Journal - 29/01/13 - Changing the sequence

Today brought stress, conflict and even panic to my group. I had planned on finishing the editing in which only a few more scenes had to be completed. However this was not to be the case as the file encountered an error and removed several scenes, in which we was unable to recover.

When looking over the files that had been saved I didn't feel the shots fitted well together and had an overall theme of not making sense. Thomas also noticed we had lost continuity, and when watching over our sequence this proved quite obvious.



We decided to make a huge decision in re-starting the whole sequence, neither of my group members were particularly satisfied with this, including me; because the deadline is Thursday so this meant squashing everything down including; the filming, editing, titles, transitions and sounds in the space of a day. This also gave me the feeling of 'wasted' time because we had each spent many hours on our designated roles and I felt all my efforts in editing the green screens was going to be a waste.

We began by brainstorming new idea's - because of the very limited time we had, we knew the new idea would have to be simple and easy to create. We came up with an idea inspired by our previous office scene; this consisted of our actor writing a funeral speech about his recently passed Grandmother, scrunching up the speech and then throwing it at the camera. This would not only involve the audience and make them immediately feel apart of the character but represent a deeper meaning - the repetition of his training and frustration he will face when becoming a spy.

Once filming all the scenes we uploaded it to final cut pro in hope of no disruptions; thankfully they quickly uploaded and we was able to start the quick but efficient editing. Whilst Nicola converted all the new footage, I managed to recover some of our old footage in which we could involve in our new sequence.
We decided to use a layering effect where we was able to adjust the opacity and make the action footage appear 'ghost like' over our office scene. Daisy then added a cross over dissolve which made the sequence less jumpy and more professional; this also proved to be elliptical editing because it showed the time period in which the spy wrote the speech and foreshadowed the future events he will face through layering the clips.
We was very fortunate to have good teamwork because even though we all seemed reluctant and frustrated, I feel the overall outcome will benefit from it. When thinking back to our storyboards I feel our first idea was very good because it seemed it would be continuous and link all events, but we didn't consider how difficult the capturing of the shots would be E.g. slow motion coin flip turning into a ring; exploding phone, bird poo transferring into falling letters etc. I feel my group forgot we had basic equipment and limited time; therefore this experience has shown me to not over complicate things because sometimes simple outcomes can be the most effective!

In order to ensure we have a completed outcome by Thursday me and Nicola will be editing the scenes together, this means we will be able to express our opinions and idea's to ensure the outcome will meet all our expectations; Daisy will then add the transitions she has planned and Thomas the titles in which he has experimented with; overall today has shown me the importance of teamwork, deadlines and planning.