Fiction Adaptation: EDITING

Through out my editing process, I decided I would align the clips of that day up in the edit the same day. This was so I would be able to edit straight away and edit sections together instead of waiting to film everything and then editing it all together. This saved a lot of time and made editing my clips more enjoyable as I didn't feel rushed at all. Towards the end of the edit however, I did feel quite stressed as I was still doing the graphics and sound which made my edit more stressful. 

At first editing was quite simple, I aligned all the clips together to see how much I would need to cut out - which was a lot. I really didn't want to cut out my introduction to the garden party, where Nancy greets her friend at the door and they drink tea, as I felt I had some really nice shots. However I was 2 and a half minutes in and the poem hadn't even started yet! I also still hadn't added all the clips in as I had some more filming dates which meant I knew I would need much more time.

The next step I had was finding an old fashioned filter that fit my film. I didn't want a tacky over the top filter and most certainly didn't want it in full black and white as I feel the colours in my film make it have a sweeter tone as I feel black and white would make it too sad and serious and I wanted mine to have a mixture of emotions. I finally found a good effect called 'Dry Heat' it was a nice tinted brown colour which worked really well with my 20's theme and enhanced the look of the costumes and hair. 

I then began adding in the narration for the poem. I found this difficult to do as when I saw my story in script form, it felt like everything would fit together - but I underestimated the time it took for actions and movements to actually take place, which meant sometimes the clips where too long and sometimes they didn't fit parts of the poem enough. For the narrator, I decided I wanted to use both my actresses who played Nancy. To do this I figured out on a line at the end of the poem I decided I would blend both their voices together and gradually the older version of Nancy would take over and recite the poem. I asked the two woman to read the poem out slowly, so luckily on the lines they fit perfectly together!

The edit became the most complicated when I needed to cut parts to the music (the dance scene) and when I did some choppy cutty parts when the soldier is on the screen. I found it hard to cut the clips without making it look too weird and distorted. I also wanted to cut the ladies dancing to the music at the start of my story however I could only do this for certain parts or the footage wouldn't edit together well.

There was also problems such as continuity. As I filmed the young Nancy's scenes over two days, I had to make sure her hair looked the same. However I unfortunately did her hair slightly different by mistake which I personally think is noticeable as it looks longer (her her is clipped into a faux bob). The second continuity problem I had was the fact that strands of Nancy's hair kept coming out, I tried to fix this whenever I saw it happen, however I noticed on some clips strands of her hair is hanging out.

Throughout the sound edit (after finally getting all the sounds I needed!) I began editing them into my piece, which really brought my film to life. I really like the sound in my film however i'm still unsure on certain parts such as when the sad music comes on when weird things happen to Nancy and when her locket falls on the ground, I think it sound a bit too sci-fi with the bleeping noise.

Finally, I had to create a graphic match in my piece - where one photo from one era blended into another shot of the same photo but 50 years later. I found this hard to do as I stupidly filmed the shot differently... One shot is filmed from the angle looking up, whilst the other is straight on. I found it difficult to match them together however I used the transition fade tool so it makes it look better. I wouldn't have been too bothered about including the graphic match, however it's crucial in the change between the young Nancy and the old Nancy.

As the time limit for the film was only 5 minutes, I feel I struggled to manage time adequately. I filmed too much and had to cut too much out which was upsetting, however I did learn I need to think more when writing the script as although a page is a minute, it could be more if what you write has a lot more going on than you think, or if the characters move slower.

Overall, editing the film has had it's ups and downs but I have enjoyed editing it as it's something I like doing. I've learnt a lot about time management and making sure continuity is always the same as it's hard to fix. If I could change something it would be probably getting a composer for my sound effects as I'm really happy with the chosen music, however I think the sounds aren't specific enough - especially the outdoor sounds which are really off putting.

Fiction Adaptation: EDITING GRAPHICS

The graphics process during post production was extremely time consuming but the finished product was definitely worth it!

I wanted to add an old fashioned tint on my film, but wanted the red apple and red rose to stand out in a bright red colour so they became noticeable to my protagonist in the story.

I wasn't sure how to do this and even Fergus was a little stuck too! Eventually we figured it out and I realised I needed to create a lot of masks and layers in After Effects to create a shape and add a colour over the top of it.

THE APPLE.

To begin with, I imported the clip of my character Nancy holding the apple up, I then created an adjustment layer and clicking on the original clip, drew a mask around the outline with the pen tool. After many failed attempts at moving onto the next frame and moving the mask I realised I was doing it wrong as the mask from the previous frame was moving and didn't stick in the position I wanted. I finally figured out I had the wrong key frame turned on and needed to have the mask path key frame turned on not just the mask general keyframe. In after effects the clip is broken down into how many frames per second (25) this meant I was editing 25 frames per second and if there was a huge movement in a shot it was annoying to individually move each little dot on the pen tool as for some reason I couldn't move the whole mask. After this I went to the colour correction page and clicked on the 'Curves' tool. This brought me to the RGB (red, green, blue) switches which I could move around to get a colour on my mask on top of the apple. I turned the red up high so that my apple would stand out against the tint on my film. I am really happy with the outcome however I know it does look a little cartoon like.

THE ROSE.

The process of making the rose red was similar to the apple, however throughout the very very long apple process I figured out a few things that made creating the graphic quicker. Firstly, I found out that I can actually move the mask on each key frame instead of using the blue dots to move it (which took so long). This made the process much quicker, but I needed to make sure I had the 'position' key frames turned on on each frame movement under the mask layer. Throughout this process I also realised I could use the tracking tool to track the motion of the clip and click on the rose so it would track the movement. This meant I could 'parent' up the mask layer with the tracking layer so that I only had to create the mask once as the mask followed the track. Most of the movement was quite smooth when I tracked the motion and didn't need much adjustments. 

I also realised that I could save a preset of the colour adjustment which meant it would be same for both the clips of the roses and I could save the exact colour I want. When creating this graphic I realised that the rose looked much better than the apple which was disappointing as I think it brought the look of the apple down compared to the bright rose. After a long few hours I finally had the apple and rose clips sorted out. I really like how they turned out, especially the rose as it really stands out against the background. The next step is to do the same again but for the small rose which you briefly see at the start of the scene as Nancy catches a glimpse of it from the corner of her eye. 

Here is a before and after of the rose which I'm pleased with.













The next graphic I did was create the smaller rose, this was the easiest one to do as I'd spent days creating the above too, watching tutorials on YouTube on how to do it, creating many attempts at the idea with a LOT of failures, but I finally created it, so had a lot of experience in how to do it. The small rose was easy to do also because of how small it is and the layer I had to create was really small. Here is the finished product. From zoomed it in looks very rough however when it's zoomed to it's original place it looks really effective.









The last graphic I needed to create I was worried about doing. I needed to import the character Jack's photo into a small locket that my character Nancy drops on the floor. To do this I decided I would try use the tracker as this would track the motion and hopefully line up the photo for me so I didn't have to spend too much time manually editing it in.
I began by first tracking the motion of the locket when Nancy holds it, she didn't move it too much which was lucky as I didn't want the photo to look too fake and obvious it had been added in.
After resizing the image of Jack and parenting it with the tracking layer, I finally had my starting point. I next needed to go over each key frame and re position and size it so I knew for definite that each key frame looked perfect. A lot of the frames didn't need adjusting, however the ones that did made the others look weird, so I ended up adjusting a lot of them anyway. This was once again a very long process however I got through it in the end. Next, I needed to change the colour of the image and turn up the brightness as it didn't blend in with the photo frame and looked too 'flat' and stuck on the image. I played around with added blurs to the edges of the photograph to make it smoother and blend in more with the locket, however I couldn't get it spot on and I still feel like in the final product it looks out of place, however I'm happy with the way it turned out considering I hadn't tracked an image before.

Here is the image of Jack in the locket Nancy is holding.

Overall, I'm happy with the way the graphics have turned out as I was definitely new to doing these sort of intense graphics in films. I definitely have pushed myself with this and have learnt a lot of new skills in After Effects which i'm happy with and feel more confident using the programme. 

The down side of learning new things is that it takes SO long to learn, I was getting really irritated that I couldn't figure out how to do some graphics and couldn't find any tutorials for ages and wanted to give up as I was using so much time up to do it, not knowing whether it would be worth it. However I'm glad I stuck with it as the rose and apple especially made my film look much better and I don't think it would of had the same effect if the apple and rose where just a normal dark colour and blended in with the background. I've learnt that time management is key and that I should try learn things before doing it as trying to figure it out yourself might work eventually, but takes ages to do.

Fiction Adaptation: THE SET

For the set in the back garden I wanted to create an old fashioned style layout with cups and a cake stand to portray that my characters are upper class.

To create my set I took a simple green table and placed a white table cloth on it with lace around the edges to create an old fashioned style. I then added some wooden chairs around the table as I researches furniture back in the 20's and found wooden chairs. 

Next I placed 2 cups opposite each other and made sure you could see the floral pattern on them. I chose to buy small cups as I feel these portray my character better as she is very delicate and petite. 

The central piece of the table is the cake stand with all the little cakes on it. My character is very organised and neat so I made sure that the cakes all had a pattern and wasn't just placed randomly on the stand.

I wanted to make sure my scene was realistic so tried to add as much detail as I could. I really like the bright sunny shots but I feel like when I add the old style effect it will made my scene look much more realistic.

Here is the finished table set.

Fiction Adaptation: LUNCH ARRANGEMENTS

As I'm going to have an intense first day filming, I've offered my actors some lunch. I want to do this as first of all they will be hungry, and second of all I want to make sure my actors are all well fed and comfortable throughout the day. I feel like offering them at least lunch (travel exp. only paid for one actor) will make up for not paying them and they may have more respect for the production.

Throughout the morning and afternoon we will be taking short breaks and I will be offering them teas and orange juice.
I'll also make a big selection of sandwiches at lunch for my actors so they aren't going hungry as well as some biscuits and crisps.

The lunch is pretty basic for my actors but it's quick and easy - hopefully they will still appreciate it and enjoy the production!

Fiction Adaptation: LOCATION SCOUTING

I've decided I am going to narrow down ideas of where I can film and choose some definite places.

In my mind I considered shooting at the following locations:

-[EXT.]a backgarden

-[EXT.]a park

-[ETX.]mote park

-[ETX.]markets

-[INT.] kitchen

-[INT.] empty room

-[INT.] bedroom

-[EXT.] memorial

But I visited some of the locations and did seem to find problems with a lot of them. Here are the problems I faced and then the solutions I came up with.

Firstly,

When looking online at mote park (never been before) I thought it looked absolutely beautiful, there was a long tight path with trees from both sides creating a path for my actress to walk down, it looked really nice and I thought if I go down and visit it, I can take a better look.

When visiting the park I found that the spot I wanted was really hard to find, it took another 15-30 minutes to walk round the park to actually find  a good place to film, which wasted more time and I was worried I would forget where about it was on the day of filming and waste more precious filming time. Also as it's winter, the location doesn't look as pretty and nice as the photos. The leaves have all fallen off the tree's which makes the location look more horror based than a dramatic summer piece. I also realised that it was a 40 minute walk from the first location and if I wasn't 100% sure on the location - it would be a huge waste of time and money (as I wouldn't want my actress to walk there as i'm shooting it the same day at the scene in my garden). I decided the location wasn't for me and crossed this off my list.

For the memorial scene, there is a memorial plaque near my house near Maidstone West station. As it was recently remembrance day - the memorial looks beautiful filled with hundreds of stunning red poppies all around it and notes from people. When first walking past it, I really liked how it looked. However, when going back to the location I thought it wouldn't fit with my story, the reason was is I want a photograph of Jack in a photo frame and another of Jack and his best friend, along with a box with her locket in it and the poem, but why would Nancy bring all these things to a memorial, to take them out just to put them back? I thought it would make more sense to have her lighting candles in her room creating a very dramatical piece in a dark room with just a spot light on Nancy. This was my original idea and I really do feel it will create a stronger story than an old lady being sat at a memorial with lots of objects. Another reason I didn't choose this location is because I want her to walk away from the memorial and I worked out that Nancy is 20 in the 1920s and the older Nancy is 80 which means that the older Nancy will be set in the 80s. I feel that the background wouldn't fit an 80's theme and it also has too many modern things in it. Therefore i've completely crossed this off my location list.

I wanted to film at some old fashioned markets as I feel this would add another dimension to the theme in the 20's. However, when scouting markets I could only find some that where on a Saturday and Tuesday. When filming i'm being very specific as I do want the sunshine (although with a filter it might not be too obvious it's not sunny) and I found that these days where raining - continuity would become broken from sunny filming dates. I also found that when I visited the markets it would be hard to make them look old fashioned as they are busy and if costumes are not old fashioned it would be very obvious and ruin the whole style of the film - which I desperately don't want.

Although the 3 locations above are proving to be difficult to find a place to film, I had lots of back up ideas so I aren't stuck.

An idea that wasn't a back up idea but was pure luck was a small field with benches and large tree's when walking back from mote park. I saw it and decided to explore it more. I really liked the look of it as it was small, had a nice grass part to film on and had lots of trees and areas which I could use to walk out of shot. I really like the park and I am definitely choosing this for one of the scenes when Nancy leaves the garden party.

I also needed a garden in my film and immediately wanted to use mine. This is because our garden is quite big and long with lots of grass available and a huge back door which I want. It's also free to use whenever I want. I've decided I'm going to film the garden party in my back garden. 

For the beginning of the film and towards the end, I want Nancy to appear in the kitchen as she is setting out the garden party and also when she comes back from her walk and finds a letter left from the army about her husband dying. I've decided to use the kitchen at my house for a few different reasons. The first is what it looks like. Luckily when we moved in the kitchen is the lower floor which means it looks quite old fashioned as it's sort of like a base ment and the walls are old styled. We also have a huge brown table which I thought is perfect as I need an old fashioned style table. I knew that when I added an old style effect to my film it would make it look even better. Another reason I choose the kitchen is because it's big and has lots of space. If our kitchen was small I definitely wouldn't have used it no matter what, this is because I need space in the kitchen for my character to move around and if it's too small it will look strange and off putting to the audience. The final reason but least important is the convenience. I can use it when I want and I know when people are most likely to need to use it for cooking (which is hardly ever in the morning...!) so I knew I would have availability to it!

As I mentioned above, I want the memorial (remembrance) scene instead to be in a dark room with just a table and spot light shining on the old Nancy. Once again I luckily have a spare room in our house which is absolutely perfect for what I want. The room has a window which doesn't let too much light in as it's the ground floor. I tried placing a desk in front of the window, shutting the curtain and turning the light off (during daylight). Even without the lighting kit the room looked really nice and dramatic. However, I definitely do need to book out the lighting kit as I need light in the room to make it look warm and show how my character Nancy is isolated and alone - I also think it will add drama to my film. 

Overall, I'm happy with the locations I've chosen and I'm glad I went out and looked for them as if I only looked online at mote park and turned up on the day I would of wasted at least 2 hours (travelling there and back then walking around looking for somewhere to film) and also if I just appeared on the day I might not have been completely happy with what I found. Another reason I'm glad I scouted locations is because if I hadn't have gone to mote park I wouldn't of found the other small field/garden that I want to film on for definite. 

Fiction Adaptation: BIG UPDATE.

So today is the day of filming day 1, and I have 4 of everything. 4 cups, 4 dresses, 4 bracelets, and a couple of hats. However, I received 2 emails last informing me that my actresses can no longer make it as they have other film commitments (paid, of course).

For my this was a huge deal and I was worried what my film would look like with two 2 girls.. I started worrying, emailing applicants and extra people asking them to be in my film. I did get an applicant however she decided it was too far away. It really annoyed me that I had over 15 applicants for the role of Nancy (and they agreed to be auditioned for the role of the friend too) but then everyone suddenly dropped out on me last minute. Luckily, my main character was very dedicated and the other character was too.

I had to plan something out instead of worrying, so I decided to change the idea and have it as a two person best friend garden party instead. I was worried it wouldn't work -however I when filming today it worked much better anyway, and I would of had too much footage and not enough room anyway if I had 2 extra people. I also wouldn't have been able to fit the girls round the table and it would of been awkward to film a round circle - so this actually did work in my favour luckily. This also meant I had more choices of dresses for the second character as I wasn't keen on one of the dresses as a 1920s style anyway.

In conclusion, I think it worked in my favour that the girls dropped out, even though it is irritating I wasted a lot of time planning and developing each character in terms of personality and costume. However I learnt that it's not always a waste as it did turn out for the best and I did expand my organisation skills a lot when doing the research and buying of the costumes.

Fiction Adaptation: FEEDBACK SO FAR

Today I showed my fiction adaptation to Helen as I wanted some feedback so I wasn't showing it to her a week or less before the deadline and wouldn't have chance to make any dramatic changes.

To my surprise, she seemed to really like it and complimented that it was beautifully shot. I was really worried the costumes wasn't going to be up to scratch even after the exsessive research done, but to my luck - Helen said it was on point.

Helen told me I needed to add more natural sounds in the background along with the radio soundtrack which I agreed with and planned to do.

Overall I'm happy with the feedback as I really was doubtful if she would like it as when I pitched my idea and wrote my script, the feedback wasn't too good - however I feel much better about my idea now.

I am going to make some changes and show it to Helen again and Simon and class mates to try get as much feedback as I can.

Fiction Adaptation: FRAME PHOTOSHOOT

For my film I plan on having Nancy's fiancé shown in the film throughout. This will be through imagery such as a photo of Jack (the fiancé) in her necklace locket. He will also appear towards the end of the film with the older version of Nancy when she's looking through old photos and reading her poem back. He will be in a photo with his friend (who he died in place of).

I needed someone to play the role of the best friend, just for the photo. I didn't think there was a point in hiring an actor just for one photograph. I also already had planned to ask my house mate Laurie as he fits the character I need: tall and dark. I want the photograph to be in sepia, and the two characters to be wearing suits of the 20's. As both characters are upper class, I did some research into photos back from the 20's to see how they posed and acted in photographs, I found a LOT of different ways, some more casual than I thought they would be. I decided to put a part in each of my characters hairs and style their hair to look more formal and presentable. I decided to take a lot of different photos of the two guys to see which one I found to be the best. I actually really like how the photos came out! Next I needed to take a photo of Jack by himself, this will be the photograph for inside the locket and for the older version of Nancy at the end. I found it difficult to take these photographs as I wasn't too sure on the hat prop I bought and felt like the photo looked generally weird as it didn't have a good background. However I still like the outcome and hopefully the sepia brown tone will help it to come to life more.
Overall, I think the photo shoot went really well and I'm pleased with the amount of photos we got. My next job is to edit the effect on to the photograph and then see how they turn out. I am then going to buy some old fashioned photo frames and see what the photos look like in there!

Here are some of the photographs we took and why I chose what I did.
(photos here)
I decided to choose this photograph of Jack and his best friend Harry as I feel the photograph shouldn't be too serious as it doesn't need to be and should show two men in their prime looking happy. I am going to print out the photo in sepia + black and white so it looks old and has a brown tint to it.

I choose this photo of Jack as I wanted a typical soldiers photo where they are at an angle wearing a suit and their hat. I chose this picture also because I like how serious Vic looks which fits with what I want as during research into photos from the 20's, the men where always serious in their photographs by themselves. Unfortunately I was unable to get  soldiers outfit so decided to get my character to wear a suit which I believe still worked. I couldn't get the right angle for the photo so I'm not 100% happy with the outcome however I still like it and will use it for my film.

Fiction Adaptation: SOUND DESIGN

My fiction adaptation film is going to be a dramatic piece in which I really want all the emotions to come across well on the piece. I'm going to try really hard not to make the piece cheesy and tacky (especially with the costumes). To do this I want to use sound tracks throughout my film - however not in every single shot as I don't want the emotions behind the music to become blurred and for it to look too much like a music video.

With the help of a very useful website from Sam Creamer, I was able to find a number of songs on the website: http://www.audionetwork.com

This website was especially helpful as the websites I usually look at (Incompetch) aren't film soundtracks and they can become quite typical and boring. However this site is especially designed for TV, Film, Video and Advertising.

I began searching for songs under a variety of different moods and emotions for different parts of my film. The hardest song to look for is for old Nancy's scene at the end as it's extremely emotional and I don't want to ruin it in anyway. It took much longer than I thought when looking for songs and I should of allowed myself more time to really search thoroughly through the website - however I do feel I have found a beautiful song that really brings out the emotions that Nancy is feeling and hopefully the audience will relate. I narrowed down my search to a few songs and with the help of advice from a few people - finally chose the song ''Modest Reflection''. The song is a piano based song with a slow tempo, the key changes slightly throughout the piece and I really think it fits with my piece.

Next I wanted to find a song that could fit into my park/apple scene and which I could edit so it would become distorted with another song I want to find. This is so the mood turns weird and weird through parts of my film when contrasts begin to happen and Nancy starts seeing flashes of Jack in her imagination. I want the first song to be quite peaceful and uplifting - then the song becomes distorted and we hear a very low key change and the song turns into a dangerous and scary mood. After a very long search I finally came across ''Still Light'' for the uplifting song. I really like the sound of it as it's very happy, energetic and fit when I played it with the scene I wanted.

For the song that will lay under this and distort into, I found ''Genesis One'', I feel this song is perfect as it's not too dark and depressing yet definitely drops the mood of the film and makes it feel isolated and worried.

These are a few of the songs I found whilst searching for a variety of different songs.

I looked on the website and found that for students it's only £0.83 to buy a track, compared to TV commercial advertising which is £495 per track! It does have less advertising and advantages for students however non that affect what I am using the track for :)

I decided to go ahead and buy the tracks as it's worth it and fits with my film.

 

The next part of the sound design was to find general background noise and a 1920's royalty free song that I could use for the 'radio' in the 2nd scene. 

I decided to look on incompetech.com and http://www.freesfx.co.uk to find general noises such as walking in heels, birds/ambience, grandfather clock etc. At the start I didn't have much luck... it was hard to find ambience that wasn't too over the top and distracting - especially the bird noises. However I did end up finding some really nice sound effects that fit with my film, especially the heel shoe noises and the grandfather clock.

I ended up finding a really catchy 1920's song on Youtube which was royalty free named, ''You Took Advantage of Me'' by Bix Beiderbecke. I really like the song as it fits perfectly with the dance scene and doesn't ruin my film.

In conclusion, I'm really happy so far with the music choices and hope that they keep the mood of the film up and don't distract the audience. If I could do anything better it would be making sure my time management skills are more up to scratch as I under estimated the time it would take to create a sound design!

Digital News Production: KENT NATURE FINAL

Here is the final news piece of Kent Nature - enjoy! :)

Digital News Production: Case Study

Digital News Case Study

Digital News Production: PROMOTING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

To promote our news channel, we decided to create a few platforms on social media websites such as a website, a Twitter page and a Facebook page. This will allow us to share our news programme and interact with our viewers, keeping them up to date with our stories and when our news programme will be on air!

I decided to take up the role of the Twitter page, and Charlie took up the role to create the website, Youtube Channel and the Facebook page.

We used a photo that Charlie took of some tree's in summer for the banner on each of our social media sites, and put the logo as our profile picture.

We wrote some tweets and status' to encourage people to like our page and post about our news piece being live on the 8th December!

I'm really pleased with the website that Charlie made, it stands out, has the logo on the top and leaves room for our stories and pictures!

In conclusion I learnt that working as a team really helps with things like this as everyone can do something and it makes the workload a lot easier!

Here is all the links below:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KNatureNews

Twitter: http://twitter.com/kentnaturenews

Website: http://charlieansell.wix.com/kentnaturenews

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7vHuWSdT7bFalk0uqopIlQ/feed

Digital News Production: CREATING OUR SET

Creating our green screen set was pretty simple when we thought about it, but when it came to actually putting it together, we found it difficult to find imagery and a good picture that would fit our presenter. Vic was in charge of doing the green screen and Charlie and I helped him pick the image.

We wanted a straight forward nature theme background, however as we didn't light our presenter properly (no backlight) she looked really flat on all the images which was a big disappointment. Non of the images we tried fit and they all looked strange.

I told Vic the pictures looked too flat with just a picture behind and we needed to make it look more 3 dimensional. I said we should start looking for a desk instead and put Samantha behind it. Vic then also added that we should add a TV screen behind her with our channel name on it and when Samantha says 'coming up' we show the clips on there.

I found an image of Google of a mock up of a desk, I really liked it however thought it looked too fake. However, we decided to go with it and Vic began working on it. We agreed that in the part where it says 'Daybreak' it would have our logo on it with an image of wood behind that we was going to use for the original green screen background.

Vic then got to work and used Photoshop and After Effects to cut out the desk and parts of the desk so it would become a PNG and we can use it in After Effects.

I helped Vic with how to use the tools in Photoshop to changed the desk colour and key framing in After Effects to create the animation when the footage appears in the TV screen as he wasn't too sure but I think he did really well to learn it quickly. 

Then we imported a background image Charlie took of leaves on a tree in summer (for his previous project) and it looked a lot better with the desk as it wasn't flat anymore and looked more professional instead of Samantha almost floating in the air without a desk or anything.

Here is the final image of Samantha Scott that Vic edited together.

In conclusion, I think the editing of the presenter started off really unsuccessful however we worked well together to finally get around all the problems and create a nice nature themed studio. 

Digital News Production: CREATING OUR INTRO

When looking for our introduction, we wasn't too sure on what exactly we wanted to come up, we knew we wanted animals and nature things to appear but not sure how. We decided to look online for a template that we could edit and Charlie found one online that was brilliant! Butterflies flew into the screen and then the logo appears with the butterflies around it. Although it was simple it's exactly what we wanted and we all agreed it was great for our piece. As it was just a template we knew some changes needed to be made. We changed the colouring and added flashes on the introduction so everything stood out more. 

In conclusion I've learn that time management is extremely important in graphics as we should of made the graphic ages ago so that we could of made it from scratch ourselves and learn more about after effects. I also learnt more about graphics and how they work as when you break them down they actually are quite simple.

Here is our finished introduction.

Digital News Production: RE-SHOOTING PRESENTER

When I looked through the green screen footage, I added some photos behind the green screen so I could look at how it turned out, unfortunately I found that the outline of Samantha was really fuzzy and I couldn't do anything to fix it. This was really annoying as it took us ages to set up the green screen and film Samantha as we wanted to make it perfect.

Later on, when having a workshop with Alex Boorman, he told us the fuzzy lines was probably because we had Samantha too close to the green screen and that's also why we found it really hard getting rid of the shadows. Thankfully Alex said he would help us out when setting up the green screen, which he did. I couldn't believe we didn't think of moving her further away from the screen to get rid of the shadows as it was so straight forward! I suggested using three point lighting as I'd researched it and knew it helped the subject stand out however the group didn't want to so hopefully the footage will still look good!

Thankfully our second time round went really well and Samantha was really co-operative and didn't mind re shooting.

Here is our presenter section edited together. (No effects or photo in place of the green screen added yet)

In conclusion, we learnt it's important to make sure the lights are all evenly set out and to leave room between our presenter and the green screen or harsh shadows will form!

Digital News Production: COMPOSER

Our group decided we needed some music for our introduction to our news piece. We found that all the royalty free music wasn't exactly what we wanted and we really wanted a specific tune that would fit and even interact with our introduction.

Vic posted an advert on casting call pro on behalf of the group, looking for a composer for our news piece. We made sure that we made sure the applicants knew we didn't want something too serious and it should be able to fit with our nature theme.

Luckily we found Frazer Merrick, an applicant who really helped us out. He first wanted more information so we decided to send him our presenter footage so he could get more of a feel of what it will look and sound like together.

Frazer sent us three clips. One of the introduction, one of a short sound bed noise to come up when Samantha says 'coming up' and a second sound bed for the actual clips during the coming up part. We downloaded it and edited it with our introduction, we absolutely loved it and decided to use it.
However we only liked the introduction so didn't use the other sound clips.

Here is our introduction sound below...

Digital News Production: FILMING ''LIVE'' AT LODGE HILL

DAY 1:

Today Charlie, Vic and I went down to Lodge Hill to begin filming our live piece. We planned to meet Rolf Williams there at 12 o'clock. So we got there for 11 to make sure we had enough time to set up.

Unfortunately the clip mic and fostex began playing up and we could no longer use them. In the heat of the moment and with our interviewee waiting for us, we decided to just try film with the Canon 700D sound. We did our best to try use ourselves as windshields however we knew it wouldn't help too much.

When we played it back the wind wasn't too visible, however then suddenly there was a big gush of wind and Rolf interview was ruined...

We decided we would try fix parts of the interview that wasn't too bad on Final Cut in the wind removal tool however we couldn't fix other parts at all...

Luckily for us we didn't need all of the interview anyway as he said a lot of answers and it went way over.

We also couldn't film Charlie introducing Rolf or his parts asking questions as it began to rain.
This meant we would have to go back and reshoot.
Luckily we had Rolfs parts and we didn't need to worry too much about that.

DAY 2:

After we got home to edit the footage, Rolf's parts came out a lot worse in editing... however we was unable to get him again as he was away until mid December. We decided we would have to learn from these mistakes and know that filming on location - especially on a windy day - isn't going to be as straight forward as we thought.

Therefore me and Charlie went back to film Charlie's parts again with the clip mic.
Unfortunately Vic couldn't come with us to film as he had a tutorial in Rochester. For me this was slightly hard as I had to do sound and camera myself, holding the fostex, wearing the headphones and controlling the camera, along with holding the script up for Charlie incase he forgot what he was going to say.
HOWEVER! We once again came across a problem... the clip mic's wouldn't work. When I returned it to Fergus he said that the wire in the clip mic was ripped for quite a while and that it's probably just given in.

Luckily, we had the rode mic with us and charlie held it below him so it was easier for me to control everything else. The rode mic worked just as well as the clip mic (if better) and the sound came out really clear. There was hardly any wind that day which made filming go smoothly for us.

Now we've finished filming we can begin editing our live piece together.

Digital News Production: EDITING KENT LIFE

Originally myself and Vic was going to take up the role of editing Kent Life as it's our biggest project with the most shots to sort out and Charlie was going to edit the live piece. However, with Vic busy doing other parts of the project I ended up doing it myself which I didn't mind too much as I like editing.

I began by lining up the shots with our shot list and referencing back and forth. However, I ended up making huge changes to our original plan as we couldn't get that much footage of the Young Farmers as they wasn't doing too much the day we filmed. I then began going through the interviews and finding interesting parts so I could use everybody but make sure all the best answers where used, this was a long process but I got it done. I then needed to match up the video with the clip mic's which was once again a long process but it eventually got done. I found it quite stressful at the beginning because the most footage we got was of the animals and I wanted more footage of the cob tree club. However, once I got the voice over of Vic recorded and imported I found it much easier to align everything with the voice over as it helped tell the story. I needed to make sure when I edited the interviews I switched between the right third of the screen and the left third to make sure it ran smoothly and didn't look weird.

I then decided I would use the facts and figures found about the decline in farming and edit it so we had graphics as part of our package. I began with a shot of animals and decided to blur it and slow it down slightly so that I could write on the top of it. I used the 'type writer' effect on Final Cut so that when the voice over is talking the graphic appears at the same time. I didn't want the graphic to be boring and too informative so I broke it down so it's short and quick comparing how many farms there was in 1939 to compared to the 2000. I decided it might be nice to add a little green tick and red cross next to each of the facts to make it more newsy and interested for the viewers to look at so it's not just text appearing. In the previous post I discussed the graphics I did for the whole Kent Life package piece. Here: http://rubyrogersmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/digital-news-production-package-effects.html

I had a lot of work to do through the edit of the Kent Life piece but once I got into it I felt more at ease editing it all together.

Sound design wise at first I was going to put some farmyard music into the beginning like we did for the Fremlin Walk news package, however after trying it it looked too documentary style and I kept feeling like the style of the piece kept turning documentary. I decided to silence the sound and add my own sounds in from sound effects online, I used a buzz track throughout of birds and made sure to turn it down so it wasn't too distracting and loud throughout the piece. I also used a a cockadoodledoo sound at the beginning of the package as I felt it was a nice way to start the piece. 

I'm happy with the sound design as it's basic yet adds a news style to the piece instead of making it informal with a song. 

Throughout the edit I tried to make sure the clips matched what the contributors was saying so it didn't look weird and un even. 

It took me a long time to go through the clips however I tried to make it easier for myself in the edit by creating a library and several events in final cut each with it's own assigned name for example: animals, interviews, clip mic's, actuality, signs, etc...

In conclusion, I really enjoyed editing the piece and I'm proud I did it all by myself and also did the graphics and tag line myself  however I do wish I got comments from the group as it would of made the process much more faster. However I am happy with the final piece and glad I took on the editing role. 

Digital News Production: PACKAGE EFFECTS!

After finally finishing the main edit to Kent Life - I needed to start adding all the graphics and tag lines to the news piece. 

FACTS + FIGURES!

I began by finding a shot that had animals in the background and blurring it so that I could add text above it. I discussed with my group how it should appear and we all agreed on having it come up as a typewriter as our presenter is discussing the topic. I put a glow on the background of the text so it would stand out more as before adding the white glow it was plain and quite hard to read. I thought we can have the good points in black and the bad points in red. I then thought it might look boring by itself so I googled PNG photos of ticks and crosses so that it would look more appealing. To animate the effect was quite simple, using after effects I imported the clip and then imported the tick and crosses separately. I then added in key frames to where I wanted the tick to start (small) and turned the scaling down to 0.0 so that it was tiny and added another key frame where I wanted the tick and cross to appear and put the scaling back up so that it would zoom out to a nice size. 

I then did the same thing for the cross and my animation was ready!

Although the graphic is quite simple I think it adds more of a news piece feel to it with the facts and figures appearing on the screen.

TAGLINE!

Creating the tagline for each interviewee was the next step for our graphics. I needed to make sure the colour theme and style fit our channel. We decided on using autumn colours such as browns and greens and dark reds to fit in with our logo.

On Final Cut Pro X I found a tagline animation that was quite simple, yet I thought fit with our news piece very well. I decided to put the name of our contributor in red, who they are underneath in black, our twitter page to the right and our logo to the left. I added the logo in After Effects as I needed to resize it and animate it. I added a fade towards the end of the tagline so it didn't cut out abruptly. I then showed Vic what he thought of the tagline and he said that I should move the logo up so it comes off the edge of the tagline - which I thought looked really good. 

In After Effects I once again used key frames and the scaling and opacity to create a short animation for the tagline. I needed to make sure that the logo entered the frame when the tagline finished coming into shot and also make sure it left the shot when everything faded out. To do this I added a keyframe when the logo was off screen, I then re positioned it onscreen half way through the clip and re added another keyframe so that it would track onto the screen from the left. I then added another key frame so that it would fade out at the end of the clip - I turned the opacity down to 0% so it would fade out. I really like how the animation has turned out and throughout the process I have learnt more about After Effects animations and graphics!

Digital News Production: LODGE HILL RISK ASSESSMENT

Before shooting, I decided we should create a risk assessment so we know any precautions that needed to be taken before and on location of filming. Although we're only filming on a field at lodge hill, I knew it had a good chance of being muddy - especially as before we film we're going to go down there and take a big look around it so we know the best places to film. Therefore we need to make sure we wear suitable shoes and make sure the equipment is all bagged up correctly so it doesn't get dirty or damaged.

Below is the risk assessment I made for the Lodge Hill shooting days!

Digital News Production: KENT LIFE RISK ASSESSMENT

Before we set out to shoot at Kent Life, Vic and I decided to create a risk assessment so we would know what to take with us, how to prevent hazards and what hazards could occur.

We noted down possible bad weather conditions that may happen which could cause equipment to become damaged, and also the risk of us slipping - especially as we are going to a farm which is obviously going to be muddy anyway. As we're going to a farm, we know that theres going to be a variety of animals there - we know some animals pinch and bite, but was unsure if there would be any dangerous ones there, so we decided to make sure we talk to the managers to see which animals we can approach and if theres any we need to be wary of. 

We also decided to make sure we wear suitable clothing to we know not to get dirty.

Below is the risk assessment for the day of shooting!

Digital News Production: OUR LOGO

To create our logo we needed a starting point, an idea of what we wanted and an image to work from. We all agreed that we wanted something simple yet interesting. Vic said we could have the name of our channel in small letters in the middle of our logo and mentioned having a leaf. Charlie and I thought this was a good idea and we began creating a logo from there. I helped Charlie look for fonts and recommended a few sites we could look on included dafont.com and 1001fonts.com

Charlie found a simple leaf on Google images which we could build on and that led us on to thinking about the font we wanted inside the logo.

We found a font called Snow Mask on dafont.com and really liked it for our logo as we only wanted to right the letters KN. We thought it look like flowers and it also could fit into the leaf edges.

Snow Mask..

We then looked on photoshop and edited the leaf with KN inside it and changed the font colour to a dark green. However, the leaf still looked plain and flat, so we went on the blending options on the text and added a shadow behind it which really helped. We then added a gradient overlay on it and faded the leaf from green to a red-ish orange autumn colour which we really liked. We saved it as a PNG so that it has a transparent background and we can add it to our tag lines and presenter green screen.

In conclusion, i've learnt more about photoshop and different styles of fonts. If I could change anything from this process it would be maybe adding more red to the leaf to make it a more autumn colour, however I am happy with the final logo.

Here is the finished logo!