our preliminary task we can see that the bottom of the persons feet are cut out and it would have looked better if we had framed it differently to make them more central in the shot.  Where as in the shot below from our main task we can see that the hand is framed centrally in the shot.

I’ve also made progress concerning Final Cut Pro. This is as in my final task I’ve had to do more complicated editing involving changing the contrast and brightness as well as cutting it more accurately to make it flow better.

I think that added to this my imagination has been stretched and my approach to things has developed and changed drastically from before the preliminary task when I felt that we had do everything properly and literally. I have grown to understand film more and have realised how hard it is to film some things even if, at first glance I’d assumed they would be easy to film (like the horse scene). I also realised that there is no need to film everything literally and that film is all about trickery and suspending the audiences’ disbelief. I had worried that if I didn’t film it properly the audience would be able to tell that it wasn’t but by filming the horse scene and asking for feedback I have realised that this is not the case. The audience couldn’t tell that the actors weren’t actually on the horse and thought it looked realistic. They also thought that it is possibly more effective this way as it is slightly mysterious and feels like something is being hidden from the audience, building suspense.
From learning about suspending the audiences belief it has made me more aware of how things might be filmed in ‘real’ films and has made me question more whether it is what we think it is or just trickery.

Initial reaction

When i saw our finished film opening for the first time i was very pleased with it. I was surprised that we had managed to get it all edited in time and it looks like we pulled it off. When we first chose to do a western we had no idea that we had such a big task ahead of us. although we encountered many problems with the horse, weather, actors etc i think what we produced at the end was worth the trouble. I am very pleased with it and hope that all the hard work has paid off, the more i watch it the more little mistakes i see or ways it could be improved however i think I'm just picking at it and hopefully they go unnoticed by others. Though i can see room for improvement i think we did the best we could in the time given and, as it was said in class "a film is never finished only abandoned".

Sound and finishing editing

Today we finished editing our western opening. The company never emailed back to say we couldn't use the piece of music so, as it was from a music for education website and we aren't using it for commercial purposes we assumed that this meant we could use the piece. It took a while to edit all the sound and you can faintly hear a bit of wind in some areas but given the clips we had this was the best we could do. I am relieved that we have now finished.

Title

We had to come up with a title for the western opening. Th only idea that we had originally was 'Stealing' or something along the lines of theft or a chase however we couldnt come up with anything that sounded as though it fitted with a western. We visited a website that had a list of traditional western words and whilst scrolling through them discovered that the western word used instead of 'to steal' is 'annex'. We decided that this well fitted with the theme and narrative of the story as well as the genre (what with it being a western word). Hence this is now the title of our film. We added this and other titles : directed by Nikki Hackshall and Jess Moulsher, Music by ''Dreaming Guitars'' and the actors names. We added these titles as these are ones that featured in the westerns openings that we looked at initially.

Editing

Throughout this week we have been focusing on editing the film opening. The biggest problem we had was sorting out the brightness levels, this is as the shot of over the horses head was filmed at 2pm whereas the shots it was going alongside (of the people 'riding' and the hooves) were filmed at 5pm so they were darker. To rectify this problem we had to change the brightness settings, it took a while to get the right balance and it still looking realistic but we got there eventually. We also had to do this with the shot of the hand picking up the bag, this was harder as the darker we made it the less realistic the hand looked, but we reached a level inbetween that makes it look ok.

Finishing Filming

At the weekend Nikki filmed the last of our shots. It was the view over the horses head that we were going to cut an put with the shots of the people 'riding' the horse and the hooves. We couldn't film the shots of the 'evil men' due to the actors not being free so we had to change our storyboard to get rid of this. This completed all our filming and meant that this week we could focus on editing and sound. 

More Filming

This evening we managed to film more of our footage. We filmed a shot of Jane (the wife) closing a door and one of her and rob (the husband) on peoples shoulders running along to look like they were on horses. I was a bit worried about how this would all work out and one of the people that was meant to carry them pulled out so we had to find someone else at the last minute. However everyone co-operated well and was very helpful. We managed to get it done before it got dark. We had a slight problem in that it was rainy however it was only drizzle and this was solved by holding an umbrella over the camera so no rain got on the screen and by making the ''horses'' run on the path so they didnt slip in the mud. The two people carrying Jane and Rob (the ''horses'') were extreamly willing to help and do whatever we told them. This helped a great deal as they were able to jog along bouncing slightly so it looked like the actors were on a real horse. One of them (the ones carrying them) even made horse noises to ''try and get into his role''. It worked far better than i thought it woiuld, we were not able to get many takes as the ''horses' were getting worn out and the light was fading but i'm fairly confident we got all that we needed to. Here are some photos of us filming:

In action

 Rather wet looking actors and 'horses'

Filming with an umbrella to stop rain getting on the lens.