week 13, Saturday

After having some problems with getting into the Video Room, we finally managed to do that, thanks to Phil. ) Today we've started the editing. First, we decided to rename the copied files and separated them into different folders so it's easier to search for them later on. We did it quite fast. But then we had quite a hard time with the rest, with putting all the shots together. And here we found some disturbing things,

such as, for example, in Nero Smart Start we don't have a scroll in the bottom of the video line, it was complicated to work with the files because most of the time we had to use zoom in and out just to see what we've done already and in which part are we working at the moment.
Another thing we've noticed was that we cannot separate the whole movie into smaller parts. Like we've tried to build a movie from 2 small parts (just to test), to save and merge them together. But, unfortunately, that didn't work. And so we had to build the whole movie as one file, which wasn't that easy to do, because of the inclusion of very tiny and important details, which were easy to loose in this huge line of films.

Well, the main part of work is done, now what left is audio, special effects and title with credits.
Hope that's complited till Tuesday. )

week 12, Thursday

Yes, we got his phone number, called him, and arranged a meeting at the Margit Island in the afternoon. We all were there on time, and so was he. On the way to the shooting place we got acquanted with him and shared the film story. He liked it very much. )

We found a great place for shooting. The light was only coming from the sun. but that was suitable. Oksana was shooting, while me and Itamar were acting. Anna wasn't there, she came after we finished, and Adel was taking photos of us working.

Well, first shots were quite boring, they were about the nature and us just walking. But the main part was exciting quite a lot for me. ) It's about passion and pain. )) I hope it will look good on screen. :)
We did try many different camera positions, though we couldn't get an OS shot properly. I think that was because of the coats, it was quite cold outside. But overall we did a great job. )

Well, after this scene in the park, we went to the Adel's appartment to take some shots there as well. First, we needed to make some decoration staff on the wall. We did that all together, hehe, even Itamar was helping us. ) So kind of him.
After finishing with that, we started the actual shooting. Well, i think we spend a lot of time with that, and we got many shots. probably later it will be a little bit disturbing. but that's ok. the more shots we have, the more interesting and various scenes we'll have later on , i guess.

And we finished our shooting by taking some pics of Tom (Itamar) dead. He is really a great person, we needed him to lie down on the corridor floor, and he did that! )

I hope we didn't miss anything out of sight. And we agreed to meet again on Sunday evening to continue shooting. We need two more days for the shooting, i think. they are gonna be Sunday and Tuesday. on Sunday we have Itamar again, and on Tuesday we'll try to get Max (for the Powerful Man's role).

week 11

This week we were not able to do anything. Girls were busy, we didn't have actors, were worrying about Tom's role (the main character). We thought already that Itamar would not show up at all. And we started looking for an alternative actor. Though we really liked Itamar, and wanted him to play this role. We talked to Marcel, Natela, Fathir and other guys. Some of them agreed to play, but we spent a lot of time discussing them among us. And we really didn't want to leave Itamar, fortunately we got his phone number finally, and he agreed. )

week 10, Sunday

Yesterday we met with girls (Anna, Adel, Oksana and me) to discuss our video.

First, Oksana (as a director) explained what she wants to show with this movie, and how she sees it. Then we looked through the synopsis we wrote earlier. Then me (as a producer)), i made a list of things we should not forget about: all the necessary props and also effects.

Then we started our script, including dialogues. We had some brainstorming and then selected the best of them.
Also we decided on the days and places we are going to shoot at.

But seems like only me and Oksana are so entusiastic about this film. ((
I don't know, maybe Anna and Adel don't like this story, i don't know.

Ok, after getting home, i sent this draft of script to Oksana, so that she'd correct it and add some more information. As for me, I decided to make pre-storyboard, if i can say so. ))
I just separated all the shots into groups according to the time and place we are going to shoot. This pre-storyboard of mine includes also the dialogues, and description of the shot (like is it a WS or CU, and what we see in this shot - the view); also it contains some descriptions of the costumes or rather look of the actors, and the way they act and talk.

Well, all together i counted 52 different shots, though i guess we'll add some more shots as cutaways. What i like in this film is that it doesn't have a usual storyline, and at the same time it's not very complicated and twisted, at least we'll try to do so. An interesting idea was to have a sort of framing for the story. We did so by introducing a new person. Well, to explain it well i'd have to tell you the whole story.but i can't, so you'll just see it by yourself when everything is ready.

week 10

This week we dealt with lighting. This theme is really interesting for me since i read about it from the course book. We learned the differences between three types of lighting: fill light, back light and key light. It was really nice to go through photos of different ganra and light. It was helpful for me, because i experience the world mostly by my visual sences. Through this we got a visual demonstration of how two lights differ from three, what kind of lighting is usual for a particular ganra. For exmple, for High School Drama we set that at least 4 lights are necessary to be present.
And could be only 2 for a detective film.

And we spent some time in a studio practicing the use of light. It was always attractive for me to know why and how photographers use umbrellas for shooting people, but i never had a chance to try that professionally, and now got it. And i really liked that.

Funny thing we had was trying to shoot from a chair being pushed and pulled (dolling in/out), and at the same time zooming in and out. The result of it was unexpectedly good, and i decided to use it in our second movie (i know already in which scene))

And so Thanks, Phil, for this class. I enjoyed it a lot. But i think, we could have had some more time with practicing it maybe in different places, for example outside in the garden. (of course, i know this would be quite difficult to organize because of absence of outlets outside, but still...)

week 9

This week we tried to shoot an interview. The main point was to see the necessary distance between the talkers, and also the distance between the talkers and a camera, so that the sound is relevant.

We separated into groops of 2-3. And i was with Oksana. (as usual)) We went to another empty class room in IBS, and began shooting. First, we settled upon shooting Oksana and me sitting right by the camera and interviewing.
Important thing we learnt was to ask open questions, such as Tell me about your future plans, or What were your thoughts when you did this and this, etc. The open questions work more for giving a direction to go for the interviewee, while answering the question he can start from one point and end with absolutely another one, discussing very interesting and personal views on smth.

Well, while interviewing Oksana we didn't go too deep into these questions, but we tried though. And it worked well, i think.

The second shot was about us sitting on a table right by each other, keeping the necessary distance (so that we both fit into the frame), talking to each other and the camera as well. )) We also tried to move our hands in space we had between us, so that it doesn't disturb the other person. And this also worked quite well.

And so the lessons we got from this day were:
-how to set right the camera, taking into consideration the quality of the sound, and at the same time keeping both the interviewer and the interviewee within the frame;
-what kind of questions the interviewer should ask;
-which way to look while answering a question for better look and sound;
-how we should use our hands in the interview,
etc.

week 8, editing

Yeah, this week is the last one for our assignment, so we had to start editing. We managed it on Monday after classes. We were quite tired, but we had no other choice, so we started.

As usual we uploaded videos we shot. Everything goes well, but suddenly we find out that some of our videos which are veeery important just disappeared. We started getting angry with the computer and camera, when Phil came to us and saved us. ))
I don't really know how he did that, but finally we got everything we needed. and Oksana brought some music, we listened through some of them, and chose most suitable ones.
While she was looking through them on another computer, i managed to add effects and text to our video, and then we added music.
After pre-watching it several times (and editing it each time, of course) we burned it into MPEG format and saved it into a folder on the desktop.

Well, i can say that editing was quite easy for us, just time-consuming, that's what we noticed.
But it's also interesting to play with all the shots, following the script, and making some corrections. However, we thought that the film could come better if we had more than 4 minutes. He, but anyway we have 5 and a half minutes. And i guess this is the longest film in our class.

And though it was quite hard to shoot this film, we had lots of fun working together. ;)

week 7

Finally, we finished shooting this week. During the shooting i realised that it's really good that we make film without sounds, because then we would have had many troubles with that. all the time we had people, cars and trams passing by, so it would disturb the audience. so, i'm happy we are making a silent movie this time.

What is funny in our film is the fact that we didn't have enough actors, and therefore one actor plays two roles in our short movie: the son and dad. so probably it will come a bit confusing to people watching it. but i must say , we did our best to hide this minus. first we tried to make some make-up for the dad, so he would look at least a bit older than his son. Oksana was doing make-up. but after she finished her experiment we were rolling on the floor laughing. )) the dad didn't become much older, but rather just durtier. LOL.
yeah, we had fun with that. then we had a scene where we were showing our family picture, it also became very funny, when using Photoshop we put mother between her husband and son. there is almost no difference between the two, only the son is a lil bit smaller than his dad. and his eyes are quite scary. ))) that's another story.

And well, to make me older (because i played the mom) we put a kerchief on my head, and i didn't take it off till the end of the whole shooting process. So it appears that i don't take it off at all! :)

So ya, you see now that we had some troubles with make-up, costuming and so on. But we know that this is our first movie, and it cannot be highly professional , so we decided to leave it all as it is. Hope you enjoy the film!

week 6, Sunday

This day we went out again shooting some scenes of the house, now including shots of bycicle. We took it that morning from Natela's place to mine. Then we started action shooting. Like for example, the way the boy jumps off the balcony and lands on the grass, grabs the bike and rides away.

And we had fun and trouble in one face, when during a shot of the boy making graffiti on a wall, 2 policemen came to us... Hmm... we were surprised and embaraced... we didn't know what to do. We tried to explain that we didn't do anything wrong, but they hardly could understand us, 'cuz they didn't speak English.

Then they asked to wait a lil bit, they called someone. After a while 3 more policemen drove to our place, by the way, it was near a tram stop just one stop before Budagyongye center. There is a long wall with lots of graffiti on it, so we decided to use it, 'cuz it seemed quite bright there.
And so 3 policemen came to us , started asking different questions, like what are our names, ages, where we study and so on. They made some notes, and called someone else.
Hm, we waited for another half an hour in darkness and cold. (Oksana, Kubat - my bro, and me with all the props: bike, bags and sprays)

And here come another 3 people. Again talking to us, asking questions and making notes. They called someone else... We thought it would never end... But finally they said Good bye to us, and let us stay there, but just not use spray any more. Otherwise we'd be arrested. o_O

And so this is it. We spend some more time shooting over there, then we moved to another place, shot some more. And came went home. Laughing all the way back. )))

week 6

Now we actually started shooting our 4 minutes long film.
First, I prepared everything I needed for it. Like I made a list of what i wanted to shoot that day, took a tripod and a camera, and went out to the street. It was a sunny day, and time was around 4 or 5 pm. It was lil bit cold outside, and i was wearing not a very warm sweater, so finally i got cold. During 3 hours i was able to shoot all the scenes about my house, which is part of the film, of course; some shots and night and some extra shots, which were not in the script.
While it was getting darker, I was changing sets in the camera, changing brigtness and contrast staff, so it doesn't look that dark outside.
I had fun shooting the street in front of my house, couse its shape is quite interesting. I changed the position many times, always trying something new, something better. I played with cars and people in the frame as well, like a person coming into the frame and another one from the other side, they great each other and then drive away in different directions. that looks cool, even though i didn't plan that. :)
And what i found interesting to shoot were jets, i guess, with bright strips behind. They looked really impressive, i tried to capture all of them (there were around 5 or 6 of them) from different positions. It was not included in the storyboard, but it looks so nice that i think we will include it instead of 2-3 cutaways. ))

week 5

This week first we watched a small part of a film, and discussed it well. We were clapping and counting the shots, so it's easier to understand how it differs depending on what is being shot. We all noticed that the longest shot can last even 30 seconds, and the shortest one just 1 sec. and it's all differs; for example, in action movie the shots don't last long, and the angles are always changing. That all plays roll in making the audience feel the speed and extreme.

Also we discussed again some problems that may occure, such as audio issues, for instance. The teacher gave us some advice about that. Well, in my opinion it's cool that we study that stuff, that's very important, but i think we repeat this topic every class, instead of studying something else.

The last 2 hours we spent discussing our projects. The Power Point slides helped us understand in which way we should present our storyboard, what should be included to the work. Now i know that location, time and even costumes and make-up, all matters if that's important in the shot. All the props also should be on the list.

I don't know what sound effect we are going to use with Oksana, but that's cool that we can add some music to our films. ;)

4th week

This week was interesting as well. We 'made friends' with the Nero Smart Start software. We learnt how to edit our movies, how to crop and add music.

And we had fun doing an outside shooting for half an hour with Oksana. That was a great shiny day, so we didn't have any difficulties with that. The subjects of our shooting project were two little underground balconies. And what we did, we shot 4 people climbing up from them by particular order. one by one. that looks funny. Then we came back into classroom, and made editing. So we had fun.

3d week

This week class was mostly about pre-production. We learned about scripts, treatments and storyboards, and main differences between them. That was quite useful. 'Cuz i've heard this words before, and we studied them last year, but i didn't know how to differenciate them.

Then we enriched our stock of vocabulary. I think that's really great that we do learn them, it is helpful even for people who is not going to be a professional director. That's just good to know and use in e.d. life. :)

And the last thing we did , was starting our first storyboard. We had time to discuss our project with the teacher. And now it's much clearer for me and Oksana what to do, and in which order.

the 2nd week

The first thing i wanted to say about this week's class is that i really liked it. 'cause we actually started filming as professionals. And that was really exciting!
I learned a lot of new staff, like how to hold the camera, how to work with compositions, which composition to choose in each case, how to work with colors and shadows, etc. We also had some problems with the weather, so we had to save the camera from the rain, staying under an umbrella.
Also i gained some experience in being as an actress. :) It was really interesting for me, 'cause actually this was the first time i ever was standing in front of the camera, and was dictating how to stand right, where to look, what expression should be on my face, etc. :)
We took it all seriously, but also we had some fun of course.

And the hometask was to watch movies. So that's what i did. And now watching the films became more difficult and exciting at the same time. :) 'cause now i'm trying to focus on two things mainly rather than one:

1> i started to consentrate on the work of the director.The most important questions are now which compositions he uses, how well he uses them, what light looks good, in what environment he shoots: is it raining, or sunshining; is it in mountains, or somewhere in a city...
and also how well it all goes together.
2> and secondly, i'm still trying to follow the story :) now mainly consentrating on the work of the artists, how well they play their roles.

And i think that's it. That's all i wanted to say.
See you on the lecture.

the 1st week

Hey, well, this was our first week of this semester. and i can say that i was really happy to meet my groupmates again. and the courses we have this semester , in my mind, are really exciting! :)
and i'm certainly interested in all of them. so i think that will really encourage me to study well.
Unfortunately i couldn't fit some subjects into my scedule, but i'll do my best to take them the year after the next.
so wish us good luck, and see you next week!
Cheers