Diary
15/11/2018
Today I opened up all of the survey results in a spreadsheet and went through and analyzed the results. It took me quite a while as I had over 170 responses and therefore needed to make sure the results that I talked about were representative of all of the results. I used the premade Google Forms graphs for the quantitative answers and listed the main points from the qualitative questions. Now I need to analyze three clips from Edgar Wright movies to talk about in my video essay.
Inform our own idea...
The people who watch all of these shows I have looked at are all different age groups. Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway is one of the shows with the broadest range of people watching, the reason this show is like this because of Ant & Dec and also the show has a big range of content.
The findings suggest that if we go with the Saturday evening, ITV, 7 pm as this is one of the most popular times for viewing TV as a family. At this time people will put the TV on and just watch whatever show is on. For the group, this shows us that we need to make sure that our show doesn't collide with a popular show as everyone would just watch the show. If we did have to show our show at the same time as a popular show we would have to make sure we were appealing to a different target audience.
Based on our idea we now need to research our target audience to find out what they would want from a show, we need to think of ways we can make our show different from others. We need to research what the shows we want to borrow ideas from do and how they are really successful. ​
Diary
11/12/2018
As I wasn't in yesterday I began by labeling my footage. After this, I then began editing my project. I worked my way through, I'm just organizing the clips on to the timeline before I go back through and make sure everything looks good. Recording this in alphabetical order has definitely made editing a lot easier. I am trying to use backing tracks of the Christmas music as this will avoid any copyright issues. Maybe when I imported the footage I should have saved them in folders of each scene rather than each day as this would have made editing a lot more smooth.
Peer Feedback Analysis
The first question that I asked was "What do you think of the narrative?" The person from my group said it was fun and festive and the other person said it does make some sense but not that obvious in some places. When I go back through I will ensure I look at each scene and see if there is anything I can add which will help people who don't know the idea understand the idea a lot more clearly. ​​
Secondly, I asked, "Do you think that the video flows well?" The first person said it was very nice to look at and the other person said some of the shots and scenes are too long, and that Edgar Wright uses fast and quick cuts. I will go back and add some quick montages to go between each of the scenes.
Next, I asked, "Do you like the montage at the beginning?" The first person said definitely, it was created very well and planned well. The other person said it seemed quite long for an Edgar Wright film but they said the comedy is transferred very well. As the film is already 9 minutes long and I will be adding quick montages I may cut the beginning montage to make it a bit quicker,
After this, I asked, "Do you like the graphic at the beginning?" The first person said yes it is very creative, but the car should be red and the other person said yes they like it and the fast car warns with the theme of the film and title. If I get time I will change the car to red but I think that there are other changes which would benefit the production more than this.
I then asked, "Do you think each scene is shown clearly?" The first person said it is and very clear, the second person said yes, although they feel some of the scenes are out of place. When I asked for further information on this they said that they thought the scene in the office was very sudden. I will try and find a shot which I can put before this scene which will add some meaning to this.
Following this, I asked them what they thought of the transitions. The first person said to remove the cut to black between one of the scenes. The other person said that they work with what we are trying to achieve. I will remove the cut to black and add a transition instead. This may make it flow better.
When asked about the shot type one of them said that some of the shots do seem very shaky. I assume this relates to the following car shots. I will try to add some Warp Stabilizer to try and resolve this issue.
Next, I asked, "Do you think the audio levels are okay?". The first person said I should add music in places where there isn't any audio. The other person commented on the wind in some of the scenes. We did use a wind muff so the wind would have been reduced. I will have a look at editing to see if I can remove even more wind.
Finally, I asked what do you dislike about the production. The first person said the cut to blacks which I will remove later. The other person said Mrs. Palmer looks at the camera in a few scenes and is wearing different clothes. This is due to the actor ignoring the set out dresscode and nothing could be done to change this.
Production Log
To achieve the background snow effect I found a green screen snow effect on YouTube which I downloaded. I then used Color Key to remove the green.
For the shots where a tripod was not used I used an effect called Warp Stabiliser. This is very easy to use and works very well. I used this for a car follow shot and also when the called pulled up at the start.
For a couple of the clips we shot out the window of the car driving along you could hear non-Christmas music in the background, so I have swapped this audio with scenes we didn't use in the film. For this I un-linked the audio from both clips and swapped the audio.
To achieve the background snow effect I found a green screen snow effect on YouTube which I downloaded. I then used Color Key to remove the green.
Hover over the images to see the explanation
Diary 14/12/2018
Today I finished my edit for "Christmas Driver". I went through the edit adding the finishing touches I saw that needed changing. I then went through and tried to fix the issues brought up in the peer feedback. I downloaded sound effects from FreeSound.org and used these to replace bad audio. I added some color correction which increases the saturation and makes the whole video look a lot warmer and nicer. There was one scene in which you can hear the wind really loudly but I couldn't really find a fix for - maybe in the future, we should check the sound of clips when we review the footage as this could have meant we may have been able to re-shoot this scene again. I found a couple of changes to make as I was previewing it for the last time, so I went and removed these too. As this took a while to export, I did that on my laptop and wrote the comments to go with the production log (above). Below you can see the final Christmas Driver edit.
FINAL EDIT
Test Screening
For one of my test screening interviews, I conducted it with Michael Webb who is the college technician. He picked up on a couple of issues which I will detail here; the first was the audio, I knew this was an issue but he showed me a couple of different ways we could have improved the audio. This included placing microphones in the car and resting them on our laps or with our spare hands. He also made me aware of a couple of scenes where the camera angle was wonky. This could have simply been resolved by reviewing the footage while on location. The other thing that he said wasn't portrayed the best was the narrative. A couple other people have said this to and this shows he was clearly something wrong with how we showed it; maybe Mrs. Palmer wearing smart clothes would make her seem more businessy and even a graphic which said something about community service would have shown this.
My second interview was with another class member who has watched many of Edgar Wrights films and would be in our target audience. Her main comments were regarding the auteur styling and I would agree that it doesn't have that many auteur stylings. The other comment she made was that it wasn't fast paced enough to look like it was made by Edgar Wright. I would agree with this also. She suggested shortening the first sequence which was quite long. Again she said that the narrative wasn't that clear and if she didn't know the idea she probably would have not understood the ending.
Diary
17/12/2018
Today I wrote my interview questions for my interview with Chloe. I wanted to make sure that I picked questions which would give valuable answers as previously this has been the issue with methods of research I have conducted. I then booked my interview with the college technician. I then conducted my interview with Chloe, she is a fan of Edgar Wright and a person who is in the target audience. After this I did my interview with Michael, I did this interview differently as we went through and paused as he wanted to talk about something. Michael was a good person to interview as he has industry experience and a very good eye for detail, so this meant he could review this from a professional point. After this, I went through, listened to the feedback and wrote my analysis.