Voiceover

During the final week of editing we realised a few of our shots were lacking neccesary audio to anchor our storyline. To get around this we decided to film a voice over for these tracks using Lewis and a friend as actors.

To make the voiceover realistic we decided we would have to record the audio within a similar enviroment to where the video took place so we headed to the far corner of the school field to get the same ambient wind and bird song in the background. We also filmed the shot from different distances CU, MCU and LS as these were the distances within the video were we wanted the audio to cut in. These varying distances would hopefully make the audio, when coupled with the video recording, sound realistic.




Lewis and Chris reading 'The Witness' voiceover script.

 We decided to act out what we were doing when reading the script as to help get a sense of place and realism within our voices.

Sign Off

Thanks to the hard work and efforts of James and Lewis during deadline week we have been signed off.
The final week saw:

• Minor shot re-arrangements
• New music for both halves off the opening sequence
• New titles created on the mac book
• Sound effects, including police sirens
• Dubbing the reactions of the bad guys
• Adjusting the contrast on shots to ensure they all match

These minor adjustments were still significant and enhanced our sequence. We have enjoyed the production part of this project and will now move on to the evaluation in Mondays Lesson

Final Shoot - Proper

Friday the 11th of March sees our final shoot. We reviewed our footage and were more than pleased with everything but the ending, the 'Cheyne Walk' shots which involve Lewis running into an open field whilst being chased by the baddies did not make the cut. This was because the shot itself was not perfect and it gave the impression Lewis escapes (an event we do not wish to reveal to the viewer in our opening)


We therefore needed to film a new ending after deciding our unused, existing footage was not suitable. Instead, Lewis came up with a POV shot of him backed up against a tree before turning into an onrushing James. This shot would be followed by a blackout and subsequently the title 'The Witness'.
He was inspired by a shot he created in a previous media project. We were all very excited with his idea and the teachers signed off our equipment during todays lesson. Filming will take place tomorrow morning and then we will capture and fit in the shots to our sequence.

Lewis' idea was inspired by the shot on 47-49 seconds.

Editing in the run up to the deadline.

This week is the last week (excluding monday) before Philippa and myself leave for a geography field trip. This date has been long in the pipeline so we have been working towards our deadline by Monday the 14th February.  We understand however that there may be 'snagging' following this date seeing as the deadline is not to a later date.
To compensate for this Philippa and I have been doing lots of editing this week to allow us still be level with James and Lewis in terms of commitment to Editing.

This weeks editing achievements include-

• Adding Titles
• Dropping the contrast on all the shots to an ideal level
• The near completion of our sequence- we are the advanced edit stage.
• A titles session using the Mac with the media technician ( although we decided to use titles that come with adobe premier)

Our titles session with the technician

Penultimate Shoot

Friday the 4th of March saw what we planned to be our final shoot. We met at Lewis's at 7 and the first shots were captured at 7.30; all the shots on our shot list as well as some added chase sequence shots.
These included some of the smoking shots which we deemed missing, such as the close up of Lewis reaching for the lighter.

After these were filmed we shot the dragging shots and the baddies overhearing Lewis and then walking towards him. These shots consisted of a variety of POV, long shots and close ups.
Once these were filmed, we moved on to the confrontation between Lewis and the baddies before capturing yet another epic chase sequence. We stuck to the same path as we felt this worked well the first time round (these could not be used due to a colour problem we had no control over) and filmed the sequence with a point of view of every character.

The sun came out and this time it was welcomed, as it meant that come editing where we could drop the contrast and brightness we can create lots of different shades and colors. Editing took began later that day, we returned to school at the end of break and between us had 5 periods worth of editing time plus lunch (4hours 20minutes) This gave us substantial time to capture our footage, log it and put it in a rough order amongst some of our old footage.

Second Shoot

On monday the 21st we had another shoot, unfortunatley we did not finish all of the shots planned on our shot list. However, we are not too dissapointed about this as we filmed substantial shots for the walking,smoking and chase parts of the sequence.


Lewis films most of the shots that do not involve him to ensure we all have an equal amount of filming oppertunities.

 

Our chase sequence shots are of a very high quality and we think that they have great potential, this is because we spent so much time trying to master them and it was very enjoyable to film.

Sam reviews some footage and decides that we should move on to the next shot.

We are not worried about not getting every shot filmed, in our one day back at school we captured 1 hours worth of tape so are still on schedual for our mid march deadline.  We aim to have a rough edit of our footage completed by Tuesday the 1st March. (Today), after this we will analyse the sequence and discuss re shoot plans for what should be on Friday 5th March but potentially earlier. An earlier shoot would leave us able to edit in Friday's triple allowing us a whole week for snagging and brushing up which is appealing.
We will discuss as a group and with our teachers what is the best plan of action, but all is looking well for group 4.