Final post

This is my final post for my AS media coursework. I have really enjoyed the course and hope to carry on with media studies next year. I have learnt a lot from the course to do with filming and construction and look forward to making a music video next year.
My blog is now closed.

Audience feedback

We showed our films today to people in our year and the year below. We asked them to give us comments on our films and tell us something that they liked about it. The general comments that we got were that they enjoyed the flashing credits and the difference of colour in shots in the flashbacks and present day.

Some examples of the comments we recieved were:
'I liked the combination of what was happening to leyla visually and the voice over of her mother (I think) talking to the police'

'Interesting, liked the flash backs and flashing credits. It was gripping and made me what to watch more'

'Music makes suspense and the writing looks good and fits. There is a good cliff hanger of Charlotte waking up'

We also got a really positive feedback comment from Ms Upton who is the deputy head. Her comment was:
'Really good! I liked the cup and milk, everything was great, story was good. Gave me the chills.'

Overall I'm really happy with the comments we recieved from people and glad that everyone liked it

Finalising our film

In our last lesson before moderation we had to finalise our film and make it perfect ready to be moderated. We edited our credits so that the last name would stay on the screen for a few seconds after flashing numerous times. This enables viewers to clearly see the names and read them. We also made all the background music quieter so that you can hear the voice over more clearly.

We then uploaded our film into youtube in HD which made our credits look clearer and more realistic as a real film.

This is our final edit of our two minute film opening coursework, Leyla:

Almost finished film opening

Our film opening must be finished by the end of the week so we have been finalising our voice over and music and have almost finished it now. In our last lesson we editing some of the music that was on our previous draft and made the bird noise quieter as it was quite over powering and made it sound quite fake. We also faded the music together more so it had more of a flow to it and sounded better. We also deleted the clips that were put in of Charlotte at the end in the mirror so that it ends on just Charlotte walking down the path as this looks more effective.
We just have to make a few more changes to our music by making it a bit quieter as the voice over is sometimes drowned out by the music at points and then this will hopefully be our final edit of our coursework.

This is the draft of our film with the music and voiceover put together:

Background music

After recording our voice over and putting it to our film we realised that it did not fill up our film and we had really big gaps that we needed to figure out a way to fill. We decided to make some fast tension music to put in the background throughout our film.
We used garage band so that it was not copyrited and then tried to fit it to our film to make it fit.
This is our next draft of our film opening with the music included.

Script for our voiceover

Policewoman (Charlotte): This is PC Smith interviewing Mrs.Richardson concerning the disappearance of her daughter Leyla -. Time is 12:43.

Policewoman (Charlotte): Mrs. Richardson, when was the last time you saw or had contact with your daughter?

Mother (Aimie): She was at home yesterday, we had a cup of tea and lunch together. Just like we always do.

Policewoman (Charlotte): What was her mood like?


Mother (Aimie): Well she's a typical teenager, how do you think her mood was?!

Policewoman (Charlotte): Did she say or do anything that you consider out of the ordinary?

Mother (Aimie): She was on the phone for a long time, probably to that boyfriend of hers, and she wasn't paying me enough attention. I wanted her to stay in with me but she stormed out. That was the last time I saw her.

Policewoman (Charlotte): Is there anyone that you know of that would have a desire to harm your daughter?

Mother (Aimie): No. Maybe you should be talking to her boyfriend, not me.

Policewoman (Charlotte): Why? What was he like?

Mother (Aimie): I didn't get to meet him. She never let me.

Policewoman (Charlotte): What about her friends?

Mother (Aimie): I only really met Sarah Underwood and Stephen Land, but they haven't been to the house in months.

Policewoman (Charlotte): Do you know if she is still in close contact with them?

Mother (Aimie): No, like I said, she never told me anything like normal daughters should.

Voice over

During this week we re recorded our voice over to finalise it and make it a bit longer. We used Chrlotte as the police officer and me as the mother because it was the eaisest and convenient situation.

We have also edited our voice over to distort the surname of the victim, similar to that of Plan B in his song Suzanne. We also put more effects over it to make it sound eery and mysterious. We timed all of the parts of the voice over to fit our film and realised that we do not have enough to fit. We decided that we should make some kind of sound track to fill the gaps and used garage band to add sounds and melodies together to create some background noise for inbetween bits of the voice over. We just now need to move the music and voice over from garage band over to imovie and make it all fit in together with our film.