Post- Production Part 1

Now filming is finally finished, I have taken all the clips off the SD cards and backed it up on hard drives. I have then imported the footage into Premiere Pro and separated them into bins for different scenes. This enabled us to have a more organised editing environment. We have started editing today and it has started going well, we have had a few white balance issues and sound issues, that we are hoping that these issues can be fixed by using colour correction and maybe redoing the sound.

Production

The production on our film went really well, we kept to schedule on both filming days almost perfectly and captured a great of shots that we liked. We used the shoulder stabiliser and dolly wheels to create even more interesting camera angles and movement. We had issues with the external rode mic, as it turned out that we had not checked that the mic that was on the Panasonic HMC151 off before trying to turn on the Rode Mic, causing the audio to only record through the camera. We are thinking after looking at the rushes that we made need to redo the audio only and try to sync it up together. We used our shot list to decide on what shots we were going to film, which made filming a lot easier.

My Pre-Production Evaluation

For this project, pre- production was quite extensive, first of all we decided on a script, which Rose wrote the first draft of. After this draft, I came up with some quick character designs which would enable us to decide what look we were looking for, when looking for actors. These designs included not only the look of the actors we were looking for as well as costume design that we were aiming for.

 After this I organized an audition for the two main roles, I did this by putting out an advertisement for the roles on multiple sites including, Star Now, CastingCallPro and FameStreet. I contacted all that had replied to the advertisements with information on how to get to the green screen room in university (our audition location), from giving them bus routes, maps and train times.

After our first audition we had found our lead female actress, but were still searching for someone to fill our male role. For this I decided to look through the profiles of the male actors in the area on CastingCallPro and decided on a few actors, which would be suitable for the role, I decided this by looking at their show reels. Through this we got our male actor. This process made our production start a few weeks later than we had planned on.

The next part of our pre- production process was too find locations, we searched online for art galleries within the Stafford area, through this we found the Shire Hall Gallery, Rose rang up and organized a meeting where we would explain our idea and how long it would take to the owner.

After we got this location, I redrafted the script to work with the location and the atmosphere. This included changing the costume design, I came up with some new pre-visualisation material for this, through creating mood boards and new character designs that included our actors.

Through the whole pre-production process I continued to be the sole contact for our male actor, keeping him updated on what was happening through email, sending him maps to the locations and giving him car parking suggestions.

I organized and booked out the equipment we needed for shooting each day and did risk assessments for each day taking into consideration our locations. I then also filled in all the location and actor release forms so they could be signed, securing them in place for filming.

Overall, I believe the pre-production process went well, with a few troubles with getting a male actor at the audition, causing production to be held up by a few weeks, but I think we handled it well. This all enabled our production process to go pretty smoothly.

Getting Our Male Actor

We had quite a struggle getting our male actor as no-one turned up for the role of Paul on the audition day. So we searched on CastingCallPro for a male actor within the age range 20-35 in the Staffordshire area, this enabled them to get to the locations we had organised easily. This is how we found Alex Wadham, who we decided upon from his showreel.
Alex Wadham is now our main actor "Paul". We are set to start filming on Friday at the Shire Hall Art Gallery and the park. And then again the following Monday in the Student Union Bar and a house on tithe barn road. I am the sole contact for our group to Alex and am in charge of making sure he gets call sheets and up to date scripts in time.

In The Blink Of An Eye

I have read the book In The Blink Of An Eye By Walter Murch (2001) it gave me tips about film editing and post production.

"Don't feel you have to cut because you are being paid to. You are being paid to make decisions"

I think this is important as sometimes, as I feel some clips are cut in both professional and my own work, just because there are another shot of the same footage, when keeping one long take you can create a better effect, that is more visually interesting.

He also goes on to talk about what the criteria for his ideal cut is, these six things are (in order of importance) 1) emotion 2) Story 3) Rhythm 4) Eye-Trace 5) Two-Dimensional plane of screen 6) Three- Dimensional space of action. I agree with him as getting the emotion and story across within the scene are the most important thing to do while editing and this is something I am aiming to do within my own work now and in the future.

First Half Of My Alice In Wonderland Edit

Alice Half Draft from Becca Nield on Vimeo.

After choosing what clips I wanted from the first half of the film, I edited it down this caused me too cut out some of the scenes which are less important and enabled the main story about Alice Vs. The Red Queen and the Jaberwocky become the main focus. I have edited up to 48 minutes into the film with an hour left to edit, this edit is just over two minutes which means I am on track to make a 5 minute edit of this film. I am going to keep powering forward with this edit and soon come up with a complete draft edit soon.

Chase Scene

This is our chase scene, that we made last week;

The Chase from Becca Nield on Vimeo.

We had to film on our phones to make this scene as part of the brief because of that our scene is very basic. I would have benefited from a steady cam and an external mic with wind covering, but we worked with what we got. We added in suspenseful music and slap sound effect in post production, to make it more intense. I feel like this could have gone better with more plot planning and a shot list.