Question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Here is our director's commentary, where we talk about what we like about our film opening, but also talk about what we would have done in hindsight. The main thing we talk about is continuity errors, which occurred due to us going on multiple shoots, and using footage from each shoot.



To summarise, we discuss:

• How one of the titles is a little illegible
• How it was difficult to grade the sunrise shots due to us using footage from different shoots
• Some minor continuity errors
• How in hindsight we would have tried to make more of a link between the bucket list and the photo
• The issue with the loud wind noise 

Before we went out on the shoot, we created an Animatic on Adobe Premier Pro using photographs and a voice-over to try and create almost a rough cut of our idea, but without actual footage.

Combining the photos with the V/O, we discovered how long the duration of each shot had to be. We also realised that we had to make some adjustments to the script. Our animatic would have been a little more helpful if we had the actual props we were planning on using on the shoot with us in the photographs, as the Beatles phone case and absence of the backpack was sometimes a little confusing.

Because I played the main character in our film opening, I was obviously not able to film the shots that I was in. This meant that I was given the opportunity to film some of the sunrise shots at the start of our sequence, using a DV 30 video camera and a tripod. I did some panning and some tilt ups, but we didn't want the opening to include too much shot movement because it would have looked a little odd. I also found that trying to get a smooth pan, especially a pan up, was quite difficult at times. We also attempted to do some zoom in and out shots, but they didn't look very professional. Instead, our shots have movement within them (for example, planes flying). This is similar to the sunrise shots in the 'Submarine' opening sequence, one of the films we were inspired by. The equipment was fairly easy to use, and the quality of the sunrise shots was good due to the thankfully good natural lighting, especially on our test shoot. 

This GIF shows the opening, sunrise section of our finished sequence

We edited our sequence on Adobe Premier Pro. We have used this software in past projects (our GCSE children's TV show trailer, and our AS preliminary task), and so we found it rather easy to use. What we did find a little difficult was the grading process, which we had to do after getting a final cut, to ensure that all the shots looked the same (in terms of lighting, contrast, colours, quality, etc). The fact that we used some shots from our test shoot, some from our real shoot and some from our re-shoot meant that the lighting was a bit different each time, due to the varying sunrises.

(Left) My group member Sharlene and I editing the vlogging section.
(Right) A collection of screen shots illustrating the grading process.

As we wanted to use one of my original songs as the soundtrack for our opening sequence, we had to record it using a microphone and Adobe Audition on the Mac in a quiet place. After getting a few takes, we had to transfer the sound clips from the Mac to our edit suite, where we edited a couple of the takes together to get the perfect soundtrack. Editing the takes together was quite difficult as we recorded the vocals and the guitar in the same recording, meaning we had to match both of these elements up with each other when cutting them together. We did have a previous recording of the song, but the quality was very bad - and so, without the microphone, the poor quality sound would have distracted the audience from the visuals rather than complimenting them

and would have also made our opening seem very unprofessional.

We created our titles on LiveType, and searched the website 'Dafont' to find the perfect, indie font, with a playful, coming-of-age feel about it.  I am very happy with the font as it really adds to the opening sequence, however I did find LiveType a little tricky to use because I haven't had the opportunity to use it much in past projects. 

In our opening sequence, Lila is vlogging her experience of watching the sunrise. We therefore needed to create two 'REC' titles (one with the red dot, and one without, so that it could flash on and off - which is more realistic). I made the 'REC' titles on Adobe Premier Pro on our edit suite. At the end of 'Easy A', Olive is vlogging, but a 'REC' title is not used - we thought, however, that without the title, it wouldn't be very clear that Lila was vlogging, which is a key part of the narrative.


In order to stay in contact, our group created a Facebook group where we could post our ideas, images and videos, and comment on them. This aided us in the development of our project as it meant that we could still share ideas and have online group meetings without actually being with each other, face to face. The presence of new media therefore made our lives a lot easier.