Finished Result

Overall i am quite pleased with our film. I didn't quite realise at first when we chose western as our genre on how hard it would be with all the different technology, clothing etc. Which meant we had to re film quite a few thing because of these problems. This meant we had to create new storyboards, get actors to be available for a long enough amount of time so that we could film the scenes and having the right props. But overall i think we did a good job to try and match our genre.
When watching our final piece i do spot all the tiny errors we have made but i think this is just because its my film therefore im more critical. But other people says its very good and didn't notice all the problems that i had previously noticed.

Finished Editing

Today we have finished our editing. We had a few minor problems that we didn't realise the first time round with sound. As there were some quiet wind noises so again we had to use sound from other clips to match up with the video. We managed to export our film into quicktime also but we are going to proof watch it tomorrow a few times just to make for sure it is as good as we can get it.

Filming/editing/title/music

On the weekend I filmed the "riders point of view" and sound of the horses hooves as this was the last bit we needed to do. I only did this because it was impossible to have the correct view n speed if somone else was filming. I did this by riding the horse and holding the camera with one hand roughly were the view of the rider would be. This was proven quite difficult due to the un-smooth ride meaning that the camera was quite wobbly and mostly likely we will be only able to use a few seconds because of this problem. The sound was done by while riding along to hold the camera down near the horses feet while it was moving to try and get an accurate sound. The problems with this was in some places where the speed picked up the sound was then quite hard to hear. Also another problem was that it was very hard to try and keep the same speed while filming to try and match the other clips of the riders eye view/legs/Jane and Rob on top.
But hopefully we can use some shots out of the filming it to use in scene in our film introduction.
So far we have been editing everyday just trying to do the basics of cutting and fading etc. Fortunatley we have only had a few problems. For example due to the sound of the riding clips not being perfect (too quiet or wind noise) we had to cut the sound up and try and make it match a completley different.
We have put in our music of "dreaming guitars - desert wind"(from www.music-for-video.com) which has been put at the begining of the film which creates quite a calm scene and then we cut the sound of suddenly with the slamming of the door to make more of an impact on the next few scenes. We are using this track even though they did not reply back. But we are assuming that its fine because the website is music for educational purposes and we are not using it comercially.
Also the most important thing we feel was picking our title. We have chosen "Annex", meaning to steal,  which we found by searching for western style words. We feel this suits our film well as it does have to do with stealing.
We have almost finished out editing just got to sort out the sound in some places and check that it all flows properly.

More filming

Today agin we did some more filming to add to our horse scene. We filmed our two main actors, Jayne and Rob on top of peoples shoulders to make it look like they were riding the horse.

But also earlier before the day we decided to do extra scenes where we will have the place where the "bad guys" stay (look at new storyboard). So today we also filmed Jayne opening the door and the shutting of the door. Today went well apart from the rain, but we managed to solve this using an umbrella. But also we had another problem that it was a bit darker than the day we did our first filming. But we don't know how much this will effect our film untill we edit it tommorrow.

                                                                                  >>>Here are the actors and holders we used: right  to left James, Callum, Rob, Jane.

Due to the rain we has to use an umbrella to stop <<<water from hitting the camera

This was taken just before we started filming our scene with our 2 main actors and our 2 holders.>>>>>

Filming

Yesterday we film some of our scene with the horse and the pan of the room. We managed to get someone else to ride the horse whilst we drove alongside on a quad bike, with one of us filming and the other driving. It was quite hard to stay level with the horse and the horse kept jumping about so some of the footage is a little bit wobbly.  The only major problem we had was that the light was limited as we had to do it after school. The pan in the room went very well just had a few problem moving things about. Overall i think the shooting went very well.

Letter to music company

We sent an email to a music company requesting to use a track as we were not sure if we are allowed to use it for educational purposes.

Dear sir/madam,

I am a British student studying at a sixth form near Cambridge. I am currently studying Media Studies at AS level, as part of this we produce a 2 minute opening of a film. This work is not not used for commercial purpose purely educational. I am in the process of creating my film opening and have taken on the task of a western and was wondering if it would be possible to use a piece of your music to accompany it. It is the piece 'Desert wind' (dreaming guitars) that i am interested in using as it would fit well with my work. Please be assured that this is for no commercial gain what so ever and is simply to help with my studies. I look forward to your response.

Yours Faithfully,

Nicola Hackshall, Saffron Walden County High School

Problem Solved

For our problem with our two actors riding the horse at the same time. We have thought of an idea where we will have both of them on someone else's shoulders running along a field. Where we will then film from a low angle looking up so that it looks like they are moving as if they are on the horse. Hopefully this will work on our next filming day, which we are planning to do on two days. This is because we are not able to get  our actors to the place where the horse is. Therefore we have decided 2 days so we can get the filming done as quick as possible so we are able to check and edit the clips. On the 7th feb we are hoping to get the horse shots done and then on the 10th feb we are going to get the actors shots done.

Here is our planned storyboards for our new scenes: