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.

Editing

Today we continued to edit in class. We have now added some titles but still need to think of a name. we still havent heard back about the music. I am now more confident that we will get it all completed for the deadline-the other day i was a bit worried as we didnt have enough film but now that we have filmed more (especially the pan) it is longer and i think it is all coming together well.