Final magazine cover

This is our final magazine cover above. Our magazine cover took a lot of hard work as we had difficulties choosing our final picture but in the end we managed to turn all difficulties to our favour. We are happy with how the magazine cover looks and hope to continue improving.

Magazine cover progress day 2

In the lesson today, we picked up from where we left of yesterday. We decided to crop Fiona out of the picture so that we were able to edit the background to make Fiona stand out in centre of the magazine.

 To sum up, we managed to crop the image out and edit the final background using numerous effects; we used an artistic 'neon glow' effect on the background then used a more darker artistic effect on the image itself. This is how it looked in the end:


We then began to add titles, captions etc. onto our magazine cover. Though, we were not able to finish doing everything on our magazine cover so we decided that we will continue to work hard and finish to hand in our final piece as the deadline for our magazine cover is tomorrow.

Magazine cover progress day 1

 

In today's lesson we managed to do quite a bit with our magazine cover. Although, this was not straightforward as we came into the lesson we had  a plan for what photo we are going to use and so on. We ended up spending most of our double lesson trying to cut the image out of the picture leaving us with the background so we could create a gradient effect. As we wanted to go for a look that seems would be on studio magazine and from looking at examples we wanted to use a very similar idea. One of the main issues we had with this was editing and being able to use the tools well on Photoshop such as, 'Quick Selection'; we intend to watch some videos on you tube that would help us. Our idea later changed as we still wanted to cut the image out of the picture but to then change the background to black so we can get a gradient effect of black going to white as we saw on this studio magazine:




We were finding difficulties in trying to edit the image that we had chosen as the actress was sitting on a pole and we did not want to rub all of it out as it looks like she is sitting on air as well as the fact that it was quite difficult to ' refine the edge of the picture. We ended up changing the picture that we wanted to use from the one on the left to the one on the right:
As the picture that we are now going to use is taken on quite a nice background we want to keep the background but also maybe use a gradient effect. We will continue on with this in tomorrows lesson, hopefully everything will go to plan.

Cover Shoot

During this week, we have been collecting all of our ideas and research in order to deliver the shoot to the best ability we can. Therefore, as mentioned on the last two posts, we have been looking at all sorts of magazines , then we were inspired by film magazines and also UK and US Magazine covers. At the end of the week, we decided to go with Studio Magazine and to have Fiona on cover, not in character.
We've found similar titles to the actual magazine titles, which was very encouraging at this stage as we would like to impress and engage people via the cover. One of the reasons why we've chosen Studio Magazine is because of its insight. The magazine includes fashion, Hollywood news and engages the female attention which is exactly what we want to do by putting Fiona on cover. As our specified audience is female, the cover will hopefully stand out. I have taken variety of photos of Fiona using my digital camera Nikon S8 and ones that we admire can be seen below:

Overall, the cover shoot went very well and we are happy with final photos.

Looking at fonts

As we made the decision in yesterdays lesson that we will be making a studio magazine for our film. After talking with our teacher we realised that we have to find font that matches with the actual 'STUDIO' font on the magazine. We know finding one that is almost the same will be quite difficult to do but by doing research and looking at the websites that our teacher has given us we hope to find one.

We came across these two types of font we thought matched with the 'STUDIO' magazine name. We hope to get  feedback from our teacher about these fonts and possibly make a final decision. Though, we will continue with research for different fonts.
Today, we continued to look at fonts. We liked the second font but we thought it was too thin compared to the actual studio magazine title. We decided that we would go back on the website to see if we can possibly make the text bolder; which we managed to do. We now think that the text we found and the studio magazine titles is very similar. Though, we are yet to receive feedback from our teacher to get another persons opinion rather than just me and Mimoza.

This is the actual studio magazine title.

Survey

Making final decisions for our poster

      

Both these magazines inspired us the most in making our decisions with our magazine cover. The magazine cover on the left has already been posted on our blog as part of our initial ideas; we re-visited this magazine cover in our initial ideas and gained more ideas from it. We thought of the date of our film which is in February so we decided that our magazine will be released in January and will be a 'Limited edition'. We also make a couple more decisions which is shown in the draft of our magazine cover below:

We are also currently looking for a font to match the title of the magazine 'Studio'. We need to find one that of exactly the same but this will be hard so we intend to find one that is very similar. We intend to look on this website: http://www.identifont.com/ which was recommended by our teacher.

Magazine Cover Influences

As I have discussed couple of my ideas with Dolapo, we agreed to choose well-known magazine such as Empire, Total Film. The genre of Once and Again is romantic drama, therefore 'Little White Lies' won't be exactly the right magazine choice for the genre. Although, we know that our film appeals to a specific genre. Below are examples of magazine covers that inspired us by the structure and font of the titles. 

We really like the idea of having 3 characters faces on the cover, because the film is all about the love and tragedy occurring between Alex, Claire and Stella. We have created our final film poster and it features soft colours, a romantic frame of childhood friends, therefore it does not bring the dramatic feature of film's ending. I would really like to have that tension or mystery between the 3 characters on the cover. Also to mention Empire Magazine prefers to go with comic-con action films so we wanted to change that idea and make it our own, so that the name of magazine EMPIRE will stand out and so as our film as a different genre will  catch reader's attentions.


After receiving feedback from our teacher, we started to look at magazine covers of Studio. Studio is the first women's film magazine, and having Fiona (Stella) on the cover with titles in red and her wearing clothing in same colour tones can be very effective and sophisticated compared to other film magazine covers. Below are examples from Studio:

Here on the right is a magazine cover which features the famous US TV Show, "Vampire Diaries". I found the photo very effective; close up of their faces and attention to detail caught my eye. We could potentially have Alex in the middle and two other girls on side of him. Even though, just by looking at the front cover you wouldn't think this has any connotations to our film but we were able to get some ideas from this magazine cover. We thought that the idea of the three characters on the magazine cover was interesting because that is the main focus. We also liked how this may be  romance film but the characters expressions are not only conveying romance but some kind of drama.

Magazine ideas

Even though, today is the deadline for our poster, we know that we are going to start designing our magazine cover straight away  So far, I have been researching examples of magazine covers for romance films. I realised that for the magazine cover there are two approaches that we could take: we cud either have all three of the main characters maybe posing together for a picture on the front or we could have a picture with two or so of the characters posing closely together on the front portraying romance.
Not really keeping in line with these two ideas, I thought about maybe doing a triple slip screen with all three characters with a broken line in between possibly. I spoke to Mimoza about this idea and she also thought it was good. We are still currently thinking of this. Here are some of the magazine covers that I looked at and discussed with Mimoza:

 

                      
After talking to Mimoza she found a good website where there are magazine covers for loads of different movies with a variety of genres. We came across one particular film poster from the movie twilight that we thought was quite interesting for our film. Here is the magazine cover:

       

When looking at this magazine cover on the left, also trying to keep in mind the fact that we have two female characters as opposed to two male characters, so this could either be an advantage or disadvantage for us. We thought that maybe using this idea in the sense that Alex would be standing in the middle with Stella holding on to him as she is clingy and over protective as she doesn't want Alex to go back with Claire. On the other side we would just have Claire maybe gazing at Alex.
With the image on the right, this is actually a poster but we thought that we could possibly get some ideas from this poster for our magazine cover. We thought of the idea of maybe having Fiona watching / looking at Claire and Alex.With the main focus of our magazine cover being Alex and Claire. We are not sure about this idea as we thought it would suit more of a male character to be watching/ looking at the back rather than a female one as well as the fact that it wouldn't really go with our storyline.

Final Film Poster

Here is our final film poster. After having many difficulties using Photoshop as well as the computer being very slow and even crashing, we finally got there in the end.

Film Poster so far

Below is what I've been doing so far to create the film poster. Our draft and ideas might change, but we hopefully will develop and put all of our efforts and dedication into this film poster. We have experienced photoshop softwares before this project, however I was only familiar with simpler softwares such as Photofiltre, therefore learning and experiencing adobe is a challenge. I really like the new version of Adobe Photoshop CS6, because there are variety of options and features of the software that let people work professionally, although we are not technicians. As seen below, first step to do was to leave the picture on its own and get rid of the background, in order to replace the new edited background. So, we had to create layers and also work on each photos brightness and saturation. Then, we use the healing brush tool to remove flaws or any spots on their faces. The background image was first edited on instagram then later followed by an extreme edit, using Adobe Photoshop CS6. We hope our poster turn out to be how we would like it to look like and will attract the target audience.

 

This poster above was another try just to see what it looks like. I agreed with Dolapo that the rose as the background is not necessary and creates no meaning to the actual film itself. Therefore, later I tried to remove the rose background and stick to the 3 images above. However, the poster suggested more of a rom-com rather than romantic drama, due to its plain white background. We came to final decision that we are definitely sticking to our second poster above, mainly because the atmosphere of the poster is very suitable for a love theme and it has an emotional meaning for the characters, Alex and Claire. Poster brings them back to their past, the first place they met and also which is included in the trailer. 

Photoshop in the lesson

In the lesson yesterday  keeping in mind the troubles that I had with Photoshop the day before and the fact that the computer kept on crashing, we attempted to use Photoshop again in yesterdays lesson. This was ok as throughout the lesson we tried to edit our pictures neatly, with help from watching some you tube videos. We found it hard to take out the background under the characters hair on the poster as if we just rubbed it out it would make her hair look very weird and look so obvious that the picture has been edited. Due to this taken up our whole double lesson, we decided to stay back at lunch time. Consequently, we couldn't stay back so had to leave as our computer crashed again.
I could not come into school today as I have a university interview so it was only Mimoza working on our poster. I will later talk to her and see how she progressed in the lesson and talk about what we need to do and how we are going to do this.

Using Photoshop

Due to Mimoza  being very ill today I worked by myself. At the beginning of the lesson today I had to go to tech block where Photography is as I had to transfer the pictures onto my USB so that I could then put it on the mac. When I came back to the lesson I uploaded to the pictures onto Photoshop straight away. The computer then began to be very slow so I couldn't work on Photoshop or even go on my blog. After asking my teacher for help I had to restart the computer then was able to use Photoshop .When I used 'quick selection' to edit the picture I then needed to zoom in a rub a bit out, Photoshop was not allowing me to use the rubber.When I asked for help this ran into the end of the lesson. As a result I was not able to do much work in the lesson except for editing one picture. I hope when Mimoza joins me tomorrow we can do a lot during the double lesson that we have as our deadline to give in the poster is on Friday.

Taking photos

We arranged a time with the cast members to meet up and take pictures. Due to one of our friends taking photography, we asked if we could borrow the camera. This worked to our advantage as the pictures were very clear, good quality and look professional. We met up with the cast on Thursday lunchtime. Previously me and Mimoza had taken test shots in places within the school where we thought the lighting and background was good so when it came to the time when the cast was in front of the camera we wouldn't waste any time looking for  location. The test shots will soon be uploaded onto the blog.
So when the cast arrived at lunchtime we knew exactly where to go and what to tell the to do as we had the draft of the poster with us. Taking the pictures went smoothly, we even put the flash on from the camera to make the lighting in the pictures a bit better.  The only problem that I would say that we had while taking the pictures is that people were constantly walking up and down through the corridor which distracted us and made us take more time when taking the pictures. But we got there in the end with what we think are good shots and hopefully we will receive good feedback for them as well.

Draft of the Film Poster

Here is the draft of our film poster and what we would like to include in terms of framing and the right taken photos (close-ups) of the cast. We already arranged a time to take their photos tomorrow. I have been spending quality amount of time drawing the draft, because i wanted it to feel real and look interesting. After hard work, I am happy so far with the results and after receiving very useful feedback from our teachers, we decided to not leave many space between titles and to make sure Once and Again title stands out. In addition to adding, for example. 5 stars next to the title to take up some space.

Poster influences

Poster influences on Prezi

This is our prezi on poster influences. Where we included our thoughts on the individual posters we looked at and how this helped or will help us.

Trailer Final look :)

Here is our trailer :

Deadline for our trailer

 Today is the deadline for our trailer. We were able to finish our trailer at lunchtime today without too much manic and we don't have to come back after school. As we came both at lunchtime and break time we
we then able to include some last minute things such as, the sound onto to the scene when Alex and Claire bump into each other, and in the end this went smoothly. Here is the link of the song that we used in this scene, which was already previously posted onto the blog as one of the options of sound that we would use in this scene. http://www.unsigned.com/xe_latheufoacidgodz  After school yesterday I was also able to include the sound of the switch coming on just before the production logo. In the end watching our trailer through we thought it was a very good final piece to give in and we hope that we get a good overall mark in the end for our trailer. We will hopefully upload our finished trailer on the blog next week.

Progress with our trailer

We are aware that tomorrow at five o'clock is the deadline for our trailer. As we got a lot done in our double lesson today in addition to staying back at lunch time, tomorrow shouldn't be a rush or stressful day for us as we are nearly finished and have very little to do. In today's lesson, we managed to add the audio effect onto our production logo that we found. To us this made our trailer seem even more like a trailer as well as giving it a nice touch. Again asking our teacher in the lesson for feedback he watched the trailer through and suggested that we still delete a bit more from the arguing scene, with Alex and Stella, to make it seem more quick and sharp. He also suggested that we remove all of the voice overs that we had reading the titles out as it is not something that is really necessary to have and our titles just appearing up on the screen by itself was all that we really needed to have.
He suggested making the title of our film 'Once and Again' in bigger font or doing something to make it stand out rather than having the most important title of our trailer to look the same as the other titles.It was also suggested that we maybe include a dramatic piece of music over the scene when Stella first finds the book as we want this part to stand out as it is towards the end of the trailer now. During the lesson our teacher helped us to find a piece of dramatic audio on you tube that would possibly go with the arguing scene in our trailer. We were not able to do this in the lesson as there were complications with the internet, we decided to go on imovie and look at dramatic pieces of sound that they have that may possibly go with our trailer. We found a heartbeat audio that we put onto our trailer and thought matched the scene quite nicely but we still want to try and find other pieces of sound such as, the one that was on you tube. Here is the the video of the piece of music that we want to get the audio from:

We hope to stay behind at break time tomorrow and if necessary lunchtime to finish this and  then export it as our final trailer to be marked.

Additional things for our trailer

After today's lesson we felt that we had done a lot to improve our trailer. In the lesson me and Mimoza discussed the pieces of sound we would want to include and we came to the decision that we will not include the sound of the children laughing or the car crash noise in the end as this ,we think, would not really go with our trailer like we imagined it to. After asking our teacher for feedback twice we changed quite a bit for the better and we think our trailer has  improved since last lesson, although, we know that we still need to do quite a bit more. The first time we received feedback after showing our trailer to him very briefly we changed the font of our titles as they were quite plain, even though, they did not need to be extravagant. We also ended up cutting part of the argument scene as it wasn't needed and was just adding time to our trailer which we did not want and were already trying to lower. Previously, we had put on pieces of voice overs over the tiles in our trailer and we noticed that it didn't flow or go to well in for certain titles in our trailer so we had to delete it as, for example, the title 'Based on a true story' comes up straight away as the music piece ends and then the voice over would come into it and this did not flow so consequently we had to delete it.

Yesterday we added the characters names to our trailer so today we decided to add the characters names in more different points in our trailer and add a last name to the characters names, for example, 'Stella Henderson'. After watching the trailer though as we showed our teacher we realised that the very beginning of our trailer ( the children's scene) didn't seem to much like a trailer but more like an opening sequence, so we decided to add another music piece just after the production logo gets of the screen. We also thought of including a quote from Shakespeare about love just before the children's scene comes on to make that scene flow better. Looking at the production logo itself, we thought that it was missing something so we decided to look at some trailers that we had put as influences already on the blog and look at their production logos.

We also thought of possibly using the sound of a light switch turning on then use this audio. Here is the link for this sound: http://www.soundjay.com/switch-sounds-1.html

 The second time we received feedback we had made the necessary changes pointed out by our teacher and the changes we thought we needed to make. After our teacher had watched our trailer he thought it was good but we could possibly add another piece of melodious sound onto the scene where Stella and Alex are arguing but lower this sound so that we can actually hear the dialogue as well .We looked at a couple pieces of acoustic music and here are the links:

 http://www.unsigned.com/xe_latheufoacidgodz
http://www.unsigned.com/adamlambert

http://www.unsigned.com/antonbrello

When a music piece finishes in our trailer you can hear when and where we have cut it and this doesn't sound good, so with help in tomorrows lesson we want to fade out the music so you cant tell that we are cutting it but it fades into the background with the next scene. 

Extra stuff for our trailer

We were not able to include some sound in our trailer as we ran out of time in the lesson such as, the sound of the car crash. Although, we both said that we would look at possible sounds that we can use and tell each other about it in tomorrows lesson. I found some possible car noises that we can use for the scene when Stella gets hit. I found these sounds on SoundFX.

Here is the link: http://soundfxcenter.com/sound_effect/search.php?sfx=Car

Though, I wasn't too sure if the sounds of a car crash sounds a bit too dramatic and in this sense a bit fake, but nevertheless I will share this with Mimoza tomorrow. We also wanted to look at sounds of children laughing to include in one of the beginning scenes. This is quite difficult to search for as I keep on finding sound of very young children between the ages of 3-5 laughing but we are looking for sound of children between the ages of 8-10 laughing.Lastly, we thought that we would include another soundtrack at the beginning of our trailer as it would seem quite boring. One of the unsigned artists that I found earlier and posted on the blog By Carl Hauck; we thought that we could possibly include one of these songs, in particular the songs we liked were: 'Marital Riesling' and 'Windjammer'. As we also wanted to include the sound of children laughing at the beginning of our trailer we thought about including a pice of sound at the beginning and when it comes to the part where the children are laughing we would lower the sound of the music and increase with the sound of the kids laughing.

We were struggling to find a green screen to go before our film that was in good quality. Here is the green screen that we found in better quality:

Our progression with our trailer

As we finished filming last week, which took a weight of our shoulders, we now have a lot of time to put in towards making our trailer the best we possibly can. In today's lesson we managed to get a lot done in terms of titles, sound (the voice over) and cutting down our footage. After we had done this we asked our teacher for feedback on our titles etc. we realised that our design of our titles didn't exactly fit in with our trailer as it is a love story but not a typical one as someone dies at the end; so we changed this. We also realised that some clips were still too long after we had cut them down. For a trailer the scenes should only be seconds long to not give too much away of the story and still attract the audience at the end of the day. We found that  the longer our clips are the more it seems like an opening sequence rather than a trailer which we do not want. 

Furthermore to include our actor/actresses names in our trailer we decided to use our title format again but this time instead we will just include the actor/actresses names itself so the names appearing on the screen doesn't neccesarily need to follow any particular sequence as you would with an opening sequence. The first time we went about including the actors names we also included their real names which we realised we should not do as it is a trailer and you don't see the actor/actresses real names in a trailer; again this will make our trailer  seem more like an opening sequence which we do not want.  We also ended  up moving our production logo to the very beginning of our trailer, after the green screen as after getting feedback we realised that it made more sense to be there. Watching our trailer from the beginning at the end of the lesson it seemed more like a trailer rather than an opening sequence to us, which was one of our struggles. We hope that when we show our teacher our trailer again to get more feedback he will also see our progress.

Receiving Feedback

In yesterdays lesson we had to screen what we had so far of our trailer and watch others in the class. We were allowed twenty minutes at the beginning of the lesson to include more editing to our trailer. We recieved feedback after the screening of our trailer in addition to giving feedback after the screening  of other groups works. The feedback that we recieved for our trailer was very helpful, we were also aware of some of the criticisms given but did not exactly know how to go about it.
The main criticism that we were given was that our trailer was too long and this makes it not seem like a trailer anymore. We are currently working on this by trying to cut down as much as we can from our trailer to the point where we dont know what else to cut down so we will ask for our teacher to look at it and give us his response of what he thinks does not need to be there.
As we stayed in the media room throughout lunch and after school we managed to get quite a lot done including, titles, sound and cutting down our scenes. At the moment our trailer is 2.34 as we cut it down from 3.36. For us this is a big improvement as from the beginning we did not know what to cut down as for us everything that we had was relevant and cutting it down might make the storyline not flow as well. After talking to our teacher we managed to cut it down and realised that we don't need all those parts and without, our trailer seems to flow better. We still would like to cut it down more as we still have to film one more scene of Stella lying on the floor.

Filming: Day 8

Today after school we filmed the last scene of our trailer; this was the scene of Stella lying on the floor after she got hit by a car which would not be shown in the trailer but you will only hear a car noise. Filming today was good as it went smoothly and was pretty straightforward as we all knew what to do as we had previously filmed this scene when it was dark and this was very difficult so we decided to re-film during the daytime when it was light out.
 The only problem while filming was that cars kept on going up and down so we had to keep on moving the equipment and the actress had to constantly move out of the way as it was around home time for schools so parents are going up and down. We filmed several shots of the actress on the floor to see which angle is best and hopefully later on when we upload the footage at school we will be able to choose the best scene with the help of teachers feedback.
Moreover, when we add this scene to the trailer hopefully we will still be able to keep the maximum time of our trailer at 2 minutes 30 seconds or even less.
Previously we decided that Fiona, who plays Stella in our film, would do the voice over for our film. So after we finished filming we decided to record Fiona saying the titles in our trailer on Mimoza's iPhone.

Uploading the Footage and Editing

Due to the fact that we chose to film before period one and we did not have that much time to actually upload our footage on imovie and edit the parts that we do not need. As a result, we then decided to stay back during break and lunchtime today uploading the rest of our footage and editing/cutting the parts out that we do not need. We still have not completely finished this as we ran out of time and had variety of footage to upload and edit. 

Though, we have got two final music pieces, a voiceover and titles to include but we have not been able to do this as we are focusing on filming the footage and getting it to be the best that it's possible so that we do not have to re-film any scenes. We hope to use every opportunity of using the computers whether in school  or outside the school time. As we are aware that we have a rough screening of our trailer on thursday in the morning we will give our best to include more pieces of shots cut before thursday. Even though, throughout tomorrow we are off timetable we will do our best during break and lunchtime to do more to our trailer to improve in all areas.

Filming: Day 7

Filming today went very smooth and well. We ended up with exact shots that we would like to film. Today, we filmed the scene of manual focus where Alex and Claire find Stella's unconscious body on the floor. Previously, we struggled to film the focus as the touchscreen did not help. However, after experiencing with the camera many times, we managed to film the focus in one take. We hope the feedback given by teachers will be sufficiently good therefore, we won't have to re-film. Only problem we had was that there were disruptions of the children and parents going into the near primary school. We will soon be posting the pictures of today's filming.

Filming: Day 6

Today, we filmed the scenes when Alex and Claire bumped into each other  We also wanted to film the scene where we have a shallow focus of Alex and Claire but due to the fact that our camera had a very low battery we could not do this. As a result, we re-scheduled with the actor and actress to film before school and during period one this Tuesday. Filming this scene was rather straightforward but a problem we had while filming the scene with Alex and Claire is the same shot was the fact that we kept on getting disturbed by cars as we had to film this scene in the road to get a good shot. The last shot we filmed where we get Alex and Claire reaction in a shot/reverse shot was quite difficult for the actor. This was difficult for the actor as he found it hard to give a happy but shocked facial expression without laughing or smiling too much. We found that the actor is more natural and relaxed when he doesn't know that we are filming rather than when he does. Overall, filming went good and did not take long to film as we knew the camera battery was low so we couldn't was time in addition to the fact that we had spoken earlier and devised a plan for the day.

Filming: Day 5

As I was not able to make filming yesterday because I had to go to a  university open day Mimoza filmed. Though,it was easy for her to just re-film a close up of the book that Claire hands Alex when they were children because the children are Mimoza's neighbours. After we filmed this the first time and received feedback we realised that the shot was too quick and the zoom was to sharp, this needed to be filmed correctly as we want the audience to concentrate on the book as the the book is a very significant prop in our trailer.She filmed this far away and a separate shot as an extreme close up of the book so that we can use an insert at this point. Furthermore, after speaking to Mimoza this went very smoothly and was quite quick as the children and Mimoza both knew what to do. If we again need to re-film this scene or other parts with the children for some reason this will be quite easy to do as I said before the children are Mimoza's neighbours so we could ask them according to our schedule most of the time.

Filming: Day 4

After school on Friday, we managed to film two scenes. These were the scenes with Alex and Stella arguing in the house in addition to the scene where Stella gets hit by a car. We previously filmed the scene with Alex and Claire but this did not go well as we had problems with the mise en scene because we had to film in the common room as a last resort. Although, filming after school on Friday was quite smooth as the mise en scene was good and already set as this time we actually filmed in a house, the characters knew what to do and what to say as they have already filmed this scene before but just needed a brief reminder. While filming theses scenes we realised that we didn't need the scene where Stella breaks down and starts crying as the first time we filmed this it was difficult to make the actress cry as well as without this scene our trailer still flows. The only problem that I would say that we had was when we filmed the last scene of the day when Stella was on the floor and we had to get a very high overhead shot of Stella, this was hard because we couldn't actually see properly whether we were getting a good shot. Furthermore, it was quite dark so the lighting for us at this point was a problem but we did our best to overcome and hopefully the audience will think so when they watch this scene in our trailer.

Discussion in lesson

Both yesterday and today, we talked about several things in the lesson such as, the voice over,which final music pieces we will use for different scenes as well as our schedule for filming or re-filming if we need to do so. Though, we did not have too long in yesterdays lesson as in half of lesson we were uploading footage and editing/cutting parts that we didn't need. We did manage to discuss/look at a few music pieces of Eric Baker, we chose one of his songs to definately include in our film which is called   'Not Enough' we also wanted to include his other song ' Two left feet' but there was a problem with the video on youtube that was not allowing us to hear the music piece. Today, we listened to this music piece in the lesson and decided to make it a definate music piece to include in our trailer.
We were also able to add these pieces of music to the footage that we have so far so we can see how well the music fits in with particular scenes. So overall, we will have three pieces of sound in our film including the voiceover. We also spoke about our filming schedule but we couldn't really make any big decisions as we were waiting for our actor/actresses to tell us when they are free to film. This is why we filmed the childrens scene first as they are Mimoza's neighbours so it would be easy to film them according to our schedule but with the other actor/actresses it would be and is harder as their schedule may clash when we would like to film. We are aware of these difficulties ,that is why we filmed in this order. We want our voiceover to be done by one of the characters in our film such as, Alex as he is the main character in our film. After talking more about this in todays lesson we are not too sure about doing this as it doesn't seem professional to have one of the characters in our film doing the voiceover of the titles etc. rather than another person. We are still currently thinking about asking someone else to the voiceover for our trailer, maybe one of our friends.

Footage from Filming

The footage above includes different scenes within our trailer that we filmed but didn't go too well, for example, in one of the scenes we were trying to do a shallow focus with the characters before we actually did the shot again so we wouldn't waste time. In the second part of the clip we realised that at this point there would be a costume change so consequently, we cannot use this though looking through the clip there are some good parts. This clip highlights our attempts, what obviously did not go well , some of the difficulties the characters experienced as well as some funny bits while filming. (bloopers)

Feedback

We are very happy to get such a nice and detailed feedback from our teacher.
We are very excited to give our best shot and continue to improve. The feedback above, motivated us to achieve our full potential.

Filming: Day 3

During filming yesterday after school, we had some difficulties and good shots. The fact that it got dark at 5:30 pm made filming more challenging for us but we used our second option to film. We were going to film in Kelsey Park and when we realised that the lighting was going to be a problem, we instantly moved to film outside the Langley Park Estates bridge. We tried our best to  overcome this difficulty and as well as getting the manual focus right. If it does not work, me may move to film with deep focus. Our greatest worry is  that the audience won't be able to see the screening and the characters clearly. We will hopefully improve and give our best shot by filming more and more, if any disruption occur.

Poster ideas

Even though, we planned to be filming for a few days this week, this did not go to plan so instead of wasting our time waiting to film, we decided to think about some ideas for the poster of our trailer. While watching a film in the cinema recently, I came across a nice image used within the film that I thought we could use in our trailer poster and I later shared this idea with Mimoza . We then thought of bringing in the significant prop of the book in this image on the poster, so that  in a way the book will act as an aspect to our trailer poster that foreshadows what is actually going to happen in the film or at least hinting at this. The image to the left is an exemplar picture to illustrate this idea. Although, obviously the children will be further in the image maybe we could get the effect of the sunset through editing, this is something that we could possibly try before it comes to actually making the poster so this would not waste any time.

Problems with filming

As our actress Chloe is very ill and her health is not in good condition, we had to cancel our plans for today and reschedule the filming for another day. We have asked our actor/actresses about when they are available to film next, we came to the decision that it would be best to film next Tuesday after school at 4:30. We will be filming the scenes where Alex and Claire bump into each other, when they are on the bridge and lastly the scene where Stella is involved in an accident. We hope to finish all the filming by next week Friday at the latest and move on to editing as we know that this will take up a lot of our time.

Filming: Day 2

Filming the scene of children went very well. They listened our instructions and guidance throughout the time, when filming at Park Langley Estates. They were very sweet and mature towards everything which made it easier to film in that environment. At the last minute, when I was filming the children running, it started to rain. However, we finished today with variety of shot sizes. Here are shots from todays filming.

Soundtrack for the Trailer

We came across variety of artists and bands when looking for a suitable song for our trailer; whether signed or unsigned. Those genres such as Soul/Acoustic/Pop were big influence to us. As I am interested in music since the age of 5, I was already searching unsigned artists and to listen their demos from www.unsigned.com. Prior to that, I came across an amazing artist and guitar player, Erick Baker.
I discussed about those songs with Dolapo and she agreed with me that this could be a very good possibility for the trailer. In my opinion, the song 'Not Enough' will be very good during the scene Alex and Claire walk and bump into each other. Although this is not in the storyboard, we are thinking of using the editing effectively to show our audience, that the trailer of 'Once and Again' will be unique and different. For instance, before the two characters bump into each other, we could show their walk towards each other in separate frames within the scene.

Then the song could be replaced with 'Stay Awhile' during the scenes when Alex and Claire are on the bridge, Stella finds the note and cries onwards. Here are the songs:

Film Schedule

Filming : Day 1

After school yesterday we decided to start filming a few scenes in our film to lessen the burden for us when filming during the half term. We planned to film the scenes with Alex and Claire arguing, Alex and Claire on the bridge and possibly if we had extra time, the handheld shot fo Alex walking down the the path in the park. Although, this did not all go to plan as we wanted to film the scene with Alex and Claire arguing in the Annexe building but there was a problem as we could not get supervision at that time. As a result we had to look for another place that resembles a room to film this scene. We finally came to the decision that we will film in the common room as it does look like a room and has sofas etc. Therefore, we did not have to worry much about certain factors, for example, the mise en scene . Consequently, as this took quite a bit of time to look for a room in the school that would resemble a living room to film in we were not able to film the other scenes that we wanted to which was of Alex and Claire on the bridge, this is part of the scenes where they are getting to know eachother.We are now planning to film this scene later on in the week or beginning of next week, this will possibly on Tuesday.

The schedule for the days later on this week and next week that we are going to be filming will  be put onto the blog shortly.

Final Production Logo

          Here is our final production logo:

Filming Time

Tomorrow, we intend to start filming scenes of our trailer this week onwards. We are very excited to start filming. Tomorrow after school, we would like to start filming the scenes of Stella and Alex fighting in the Annexe building and Alex and Claire on the bridge. Here is the picture above of the bridge where we want to film this scene.

Testing Shot

Here is our testing shot above. We tried several different ways to film and to grasp the idea of a manual focus. As you can see , in parts of the clip the camera was unsteady in terms, of the zooming and reverse zooming.We also struggled to go directly into smooth manual focus as sometimes it would go to quick into focus that we wouldn't get the effect that we wanted. We will try again to improve and get the composition right before we film our trailer. So when it comes to filming the scene, it wouldn't be too difficult.

Sneak Shot of Logo

I came across one of my friends couple of weeks ago who is training for an architecture course.
He suggested me to try using the Autodesk 3ds Max as we could produce an animated logo in 3d. Although, at first it was difficult to learn it and find out about the different features of this software, with the guide from a friend, we managed to play around a bit. Here is sneak preview of the Spotlight Productions Logo :

I will be posting the production logo very soon.

Music for our trailer

As this week we intend to start filming a few scenes within our trailer, we understand that we need to pick the final music pieces that we are going to use in our trailer. Looking in depth at different pieces of music by unsigned artists I came accross the website www.unsigned.com where I researched ambient/romantic music and I found several music pieces that we can use. One particular artistic music that stood out to me was Carl Hauck. I particularly liked his song 'Marital riesling','Milt the Stilt' and 'Herrick you Devil'. We thought 'Herrick you Devil' would suit the scence of Stella dying, we initially thought that we would edit a part of this song to use in this scene.
Here is the link to the different pieces of music that we looked at and liked by Carl Hauck. http://www.unsigned.com/carlhauck 

Casting Shot of the Children

I have taken photos of the children. It was a difficult decision to choose between two beautiful children. However, we had to consider the fact that the children will have to look similar to the actual grown up cast. These are the shots below:

                                                                     Callum

Charlotte

                 

Harriet   

We came to final decision that Charlotte looks like Chloe and have the similar face features of Chloe. Therefore Claire will be played by Charlotte. Alex will be played Callum.