Panophobia - final piece

Here is the final draft of our film opening, Panophobia.
In order to create a more realistic and rounded view of our character's friendship, we added clips of us around school together, and took more disposable camera photos.
Taking more disposable camera photos additionally allowed us to replace any original photos that were unclear/too dark to be seen properly, so with the help of my sister (as there was not a time that we three were all able to film together) I re-filmed five of the photos being set alight.
Alongside some editing changes, including cutting the whole thing down by about thirty seconds, the film title was placed after the titles stating the main actors, as the titles we based ours off (Gone Girl opening credits) put them in that order.

Evaluation - Question 1

Evaluation - Question 2

 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question 2 correct from phoebe Hall

Evaluation - Question 3

Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 5

Evaluation - Question 6

Evaluation - Question 7

Looking back at your prelim task, what have you learnt in the progression from that to the final product?

Although me and my group were initially stuck for ideas when given the genre of "Musical", we very quickly came up with the notion of making it a parody of stereotypical, cheesy, boys-meets-girl musicals - specifically High School Musical.
We wanted to make it as comedic as possible, and rather than using jokes that we thought up, we thought of things that made us laugh personally, so both the comedic aspect of certain scenes and our acting would come across as genuine. This definitely worked, as the fact that we didn't take ourselves too seriously while acting and genuinely enjoyed it translated well onscreen.

We created an outline of our plot and wrote down in detail specific scenes we definitely wanted to include. Alongside this, we decided on the songs we wanted to use, and how they would fit the plot.
Filming the scenes proved slightly difficult, as we had initially wanted a scene in a bedroom - however, we decided to scrap that scene as it didn't hold any relevance to the plot and did not affect the final outcome. We decided to have the whole thing deliberately based at school, like in High School Musical, and filmed near the sports lockers, in the corridors, outside and in the library.

We used my Sony Cybershot DSLR camera to film, in order to get the highest quality possibly. We used both a tripod for some shots, but the majority was filmed hand-held. However, this did not generally affect the shots or look shaky, due to a setting on the camera which automatically stabilizes the footage whilst filming.

Editing our prelim tasks helped me greatly in terms of editing, as I had to incorporate short clips from songs, making sure to dub the audio in time to us lip-syncing. This was fairly easy as during filming, we'd played the music in time in order to mime at the correct speed. However, making the sound clips sound less abrupt upon starting was a little bit difficult, but I managed to do so by applying the fade effect at the start.

Overall, I am pleased with my prelim task, and it was a great way to become fully comfortable using Adobe Premier. Filming and editing this task was educational in terms of going through the process of creating something genuinely entertaining, and learning how to edit footage together in order to make it look at least semi-professional. It also enabled me to be more resourceful in terms of filming wherever we were able and using whatever tools available in order to create something you would want to watch.



Creating our film opening, Panophobia, was definitely a harder process, but one that was indefinitely helped along by the experience we all had from creating our prelims.

We firstly came up with the idea of doing a teen drama, as it was a genre we all enjoyed and had good ideas for. The first idea I came up with the sequence of the disposable camera photos burning away in reverse to reveal the credits written on the back, which ended up being the main title sequence, running throughout the montage showing the friendship of our three characters.

Although we definitely wanted our film opening to be a teen drama, we were aware that many teen dramas could head down a fairly cliched route of the stereotypical rebellious teen runaway or someone getting bullied via social media etc, so created these three characters who at first glance seemed to have a normal, healthy friendship. However, this was juxtaposed by the imagery of burning and flames, specifically burning photos of them together.

We created two storyboards on paper and one interactive storyboard detailing our shots and the amount of time they would be shown onscreen - this helped us clearly map out the scenes we wanted to film and where we wanted to film them.

I particularly liked the idea of filming in an arcade, due to the bright colours and the fact it would be a place where our characters could be shown interacting with each other and having fun. We initially planned to film in Southend, however due to scheduling issues this was not  possible. We ended up finding somewhere else to film the arcade scenes, which was the bowling alley nearby, and it worked out just as well, seeing as we ended up replacing some of the less well-shot clips with shots of our characters around school, laughing together.

I edited these clips together into a montage, adjusting the red shift and brightness in order to make the colouring appear slightly faded as though looking back on a memory, which was the intended effect. Throughout the montage, clips of burning disposable photos (we had previously taken these photos in various places, having to re-take some in order to make sure the image was well-lit and clear to see) were shown, sped-up and reversed to reveal the credits on the back.
I colour-corrected these clips, turning down the contrast and turning up the green shift, both to make sure the flames stood out, but also to contrast to the warmth and brightness of the montage scenes and create a cold atmosphere.

Overall, I am extremely pleased with the way our film opening turned out. Between creating my prelim task and this, I learnt that much more meticulous planning was needed, as well as the willingness to film wherever and whenever possible. I feel that my editing skills improved drastically whilst editing Panophobia, especially compared to the editing of my prelim. Using colour correction and adjusting the contrast/brightness levels on our raw footage gave it a much more professional look overall, and also allowed me to make tiny adjustments in order to give off either a happy or sad atmosphere.

If I had more time to improve it, I would take out some of the arcade clips, as the ending of our film opening feels slightly rushed and could be slowed down if less footage had been used. I would also remove some of the voiceover, specifically the "Snapchat us" line, as it feels insincere compared to the serious tone of the plot.

Production Diary

 1/11/12We were first put into our groups and we were told that we would be making our own film opening. Our group was myself, Phoebe and Amara. We first discussed the genre of the film we wanted to make and we spoke about different ideas that we had.

 

2/11/16-The next lesson we further discussed our ideas and decided on making  a teen drama where a young girl goes missing.

 

 3/11/16-The lesson after this we thought about names for our film and researched a few phobias relating to loneliness and isolation. We also thought of other things to do with these themes. We decided to use “Panophobia”, meaning “the fear of everything”.

 

4/11/16-The next lesson we started to plan out the cast, characters and the storyline. We decided on three main characters; Erin, Ilsa and Amber.

 

 5/11/16-The lesson after this we worked together to produce a PowerPoint presentation of all the ideas we had so far. WE did this over the course of a few lessons and when we finished we presented it to the class as a film pitch.

 

 8/11/16-In the next lesson we made a shooting schedule. This included the locations , dates and times that we would be filming.  We also made a storyboard for each scene and the shots that it would include and for how long each shot would last. In this lesson we also made a prop list that included prices.

 

 9/11/16-The next lesson we spent researching different videos that we could gain inspiration from. We looked at music videos that depicted teen rebellion and loneliness, and some videos that had reversed scenes in them which was a main point of inspiration.

 

 10/11/16-The next lesson we made a mood board showing the themes that our film would include. We also did a risk assessment for our filming process.

 

 11/11/16-The next lesson was spent making the missing poster and writing the script for mine and Phoebe’s voiceover. Before we made these things we spent a while looking at real life missing posters and looking at missing people websites to make sure that our poster looked realistic. We also looked at real missing pleas that were on YouTube , which helped with writing the script.

 

 12/11/16-The next lesson we decided to change our location. Because of our decision to film at the arcade in the Chelmsford Tenpin Bowling alleys we needed to call them to check if it was okay to film there - once we called up we were told to email them , which we then did and waited 48 hours for a reply.

 

 13/11/16-The following Monday we began to film. We did this at Amara’s house after school, taking a couple of hours to fully set up the camera on a tripod and think about how we wanted to frame our shot. For this scene, Phoebe and myself were the actors while Amara was behind the camera.

 

 14/11/12-The following lesson we went up to a quiet and empty classroom so that we could record our voiceover. We recorded it on both my camera and Amara’s phone, in order to compare the sound quality and see which recording would work best for our film.

 

  15/11/12-The lesson in-between then and the second time shooting were spent editing the footage that we had filmed.

 

 16/11/16 -That Thursday we went to film at the arcade. We took a disposable camera with us to take the photos that we would later be burning. Here we filmed some of our montage scenes.

 

25/11/16-Our next filming session was was on the following Sunday at around 5 o'clock in Phoebe’s back garden. This is where we filmed the burning photos and the scene where the missing girl both holds the lighter and watches the come home plea on YouTube,  - we met in the evening because we needed it to be dark in order to show the flames.

 

27/11/16- The next lesson was spent with me editing and uploading the work we had done so far onto my YouTube channel and the blog. We also redid the story board, adding in the shot types and times. We also decided on a song that would best match our film.

 

28/11/16- When our first draft was complete it was presented to the class. In the next lesson we looked at our feedback and took some key point and typed them up. Amara created the poster for our film whilst me and Phoebe edited.

 

29/11/12- The next lesson while I edited, Phoebe and Amara began to think of different ways to market our film. They decided that marketing techniques would include social media accounts and posters on buses. Phoebe created the poster for the bus and Amara made the twitter page.

 

30/11/12 -For the next lesson whilst I edited, we continued to upload what we had done so far on to our blogs and looked back over feedback given to us.

 

02/12/16-This lesson, we took another disposable camera and re-shot some photos for our burning photos/credits sequence, as the feedback given to us mentioned that some of the original photos were too dark to be seen properly.

 

03/12/16- The next lesson we redid some shots for our montage sequence so that we had more shots other than just at the arcade. We did this around the school.

 

05/12/16-The next lesson was spent with me editing and Phoebe and Amara ticking off our checklist and going over anything we still needed to do.

 

6/12/16- We remade a version of the storyboard on Prezi including all of the shots and scenes.

 

7/12/16- I completed editing and added Film4’s logo to the start of the film opening as our institution – we also added Phoebe’s company logo.