Construction Post 12: Our Final Product!

Hey there!

We have now finished our opening sequence which you can watch below:

Construction Post 11: Reflections on Week Two of Editing

During this week of editing, the main thing that we have worked on is titles. These are very important to our opening sequence and require a lot of planning and consideration. We firstly began planning our titles by deciding the billing order of them and which titles we were actually going to include. Below you can see a draft list of the titles we are going to have in our opening sequence and the order in which they are going to appear in:

Another thing we did during this week of editing is finding the right music for our film. We all worked on this together as a team, each member of our group finding different songs/soundtracks which we would then all listen to and decide whether or not we thought it was suitable. For our music, we had to ensure that it was unlicensed and royalty-free so that we were legally able to use it. This did cause some problems at first because to begin with we wanted to use 'Lose Yourself' by Eminem for our opening sequence. However, as this song belongs to an official artist and is not unlicensed we were not able to use it.

So we had to find something else. The websites we looked at include Stock Music Site, Epidemic Sound and YouTube Audio Library. We found two songs that we thought we might use on Stock Music Site but we soon found out that you actually had to pay for the music on this site, so we decided to use the other two websites. On Epidemic Sound I found one song that had potential for our opening scene but when we all listened to it we decided that it was too upbeat for our film, as we wanted music that would interest the audience but also make them feel at ease and fairly relaxed. So then we moved onto looking at songs on the YouTube Audio Library. On this site we found several soundtracks that we thought had potential to be used for our film. Here is a picture of the original list of songs that we created:

Once we had gone through them all, we decided that 'Phife for Life' was the best soundtrack for our film. We chose this particular songs over the others as it is rather relaxing and it suits the tone and mood of our opening sequence, that being a serious but also interesting mood.

Now all we need to do is make sure all parts of our film are complete and make any necessary finishing touches to it to complete it. 

Construction Post 10: Reflections on Week One of Editing

One week has now passed since we filmed our opening sequence which we have been editing for this week. We kicked off our editing firstly by cutting down our footage and deciding which scenes should be deleted as they did not actually have a strong meaning so the audience would not be able to connect with the entirety of our film. However, now we have cut down our footage and shots, we know now what specific footage we have to work with.

Here are some screenshots of our editing process:

In this picture we were deciding which transition to use for this shot which you can see in the bottom right-hand corner. 

The above screenshot shows the font we used for our titles and the title we used for our film. 

This week of editing has also included brainstorming titling ideas for our film. Fiona is the one who is primarily responsible for the titles of our opening sequence but we have all helped to add to ideas. Firstly, we had to create an official title for our film. The first titles we came up with are:

However, as well as these titles we came up with a some others as well which we thought were better than our original titles; these included:

• In The Ring
• Down For The Count
• Four To The Body
• On The Ropes

Once we had looked at all of the names for our titles we decided that the new ones we came up with plus Roll With The Punches were the best. However, in order to ensure that we successfully appeal to our target audience we went to ask people within our target audience which title they thought was best for our film. These are the results we received from our survey:

From our results we saw that Roll With The Punches was the most favoured title so we decided to choose this as the title for our film.

To conclude what we have learnt from our first week of editing is principally how to use titles effectively in our film in order to appeal to our audience more. Also, now we have decided on the font that we are going to use for our titles in our film as well. As we have now chosen our main title, we can now begin to work on placing the other necessary titles in our film. 

Come back again soon for another update on editing! See ya!

Construction Post 9: Our Post-Production Kit

Hey there, thanks for coming back! Now we have finished filming we have began editing our film and in this post you can read about the kit and equipment that we are using for editing. Enjoy!

Our hardware included:

• Headphones/earphones
• Apple iMac

For our software we just used Final

Cut Pro X which is a fast and 

efficient programme which

allows you to edit videos to high 

standards and qualities. 

Construction Post 8: Mise-En-Scene Arrangements On Set

Welcome to another post about our filming day in which you will learn about the mise-en-scene planning we had on the set of our film, enjoy!

I was responsible for documenting all the features of our planned mise-en-scene on the day of filming. This meant that on the day I was in charge of taking photographs of things happening behind the scenes (e.g. actors rehearsing, group members discussing the different shots of our storyboard and how to position the camera, etc.), the props, the lighting, the location and the cast.

Behind-the-scenes:

Things that were happening behind the scenes include actors rehearsing their lines, our group setting up our camera equipment, setting up props and more. Below you can see some photos from behind-the-scenes of our set:

The rest of my group start to set-up the camera 

equipment whilst the actors rehearse their parts.

Shakiel practices his technique at the speedball,
showing Cqimere how to do it. 

Cqimere gets ready to hit the speedball.

                                              

Shakiel shows Cqimere how to box in the ring so that she can give a realistic and convincing portrayal of Maya as a talented boxer.










Location: 
You will have already seen some photographs of our filming location from my ninth research and planning post about our location planning. However, I also took some pictures of the location myself to show more specific parts of the boxing gym, which you are able to see just below:

Interior view of the whole of McKenzie's boxing gym.

Photo of the boxing ring which we used for our final part of our opening sequence. 

Lighting:

As previously mentioned, we decided jut to use the lights of the gym itself to give our opening scene a more natural and realistic feel. These are the lights that were provided by McKenzie's boxing gym:

Props:

Another feature included in mise-en-scene is props. Although we did not actually have lots of props, they were still very important in our opening sequence in order to complete it. These are the props that we used: 

          

Drew's boxing gloves

Maya's boxing gloves

Maya's boxing gym equipment bag

Maya's headphones

The speedball that features in the beginning of

our opening sequence

The punch bag that Maya practices with.

Hand wraps put on underneath boxing gloves to protect the hands.

Although we did not have a huge range of props, the props that we did use were very important in completing our opening scene as hey all had a role to play. The gym bag was used as Maya's boxing equipment bag; the boxing gloves, hand wraps, speedball and punch bag were used for the boxing scenes and the headphones were used to represent Maya's focus on her boxing technique when she was practicing at the speedball.

Construction Post 7: Our Production Kit

Hiya! Welcome back! In this research and planning post you will be able to find out what technical equipment we used to shoot our opening sequence.

The equipment that we used includes:

• Canon 700D camera x2 
• Tripod x2
• Telephoto lens
• Rode Microphone

By having a microphone we were able to record our sound in higher quality, making the dialogue of our characters clearer for the audience. 

Also by having a telephoto lens we were able to zoom in more on certain shots with the same quality, improving the quality of our shots. 

Overall we had a range of equipment available for us to use and with this we were able to ensure that our film was of a high standard.

Construction Post 6: Filming Day!

Hey there! Welcome back to my blog! This post is a rather exciting one as it is about our filming which took place two days ago (25/2/17). In this post you will learn about how our filming went overall, how we planned our set, what happened behind the scenes of filming and more! Enjoy reading!

Summary of how it all went: 
Overall our filming was successful and went well. We all met up at our planned meeting point on time and got to McKenzie's boxing gym for the right time as well. Once we were there we began setting up our camera equipment and positioning it where it was required. Whilst we prepared this equipment, the actors rehearsed their lines for a final time and the different shots which they were needed in. Once everyone had finished their preparation we began filming. In general the whole process of filming ran smoothly and went well throughout the shoot. On the other hand there were a few minor technical problems, for example one of the batteries of the cameras died during filming which was a slight difficulty but luckily, as we had another camera, we were still able to complete our filming on the day. In conclusion, our filming was successful and we worked well together as a group to solve any technical difficulties that we faced.

How we could improve:
One way in which we could have improved our filming on the day is by taking less time to position our shots. This frequently took a little longer than necessary and meant that we gradually had less and less time to film. Apart from this, we worked well together as a team to solve any minor problems that we encountered.