Beginning A2.

• Learning how to use new tools: video camera and video editing software.
• Small video projects to practise creativity and techniques
• Using target audience feedback to test out production in progress (minimum of three occasions)
• Engaging with academic discourses around the key concepts.
• Building a library of knowledge and understanding around the industries of Music, Journalism and Video Gaming as examples of MEDIA in the ONLINE AGE
• Managing a portfolio of work including THREE productions: video, audio and print.
• Creating a team production wiki to centralise the team's contributions.
• Creating a Production Team Logo
• Creating a Mood Board for your short film.
• Using on-line resources to learn more about short films BFI and Vimeo Film School
• Attending London Film Festival events 8-19th October 2014 or an even more local film festival.

Film Language
I am learning that editing is not just about matching shot types but also judging the rhythm of the edit so that consecutive shots might be long, long then short short short long. It all depends upon the effect I want the narrative to create. I am deciding here to introduce extra viewpoint shots in this part of the short film because I think that it is too uneventful at the moment and the duration of the shots are not justified because the audience haven't become involved in crux of the story. I need to make the camera create more visual interest and communicate more information in a shorter time. 

Using Film Language.
Although there are lots and lots of potential transitions in Premiere Pro my experience of watching short films tells me that   it is only really a cut and a dissolve which work effectively. Here I am incorporating a dissolve between two clips because I want the transition to be slower than a cut to show how the protagonist is trying to connect with another character. The transition implies ...'will he won't he?'; it's really the expectation of the first character. The technique of the dissolve here communicates the feelings and subjectivity of the character using the phone. See the second version of the film for how we do this!

This is my workspace in Adobe Premiere Pro. I have arranged my video clips along the timeline and I'm making decisions of how best to cut them together. I am beginning to realise that our production team is going to have to return to the location and shoot more footage so that I can edit together a more effective sequence.

What should be in your Blog by the end of this half-term?

• Research into the GENRE of SHORT FILM
• Analysis of at least THREE short films (show narrative organisation, shot types, use of transitions)
• Research into TARGET AUDIENCES.
• Use of BBC short films or Vimeo Film School to show evidence of SECONDARY RESEARCH
• Two apprentice films (of yours) blogged in your MAIN TASK with Planning Evidence (storyboarding, scripts, photos, other notes) and Audience feedback leading to AUDIENCE feed-back and feed-forward.
• Screen shots of your editing decisions as you produce version 1 and version 2. 
• A PRODUCTION SCHEDULE posted running from September to December showing all the pre-production, production and post-production dates.
• A Progress VLOG from each of the Production Team Members.
• TARGET AUDIENCE research showing familiarity with specialist organisations with analyse audiences..BFI and BARB. 

Planning, filming and editing a duologue.

A duologue is a pretty standard element of a short film so I have decided to build in enough time to practise filming and re-filming a key scene of the film which is a fairly lengthy duologue between the two main characters.

As I look at the footage of my first effort at filming I am discovering that the first draft is much less interesting to view than I imagined when I was writing the scene and even filming it.

I have assembled a radio mic which I first attached to the character nearer to the stills camera shot and then mounted on the characters furthest away from this camera shot.

Here I am near the end of a cold shooting schedule explaining what I want from my actors.

The video (and audio) file that you can see on the time line above is clipping because I have set the radio mic at throat height on the character to the left. I now realise that I should either place the radio mic between the two characters or use a mic mounted on the camera itself because all the shots are mid-shot, close-up or extreme close-up. I plan to experiment with two further microphone positions to see what gives the better results.

As you can see I have begun to cut together the first FIVE edits and then arranged the blocks of filming from which I am trying to create one complete sequence.

Your Main Task should have TWICE as much in it as your RESEARCH and PLANNING.

What should be in your MAIN TASK posting by the end of term?

1. A treatment for a short film
2. A storyboard
3. A script
4. Editing screenshots
5. A 90 second film
6. Discussion of shot types and transitions. Examples given from first version film.
7. Audience feedback
8. Analysis of feedback.
9. Revised and up-dated storyboard and script.
10. More examples showing growing familiarity and confidence with video editing software.
11. Discussion of 2 or 3 new shots that have been created in the making of the second version of the video in production.
12. Screenshots or video of two or three key editing decisions you have made.
13. Posting of the second version of your BLOG.
14. Audience feedback from the second posting.
15. Analysis of the audience feedback.
16. YOUR PAIRED or INDIVIDUAL or GROUP VLOG.
17. Final plans -updated storyboard and script.
18. Screenshots of editing decisions (say 3 in detail)
19. FINAL FIVE MINUTE short film posed.
20. Audience feedback.
21. Closing comments.

Where does the original film idea come from?

Radio is a very rich source of ideas and information and I like to listen to speech radio as a secondary research technique. I was listening to an episode of First Time With...... where Matt Everitt was interviewing the film director and musician David Lynch.

What's fascinating about this is how a creative artist like David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino can take a song with one set of associations and re-create its connotations as part of a film narrative. Tarantino does this most famously with Stealers Wheel's  Stuck in the Middle with You. Since Reservoir Dogs can anyone listen to this song without visualising the psychopath's torturing of the police officer?
The same is true I think of how David Lynch's takes the Bobby Vinton song Blue Velvet and makes it sinister and mysterious.  Here the director imagines three things:

• the visibility of red lips seen through the front windscreen of a car (the rest is mysterious)
• a moving landscape of green lawns disappearing into darkness
• an enveloping sense of mystery 

It is interesting to learn how creative artists like Lynch respond to a stimulus like a pop song