Unit 8 - Final Project
Final Product:
Pre-Production:
This first thing I had to do was come up with an idea, after some thought I decided that I wanted the main topic to be about something that I would be dedicated to. So, I chose football. My original idea was going to be a montage of goals, tricks and shots, but after my pitch and a discussion with my lecturer he told me to try and change it. So, I then started to do some research into football short films on YouTube. I also looked at a couple of football adverts from Nike and Adidas. There were a lot of inspirational ones. After watching through around four to five, one stood out. A university student produced one called A football trial, the storyline to this was an up-and-coming footballer had a trial and a famous scout was watching. After missing a penalty, the scout calls him after the game saying that he didn't get a spot into the team. I used some of the main points in this to come up with a similar storyline to this. I wish I did some secondary research, but I could not find time and figure what type of secondary research I could do.
After writing out a storyline I thought I would need to do my Storyboards. I am not the greatest drawer, so I decided to use a website to try and do them. I would start by doing the storyboards because I thought I can get a visual look into what my video would look like. After doing the first storyboard I realised that you could not really tell what camera angle would look like in each shot. So, I gathered all my research and videos and took screenshots of some of them to try and show what the video would look like in terms of the camera angles. I also did a mood board was just a collective of ideas that I could use in the final product.
The next thing I decided to do was the script. This was only the second time I would use speaking in one of my videos. It would not be a lot of speaking, but I wanted a couple of phone calls and the scout speaking to the main character. One thing I did not describe the action you see very well, but that would be one thing I would work on next time.
As well as the script another pre-production I had to do was Costumes and Props, which was quite simple as it was mostly just your everyday clothes for the part after the football match and a football kit during the match. I also had to figure out what the scout would wear, and I decided it to be a sports jacket, some regular trainers and some joggers. For props it was a board and pen for the scout, a football for the football part. Originally it was going to be an Xbox for the middle part but that changed during production.
The next main part for the music and sounds. I wanted 7 pieces of music for the video, so I found 3 bits of music for each part and then chose one after I went through them. This was one of the toughest parts of pre-production because I had to make sure it was copyright free and there were a lot of a choices, For the sounds it was quite simple. I separated the diegetic sounds and non-diegetic sounds, and then listed them.
There were 2 locations for my video, one was inside a house and the other a football field, the house was quite simple because no one was going to be home, but the field could have had 2 problems, one was that on the day we field it had people in the background, that was not a major problem. The second problem could have been the weather but luckily over the 3 days we filmed it did not rain. It rained all the week after.
This first thing I had to do was come up with an idea, after some thought I decided that I wanted the main topic to be about something that I would be dedicated to. So, I chose football. My original idea was going to be a montage of goals, tricks and shots, but after my pitch and a discussion with my lecturer he told me to try and change it. So, I then started to do some research into football short films on YouTube. I also looked at a couple of football adverts from Nike and Adidas. There were a lot of inspirational ones. After watching through around four to five, one stood out. A university student produced one called A football trial, the storyline to this was an up-and-coming footballer had a trial and a famous scout was watching. After missing a penalty, the scout calls him after the game saying that he didn't get a spot into the team. I used some of the main points in this to come up with a similar storyline to this. I wish I did some secondary research, but I could not find time and figure what type of secondary research I could do.
After writing out a storyline I thought I would need to do my Storyboards. I am not the greatest drawer, so I decided to use a website to try and do them. I would start by doing the storyboards because I thought I can get a visual look into what my video would look like. After doing the first storyboard I realised that you could not really tell what camera angle would look like in each shot. So, I gathered all my research and videos and took screenshots of some of them to try and show what the video would look like in terms of the camera angles. I also did a mood board was just a collective of ideas that I could use in the final product.
The next thing I decided to do was the script. This was only the second time I would use speaking in one of my videos. It would not be a lot of speaking, but I wanted a couple of phone calls and the scout speaking to the main character. One thing I did not describe the action you see very well, but that would be one thing I would work on next time.
As well as the script another pre-production I had to do was Costumes and Props, which was quite simple as it was mostly just your everyday clothes for the part after the football match and a football kit during the match. I also had to figure out what the scout would wear, and I decided it to be a sports jacket, some regular trainers and some joggers. For props it was a board and pen for the scout, a football for the football part. Originally it was going to be an Xbox for the middle part but that changed during production.
The next main part for the music and sounds. I wanted 7 pieces of music for the video, so I found 3 bits of music for each part and then chose one after I went through them. This was one of the toughest parts of pre-production because I had to make sure it was copyright free and there were a lot of a choices, For the sounds it was quite simple. I separated the diegetic sounds and non-diegetic sounds, and then listed them.
There were 2 locations for my video, one was inside a house and the other a football field, the house was quite simple because no one was going to be home, but the field could have had 2 problems, one was that on the day we field it had people in the background, that was not a major problem. The second problem could have been the weather but luckily over the 3 days we filmed it did not rain. It rained all the week after.
Production:
The first step for production was booking all the kit and making sure it was available. After that we started with the end of the film. The inside part had to change slightly because we never had an Xbox, so we had to change it to foosball, which ended up being fine. The first couple of shots were just of the main character playing foosball, so a kind of montage like part with a couple of close ups. Then we had to do the phone call part which I started with having the zoom next to the camera when filming to try and catch the phone call. I then realised after listening back to the zoom, that it would be easier to film it then record the zoom bit after. That way it came out clearer. Despite the change in the way i was doing it, it came out a lot better than I thought.
For the main part of my video, I had to do it into two days. The first day we did all the football parts, so the penalty and the dribbling scene. I knew from doing my storyboards that the dribbling part would not be easy, due to it being really hard to hold a camera and run backwards while the character is running towards you with a ball. After two takes it came out pretty well and I thought that when editing I can just slow it down. The penalty part involved a lot of different shots. The first was the foul, first we were going to do a bunch of different fouls, for example a slide tackle, tripping the player over and pulling them down. But we ended up just doing different angles of the same foul, the pulling down because it looked the best on camera. I wanted to really build the run up to the penalty, so I had the character place the ball down and take a slow run up to the penalty, I was going to slow this down in the edit anyway. After he takes the shot, and it gets saved I needed him to fall to the ground then it would be cut to a shot of him getting up. After all that we went home and was going to finish the rest the day after.
The problem we ran into was when I get home from filming and had a look at what we had done, I realised that some of the shots were really badly focused. What I should have done was have a look at the footage while I was there. So, the next day we had to re film some of the footage we did the other day, luckily it was not too difficult, and we did it within an hour. The next part was the following the main character towards the scout, for the talk with the scout. This was quite similar to the dribbling scene except it was a lot slower which made it easier. After this we filmed the talking part which I had to change because of the same reason as the indoor part and it was difficult to film the audio and the video at the same time because of the wind this time. So, I had the camera behind the scout while he was talking to the main character, soy you could not see the scouts mouth moving. Then I filmed the audio part.
The final two things I had to do was the long run into the distance and the start of the video. The start was quite short and simple. It starts with the character doing his shoelaces then jumping up and answering his phone. This part was tricky because I had the speech from the brother was not the best, first he didn't say hello, so it sounded really weird. I fixed this in the editing. The long run was one of my favourite parts because despite it being so simple it was really effective and came out the exact way, I wanted it to.
The first step for production was booking all the kit and making sure it was available. After that we started with the end of the film. The inside part had to change slightly because we never had an Xbox, so we had to change it to foosball, which ended up being fine. The first couple of shots were just of the main character playing foosball, so a kind of montage like part with a couple of close ups. Then we had to do the phone call part which I started with having the zoom next to the camera when filming to try and catch the phone call. I then realised after listening back to the zoom, that it would be easier to film it then record the zoom bit after. That way it came out clearer. Despite the change in the way i was doing it, it came out a lot better than I thought.
For the main part of my video, I had to do it into two days. The first day we did all the football parts, so the penalty and the dribbling scene. I knew from doing my storyboards that the dribbling part would not be easy, due to it being really hard to hold a camera and run backwards while the character is running towards you with a ball. After two takes it came out pretty well and I thought that when editing I can just slow it down. The penalty part involved a lot of different shots. The first was the foul, first we were going to do a bunch of different fouls, for example a slide tackle, tripping the player over and pulling them down. But we ended up just doing different angles of the same foul, the pulling down because it looked the best on camera. I wanted to really build the run up to the penalty, so I had the character place the ball down and take a slow run up to the penalty, I was going to slow this down in the edit anyway. After he takes the shot, and it gets saved I needed him to fall to the ground then it would be cut to a shot of him getting up. After all that we went home and was going to finish the rest the day after.
The problem we ran into was when I get home from filming and had a look at what we had done, I realised that some of the shots were really badly focused. What I should have done was have a look at the footage while I was there. So, the next day we had to re film some of the footage we did the other day, luckily it was not too difficult, and we did it within an hour. The next part was the following the main character towards the scout, for the talk with the scout. This was quite similar to the dribbling scene except it was a lot slower which made it easier. After this we filmed the talking part which I had to change because of the same reason as the indoor part and it was difficult to film the audio and the video at the same time because of the wind this time. So, I had the camera behind the scout while he was talking to the main character, soy you could not see the scouts mouth moving. Then I filmed the audio part.
The final two things I had to do was the long run into the distance and the start of the video. The start was quite short and simple. It starts with the character doing his shoelaces then jumping up and answering his phone. This part was tricky because I had the speech from the brother was not the best, first he didn't say hello, so it sounded really weird. I fixed this in the editing. The long run was one of my favourite parts because despite it being so simple it was really effective and came out the exact way, I wanted it to.
Post-Production:
I started with doing a rough cut which was the best way to start because it gave me a good idea what I had to work with. this took around 2 hours to do. After this I added the sounds, so the talking parts, the music and the other non-diegetic sounds like the football being kicked. Two sounds I added in that i think really worked was the heartbeats and the heavy breathing just before the penalty was being taken, this really added tension to the penalty before being taken. The first issue I ran into was a couple of continuity errors. One was just after the penalty when the player falls to the ground. In the first pieces of footage the player is all the way down on his knees, while in the second bit he is sort of crouched. There was not a lot I could have done so I tried to disguise it. Another bit is when the main character is playing foosball. In one shot you can see him on the left side of the table, but during a close up you cannot really tell but he is on the other side. One more rule I broke was the 180° which is where you cannot go past a certain line when filming. After fixing some of those continuity errors I then colour corrected a few of the videos, mostly the inside ones because they were quite dark, due to the lightning. At this point the video was around 3 minutes long and that was without an intro or the end. The intro I added was anything amazingly and after getting some feedback I realised should either get rid of it or shorten it down. I decided to shorten it down to just a title. The ending is my favourite part because of the sentimental feel to it with the rocky speech and the quote from Winston Churchill. At this point I had an edit that i was happy with. If I could re edit it from the start, I would not change a lot, I feel like if I filmed a lot more then I could have made this a lot better.
I started with doing a rough cut which was the best way to start because it gave me a good idea what I had to work with. this took around 2 hours to do. After this I added the sounds, so the talking parts, the music and the other non-diegetic sounds like the football being kicked. Two sounds I added in that i think really worked was the heartbeats and the heavy breathing just before the penalty was being taken, this really added tension to the penalty before being taken. The first issue I ran into was a couple of continuity errors. One was just after the penalty when the player falls to the ground. In the first pieces of footage the player is all the way down on his knees, while in the second bit he is sort of crouched. There was not a lot I could have done so I tried to disguise it. Another bit is when the main character is playing foosball. In one shot you can see him on the left side of the table, but during a close up you cannot really tell but he is on the other side. One more rule I broke was the 180° which is where you cannot go past a certain line when filming. After fixing some of those continuity errors I then colour corrected a few of the videos, mostly the inside ones because they were quite dark, due to the lightning. At this point the video was around 3 minutes long and that was without an intro or the end. The intro I added was anything amazingly and after getting some feedback I realised should either get rid of it or shorten it down. I decided to shorten it down to just a title. The ending is my favourite part because of the sentimental feel to it with the rocky speech and the quote from Winston Churchill. At this point I had an edit that i was happy with. If I could re edit it from the start, I would not change a lot, I feel like if I filmed a lot more then I could have made this a lot better.