Assignment Completed & Handed In

I have finally been able to complete my editing and finish my assignment. I had a couple of free lessons yesterday, so I was able to complete the editing throughout the day with the school laptop that I borrowed. At home, the only thing that I had to do was watch over the trailer again and make sure that everything was all good to submit. I ended up only adjusting the volume of the dialogue over the background music so that the viewer could hear it better, and at school I finished the colour correcting that I had left.

This has probably been the most difficult task yet, and I am really glad it's over. I think that the task itself was quite challenging due to the fact that it was a trailer and I found it really hard to make it non-linear and trailer-like. However, I also made it hard for myself by managing my time poorly and having a storyline that included so many characters. Having five characters made it really difficult as I had to rely on four other people to act in my film (only four because I acted as one character), nobody wanted to act, and it was hard to find times when they were free at the same time.

Overall, I had fun filming the trailer, and I tried some new things with the editing such as overlays which made Final Cut more fun to use. I can't wait until the next project as I think it will turn out a lot better than this assignment if I focus on my time management, plus other aspects including lighting, as I plan to.

Laptop Problems

On Saturday morning, I was editing my trailer and I started having problems with my laptop. It kept shutting down every five or ten minutes, then taking another five or ten minutes to turn back on again.  This was really frustrating and I didn't know why it was happening - it had starting happening throughout the week, except it only happened once every one or two days, not once every five or ten minutes. I checked my storage to see if this was the problem and it said I had over 30GB free, which isn't a lot but I thought it was enough for my laptop to at least function normally. I moved another 20GB from my laptop onto my external hard drive, which left me with 50GB free.

I decided to leave my laptop alone on Saturday and come back to it at night to see if anything had improved. After I went back on it again at night, I was editing for about half and hour and everything seemed fine with my laptop. But after that, my laptop started freezing and turning off again. After a little while of this, my laptop turned off and wouldn't turn back on. After trying to turn it back on for ages, I left it and came back to it in the morning to find out that it still wouldn't turn on.

This meant that I was unable to complete my editing over the weekend, which was really frustrating as I was almost done and I only had a couple of colour corrections to do. I explained my problem to Mr Andrews on Monday morning and I was given an extension until the next day which allowed me to complete my editing with a laptop I borrowed from school.

I was so so happy that I had saved a copy of my Final Cut library, as well as all of my footage onto my external hard drive so that I didn't have to start my editing all over again, and only had a tiny bit to complete. Even if I hadn't saved my library onto my external hard drive, I still had all of the footage saved so I would have been able to restart. I can't imagine how stressful it would be if I hadn't kept a backup of anything. After this complication, I have learnt the importance of always keeping a backup of all of my work as anything can happen to my laptop at anytime.

Finished Filming!

I finished my filming this week and I'm so happy that it is all done!

I think that I left it a bit late to finish my filming, and I will definitely be focusing on my time management for the next task to ensure that I have it all done really early and that the only thing I will need to do the week before the final is due, is the editing and any re-filming. I think that my film would have been of a better quality if I had done it earlier as I wouldn't have been as rushed as I was and I would have been able to put more effort into the different shots.

I have been editing my trailer after each filming session, and I have completed most of the editing. The only thing that I have left to do now, is adding in the audio and doing some colour corrections. I am mostly satisfied with how it's coming along so far, but like I said before, it could have been better if only I had managed my time better and got the filming done earlier.

Filming During the Week

During the week, I filmed the majority of the filming that I had left to do. It didn't take as long as I thought it would to film, however, I think that if I had filmed a lot earlier, my trailer would have been better as I could have spent this week editing and re-filming what I needed to. For the next task, I am going to make sure to film early on so that I have a lot of time left to receive feedback on my rough edit and to reshoot and change aspects of the film that I need to. 

My shot list has really helped me film quickly as I know exactly what shots I need to do and how long they go for, as it is really detailed. I think that if I didn't have a shot list, I would be even further behind with my filming. 

Filming over the Weekend

On Sunday afternoon, I came to school prepared to film the call to adventure, the scenes with the mentor character, the scenes with the villain and the scenes with the goddess character. However, the people who were supposed to be acting in my film couldn't make it as they were busy filming for their own films. This means that I was left to film all the shots I could with just the main character. This was the call to adventure at the beginning and the ending of the film. 

I will be filming the rest of my film throughout the week next week when everybody is free, and I will spend a day at school on Sunday to get the rest completed as I don't want to leave my filming for during test block. 

My time management has been really bad for this assignment and I really need to improve it for my next film or I will not get it done and will be stressing out about it again. 

Finished my Shot List

I have finally finished my shot list and it took a lot longer than expected. The rough edit due date has thankfully been changed to Monday instead of Friday which leaves me with more time to film. I have a total of 79 shots that I need to film and I was originally planning to finish the whole trailer by the rough edit due date, however, I don't think this will be possible anymore. I just have to try and get as much done as possible. 

I need a total of five characters for my trailer which is a lot, and it is really hard to find people to act. Next time, I'm going to make sure that I have the least amount of characters possible so that it's easier for me to find an actor and not have to rely on multiple actors. This will also mean that finding time to film will be more flexible and easy so that I don't have to make sure everybody's available at the same time.

For the shot list, I finished it all at once, instead of just doing one scene at a time. This took up too much time and I should have just created the shot list for the scenes I was filming first instead. This is what I will do next time in order to save time and get my filming done earlier on before the due date.

I am going to be starting filming next lesson and on Sunday afternoon. I know that I am not going to have the majority of my film done by Monday, but at least some will be done.

Starting my Shot List

I have started creating my shot list and it is taking a while because my trailer has a lot of shots. I am a bit worried about fitting in the time to film all of this because it is going to take a while to do due to the large number of shots. My time management has to be really good this term to get this all finished on time so I have to try and finish this shot list as soon as I can in order to have time to film it all. 

I wanted to finish my shot list over the weekend so I could start filming on Monday, however, I am going away and won't be able to get it finished. I want to try and finish it during Monday's lesson but I'm not quite sure if it will be done because so far, it's taking a really long time to do due to the amount of detail I'm including.