Final Editing!

Today we had to finish editing our films. We had a lot to do so we broke the editing down between us, this was efficient because we each got a turn to do editing and we were all had things to be doing. For the first part of the lesson I tweaked the music which I had chosen in the previous weeks. I chose it becauseI felt that it had a christmas twang, yet it wasn't as cheesy as the other songs I found. 
My job to incorporate the music into our film was to make sure that it was in time with it, for example when the vox-pop changed from person to person. (this gives the film more of a flow, that being jerky). I raised and lowered the volume of the music at certain parts when necessary. At times this got a bit tedious, especially when it was impossible for the music to be in time with every aspect of the film. To overcome this, I made the whole film start a tiny bit later so that the introduction of the song could play, I found that this made the film have more of a flow. 


After break, we got Mr Durran to watch our film so far. He got the overall sentimental feel of the film which we were going for but suggested that we fill in some of the gaps where we had simply just left blank. I suggested that Thea and I could go off a film christmas related footage, while Ellie stayed and edited further. 
Thea and I borrowed a christmas tree from school and filmed it from different angles, just to give the vox-pop a festive feeling. We added the footage we had taken to the film and it really added to the atmosphere of the film. But the only thing was that some of the clips were too short, so we resulted in slowing them down.  

More Editing & Feedback

In the first part of the lesson we watched each others vox pops so far and got feedback from the class. Ours was the one that needed the most work but this was not a negative because the film we had finished editing so far was intricately crafted together to give off the effect which we got from the class. 






It has taken us a long time to edit our film, firstly because of the many people we asked (over 30), so we had to watch back all of their responses and sort it our into folders depending their overall message. 
Another example of what was taking us a while was that we were editing so precisely, making sure everything was in its place. The editing included, altering the composition of the frame, making sure the microphone wasn't in the shot and most commonly making sure that I was not heard while the person was talking. This we found the hardest because at times I was heard a fraction of a second before the person started to respond. 


The sorts of feedback we received was about the length of film because it was considered to be longer than the other vox pops in the class, ours was over 6 minutes.
To solve this problem I suggested shortening the length of some of our responses because I felt that some of them were unnecessarily long, for example one of them showed them thinking of an answer. 

More Editing

In today's lesson we continued editing our documentary, but because Thea wasn't here Ellie and I had to take on more jobs than we did last week. This worked out well because we swapped quite often in doing the editing and finding suitable music. 

While editing I found that most of our clips were out of sync so we had to manually move the audio or the video clips to make the audio match the video. This took ages but once we finished manually synced it, it really enhanced our film. 

In some interviews the microphone appeared in shot so we had to crop the video to make sure that the microphone wasn't visible. We did this with difficulty because we soon found out that as we cropped it we also had to enlarge the frame and this made the resolution lower. But I suggested either not using that frame or attempting to again crop but very precisely so that the frame didn't have to be be over enlarged.

We thought it would be a good idea to organise our film in to different sections, these sections included the questions we asked and the types of responses. This made it easier to edit our film because we didn't have to waste time finding specific responses or questions we wanted to use. 

We wanted our film to have an overall flow and to do this Mr Durran suggested swapping the sides in which our interviewees were standing on. We found that most of the footage was shot on the right side so I suggested using 'horizontal flip' to change the side in which the person was standing on. 


Next week, we hope to finish our film and to make the music I have chosen go well with the film. Also, I personally am aiming to be able to get more of an input in the editing of the film. Since there are three of us we take it in turns to edit but sometimes there is an unequal share of who does the editing. So I will try to edit more and allow people to do the jobs I was doing this week (finding music, conceptual shots and fonts styles). 

Editing

In today's lesson we began to edit the footage we had shot last week. It took a long while to capture our film on Adobe Premier because we had captured over an hour footage.

Since there were three of us in our group and only one computer available to edit on, we decided that we would take it in turns to edit the film. While someone was editing I was searching for possible background music we would have playing throughout our documentary.
Previously, we discussed as a group that we wanted the overall style of the video to be 'funky and young', so quite stylistic. I thought that an upbeat christmas themed song would be necessary for our documentary.
I searched for a variety of 'upbeat christmas songs', but about 80% if the songs I found were cliche christmas songs which would only make our documentary seem like a 'spoof'.
The other 20% of songs I found fitted quite well for example I found a remix of the song christmas lights by coldplay:

After I had researched for possible background music, I went on to look for conceptual shots to go in the documentary, since it was hard for us to shoot our own conceptual footage because there aren't many christmas orientated things around.
I found a few clips of father christmas coming down the chimney, families putting trees up and other christmas clips. The most I found were in christmas music videos for example the one below which is by Train called Shake up christmas.

Next week it will be my turn to do some editing and I will also import the conceptual footage and background music I found today onto our video.

Vox Pop Day!

Today was our voxpopping day, as a group we knew that it was going to be a heavily-action packed day so the previous week we made a plan of what we needed to do this week and we also made a prop list (things we needed to bring in e.g. santa hats)

I thought that today was overall successfull because we asked over 30 people, this included a variety of demographics too. We were pleased with the variety of different opinions and perspectives we captured. 
I played the role and selectively choosing people to ask and then interviewing them with our questions. During our practice vox-pop session last week, I noticed a few things that made people not want to stop and talk to you:

• Wearing some sort of uniform - we figured out that all of us should be wearing the CRaM uniform because it looked more professional and less like we were a bunch of teens asking random strangers questions.

• Having some sort of persuasion, something they can get out of us filming them. In our case we used sweets. 

• Having contextual shots alongside our interviews - contextual shots for example footage of people walking past with shopping bags make the film overall more interesting. 

Throughout the whole day we felt that we had interviewed a lot of people and used up a lot of film and we were stuck between the decision of to carry on filming or whether to attempt to find contextual shots around town. Because of the topic we had chosen 'christmas' we soon found that it was hard to find backgrounds to shoot or contextual shots to shoot we had something to do with christmas because it was late september. Instead we  shot footage of shoppers just walking past, in which we would later on speed up as a sort of collage. 

Next week we hope to start editing our footage. 

Planning and Practice Vox Pops

In today's lesson we brainstormed a range of possible topics on which we wished to vox pop about.

Our three possible ideas were:

• Christmas - exploring people's thoughts on whether christmas is becoming to commericalised. And whether christmas should be secular or religious

• How old where you when - this included asking a series of questions about how old people were when they did particular things, for example stop believing in the tooth fairy. This may lead to a summary on whether children are growing up too fast.

• Global warming - none of us were really intersted in this topic but we just put it down to fill out the brainstorm. The disadvantage of doing this topic is that it a bit "over-done"

We decided to choose Christmas because we believed that it would raise the most interesting questions. I pointed out to the group that a disadvantage of doing a vox-pop about Christmas is that it's not Christmas time so while filming we won't be able to include a 'christmassy' background.

As a group we came up with idea of wearing santa hats to make up for not having christmas backgrounds.

We then went out on the streets and tried out our questions. I took the role of selecting people to interview and interviewing them. It was difficult at first because of course many people refused to be stopped and asked questions but I think a large reason of why people refused was because we had to film it.
For next week we had the idea of bringing in sweets or goodies to give to the public after we had interviewed. We are hoping that this will encourage people not to be camera shy and recieve the treat.

Next week we will be vox-popping all day and our aim is to get most of the vox popping done. Asking a wide variety of people so we can gather as many opinions as possible.