Editing equipment & software

As a group we have decided to use Pinnacle Studio Plus as our editing software. We have chosen this as it is an industry standard and offers everything we need to successfully produce a professional looking short film. This software offers a variety of editing techniques from cutting footage and editing sound to adding effects like shadowing, also we will be able to tweak the footage (add a tint, change brightness etc.).

Editing is regarded as the unseen art of film, our group agree with this and believe that editing plays a vital part in the film making. This is why it has been decided by the group that we must make sure that our production is not seen as a "sixth form production" but a professionally produced film, we will achieve this within the editing stage of our work.

With pinnacle being the industry standard, it's main rival is windows media player, which is another industry standard. They both have many unique advantages and offer a great user interface which is easy to use and comes with many helpful tips (providing you know where to look). So when it came to deciding which software to edit with it was a hard choice to make, but after weighing up the pros and cons it was decided that we were to use Pinnacle Studio Plus to edit our footage.

The equipment of hardware used to help edit was a real easy choice because of the cameras we were using. When uploading footage it needed to be in the DV format, to achieve this we needed a Tape to DV converter. We found this in the form of a base which connected to the computer we were using. Other bits of hardware or equipment used were simpl

e things like memory sticks to transfer copy right free music onto our project and headphones to listen to the work in progress.

Church Permission

We decided that our filmed needed an increase in variety of locations. It was then decided that including a church scene with the vicar giving a speech about the loss of life would be a shot that would improve our film drastically. Yet to film in a church we needed permission. After a vast amount of research I called several churches in the Brentwood area. Thankfully our first choice, St Thomas's in Brentwood gave us permission to film our scenes on the 5th January.

Focus Group

We used four 6th form students that took media studies for our focus group. We chose them because we felt that our target audience would be people who have a solid understanding of the media industry and techniques used within film making. The Q&A session is shown below:

Costume

Costume is very important in the film industry. This is because what a character wears needs to coincide with the stereotypes and behaviour of that character otherwise the audience will become confused and will not be able to follow the plot line.

Costume is also part of mise en scene, other parts of mise en scene consist of props, set design and make up. All these point help the audience understand and follow plot lines, so with our film having several plot twists we found it very important to get the costumes right.

The man needs to be seen as a successful and rich young professional who spends a lot of time on his appearance and clothing is no exception.

As a group we decided the best way to show that the man was successful and powerful was to put him in a suit or some form smart attire, backing up the stereotype of a rich successful man. This costume would be used in the bar scene to show the man authority.

We tried this costume out but felt it was to formal so by removing the blazer and tie found that this suited the character better.  

The first time you seen the protagonist he is at the pool, then in the next scene he arrives at his house. In this scene we want to make a suggestion to the audience that he has come from the gym/pool and gone home. To show this to the audience we have chosen a costume like this, jogging bottoms and a hoody. The use of a gym bag also reinforces this point.

The other costume we have chosen for the man will be sued in the scene when he is walking with either one of the girls along the high street and for the last shots of him entering the house. We have chosen a casual style like this one as we feel it is fashionable and would suit the man lifestyle well, also its fitting for the weather seen in the shots and the time of year. 

When we were planning our film there were certain stereotype’s we wanted to avoid and some we wanted to attract with our female characters. We wanted to avoid the cliché of 6^th form “romantic” or “seductive” clothing.  The stereotypes we wanted to attract were that of glamour girls, high heels, make up etc. but we wanted our female character to be tasteful not “slutty”. 

Because of these specifications we wanted for our female character it was rather hard when it came to picking certain costumes for them. We started with the bar scene as this is the scene which we knew most about when it came to cinematography and mise en scene.

Because we wanted a tasteful glamour girl look we knew it had to be a dress and heels but this still left quite a large style of clothing for us to choose from. It was finally decided that we dress the female character in a cocktail dress.

 We found this style of dress was appropriate as it showed enough skin to show the girls were “interested” in the protagonist without moving towards the promiscuous stereotype.

We chose black as the colour for the dresses as it is associated with elegance and mystery which will tie in well with our plot twist at the end of our film.

Like the male we also need a casual costume for the female characters, we have decided to go for jeans and a winter coat. We have chosen this as, like the male costume, it suits the weather and time of year. Another reason for choosing this style of costume is because many people wear this style so when filming the high street scene with people in the background our character will blend in and make the footage seem more real than set up.

The reason for choosing a dark coloured coat is for the same reasons as the colour of the cocktail dress, the bark colours represent mystery, a great tool to be using for making the twist even more effective.

Focus Group Questions

As we discovered our target group using a questionnaire, we believed a focus group would allow us to set the criteria essential to entice the audience to our film, through the content itself alongside the ancillary task. The way in which we undertake presenting our short film will be determined by certain features that our target group believes will differentiate our film to others. As there is a small target group we are able to hear the views of several members, allowing us to have a good range preventing a limited view.