18. Production Log

3/11/14
Today we did a location recce to establish where we would like to film for our documentary. We decided to use the drama studio and sports hall for expositional shots, and for the actual content we knew we needed to use the gym and the dance studio. We felt that the drama studio and sports hall where suitable for the expositional shots because they both are linked heavily to the two students we are swapping, the hall being used by the drama student in the documentary and the studio being used by the rugby student. We feel that using the gym for the interview with the sports player before he swaps is a good location because he will come across much more naturally, whereas after he swaps we will interview him in the drama changing rooms, which is a much more alien environment, therefore making him less natural. This process will be the same for the drama student, only with the changing room being used first then after interviewing him in the gym. At the end of the day we uploaded all of the footage onto a Final Cut document and labeled all of the footage G or B for good and bad. Good being the shots that we will use and bad being the ones we don't.

4/11/14
We began the filming process today, working on in particular the expositional shots, these mainly consisted of slow moving panoramic shots and slow zooms, one we found that worked particularly well was the zoom onto the school PE logo. We also began filming the first interviews with Sami and Harry, pulling them out of lesson and asking them the questions we had previously decided on. We found that Sami was much keener to answer the questions in detail, giving very good responses, where as Harry lacked in depth and often came across quite intimidated, this is something we expected due to the different subject paths the students took. At the end of the day we uploaded all of the footage we had got and labelled it G or B.

5/11/14
Here we got the footage of the participants doing their activities, Laurence filmed Harry in the dance studio, and I filmed Sami in the gym. When filming the students it was important to get both the footage so it portrayed a balance of them succeeding, and failing, this will then make the video funnier in general. When filming Sami I got some brilliant footage, both comedic and showing that actually he can complete the very difficult Rugby circuit training task. I tried to get mainly close ups of Sami's face for the comedy side, and when i was trying to find him being successful i would often shoot at a long distance or medium. This was similar for Laurence when filming Harry, he found that there was an equal amount of Harry succeeding at dance, and him failing, so this gave us a clear range of footage to use when editing. At the end of the day we scanned all of the footage, again labelling them G or B, for ease of access when the editing process begins.

6/11/14
Today we filmed the final interviews for Harry and Sami, swapping their interview location so they were in the opposite room from their first interview, Harry was in the changing room and Sami was in the gym. It seemed Harry was much better in this interview and had come out of his shell about the subject of doing Dance, this was a success in what we had hoped to achieve. Sami was also very good in answering the questions and didn't seem to show any signs of not liking the session, however he did point out that he didn't want to do it again. The shots we used for this were the same as the other interview process, with a front on mid shot, capturing mainly their facial expressions and some hand gestures. This was all of the filming done, and with that we uploaded all of the footage and then again labeled it G or B.

7/11/14
Today we began the editing process, trying as hard as possible to work through it chronologically, we started editing the opening expositional shots, speeding them up to fit the time of the voice over we had previously recorded. This didn't take long, and in 15 minutes we had the opening 20 seconds for the video complete. We then began editing the interviews, we decided to have a question being asked, and then an answer from Harry, then an answer from Sami in the following clip. This was easy enough to do, just a case of cutting and putting the clips in the necessary places. After finishing this after 45 minutes we realised that we needed a song or sound effect to go underneath the video, so we found a brilliant Ukelele track that really fit the theme of the documentary. After putting this in the documentary really started to look good. With the first minute of the documentary complete we decided to work on starting to find the clips of the two completing their sessions and organising them into an order, to then cut and place tomorrow. This didn't take long and it left us in a strong position for the next day.

8/11/14
In the final day of our schedule we didn't have an overwhelming amount of editing to do, just to cut and place the session clips and then edit in the final interviews. We began by editing in the clips that we needed and putting them in the right order and position, this went smoothly and we had completed it in about an hour. We then needed to edit the final interviews, we did this in the same way as the interviews from yesterday, having the question being asked, then one answering it, and after them the other answering it, this didn't take too long and when we finished this we had the majority of the documentary edited, with a good 6 minute piece we decided to clean up and fine tune the editing to make sure it ran well with the music. We added numerous cross dissolves, mainly when there was a significant change in location, and at the beginning we faded it in, and at the end, faded it to black. Then we exported it, using Quicktime Conversion, ensuring that it was in the highest definition possible (1920x1080). After 2 hours of it exporting, the documentary was complete, and we gave it a final watch to make sure everything was ok.