Director's Commentary

Evaluation

For this past few months me and the other members of my group have been script writing, creating, producing, acting, editing and developing our ideas for our film. We all came to the decision at the very beginning of the process that we wanted to do something different, and came up with the idea of a Romantic Comedy but Asian style. This genre we have chosen meant that our target audience was narrowed down to Asian teenage girls age 13-17 but we feel that our film will also appeal to teenage girls in general as there are events in the film that they can relate to.

With our brainstorm of ideas we changed this into a storyboard so we could set out each action, location and speech. We made it very precise as we wanted to make it as close as the real thing as possible to help us visualise how our film was going to look. We found the storyboards very helpful when were filming as we knew exactly what we was going to do next and it was almost as if it was a guide. When filming we did have to change a few small things, for example we changed our montages due to the amount of time we had and also our main character Anisha found it difficult to act out.

When we knew what type of location we wanted from putting our ideas onto a storyboard we began to think of somewhere local that would be easy to get to and somewhere easy to shoot with our equipment. We knew that the very opening of our film would be shot outside so we had to think about natural lighting and also the type of weather that would be best for the mood of our film. Our filming went well and the only problem we found was waiting around whilst our characters changed outfits.

Once we had uploaded our filming onto the laptop we watched our footage back and decided that some pieces we needed to film again as we thought we could do it better. I am glad we did this because small changes made a difference. The filming that we did again, we did during lessons at school which was quite good as we knew we were all free to film and also part of the montage scene was set at school, so this was ideal. We added the location of school as our target audience would be at school or college too so they can relate to these events.

Editing our film took most of our time as we had to cut the clips in the right place to make sure we had continuity in our film. A problem we found was that sometimes half of a scene was on one clip and the other half was on another clip, so we had to put this together and make sure they flow well. We also had to decide if we needed any effects and we came to the decision of adding small transitions, for example when a scene changes. The transitions helped again with the flow of the filming. We then had to add our music into the film and check it was in the right place and not going over any speech in the film. Timing for this part was a main concentration and also for the voiceover we added. The voiceover was to show the feelings and thoughts of Anisha and I think this definitely makes the opening of our film. The voiceover was recorded on the Edirol and again we cut the recordings down to the parts we needed. We added titles to our film and found these quite easy to do with the Pinnacle tools.

When we had finished adjusting our film we then had to do a Director’s Commentary. We recorded this on the Edirol as we knew that it worked well from previously using it. We uploaded this onto Pinnacle and had to mute our sound to put this recording instead.  The only problem was that it was quite time consuming finding the right clips to put on as we had quite a few to choose from.

I think that me and my group have worked well over the past few months and met the criteria needed. Our film contains many shots and techniques and is under two minutes long. I think that the different shots in our film are effective as it shows we have put thought into how each angle is going to look. I like how we have been able to include the Indian culture in the film but still appealing to most teenage girls as we have events that they can relate too. I think that the voiceover was a good element to add as it helps engage the audience with the type of character Anisha is and also makes the film more personal to Anisha as she is telling us her thoughts and feelings. The only that I would have liked to change was the background of the title ‘Oh my Guru’. We initially had the idea of having some type of animation and I think this would have been more interesting and would have looked more professional.  We were unable to do this as we didn’t have the computer programme we needed and also time was against us.

If I was to do this challenge again I would have taken more shots of the scenes as then we would have had more choice when choosing what pieces to use in the film. This would have also meant that we wouldn’t have had to retake some of the pieces we did and would have given us more time on editing.

Overall I am very pleased with the finished result of our film and that we completed the whole task in time.

Oh My Guru

Director's Commentary

After finishing our film we have added a Director's commentary which is me and my group. We have used an Edirol to record our voices. We first wrote a script so we know what we were going to say and how we were going to explain certain shots in our film. So that our comments would fit in with what was happening with the film we watched it as we wrote and also it helped remind us the different types of camera angles and shots we had used. When recording we made sure that the Edirol was close to our voice as we wanted it to be as clear as possible. Once we all took our turns of recording our pieces we uploaded it onto the laptop. We edited it to fit in with what was happening during the film so it matched up. We had to sometimes pause parts for us to finish explaining what was happening and we also had to mute the sound so we could hear our voices instead. In our commentary we are explainig why we chose certain shots and also pointing out different techniques we have used. We also talk about charcters outfits and locations as all of these elements are important when creating a film.
Before we wrote our commentary we watched some from films to take notes in what kind of matters they discussed. I think this definitely helped us with our writing of the commentary script.

Anamatics

This is our Anamatics of our film 'Oh My Guru'. We filmed our detailed storyboards and estimated our time for each action in each box of our storyboard. The Anamatics helped us visualise how our film was going to look and also how long our film will be as we had to check it was under 2 minutes to meet our criteria. We used a flip camera to record the Anamatics and we all found it quite easy to use. I think the flip cameras are good for this type of filming but when shooting our real film we will use a more high tech camera to be able to have better quality footage. With an Edirol we recorded our speech and uploaded this onto the laptop to play with the Anamatics. We also added some sound effects to it to help create the overall look of the film.

Music and Voiceover

We have added music over the beginning of our film to make the scene more interesting to watch and listen to. The music over this part is by our friend on her guitar. We wanted the music to be quite cheerful to try and reflect the mood of the character, Anisha, in the beginning of the film. For some parts we had to make the music quieter as we also had a voiceover of Anisha's thoughts. We recorded the voiceover on an Edirol and had to upload this after we had finished editing. The voiceover helps the audience understand how Anisha feels and get to know what type of personality she has. It tells the audience that it is from her point of view as she is the narrator of the film. This music fades out when the talking between characters begins.

When the title of our film shows we have a different piece of music that we found on the internet and isn't copyrighted. This piece is Indian music and we decided to play this here as it links to the title of our film. The music played at the beginning will appeal to all teenagers/ young adults and the Indian music that comes later reminds the audience of the different culture that we are trying to portray and conncets to our main target audience.

Editing

Once we had finished our filming we then uploaded it onto the editing programme, Pinnacle. We have chose to use this programme as it has different effects and tools we can use. We had to cut a lot of our film into different sections as we wanted parts to go together that weren't neccessarily filmed together. This meant that continuity was a main convention we had to look at. We also have a few match on action shots which meant we had to cut it at the right time otherwise the effect wouldnt work. Our main disaster in the film, the splash, was where we had to make sure the event looked as realistic as possible. We ended up having to add a small transition here because this made her actions flow better in the scene. With the transition being so small doesn't have a big effect but makes a difference to how the whole action looks. We wanted to add a glow effect for the montage part of our film to emphasise that she was looking back in time but the Pinnacle programme we have wasn't compatible for this type of technique.
We have added titles that are throughout the very beginning scene of our film. We chose to do them in white and make the font quite simple as when we researched into Romantic Comedies this is what we found. Each title randomly comes in a different corner each time. We wanted them to be seen but not take the view off of what was happening in the scene. The titles fade in and out as we didnt want any big effect for each title. When the name of our title comes up we wanted the words to appear as Anisha says them. We thought that this would make the title stand out more. We kept the title white and the same font too. When the words first come onto the screen you can still see Anisha but then it chages to a paisley patterened background. The background is black with bright reds and oranges, this colours contrast with the white font and makes it stand out even more. We chose a pasiley pattern as this is situated with the Inidan culture.