October 9th
Alethia: A
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
Unfortunately today's lesson was not a very productive one. Alethia was absent today, meaning we couldn't focus on helping her with the mock ups as planned. Instead, we reviewed what progress has been made on the pre-production stage. Richard has successfully uploaded our first animatic onto YouTube. Although we plan on doing another one of better quality, we were able to give him some group feedback. We need to make sure that the trailer will make some sense to those watching who know nothing about our treatment and so we may incorporate this into our audience research by getting people to view it and tell us what they think. Meanwhile, Andre is finishing his moodboard and evaluating it and Isabel has spent the lesson conducting video interviews of fellow students to add to her audience research.
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
Unfortunately today's lesson was not a very productive one. Alethia was absent today, meaning we couldn't focus on helping her with the mock ups as planned. Instead, we reviewed what progress has been made on the pre-production stage. Richard has successfully uploaded our first animatic onto YouTube. Although we plan on doing another one of better quality, we were able to give him some group feedback. We need to make sure that the trailer will make some sense to those watching who know nothing about our treatment and so we may incorporate this into our audience research by getting people to view it and tell us what they think. Meanwhile, Andre is finishing his moodboard and evaluating it and Isabel has spent the lesson conducting video interviews of fellow students to add to her audience research.
October 11th - One to one
Alethia: P
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
With only one lesson left until our pre-production deadline, the group is under pressure to finish their assigned tasks. We feel that we've had some pointless lessons in the past week as while Richard and Andre have finished their tasks, I (Isabel) have been collecting research out of class and so in this lesson all three of us decided to help Alethia complete the mockups. This was good as we each got to give her a substantial amount of feedback and it was the first time we had seen her work since she was assigned it. After this, as a group we had a one to one with sir about how we were getting on. While we are all on task, we were advised that we must upload our work onto the website as we go rather than right before the deadline so that sir can monitor our progress and the posting process isn't rushed. When sir was sure that we were completely focused and up to date with our work, we continued tidying up the website and helping Alethia with Photoshop. We were supposed to take photos of a silhouette today for one of our mock up poster designs but ran out of time which was a shame.
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
With only one lesson left until our pre-production deadline, the group is under pressure to finish their assigned tasks. We feel that we've had some pointless lessons in the past week as while Richard and Andre have finished their tasks, I (Isabel) have been collecting research out of class and so in this lesson all three of us decided to help Alethia complete the mockups. This was good as we each got to give her a substantial amount of feedback and it was the first time we had seen her work since she was assigned it. After this, as a group we had a one to one with sir about how we were getting on. While we are all on task, we were advised that we must upload our work onto the website as we go rather than right before the deadline so that sir can monitor our progress and the posting process isn't rushed. When sir was sure that we were completely focused and up to date with our work, we continued tidying up the website and helping Alethia with Photoshop. We were supposed to take photos of a silhouette today for one of our mock up poster designs but ran out of time which was a shame.
October 12th - Deadline
Alethia: P
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
Richard, Isabel and Andre have all met their deadlines and uploaded all their work onto the website. Alethia spent this last lesson completing the mock-ups to a good standard while Richard and Isabel took some photos - a couple for a photoboard that Richard is planning on adding to his storyboard, and a few possible poses for the mock-up page. We did this by identifying which scenes in the storyboard were significant and then we went around college to find suitable places that were similar to the locations in the storyboard sketches and acted out these key scenes through photographs. Although we won't have time to get these marked as the deadline is today, before our final mark we plan on uploading them onto the site.
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
Richard, Isabel and Andre have all met their deadlines and uploaded all their work onto the website. Alethia spent this last lesson completing the mock-ups to a good standard while Richard and Isabel took some photos - a couple for a photoboard that Richard is planning on adding to his storyboard, and a few possible poses for the mock-up page. We did this by identifying which scenes in the storyboard were significant and then we went around college to find suitable places that were similar to the locations in the storyboard sketches and acted out these key scenes through photographs. Although we won't have time to get these marked as the deadline is today, before our final mark we plan on uploading them onto the site.
October 16th
Alethia: P
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
Today we got our pre-production stage results back from sir. We ended up getting a C grade which was disappointing but not unexpected. We discussed as a group ways in which we can improve this grade. We still need to fix up the website as sir mentioned in the development stage, and we can not leave this until the last minute as at the end of the course we must remain focused on our evaluations. We've agreed that working individually has proven difficult for us in particular and in our next stage we will be more helpful to one another to ensure everyone is on-task and knows what they're doing. As done in September, we conducted a group assessment and this means approaching positive and negative things about one another and we feel that this helps us to understand each other more. We also decided that we need to communicate more after school outside of lessons and in order to do this we made sure we had everyone's contact details and we also made a timetable of everyone's early finishes and breaks. This means that whenever one of us wishes to stay and work as a team, they can consult the timetable (to be uploaded on our website) and text/email or call whoever is scheduled to be in college. Today has been a very productive lesson because sir showed us that there are some areas in the school that resemble a house environment and this is something we were worried about as our trailer is set in a house and we can only film it on school grounds. We also used this lesson to improve our pre-production stage and we ended up changing our animatic quite a bit - it was good that we all were a part of this task, not just Richard, and it was nice for him that we were all contributing and helping out.
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
Today we got our pre-production stage results back from sir. We ended up getting a C grade which was disappointing but not unexpected. We discussed as a group ways in which we can improve this grade. We still need to fix up the website as sir mentioned in the development stage, and we can not leave this until the last minute as at the end of the course we must remain focused on our evaluations. We've agreed that working individually has proven difficult for us in particular and in our next stage we will be more helpful to one another to ensure everyone is on-task and knows what they're doing. As done in September, we conducted a group assessment and this means approaching positive and negative things about one another and we feel that this helps us to understand each other more. We also decided that we need to communicate more after school outside of lessons and in order to do this we made sure we had everyone's contact details and we also made a timetable of everyone's early finishes and breaks. This means that whenever one of us wishes to stay and work as a team, they can consult the timetable (to be uploaded on our website) and text/email or call whoever is scheduled to be in college. Today has been a very productive lesson because sir showed us that there are some areas in the school that resemble a house environment and this is something we were worried about as our trailer is set in a house and we can only film it on school grounds. We also used this lesson to improve our pre-production stage and we ended up changing our animatic quite a bit - it was good that we all were a part of this task, not just Richard, and it was nice for him that we were all contributing and helping out.
In preparation for shooting, Richard (with the help of a friend) had to carry one of our props - a television borrowed from the college - from one end of campus to the other, so that all our locations were ready and all set up for filming during half term.
October 30th - SHOOTING
Alethia: P
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
We have come in during our half term to shoot content for our trailer. We're very lucky to have the entire college to ourselves for filming as we have unlimited access and there's no risk of disruption. It was essential that we were well prepared and brought in our necessary props for the task, these included a rubber knife, our homemade fake blood, a rosary, sleeping bags and alarm clocks. Props were essential and key to our trailer as we had to make the college resemble a home. We followed our call sheets by starting in the staff room lounge. Here we had trouble with the lighting as with curtains drawn the set was too dark and this resulted in many shots that came out grainy - these we had to discard. To get rid of this grain, we instead used the KAI Lite and changed the angles of our shots. We also found that we could not film the television directly because of the reflection it made, but overcame this through coming up with another shot last minute. After this we shot in the kitchen and this was our first time using the fake blood. This part of shooting was very successful and went smoothly. Even though we stuck to our animatic for the most part, we were able to add more content of things that we thought would work on the day. This will make editing harder as we will have to make amends to our animatic template but we are happy with what we have shot. Unfortunately, we did not have time to shoot all of our content as we were not the only group booked in for the day and so were forced to move on. We plan on shooting the other half of our trailer when we are back at college and will do this after school ends.
Andre: P
Isabel: P
Richard: P
We have come in during our half term to shoot content for our trailer. We're very lucky to have the entire college to ourselves for filming as we have unlimited access and there's no risk of disruption. It was essential that we were well prepared and brought in our necessary props for the task, these included a rubber knife, our homemade fake blood, a rosary, sleeping bags and alarm clocks. Props were essential and key to our trailer as we had to make the college resemble a home. We followed our call sheets by starting in the staff room lounge. Here we had trouble with the lighting as with curtains drawn the set was too dark and this resulted in many shots that came out grainy - these we had to discard. To get rid of this grain, we instead used the KAI Lite and changed the angles of our shots. We also found that we could not film the television directly because of the reflection it made, but overcame this through coming up with another shot last minute. After this we shot in the kitchen and this was our first time using the fake blood. This part of shooting was very successful and went smoothly. Even though we stuck to our animatic for the most part, we were able to add more content of things that we thought would work on the day. This will make editing harder as we will have to make amends to our animatic template but we are happy with what we have shot. Unfortunately, we did not have time to shoot all of our content as we were not the only group booked in for the day and so were forced to move on. We plan on shooting the other half of our trailer when we are back at college and will do this after school ends.