Major Project Unit - Production Reflection

   Looking back at how far we have come as a group working on this film, I am immensely proud of what we have accomplished. From myself personally not being a part of a production in January, to being the editor of this high standard quality of a short film is something I am extremely proud of. We worked together to create this film and we did a great job of it.

   Even though I am proud of this film, there are some issues I have about it. The recording of dialogue was not great, which required reshoots in some parts or when we couldn't reshoot, what I would call harsh editing where I had to force some dialogue to be overly raised so you can hear them. This was due to the fact our actors spoke at different levels and the sound recording was not altered for this. The other big issue I have about this film which is negative is the portrayal of the character Billy. In most parts he is very strong with showing emotion in scenes where he is angry or upset. But it is the scenes where he is speaking normally he comes across very wooden and plain, not standing out at all. Originally we believed this to be a good thing as it reflected his characters personality, but after viewing it so many times in the editing process and critiques from our peers, it is clear to see the performance was not good enough for the film.

   Even with these issues, I am immensely proud of myself, Andrew and Tim with what we have made together. I am proud of how far my work ethic and editing skills have come and also of my contributions to the footage i.e. beginning cutaway sequence & cutaways mainly seen between scene 9 and 10. I will never forget working on this project and what we have accomplished. 

Major Project Unit - Production Logo

   As Andy and Tim already had their production name and logo 'Double Cox', I decided to create my own one. I decided to do this as I wanted to be an individual, to show I separately helped Tim and Andy with their film, as I was not a part of the film from the beginning unlike them. That is when i came up with my production name 'Wolf Peach Films'.

   The name 'Wolf Peach' came from my surname 'Ansell' which originates from Old Germanic, and the old Germanic word for Tomato was Wolf Peach when translated to english. I felt this to be appropriate as I feel it is personal to me and the design I created reflects my personality well while staying suitable for professional purposes. 

Major Project Unit - Credits

   I took on the role of creating the end credits for 'Routes'. This is a simple yet important part for the film. It credits the actors for their roles, the crew and everyone else who helped out with the film, so it is a very important factor to consider, with out it there isn't any proof that myself or other people who worked on the film were involved with it at all.

   I found this video on youtube which taught me how to create rolling credits on Adobe After Effects which helped me create the credits. I decided to use this instead of the way I could have created it on Adobe Premiere as the Premiere credits was very basic and hard to put images in (Production logos) and did not reach the high professional standard I wanted this film to have. 

   Below is the finished credits I have made. The Producer Tim helped me with this by providing me with the list of people to put into the credits and what roles they played within it. I am disappointed slightly with the credits as I wanted to do so much more with them. My Initial idea was to instead of having colour on the text, the letters would be a stencil with video playing in the background with the most colourful cutaways being. So you would see the letters but instead of a solid colour, there would  be moving colour from the cutaways lighting them up. I felt this would be more suitable for the film and make them more interesting to look at. The reason I was unable to do this was due to time constraints, but I am viewing this as a lesson to learn by for when or if I edit or make a film ever again.

Major Project Unit - Nightclub Scenes

   The nightclub scenes were filmed in Romford at the nightclub Kosho. The filming done here was for scenes 5,6,7 and 8. Our producer Tim tried to get a more local nightclub for a location rather than travelling to Romford, but as none of the nightclubs replied to his contact we had to go with Kosho. This was unfortunate as we had to spend more money for the shoot, but the end result was 100% worth it. On this day we had the nightclub for a few hours to film, and we also had extras organised by our producer to have in the background to make it more authentic. This was a well planned and conducted filming day, by far the best one out of all of them.

   On this day I once again focused on my behind the scenes role while helping out the Director and D.P. with some lighting issues which arose. Myself and the director communicated well together on this shoot particularly well, so I knew how he wanted it cut during the post production stages.

Major Project Unit - House Shoots

  The house shoots for our film was for scenes 3,9,10,13,14,15,16 and 19. The house location is the student house that characters Jimmy and Billy live in. These shoots were easier than others and gave the Director and D.P. more freedom to do multiple shots due to the house being where our D.P. (Tim) lived, which gave them more freedom with filming.

Even though some of these days were very long with small breaks, but rewarding with the amount of good footage we got in such a short time. It was fast paced and long, but not rushed at all.

While performing my Behind the Scenes duties, I helped out with sound recording in some parts when we had smaller crews as well as being there for the Director when coming up with shots when originally planned ones were not working.

Major Project Unit - Sound Design

   For my role as sound designer, I have conducted some research to find out what would be needed for me to create some special effect sounds needed for 'Routes'. It was important for me to do this so I would be able to create good quality sound effects for the film. During my research I discovered that the importance of sound in film is often overlooked. Though film is considered a visual medium, all it takes is one click of the mute button to tell exactly how much movies depend on audio to convey emotion, the story and even the voice of a particular filmmaker. The effect good sound design has on a film can turn an okay film into a great film. 

   

   The sound effects you hear in any given scene of a film are often not the sounds that were recorded in production. Most sound effects, such as cars, footsteps and general ambient noise, are re recorded and added in later. It can be a painstaking process sifting through sound libraries or recording and creating sounds from scratch, all for the purpose of making the film experience as realistic as possible. 

  

   The main sound effect I needed for 'Routes' was for punching and kicking. To create this, based on my research I would need multiple sounds of different pitches and layer them together to create an authentic sound. I took a deep hitting sound (a car seat being punched) and a higher slap like sound (sandal hitting concrete) and put the sounds together to create the punching and kicking sounds. The reason we did the sound effect in a car was to avoid echoing, which the car's acoustics did not create, and the sandal on the concrete to create a slap like sound that maintained some bass behind it, to aid the effect of the sound further. 

Major Project Unit - Underpass Shoots

   For our second day of shooting, we were filming Scenes 18, 1, 2 and 24. Our day started in Lockmeadow Underpass in Maidstone for scene 18. This was our first outside shoot of many so it was both exciting and anxious for us. 

   I paid attention to Andy and what he was aiming for with his shots while I was doing my behind the scenes filming, so I could get to grasp of how the shots would play out and be pieced together. Below are images of the shoot.

   This shoot went well in my opinion, apart from one issue with how one of the actors (Arian's) dialogue was not clear enough which will require a reshoot. Below is a rough cut of the scene.





   After this shoot we took a break and began to film scene 1,2 & 24 over at Vinters Park. There were issues with the shoot as it felt like too much was being crammed into one day, and it showed due to the scheduled shooting time going 2 hours over originally planned. But still, these scenes were filmed well and was usable for the edit.