AS media : December 2014

Titles updated

Our new titles

As we had to re film our opening scene, we changed the titles that were shown as the text wasn't good and the names were repeated to many times. We decided to change the names to make them all completely different to before and the changes we made are shown below.

(In order of appearance)

Baubles-

5 names:

-Lucy Fitch

-Olivia Frain

-Oli Wong

-Katie Jones

-Tom Lee

-Sam James

Books-

Casting by: Dan Amato
Written by: Tom Richardson

Special effects by: Bonnie Johns

Stockings-

Delilah Tulips

Lee Hart

Card-

Costume designer: Lucy Harding

Production designer: Issy Payne

Cookies-

Music by: Phil Carp

Present tags-

Produced by: Bessie Hawkins

Director of photography: Chay Pollinger

Music updated

When watching the draft of our film opening, we received feedback which suggested that we needed to change the music. They said the pace fitted the film but it went on for too long and should be changed when Santa is seen.

After editing our final draft, we chose some more music which is shown below... We may not use this but it is an idea.

We decided to use this music as it fits the part where the elf appears and when Santa is taken.

Re-Filming

Re-filming

On Thursday 11th December, our group decided to re-film. We got to the filming location after

school at about 4.00pm and it took about 2 and a half hours to re-film. We decided to change a few things which we discovered needing improving when we got our feedback back. This included title font as it was too unneat, I took the job of re-writing the titles to make them more festive and neat. Another thing we had to change was the Christmas tree as it was too small, we used a newer and bigger one for the second time filming which had lots more decorations on. I bought the outfits again and we re-did everything as our filming is one long continuous film for the titles.

We managed to capture everything we needed as the lesson after (Friday 12th) we saw that we had filmed everything correctly.

What went better this time was shadows, last time we got too many shadows in the background and the lighting wasn't good as it was too dark. Second time round, we avoided shadows and got some really good shots.

Second time filming photos

Shown above are some photographs I took of Chay, Tom and Bonnie getting ready to film once we had decided on positions.

Below are some photos I took of the scene where Tom (Santa) is taken by Chay.

After re-filming, we managed to capture a much more improved scene. Shown below is the final footage but we may change music.

Text updated

Text updated

When we looked at our feedback we realised that a main issue we needed to consider changing was the text. We received a few comments which suggested we wrote them out neater so the audience could read them more clearly. One comment said 'make the text more exciting by spending more time writing it'. when we filmed for the first time all we did was wrote them as if they were actual labels on presents therefore we didn't spend much time writing them. We need to improve this when re-filming to make them more interesting to read, they need to be bold and we need to pick an exciting font type to do this.

I said I would focus on re-writing the titles as I had a few good ideas of how to present them as I had the job of looking at text when we were planning. I had come up with some ideas which the group liked and this also included writing on baubles.

I practised writing out some titles and took some images below...

The images above show the baubles I wrote on, we chose different text which was clearer then before and also chose different names as another suggestion we got was to change names as we kept repeating the same names. I used tipex to write on the baubles and took my time so they were neat.

These images show other labels we used, I had the job of writing these out too as I had neat handwriting. I used the same props as before (Christmas card and present tags) to write the titles and took time making the handwriting more suitable for the genre. When I was researching text when we were planning, I came across a few that looked good, one of them looked similar to the text I used above.

Here is an image screenshot of some of the similar fonts I looked at when planning.

We decided it looked best if we used the writing that curled such as the second ones down because it is suitable for Christmas and it was quite easy to copy. We decided to use different text font for the baubles because it was already difficult to write on them as they were small and a difficult shape so we used a simple text like the last font shown above.

Draft feedback

Feedback from draft

Feedback sheets are shown below, people gave us feedback on what went well and what we need to improve/change.

Overall, people really liked our title ideas, most people said they look creative the way we have presented them on objects in the room. They also liked the upbeat music that played over the top of the filming, however they suggested we used different music for the scene where Santa appears.

Many people liked the part where we used cookies to show one of the names. They said they liked our idea because it is different and original.

However, although we received some really positive feedback, we also got some comments which we need to improve. This included changing the titles so they were more readable but to do this we would have to re-film as the filming is one long shot. They suggested we spent more time writing the titles as the text was too simple and some were unreadable and someone said that the baubles were not good as we wrote on paper instead of on the actual bauble. If we do re-film we would have to write on the baubles, write neatly and make sure we use a range of names as we repeated a lot of the names a lot which was said to improve.

Saving Santa first draft

Saving Santa first draft!

We created a first draft of our film to show the rest of the class, we then received some feedback to see what they thought of our ideas. They wrote down what they liked and what we should change, the feedback sheets are shown on the next blog post.

Our film starts at the time of 13.42

Shown below are some photos taken when we were looking at everyone's film openings (drafts). As we watched them we wrote what we liked and disliked.