Closing post

I've really enjoyed media from beginning to end and I'm really looking forward to next year. Its been hard work, but a lot of fun all at the same time.


This blog is now closed!

Feedback on our opening

We had a mini assembly where each groups 2 minute openings were shown, 4 teachers including our year head, the deputy head and the headteacher. There were other sixth form students and a year 11 class who were giving us feedback.

Ms Upton - Deputy head:
"Really good! I liked the cup and the milk! Everything was great, story was good, gave me chills."

The rest of the comments are anonymous but here are some:

"Interesting, liked the flashbacks and the flashing credits, gripping, made you want to watch on"

"Music makes suspense, writing looks good and fitting, good cliff hanger of Charlotte actually waking up"

"I liked the combination of what was happening to Leyla visually and the voiceover of her mother (I think) talking to the police"

"I liked the journey through town in a car"

The general feedback was really good, on the whole people said they really liked the credits and the whole flashback, waking up in a field idea. I was pleased with the response we recieved as we worked so hard on our coursework piece.

Evaluation

Evaluation

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Final HD draft

Here is our completed draft of our opening in HD. I am happy with how its turned out, and in comparison with our old coursework piece it is so much better!

Twelth draft

This is more or less the final draft of our film opening. The birds sound at the end has been turned down and they carry on onto a black screen which we quite like. We have taken away the shots of Charlotte at the end as they seem quite random and don't really fit in with our opening, and audience feedback also provided us with the idea of taking it out.

I like the way our opening ends with main character 'Leyla' walking down the long path, its really effective and could portray the long journey she is about to undergo in order to find out how she got to where she was!

Eleventh draft

Our eleventh draft contains music. We had a discussion about the way the voiceover was sounding, and definitely agreed that music was needed to accompany it. Without the music the focus was on the voices and not particularly on what we'd filmed.

Yet again, we have not attatched the track yet so the sound is poor quality. we have edited in some bird sounds upon Leylas awakening in the woods which sets the scene and provides a believable mise-en-scene in our opening. These sounds are a bit too loud so we will turn it down in the next draft!

Tenth draft

The tenth draft has a sample of the news report that we are going to include in our opening introducing the fact that Leyla is missing. We have edited it so Leylas last name is distorted. We got this idea from the song "Suzanne" by Plan B. Again, the sound is not of top quality as we have recorded it from garageband on iMovie as we do not want to attatch the sound until we are confident with how it sounds.

Ninth draft

Here is our ninth draft! we have experimented with some sound in this draft, the sound isn't the best quality because we recorded it on iMovie and havent attatched it from garageband yet as we haven't perfected the rest of our sound, we need to time it appropriately before we attatch it too.

Eighth draft

We have edited the credits and each of us now have titles! We watched other credits and it is not often that just a name shows up on the screen, so having a title each made much more sense.

We have also taken the iMovie effects off of Leyla as she wakes up to show the contrast from her slumber and her awakening.

Seventh draft

We did some research on opening credits and where abouts the names and roles should go in the film and we edited our credits to see what would look best.

Looking at the credits to Step Brothers, as a group we liked the way the names of the production companies simply just faded in and out on a black screen before any action was shown of the film. We created ours similarly to see how it would look.

Sixth draft

The sixth draft. We had a few people look at our fifth draft and taking on board their comments, we thought it would be more effective to make the present day shots of 'Leyla' slower than they are already. All the fast paced shots may also make our opening seem like a trailer, by slowing it down it might look more like an opening.

Fifth draft

We have put a new effect on this draft and this shows the difference from the past and present shots.

Fourth draft

This is our fourth draft. We had a few issues with our footage on iMovie and thought we would be editing from the very start, but luckily we managed to solve it and continue editing.

We had a group discussion over whether we liked the temporary name we had given the film - Pulse, and decided against it. We thought that perhaps it would have a bigger effect if we named the main character and use her first name as the title of our film. This will leave the audience wanting to know more about the character. The film 'Chloe' can be used as a prime example. We decided we would call our film 'Leyla' as it is not a name you hear everyday, and it could reflect the strange happenings that go on in Leyla's life during our opening.

The credits have been edited again here and are timed a little better than before.

Third draft

This is our third draft of which we have given a temporary name. Seeing as every film obviously needs a name, we have named it Pulse, though that probably won't stick because we will most likely change our minds about it soon.

In this draft we have begun on our credits, and it took us a very long time in aim to perfect them. Though the time and effort has paid off, because in my opinion the credits look really effective. We looked at credits from other films, and they roughly last around 4 seconds, so bearing that in mind we have tried to do the same. This ensures that they aren't on for too long/short, and enables the audience to read the names.

We looked through the fonts on the Mac and decided there wasn't a suitable one for our film. We went elsewhere and downloaded a font of off www.dafont.com, we found a creepy looking font which we all agreed on instantly. In the credits we have made the font various sizes and spaced them about differently each time, giving it the jumpy effect we desired.


We have added a bit of footage in this draft, and cut out some too. We have taken out as many shots of the car as it got a bit repititive.

Second draft

Here is our second draft, we have a lot more camera shots here which add to the story and the flashback in our opening. It is starting to slowly come together now though we still have to fiddle about with the positioning of our different shots and we have lots of editing to do still!

First draft

This is the first draft of 'Leyla'. We've added in bits of our footage to see how it looks and so far we're impressed as it is already looking far better than our original piece we made for our coursework! There is still some more bits that we need to film and a new draft will be up soon. I'm sure this will change hugely over time as this is just an initial start to our piece. We haven't perfected anything in this draft as its purely to see what it all looked like together.

Voiceover ideas continued.

When we completed our voiceover and timed it to our opening in the way we wanted to, as a group we decided there was something missing.

There was the interview between the policewoman and Leyla's mother during the flashback of all the different things that had happened during her flashback, and during the credits there is the voice of a news reporter covering Leyla's story urging witnesses to come forward.

The way the credits are done, enabled us to cut up the news report into various sections, so throughout the opening you hear a little bit more of what is going on each time. However, with the police interview, we didn't have lots to continue throughout all of our filming as there is a lot, and with it sounding professional, there is only so much that can be said.

We decided we needed some music to accompany the voiceover in the background of the police interview. This increases the tension and builds up an atmosphere as we have different paced music according to what is going on in the opening and to what is being said.

We kept the news report to just the voiceover because it sounds quite realisitic and because we have mimiced the style of 'plan b' song - 'suzanne' with the name being muffled, we thought it would be more appropriate for it to be by itself because it may seem like an editing problem if there was music in the background and it could have seemed like too much.