Editing: Adobe After Effects CS5

Our group identified that in order to make our film look effective we need to use a wider variety of software in order to attain this. We opted to use Adobe After Effects CS5 as our inspiration into creating a production with better visual media than was presented last year. After Effects offers a great range of effects and transitions that you can apply to images, like this smoke effect you see in the image above. By having these effects in our production our group are enabled to present a better representation of the type of movie we are trying to portray, as if we can manipulate the effects we want to portray to create meaning. For instance this smoke effect in a red tint represents danger connotates a violent abruption which unfolds during the outset of the story. 

Editing: Title sequence

Our group had met and discussed the effect that we wanted to portray in the ope
ning title sequence. As you can see above we decided to use a very bold black text to outline the names of the people within our film, alongside short establishing shots of areas around Victoria and Vauxhall. We mainly did this to establish the scene where the majority of the storyline is going to be held. When combining all the shots that we took we found that they complimented each other and alongside music worked very effectively during the transitions and effects we put during the title sequence.

Location: Title sequence

These are some stills that we had taken when thinking about locations for our title sequence. We wanted to show shots all around London in an establishing shot view. Tall building and land structures helped establish the scene and show modern contemporary London in bright daylight but represents that all good things have bad intentions as the story wares on which is why we took these shots . These wide establishing stills we was able to obtain got our group thinking of where to include the names of characters and the music we wanted to include on top of this.

Shot-list for scene 1

In preparation for shooting we have devised a shot-list so that we can be prepared for the actual day of shooting and to avoid missing shots out when filming scenes.

Shot-list
1. A two-shot of Miles and Sophia walking together

2. As Miles walks away a mid shot of Sophia laying on the wall

3. A point of view shot showing Sophia looking around

4. Back to two-shot where Omed takes Sophia

5. Close-up shot transitioning into the camera being handheld following Miles run as he sees his girlfriend being taken away

6. Mid-shot as Lekan knocks out Miles

7. POV shot of Miles falling to the ground.

Construction: Montage - Split screen

Based on the research our group has conducted on the split-screen effect this is the result of what we had produced when using Premiere Pro CS5. We decided to make transitions to the split screen as well to help the montage flow better from shot to shot. The split-screen mainly made up from image-matts, offsets and presents looked very effective when rendered and helped tell the audience a big chunk of our story through short snappy cuts and split-screen sequences.

Editing: Software

To edit our film the software we have decided to use this year is Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Our group felt as if that this piece of software offered more in effects and provided a more precise level of cuts than the previous piece of software we used last year which was iMovie. CS5 has further enhancements such as color corrections and other effects which will give our production a much more movie feel, whereas this wouldn't be the case on other editing pieces of software.

Problems Encountered During the Production

On shooting the first scene we immediately encountered a problem, location which affected how we planned to shoot scenes. The location for our first scene which happened to be a recurring  location in our production was Victoria Station which we later came to realize that we were not able to film there due to the public and other suspicions, also that we needed to pay and also have a license to film in the station.

Mid way through filming we were stopped by security guards, as we felt this was a particularly good setting for our production we were determined to finish filming in the station. We continued filming again once they had gone and upon their return we decided to try and negotiate with the security guards which paid off with us convincing them to allow us to film for 5 more minutes which we proceeded in filming for another 30 minutes, ensuring we gathered enough coverage in that time.

Another disruption that caused some problems for us was battery life on the camera, as the camera would be in use by our media class it would tend to be either be near to an empty battery or the battery completely drained and filming would be cut short. To get past this we took the simple steps of having another battery pre-charged and/or having the current battery charged to some extent which has made for longer filming time and less hassle