Friday 20th November, the final edit was made.

The soundtrack was also inserted. The problems we had were:

Background hum - There was often ambient, airy noise in the background, and when scenes changed, the audio also changed. Under the effects tab there is an audio effect titled "hum remover". This effect helped remove some of this.

Audio Rendering problems - All the audio that was imported would not render. Under the Final cut preferences tab.

Audio Censorship  - There is 2 scenes where an interviewee swears, and this goes against our demographic, so it needed to censored. There is a tone generator in final cut pro. I used this, timing it with the audio, and making keyfeames, inserted this tone at the appropriate timing.

In hindsight, the edit was successful, but more time would have allowed better color correction, better audio mastering and a stronger overall outcome.

On the Wednesday of this week, I transferred the footage off the camera and began editing some of the establishing shots together to form the opening sequence. I discovered a few problems whilst editing such as;

Conflicting aspect ratio's - We used two different cameras to film 2 different scenes. The problem was that the second camera we used captured footage in a smaller aspect ratio than the previously edited footage. Pete informed me that it was possible to stretch the entire amount of footage by placing it on a separate video track, then applying the rescale effect to that entire track. We would loose some of the resolution but not too much to downgrade the quality of the footage. I intend to do this.

Rendering time - As the footage was from an external source, every time we imported a clip to edit, it would need rendering. This process was very time consuming. Pete again informed me that we could solve this problem by placing all the footage in a new sequence, then rendering the sequence, then exporting it as a .mov file, for easier and more convenient use later.

Colour balance - in certain shots the blacks were either too low, or the sun rays / glare interfered with the shot. I intend to apply colour correction, using apple colours. I researched some videos concerning colour correction which are available here

During editing, on various occasions i discussed the editing direction with the director. We agreed that for the intro sequence,and opening sequence, which would be voiced over, short quick precise cuts were the most effective, and will continue to discuss the editing direction as i continue to edit.

Today we had a production meeting, where we raised a number of issues and talked about what progress we need to make.
We spoke about meeting our actor next week monday for make-up tests and how we intend to begin filming that same week.
We also spoke about how Amy and Sannah are going to edit the final scrips together and merge the ideas from there drafts then present them to the group.
I will be capturing the footage off the Hd cameras and will begin editing the establishing shots. I will try to learn some techniques in after effects and see if i can apply anything useful to our production.

On the friday the 18th of last week we went out filming. We went to the area near Jessica's house and filmed a few establishing shots of the house our character lives in, and the street and environment.
We took mobile shots whilst on the bus, but the reflection on the bus mirror may have ruined the shot. We also took pans of the road signs and roads leading to the house.
On Tuesday the 18th we went filming in the bullring. We got establishing shots of the city our character lives in.
We took static shots of people walking past and intend to speed it up in post production. we also got close up shots of signboards in birmingham city centre. We took static shots of the birmingham bull.

This week we covered a couple of the the goals that we set for our production group.

Both Scripts from both Amy and Sannah were turned in and reviewed. There are aspects from both scripts that I think are incredibly written, we now need to pick specific aspects, as a group, of what we like about each script, and combine them.
I suggested that we storyboard a variety of short ideas and segments, film them, and then edit it down to 4-5 minutes rather than limit ourselves.
Me and Amy began writing/ storyboarding a couple ideas we had, and came up with a alternative ending,whereby the protagonist, meets a group of people, and some sort of closure occurs.

The data from questionnaires was also collected by Maylah and Sannah.

I also brought in a 2 disc DVD collections of short horrors for the group to watch and analyse. I also produced a write up talking about the conventions.
Over the week I also did a one to one interview and wrote the minutes from this.

I have been recently looking at the editing techniques, that are seen in documentaries.
So Far I have no responses to the posters I handed out but we are still searching for an actor.

Friday 23rd of september
We held another production meeting, our second as a group, an a number of topics were brought up:

Script writing style and who is writing the script:
it was decided that 2 scripts would be written by amy/sannah and we would take apart aspects from each to create the script.


The structure of the script and in what format it would be written in:

It was decided that the structure would look like;

SHORT INTRO -> BACKGROUND ON CHARACTER -> STORYLINE PROGRESSION -> OUTRO -> FOLLOW UP TO STORYLINE
and the script would be written using this as a guide line.

Location:

We discussed what locations we would use and how we would gain permission to these locations.
We also talked about when we would revisit Matthew Boulton, we decided that next monday would be the best time to go again as many embers of the group are busy on these days.



We watched a series of short films and proceeded to analyse the conventions

Wednesday 21st we went to matthew boulton to inquire to the drama department about recruiting a lead actor for our production project.
Jessica made a recruitment/ advertisement for our project, and we were given these to distribute. This trip to Matthew Boulton was an opportunity to hand out some of these posters.
Unfortunatley when we arrived the campus was closing but we managed to speak to a secretary she said she would pass on our message.
Although, as a group we felt that we did not make enough of a physical presence, so we decided that we would visit again at a later date.


Before leaving Sannah, Marla and I created an 11 page questionnaire. These were then printed out (50) and were given to be distributed at a later date.