The Production of our Media Project

The Production of our A Level Media Project

Preparation for Filming

Distribution of Jobs:

Elliot Mckenzie: Director of Scripts, Editing, and Titles

My task as a Director is to produce ideas for the script and make them into a reality. I will help my team generate a range of ideas for the mystery thriller and then when everything is filmed, I am in charge of editing.

Pablo Ortiz: Casting Director

Pablo is in charge of finding and organising our cast for our film. He will also be in our film for the opening sequence so, he will be working closely with our cast. He is also an Assistant Director so he helps with the scripts and editing.

Jake Smith: Assistant Director, Visual Technician, Actor, and Camera Man

Jake is a camera man so when he is not in scenes for the opening sequence, he will be filming. He will be included in the film because he is an important aspect of our plot. He is very experience with Photoshop and he has created our name logo.

He also organises, distributes, and collects technical and mechanical equipment, making sure that they are charged and ready to use.

Jamie Ellis: Story Board Artist

Jamie is responsible for translating our screenplay into a series illustration in comic book forms. This give us an overall idea of what we want to happen in the film and what is needed to make that happen.

The whole group is responsible for location scouting, costumes, music, technical and mechanical aspects, and props. Because we have not got access to a budget, we have to find all the things that we need from our house or people around us. In a way, we are Guerrilla Film Makers. 

Editing the Footage;

In our free lessons at college and in our spare time, we have each uploaded our opening sequence onto a Apple Mac because of its GarageBand and iMovie software. Technological convergence has allowed us to be able to access the Internet, music, video, films, radio, news, TV, and other types of media, onto our Smartphone’s, onto Android Tablets, gaming consoles, and much more type of technology. This is where “The concept formally known as the audience” comes in. We, the audience, can now make films, edit them, make a soundtrack, and then broadcast them on the Internet with a phone or a camera and a laptop. We are the filmmakers as well as the audience.

I am to oversee editing and coming up with new ideas that will help us to make our project much better. I have advised my team that in order to do the best we can, we will need to use home, study, and free time to work with the computers and each other. All ideas, changes, and plans should come back to me so that we can discuss them as a group.

Film Titles Creation

Idents are animated film logos and they are used by many production companies because they are cheap, easy, and identifiable, thus the name “Idents”. An example can be Touchstne Pictures and their simple Ident in which they have a blue strip (as seen below) that sweeps from the right side of the page and changes into a blue circle at the left side. Their name is paced in front of the logo. This is easy and simple.  As you will see on our blog, we have made a simple ident out of a black and white back drop of London and made Streamline and Productions sweep from opposite side of the screen and meet. We did this on Photoshop.

Our Film Titles

We will us the Apple Mac to make all our film title. We will spend more time on the title because we need the titles to blend in with the film, set the right tone, give of a certain atmosphere, and tell their own story. We will also be looking on Art of the Title.com, a website that specialises in the world of film and a site that has helped us in more ways than one.

Rough Cut;
We have spent time putting together a rough cut of the film and we will use it to gather up audience feedback. The rough cut is only a brief overview of what happens in the film. There will not be any major editing taking place, any soundtracks, any SFX, or things like this because we want to get a opinion on all areas.

Rough Cut Feedback

The reason why we feel so strongly about rough cuts is because they are the things that turn something that was good into something that will be brilliant. We will ask friends, family, teachers, and peers to comment on the feedback. This means we may have to spend extra time in school as well as us our free time at home.

The feedback that we gather will determine the course and structure of our opening sequence. It will lead to many re-shoots and re-edits as well as changing the script itself. I have decided to take out the dialogue in the script because the sound qualities on the cameras are not good. Besides, we feel that telling the story without a dialogue will be the thing that makes us different from other projects. The problem will be if we are able to do it effectively.
Re-Shoots & Re-Edits;

When we gather up the first set of feedback from the rough cut, this is when we shall start the editing. We shall re-shoot some scenes that take up to much time and after looking through the rough cut, we feel that we could have shot some clip better so, back to London we go.

After the re-shoots and re-edits, we will put it against the comments from the Rough Cut reviews to see if we have missed out anything. This will also give us a chance to sharpen our skills with the technology that we are using.

Final Film;

Once the final film has been finalised, we shall upload from Apple to YouTube and then we will go back to the people that we first interviewed and asked them for their second opinion. We have decided to compress the video file on the Apple Mac so that when it is uploaded to YouTube, the file will be smaller and the quality will be better.