7. What i have learn't about film making

From when I first started this course - and did a thriller opening called Cherie along with the rest of the class - I was very inexperienced and had little knowledge on anything to do with filming, such as the camera angles and shots, lighting and sound effects. 

Looking back at the beginning of my project, I have learned a lot about new technologies, distribution practices and film production, etc.

In my preliminary exercise, I have tried working on shot reverse shot, different camera angles and types of camera shots to show continuity and conversations between the characters. It was hard for me as it was my first time to tried shooting a real video, but with experimenting and testing, I overcame it and have successfully produced the preliminary task.

I also learned how to make the best use of a tripod and how to balance it. Looking back now I think it was very useful as it really helped me get prepared for filming the opening sequence and if it was't for the preliminary task, the filming and editing of our media project wouldn't have gone as well as it had.

A challenge we had in our group was editing on green screen. We did not know at the time of shooting the two women, that the larger one was wearing a green coat, so therefore we could not edit the background. Moreover if some shades of the green screen are darker this effects the editing process as it becomes all grainy and transparent. We have learn't from this mistake in future editing circumstances.

In our film editing, I chose to use Imovie. Although I wasn't that familiar with it in the beginning, but after the preliminary task I have learned a lot about it and it had made editing our opening so much easier as all of us were quite familiar with it already.

In order to learn how to do the filming for Cherie, I first watched a film opening called Delicatessen on The Art Of The Title. What I learned was about the camerawork: the camera panned across a series of still objects rather than moving people. The title sequences was distinctive because the titles were embedded in the visuals in a relevant way: for example, the director of music was shown on a gramophone record,  the costumier's name was sewn into a clothing label, the director of photography was engraved on the top of a camera. From this I learned how important it was to make the title sequence an integral part of the film. When we cam to make our film this is what we did. 

Since then, I feel much more confident when filming and am more familiar with the different aspects of filming. I have learnt that it takes a fair amount of time getting everything in place, and sorting out things such as making sure the lighting is spot on. It takes more than one shot/take to get the result you wanted, as you have to change things around, do things differently, use more interesting angles and take on board the other class mate's suggestions so everyone has a fair input in filming.  For example, our first film shoot for Zest failed because we had not judged lighting levels.

Our first scene filmed in the cafeteria: dark lighting

After looking back at the first film opening we did (Cherie) as well as our final exam film opening, the improvement on behalf of everyone in my group has improved. We are all more positive and independent when we do different aspects of filming and editing on our own and I think this has showed in our final product. We have used a variety of tools, such as our blogs, Facebook and mobile phones to help us become more organised and manage our time.

Overall, after finishing the project, I have realized that there were some important elements in order to make a film/ a film opening interesting to raise interest from my target audiences. One of them is the story board because no matter how good your editing skills are, without an interesting story, you still wouldn't be able to engage your target audiences. There are also other important factors that I have learned throughout the project, for example like editing, sound and mise-en-scene, etc. They would all help convey the mood and atmosphere of the film to audiences and also shows the genre of the film. I think in order to create a good, successful film opening, the most important thing was that all of the factors that I have mentioned above must be well balanced. You cant spend all your time focusing on getting a nice story but not putting any effort in choosing the right music and dialogue.

I have learned a lot throughout the process and I believe these skills and techniques would be very useful in the rest of the course and even for my future career.