Continuity Piece: Final Edit

Here is the final edit of our continuity piece: 

We completed our final edit at the college, using their media facilities. We got to use Premiere Pro which I found to be a really enjoyable experience. I found the demonstration that we got from one of the college lecturers to be very useful and it gave us a good idea of how to use the software. The software was a lot more complicated to use than Serif Movie Plus, but after some time to get used to it, it was actually quite simplistic.

With the software, we were able to make the changes to our continuity piece to make it run much more smoothly, and make the conversation seem more natural. We also found that when we saved our final edit, we found that the quality was a lot better than it was when we had saved it in school, even when we had saved it as an MP4 file. We decided this was because Premiere Pro is a more professional and modern software. 

An extra change that we made during our final edit, was to cut the slow pan from right to left, at the very beginning of the piece. We did this as we felt that it was a little too slow, but when sped it up, it didn’t look natural. It was for this reason that we decided to cut it, as we felt that it ruined the flow of our piece. 

Continuity Piece: 1st Edit

We conducted the first edit of our continuity piece using Serif Movie Plus. This is Microsoft software that is available on our school network. 

After our first edit, we sat down and discussed what we thought the strengths and weaknesses of our continuity piece were. Our teacher also gave us some feedback. These were our thoughts:

Strengths:

• We successfully kept continuity throughout the piece

• We included a variety of shots and camera angles which made our piece interesting

• Our teacher told us that she liked the high angle shot through the window as it was totally different to any of the other shots we used and it focused on outside, rather than inside

• The first few shots need to be cut shorter, as they are a little too long. Focusing on one thing for too long will bore the audience. Cutting the shots will make no difference to the continuity or sequence of the piece:

Weaknesses:

- To improve the continuity of the conversation towards the end of the piece, the shot of Josh saying “Thank you, I need to finish my homework” needs to be cut shorter. This means that Caitlin’s reply will be straight away, and will seem like the conversation flows.

- The shot of Josh opening the door needs to be cut and sped up. The shot is slightly too long, and as Josh must have opened the door more slowly towards the end of the clip, it almost appears that it is being opened in slow motion. As we need it to look a normal speed, we will have to increase the speed.

When will we make these changes?

We will make the changes to the edit when we go and visit the collage to use their media facilities. In the collage, they have a type of editing software called Premiere Pro, which we have never used before as our school do not have it. As we have never used it before, we have arranged to be given a tutorial on how to do the basics, to give us a basic understanding of the software before we experiment using it for ourselves. I am looking forward to learning how to use Premiere Pro as I have never used it before, and I think it will be interesting to compare it to other editing software I have used such as Serif Movie Plus, and iMovie. 

Were there any issues with Serif Movie Plus?

I thought the software was quite easy to use, and it was simple to navigate. However, we found that when we saved the piece as a Serif Movie Plus file, that it was bad quality and the footage was freezing and jumping. Therefore, we went back and saved it as an MP4 file and we found that this solved all of our issues.

Planning the Continuity Piece

Today in our media studies lesson, we were given a few helpful tips for success when filming our continuity piece. 

Firstly, we were told that we should use a story board and a script to plan what you will film, and so that you can reference back to them if you forget something that you are meant to be doing. The story board can also be used as a form of checklist to make sure that you have filmed all of the shots.

Secondly, we were told that we should always keep the camera steady. In order to achieve stable footage we were advised to use a tripod to film the shots and not to record it hand held.

Then, we were told that we should be sure to consider the shot/reverse shot technique whilst filming in order to make sure that it makes sense, and that there are no continuity errors.

Finally, we were told to include a wide variety of shots such as close ups and extreme close ups. This is to ensure that the footage is interesting to watch and helps to keep the audience engaged.

Caitlin and Hannah drew up the story board for our continuity piece and we all reviewed it to make sure that there was enough variety of shots in it. After reviewing the story board, Josh and I went and created the script. 

Before we were able to start filming, we had to make sure that we were able to set up all the equipment. At the beginning of the year, we had been demonstrated this by our teacher, and had undertaken a task to film some different types of camera shots. As this would only be our second time setting up the camera and tripod, we were watched over by our teacher to make sure that we had set up and secured the tripod correctly so it capsize, and that we had correctly attached the camera to the tripod so it didn’t fall off. We successfully remembered how to set up the camera and tripod, as our teacher gave us the all clear that it was set up correctly and was safe to use. 

The final preparations we made for filming were to clear the memory card of our camera to ensure that we would not run out of storage space whilst filming. We also made sure that we had a spare, fully charged battery on hand with us as a precaution, in case the battery we were using in our camera had/developed a fault.

As a testing shot, Josh filmed an extreme close up of Caitlin’s eye to practice this type of shot, to make sure that the reflection of the camera was not visible. We observed that very small movements of the camera were very noticeable, so we made sure that we kept the camera as still as possible when filming.