FILM MAKING

 Recently In media we have been working on making a film. There are many elements that go into the process of making a short film/ an opening which is exactly what we were doing. We had to think through what we were going to base our film on and work on the creative side such as the aesthetic of the film. Firstly, we had to think of a production company name. For this I worked with Tabi and Honor. They thought of the name "fishy films" and we would use a fish to produce are final stop motion video. The aim was to have a quick handmade stop motion video no longer than 1 minute that would be unique and dynamic. Our idea was to write the letters of "fishy films" on to blue bubbles and film them coming out of a model of a fish on by one. We chose a background that looked like the sea and started to move our fish over it. Furthermore, we used the software "hue" to make our video. We had to set up our fish and background under the hue camera then using the mac we took pictures of us moving the scene ever so slightly. We had a few images where someone's finger was in the way but we easily fixed this by removing those particular images. Then we had to add sound effects, we choose the sound of bubbles and made this the most prominent sound. In the background we had the sound of kayaks and waves but we lowered the volume of this. I think the outcome of our production company logo was very effective and the overall look of it was exactly what we planned out, for it to stand out from the rest.

The first thing we did to make our end project (the short opening of a film) was to create a scene on a table top then film it from a birds eye view. For this I worked along side Hannah, Jasmine, Honor and Maddi. For this piece of filming we used one of are phones and held it above the table covered in different items. There was an umbrella and a kimono that were from Asia, a jewellery box with pears and earrings and flowers. I was the one who did the filming and everyone else set up these items in a aesthetically pleasing way. I moved the camera slowly over the table being careful not to get any of the floor in or anyone. We had to re film it a few times because its never perfect the first time. I had to have steady hands for this but in the end I believe it turned out well. Within this we also had Hannah pick up a fan that was on the table and close it to suggest or foreshadow something that could occur in the actual movie. Alongside with the items I have previously mentioned there was also a framed picture of a woman and lots of cloth and lace draped over the table. These items played a significant role in the opening as they related to the live action part we filmed after this. 

The live action part was to add depth to our movie opening and to give it a bit of character. We decided on casting Maddi as the face of our movie and she was in a Kimono and held a baby in cloth that I have previously mentioned. The idea was to create almost a Spring scene in Japan, hence the things on the table that linked back to Asia. We had Maddi walk down the mansion steps carrying her baby, she then lay the baby down wrapped up in its cloth. During this time of filming she had the pearls from the table on her and we told Maddi that it would be a good idea to leave the pearls with the baby, almost like a parting gift. Like the stop motion video and table top filming we had to re do it a couple time to make it the desired outcome. 

To bring are short opening together we had to edit our clips. We imported the video shot on Honor's phone onto the macs and began using the app "iMovie" to edit our clips. I did most of the editing as I had used this app before and was fairly familiar with it. I first put in the table top filming then did a smooth transition to the live action scene. I added text such as the title, names of the people who worked in the film or worked on it and choose a font and colour. We went for a rich blue and a red and a font that wasn't too fancy but still worked with are film. We settled on the name "Sakura" which translates to cherry blossom and we gave it the opening description of "A cherry blossom dream." By giving it such a title I think it created the image of a romance or a coming of age movie but we left the idea up for interpretation as we could go anywhere with this film if we chose to. We had done all this editing before making the production company logo and our original group split and it was down to me, Honor and Tabi who had joined. As I previously explained, we edited our stop motion video with hue then we copied it onto our iMovie project. This was fairly easy and it fitted quite well. Our opening was by far the longest but I think it was the most professional. We already had the bubbles as sound effects on the production company logo so we just had to think of and add are main music to the short film. We chose the song "My future" by Billie Eilish and we actually had to record it via the mic on the software and playing it from my phone. This surprising worked well and our movie opening was finished

After working on this film for quite a while now I think its safe to say we spent a lot of time on this and it payed off. The filming was good and I think the overall idea was very well thought out and the executed well. What I would say is that we could've linked our production company logo to our films by making it something to do with Cherry Blossom or give it  more fitting name. However, I think we what produced was good and I'm very proud of it.