Editing

During recent editing myself and Conor decided it would be good to include a timescale on the CCTV shots, to enhance its resemblence of the type of shot. There is a timescle already on adobe which we tried to use however it was not the same as what we wanted, as this timescale started from zero, like a stopwatch. Where the one we had in mind was to be an ongoing time, to see what time of the night Michael went missing. Therefore we used the text tool, and entered a time and date, and we have to replicate this many times and layer the text on our timeline so it was an ongoing time.

However once we had done this we noticed we had the same font for every one, even though we have different types of CCTV shot, therefore we had to change the fonts slightly, so that they still looked realistic but were not the same. This took some time as I felt there was not many fonts which gave it the CCTV shot look to it and we are currently still contemplating on one of the fonts.

Editing

In the last week myself and Conor took the feedback notes from our teachers into consideration and altereed our production. We have done this because in the next few days they will be giving us final points of improvement.

Therefore we wanted to enhance our production as much as possible to recieve great feedback. We started by changing the transcript we had at the bottom of our frame whilst the police phone call was happening because it did not match the speech exactly. There was not much to change as it was only a couple of words which did not take long at all therefore this was rectified very easily.

Myself and Conor had been informed that our main title font and layout could be improved as it was not appropriate for the target audience. However we were aware of this as we had already found our font on the internet which we were going to use and i have previously published with regards to this. Therefore we saved the font on our memory pens and it is now in place as our title and I am happy with the way it looks.

There were also a couple of issues according to our teachers with regards to the audio. Firstly it was made known that we should think about softening the start of the mum's speech as it comes in quite loud and direct. We spent a few minutes consulting and deciding what we should do to soften it, and in the end we opted for an audio transition so the audio level gradually gets louder as she starts talking and I feel this has been effective as I believe it sounds more in place now.
In our last lesson we also found out that we needed to lower the audio level of most of our production which wasnt too easy as we have many different parts and sections to our documentary, however we spent about 30 minutes lowering the audio level to a more suitable level and I have also noticed the difference as it sounds more suttle and flows more.

With regards to the positive comments, it was made known that our transitions were very effective and work very well, the pace of the documentary is great and our teacher believes we have used a good amount of different locations and different filming styles which I am happy about.

Overall I believe editing has been very successful so far and I consider our documentary to be coming along very well and is near to a finished product.

Feedback from Mrs Allison

Feedback notes from Mrs Allison

Documentary opening Conor O’Sullivan and Andrew Lloyd-Jones

• Subtitles on telephone conversation should be lower case
• Transcript isn’t quite the same as speech
• Main title font and layout could be improved - not appropriate for target audience?
• Conor’s voice over is good but worth a try with an older sounding voice to get more authority
• Soften the start of the mum’s speech – to harsh
• Mic noise on mum’s speech
• Transitions between sections work very well
• Pace is great
• Very good use of different locations and filming styles
• Poster not obvious enough – close-up then zoom out ?
• Rather than screwed up what about blowing in the wind for final shot – more movement

Editing

Yesterday myself and Conor learnt how to choose more precise effects whilst editing our production. We both previously knew how to put transitions and effects into our production, however we found out that there is a setting where you can go into the effect with more detail and choose how you want it specifically.

We decided that our CCTV shots could be improved to give the whole night and camera feel to it. Therefore we have come to the conclusion that it would be best if we mix and match with regards to the colour of the shots, therefore we will use some black and white shots and some coloured ones. However we felt that we needed an effect which gave the shots more of a CCTV look to them. Therefore we have been playing around with the different effects and seeing which one gives the best feel for a CCTV shot. In the picture above, we had added the 'noise' effect which we were setting at about 28% which we feel was enough and gave it the whole distorted and blurry look to it, which we were happy with.

Feedback from first rough cut

In class we each had a piece of paper to fill in with regards to other peoples productions so far.
I have tried to scan these onto the computer to post onto the blog to give the feedback a more visualised effort, however the scanner does not seem to be working at the moment, although i will keep trying to see if it works.

The pieces of paper given to us had listed twelve technical skills which were expected to be seen in each production, therefore there were also columns named 'no evidence', 'some evidence' and 'clear evidence'. Out of the three people who gave us feedback not one of them ticked the 'no evidence' box, which I am happy about, as this means our production is moving in the right direction and we have displayed at least a hint of all of the technical skills needed.

The first person's feedback featured what i feel were very generous comments as they ticked ten 'clear evidence' boxes and two 'some evidence boxes. Although this felt good to recieve such positive information, i felt it could have been a bit more realistic which would have been better. They also made it clear that they thought it would be better to remove the 'Hertford' caption however myself and Conor have spoke briefly about this i we feel it would be better to keep it. They also went on to say our panning shots were 'excellent' and that the mise en scene was 'brilliant' in which we are happy to hear. The last bit of feedback they gave us was they they felt that it would be better to not cut to a close up of the photo of Matthew Evans as it is not suttle.

The second person to give us feedback wasn't so generous and ticked seven 'clear evidence' boxes and five 'some evidence' boxes. This made me think that this person may have looked into our production with more detail which we appreciated. Amongst the five 'some evidence' boxes they ticked the same as one of the previous people which was 'hold a shot steady when appropriate' which made us think we need to look into this more as it had been higlighted by two people and infact the third person to give feedback also ticked this.
This person also highlighted that there was only slight evidence with regards to transitions. However we are not too concerned about this at the moment as we feel the transitions should be put in place towards the very end of editing to make it all come together as a complete piece.
The last bit of constructive critism was that the shots we filmed inside the car were a bit too 'shakey' and that the text could be improved. Since this was made clear to us myself and Conor have refilmed the shots inside the car and we are much happier with how they are now. We were also aware that the text we had used was not going to be our final text, we just placed it there as a template to see what it would look like first.

The last person to give us feedback was our teacher and as expected, they picked up on many more points for improvement. They ticked four 'some evidence' boxes and six 'clear evidence' boxes with two in the middle of both. This was positive as we knew the teachers feedback would be most important and most of the boxes ticked were 'clear evidence'. Our teacher repeated what had been said already with regards to the transistions and the titles, and also the steady shot when appropriate, however they also touched on some other points. These included we needed a close up of the poster, which we were unsure about as other documentarys we had looked at did not show a close up, however we will review the situation soon. Also it was made clear that when Jamie is driving the car, his voice needs to be made louder, which we can easily adjust when we are editing. The last piece of feedback to improve was the titles and how they are positioned, which yet again we were aware of and was waiting to get the font off of the internet and putting it in place towards the end of editing to finish off.
However there was some positives which were taken out of this as our teacher felt the music 'works well' and is 'effective', which we felt too and are very happy with.

Overall we feel the rough cut feedback has given us some much needed information and guidance, and we believe we now know what we need to do in order to complete our production and to hopefully improve it.

Feedback notes

Connor, Andrew

The sound quality needs some fine-tuning to get rid of the crackling and get the audio levels set
Consider an ‘older sounding’ voice over to fit the conventions of the documentary
Consider experimenting with different sound effects for the CCTV footage and applying a time code or date (as a title for each of the cameras)
Consider re-shooting some of the footage in the room to get a smooth pan
Consider getting some more shots in the car of cutaways of hands and side profile of Jamie

Editing

As I was aware i was doing work experience this week, during half term, I knew I would not be able to come into school to edit, therefore i spent a few hours on Thursday and Friday editing to make up for the time I could have spent editing this week.
On Thursday myself and Conor imported what we had recorded, however as this was a lot of footage it took almost the whole lesson, therefore I began to construct our documentary the lesson after as I didnt not have a lesson and Conor did.


I began by removing the dark bedroom shots and replacing them with the lighter ones which myself and Conor both thought were a lot better and brighter.
Starting from the beginning I then started to give our production more of a structure, by using the storyboard I starting constructing the production to make it clearer. I done this by using text where needed and adding some transitions.
I also editing the phone in, so it made sense and had alternate speakers, which I now feel looks and sounds very good. The phone in is being played over the CCTV shots which I also edited into the main sequence. However the phone in lasted quite a long time, therefore I had to make the duration of the CCTV visuals a bit longer to fulfil the audio side of it.
Overall I believe editing has started strong and I am looking forward to going back to school to see Conor's progress which im sure is substantial.

Sound

I believe sound is a very important part out our documentary, and it sets the mood and atmosphere and also gives a great impression of the genre which our documentary is linked too.
Myself and Conor looked on a few audio websites on friday and were not too impressed with the selections however we then came across www.audionetworkplc.com which I believe has a larger selection of audio tracks which is essentially what we wanted as we wanted the music to be just right.
However we did not find the tracks needed on friday, and as I am doing work experience this week I have put my trust in Conor to find music which is suitable for our production, then when I am back editing next week i can listen to the music and give my input, if we come to an agreement that it should be changed we can look at ways in which we could rectify the problem, however I am sure Conor has come up with some good audio.
Conor has told me that he has chosen four intsrumental pieces of audio; 'Menage' by Geoffrey Keezer, 'Lonely Planet' by Paul Mottram, 'Shadow Play' yet again by Paul Mottram and 'Quiet Lament' by Luke Richards. Before commenting on these pieces I will have to listen to them, and when i do i will make an update about how i feel about the sound.

http://www.audionetworkplc.com/show-production-results.aspx?stype=4&keywords=menage - 'Menage' by Geoffrey Keezer

http://www.audionetworkplc.com/show-production-results.aspx?stype=4&keywords=lonely+planet- 'Lonely Planet' by Paul Mottram

http://www.audionetworkplc.com/show-production-results.aspx?stype=4&keywords=shadow+play- 'Shadow Play' by Paul Mottram

http://www.audionetworkplc.com/show-production-results.aspx?stype=4&keywords=quiet+lament- 'Quiet Lament' by Luke Richards

Conor has also informed me that he has paid a small amount of money for these pieces and have been purchased royalty free, i will also be paying him my share towards the costs of these audio tracks.

4th Day Filming : Wednesday 20th October

Earlier in the week myself and Conor decided that Wednesday would hopefully be our last filming day as we only had to film the night shots and i also had to film by police phone in.

Once i had woke up on wednesday morning, i recorded the police phone in, where my voice was used to say the parts of the police officer. As Matthew's mothers part of the phone in had already been sorted i then had to do the other part which did not take me long at all.

Myself and Conor also decided that we would film our night shots at night, although we were aware that we could film during the day to make things easier and could still make it look like night time by using certain settings on the camera. However we wanted to make it look as realistic as possible, therefore we opted for filming at night time.

Therefore on Wednesday night i met Conor in Ware, where we went to Jamie Branston's house, as we needed him to film the shots when he is in his car and giving his side of the story the night Matthew went missing.

We began by sitting in Jamie's car discussing what we wanted him to say when he was driving. Then we set off, and the first destination was a fairly quiet street near Jamie's house to film the shot Jamie driving down a road, seeing myself walking in the opposite direction, stopping and offering me a lift, in which i decline in a slightly rude way and continue to walk. We filmed this shot quite a few times as we couldnt get the balance right between, not showing my face too much as it was supposed to be a reconstruction of the night, therefore the person wouldnt actually be me. We also had to get myself declining the lift home, giving the impression that i am feeling sad and want to be alone, yet without being rude at the same time, which i failed to give in the first few times of filming. However after about nine attempts, we managed to get it right we feel, which pleased us a lot. We also feel we had about three different shots we could use to give us more options which also pleased us.

Our next aim was to film the shots where Jamie is driving along and giving a recollection of the night from his point of view. We filmed this down a fairly busy road, because we wanted to get shots of the road infront and other cars involved to give the shots more of an atmosphere. We found a road suitable a began to film. We informed Jamie before hand what we wanted him to say and the first couple of times he forgot what to say, which was expected and wasnt a major problem as he soon got it right and we filmed some successful shots with Jamie saying everything we wanted him too.
The only problem we came across when filming the shots in his car was the lighting. There was not enough light on some parts of the road therefore we used the light inside the car which revealed a blue line through the middle of the lens which we were not too happy about, therefore we do not have as much footage as we would have liked in the car, therefore we may think about filming a few shots again with other internal sources of light.

Once we had finished these shots we rounded off the night by filming our final shots which were the CCTV shots of myself the night Matthew went missing. We had two different locations for this, one was by some local shops near Conor's house and the other was in a car park by a pub in the centre of Ware Town. We felt that these shots were well framed and successful, and the lighting was very good, it gave the night time effect yet wasnt too dark where you cannot see anything. We will however we slowing the shots down to give it more of a CCTV effect instead of a normal shot. It wasnt too easy finding the locations for the CCTV shots, as we needed fairly open space and we also need to be fairly high up, however when we finally found the locations it wasn't too awkward to film from then on.
I do not feel we came across any major problems when shooting the CCTV shots except for one man was in the space where we wanted to film for about five minutes but then shortly left therefore filming comenced.

Overall i am happy with out filming on this day as we managed to get all of the shots we needed and from now on we can concentrate on post production and editing our production and also finding music to go with our documentary.

Update: 18th October 2010

Today myself and Conor had a discussion about our plan for this week and we decided that;

-I will take the camera home tomorrow and film some more bedroom shots as the ones which had been filmed are slightly dark so i will try to use different light techniques.

-I will also record the audio of the police side of the phone in, this is all scripted therefore it shouldnt take too long, and should be fairly straight forward. However i will record this a few times to give us more options.

-We will try and get the rest out our shots filmed on wednesday night, which includes the CCTV shots, and the shots in Jamie Branston's car.

We then will hopefully have all of our material to edit more and then have a rough cut for 1st November 2010.

3rd Day Filming : Wednesday 13th October

Location: Ware and Hertford
Date- Wednesday 13th October 2010
Camera Type- Canon Mini DV MD235
Tape Type- Panasonic Mini DV, 60 SP Mode, 90 LP Mode
Time Spent Filming- 3 hours

Yesterday's filming did not go completely to plan as we hoped to get the shots in Jamie Branston's car, however he was busy all day therefore we couldnt film these certain shots. Therefore instead myself and Conor made the most of our free time to film the day time scenes which we needed, which included the establishing shots of hertford/ware, and some interesting shots of the area too. We also managed to shoot the shots which involved the missing person posters which was created.

I arrived in Ware to meet Conor at about 12pm and we drove to Hertford immediately to film. We began by shooting an establishing shot of Matthew's house, however myself and Conor's house's are not good house's to use therefore we used the property of other people.
We then headed down by the Hertford canal to film the area as we wanted to film some natural shots. We considered ourselves to be quite lucky as there was not a lot of noise in the background so the natural noise may work well in our documentary. We also decided to film shots of the boats down the canal and the different aspects of the boats, such as the reflection in the water and different shot types. Whilst we were filming we agreed it would be beneficial to get as many shots as we could therefore we also framed some of the same shots but at different times therefore some had people in the background and some did not, this will give us more options when we are in post-production.

After filming in Hertford we decided to film in Ware. We went to the Cowfields which overlooks some of Ware, therefore we managed to get an establishing shot there. With this in mind we also managed to test out the different settings on the camera therefore with one shot we blurred it and then re-focused it, which we felt was a very well filmed shot.

We then decided to use the rest of our time filming interesting shots which included the missing person posters, this ranged from shots on lamp posts, on cars, and even scrunched up on the floor. I felt we managed to frame some of these shots very well which i was extremely pleased about.

Overall i believe this was our most successful day of filming, we managed to get many shots done and most of these shots we felt were framed well and were interesting.

CCTV influence

Without paying attention to the genre of this video, i believe this is the height and angle which we need to have our camera when attempting to film our own CCTV shots. I believe the height is good as it is not too far away from the subject and not too high, which would be too high to see Matthew yet i believe it is not too close to the subject which is vital as CCTV camera's are not normally in your face, they keep their distance.
I also feel this is a good example as our CCTV shots will also be at night time, therefore this gives an example of how the lighting should look.

Update

On Monday, Conor took home the camera with the microphone to record his narration. Therefore as i met him the following day, he showed me what he had recorded and overall i was happy with his efforts. He filmed his narration a few times therefore we have more to choose from when adding this to our main production. We decided Conor should do the narration as he speaks well and has a clear voice which is what we wanted.

Typography

Myself and Conor thought it would be appropriate to look at the different types writing we could use when the title of our documentary is revealed.

We both liked this font quite a bit, which was mainly down to the uneven letters, which we felt were positioned well. However in the end we chose not to use this font.


Myself and Conor liked this font too as the typewriter effect was what we were hoping to use if the right font was found. We also thought it would be more interesting thn many other fonts which is the type of effect we want to people to see. There was however a limitation to this font as we felt it was hard to read and has a distorted look to it.

We liked this font as it was clear, easy to read, yet it isnt too plain and simple. However we did feel it was too bold which was not the impression we wanted to give.


We chose to use this font which is called 'King' and was from the website www.dafont.com. We chose this one as it is not too bold, it is a nice clear font however it also has a slight typewriter effect which we liked earlier. Therefore we feel this will be the best font to use.

Other ideas for missing posters

Poster idea for missing person

After myself and Conor watched the Claudia Lawrence documentary (which also has the genre of a missing person) we thought it would be good to include a missing person poster into our production which could also increase the variety of shots we could use. In this documentary the posters are situated in shops windows which we felt was a good idea therefore we hope to incorporate this into our documentary too. The link to the Claudia Lawrence documentary is below. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/missing-claudia-lawrence/video/series-1/episode-1/where-are-you


This is the poster which will be printed off in numerous numbers so we can put them around places such as in shop windows and on lamp posts to enhance our selection of camera shots. The idea of the layout of the posters came from Claudia Lawrence's one. Yet again we used an idea from that documentary as we feel it ws well structured.

Below is the poster of Claudia Lawrence, which was used as a template for ours when it was created, the colours are similar and the structure is also presented in a similar way.