Editing using classroom feedback

After listening to what our fellow class mates had to say about our film, we continued editing and used what we heard into our film. The feedback from the class also enabled us to see what we need to improve in our editing and where we could have improved with our filming. Luckily we found good music to add to our film, we chose two different pieces of music. One for when Lyle is rushing around his house and when myself and William are on our way to Lyles house, and another piece of music for the last scene where myself, Lyle and William are walking down an alleyway and Lyle is speaking. We also used the soundbridge at the beggining as we felt the titles at the beggining were slightly long.

Feedback from showing 'Holloway Road'

When we showed our first cut of our film to the class we had not decided what fonts to use for our titles, or sound because we had not decided on what fonts to use or what music to have playing in the different parts of the opening two minutes. As a result of this the feedback we got was not what we hoped it would be, as many found it slightly boring without music which we can understand. The positive feedback that we did recieve was that our match on action worked well, the props we used were good, our opening shot was good as it showed Lyle being a lazy character, also that our titles were in suitable places. The last bit of positive feedback we recieved was that the fridge shot was good and something they had not seen before, this lead to the class liking it and thinking that it was effective.
The negative feedback that we got was to put sound in, which we already knew we were going to have to do, the class did not mention our title fonts however we knew we had to change this as well. We also got told that it would be a good idea to add a sound bridge at the beggining, which we thought was a very good idea.
We thought as a group that showing our first cut of our opening of a film was a great idea as we got to see what the others thought of it and we got ideas that we can use to hopefully enable us to improve our opening two minutes. The idea that we thought would be the best to enable was the soundbridge. After hearing that idea we were keen to add it in at the beggining of our film.

This is the bedroom we used to film the opening scene where Lyle is awoken by a phone call. The blue wallpaper was ideal as it signifies Tottenham, which is the team Lyles character supports,which he is hiding from his 'firm' friends. Therefore we felt this would be an ideal room.

This is the mirror in the hallway which is used when Lyle is putting his coat on and about to open to see myself and William, he spends a fair amount of time in this mirror, rubbing his Tottenham Tattoo which he must not let his Arsenal friends see. The coat stand just in the right hand side of this photo is also used when Lyle picks up the Arsenal scarf to take with him.

This is the Kitchen used early on in the film where Lyle opens the fridge, to then hear the doorbell which alarms him. This space is also used when Lyle is hiding a few of his Tottenham memorabilia such as hiding the book in the cupboard below the sink and kicking a video underneath the sofa.

Filming the outside scene of 'Holloway Road'

We decided as a group to film the outside scenes in the outside in ware, as we felt ware was a practical place to film and easier for everyone to get to. We filmed on the 26th of November 2009 and we used the same equipment as the previous week. We spent about an hour or slightly longer filming in Ware. We thought hard and long about what we wanted to film outside and what the location had to be, after a couple days of thought we decided to film down an alleyway which seems tatty and a bit 'worn down' if you like. We chose this because you do not expect hooligans to be hanging around nice areas which look clean, you expect them to be in place where no body can recognise them easily hence the tattered area down an alleyway.



We came across a few problems whilst filming the outside scenes. Firstly as we arrived at the alleyway, we tried to turn on the camera however we found out it had no battery, luckily the charger for it was in the bag we had with us otherwise we would have had to travel back to school and charge it and then come back, which by then it would have been dark and unable to film. As we had the charger we went to Lyle Petts' house to charge it which was a two minute walk from our filming area and charged it for thirty minutes and resumed filming. This still gave us a very limited amount of time to film our shots and the battery was only 10% charged, this was a cause for concern whilst filming as we had to turn it off everytime we had filmed a shot, and could not risk watching over our footage because we did not want to risk the battery running out. However we did manage to film all of our shots before it got dark. We will learn from this mistake as we all should have checked to see if the camera had battery before we left school to film.



Part of the reason why we filmed outside was because, whilst filming the inside scenes we felt that Lyle was the only character really doing anything in the opening scene, so we decided that we should have shots of myself and William's journey to the house to meet Lyle. We also wanted to show the viewers how we got to Lyles instead of just turning up.



Our last shot which was myself Lyle and William walking down an alleyway in slow motion towards the camera was thought in an instant, we had not planned it but as we were there we got a feel for the place and decided it would be a good idea. We also used a low angle shot to make the three characters look more powerful and feared. We also thought it would be a good oppourtunity to use a voice over as it would fit in well.



Overall, I felt filming outside went well, despite the problems we had before hand, the outside scenes also gave us a chance to use a wider variety of shots which we are proud of.

Filming altogether was enjoyable and i felt we worked well as a team, we all encouraged eachothers opinions and listened to what eachother had to say if they thought it was valid and important.

Filming the inside scenes of 'Holloway Road'

The location we filmed in for our scenes inside was in Conor O'Sullivan's sisters flat in Standon, which is located in Ware in Hertfordshire. We filmed on the 19th of November 2009. The camera we used was a Canon Mini DV MD235, and the tape used was Panasonic Mini DV, 60 SP Mode, 90 LP Mode. We spent approximately 5 hours filming in Standon.

We had two main locations in the flat in Standon, which was the bedroom and the living room/kitchen.
Whilst we were on our way to meet Conor in Standon, Conor rang us and told us the camera was not staying attached to the tri-pod, so we took a detour to the school and picked up another tri-pod. When we arrived in Standon we tried to set-up the tri-pod and camera and realised the new tri-pod was not attatching to the camera either, as a result of this Conor had to hold the camera down on the tri-pod whilst filming and I believe he done a good job of this. As our shots were limited due the this.

Despite the mishaps with the camera and tri-pod the filming went reletively well. Before filming we moved around some furniture and removed some pictures from the walls to set the scene. For example there was a large picture in the living room which we removed and replaced it with a Tottenham one, which we used in filming. Also in the bedroom we had to move a chest of draws so the camera could fit in. We also dotted a few objects around the room to set the scene a bit more.

We also wanted to make sure there was not any sounds from outside that would go over the filming so we shut all the windows and also put the cats in a different room so we didnt hear any 'meow's' halfway through a shot.

Animatic Description

This is the video of our storyboard, after deciding what shots to use as a group we put pencil to paper and drew out our shots. we were reletively happy with our shots but aftyer a class discussion about everyones storyboards we discovered that some of our shots were a bit plain and simple and even slightly boring, we took this positive critisism and as we came to filming we changed some of our shots around and as a result of this we felt happier.

The overall theme of our storyboard is Lyle being the main character in a rush to get ready as myself and Will were minutes away from his house. As simple as it sounds we used a lot of shots which showed Lyles secret identity.

Previously we decided that Lyle would be an undercover police officer trying to get into the minds of the football hooligans to bring them down for their crimes, however we decided this task may have been a bit out of our league to do therefore we switched to Lyle being an undercover Tottenham hooligan who has got himself into the Arsenal 'firm' so when the two clubs meet later on in the season Lyle's character is aiming to set the Arsenal 'firm' up causes them to suffer a heaving beating at the hands of their fiercest rivals.

During our filming of the opening scene we included a few shots that link to the theme of Lyle being an undercover Tottenham fan. This was to make the viewers wonder about who he supported and what he is doing by owning to different teams memorabilia.

We changed some shots on the day of filming as we thought it would be beneficial to our group and improve the opening of our film. The original storyboard was a chance for us to explore some ideas but was never a definate final idea.