Its right here yo!!!
For my specialist project I considered numerous ideas from making a short film to finding a band to make a music video before deciding on my idea. After considering many ideas I decided on a project, which consisted in me writing, shooting and editing a short every week and uploading them to YouTube until the deadline, which would result in me having roughly 8 videos online by the time of the crit.
I originally decided that I was going to make some comedy sketches as I feel that narration is one of my strong points and video production is the area that I am wanting to find work in after the course is finished, so I felt this would be a good way to build up a portfolio.
I researched into other Internet channels on YouTube to help develop the style of videos I want to make. Some one the channels I found most useful were Epic Meal Time who are a food based ‘show’ that uploads a video every week, I found these useful for the shooting style (Shot on a handheld SLR), Jon Lajoie for his style of comedy (Writing and performing his own music) and SMosh a duo who write, produce and perform in their own comedy shorts (A similar style to what I was preparing to do) as well the website www.funnyordie.com (A comedy website in the same style of YouTube but you vote if the video is funny or not).
After developing a few sketches I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t happy with the sketches I was coming up with and I also felt that there wasn’t a theme connecting my videos together so I decided to tweak parts of my idea to make it more suitable for what I was wanting to achieve. I came up with the idea to make each of my videos into a weekly review of a film, where I would watch a film (recording myself while doing so, so I can use the footage if needed) and give a review of the film as well as including a re-enactment of a scene from the film I choose each week. I also decided after a few reviews to produce some other shorts where I recreate some scenes from classic films shot for shot. Although I am playing the roles as though I am serious they are supposed to come across in a comedic manner.
For me to meet my schedule of producing and uploading a video I had to keep to a strict timetable, which consists of:
Thursday- Choose a film, watch it whilst taking notes throughout the film and recording myself watching the film.
Friday- Write the dialogue for the review and plan the scene from the film I will be using.
Saturday- Film the review section of the video.
Sunday- Film the scene for the video and check footage over in case of reshoots needed. Upload footage for editing.
Monday- Complete rough edit of the video.
Tuesday- Tidy up rough edit of the video to create final cut of the video.
Wednesday- Upload the video to YouTube.
I filmed the footage on a variety of different cameras, the reviews were filmed on my own Sony Handycam DCR-SR36 camcorder, and the shot for shot remake scenes were filmed on Alex Campbell’s Canon 7D SLR Camera. The reason I used my own camera for the reviews despite its being much more inferior quality compared to the Canon 7D is because I wanted to give the project a Video Blog look about it, not to make it look amateurish but as most people on YouTube who upload their own footage of their own reviews, they are usually filmed using a webcam as technology has made it possible for everybody to voice there own opinion at the click of a button, so I felt it would be best to start my reviews in this style before progressing up to a higher quality camera.
I used the Canon 7D for the scene remakes to help give the shorts a professional look about them due to the camera shooting at 1080p HD giving them as clear a look as possible. Sound for both types of video was provided by the microphone options on both of the cameras as I felt this was suitable for the videos I was doing, as there wasn’t much background noise that could of affected the quality of the sound or dialogue apart from on the London video but the reason I didn’t use another microphone then was to do with transporting it around London as we would be getting on and off the Underground all day we had to keep equipment to a minimum so we could get about easily enough and get set up quickly and shoot where we needed in as quick a time as possible.
To edit my videos I used my own Macbook Pro which has Adobe Premiere Pro installed. I used Premiere Pro to edit as over the past 2 years of the course I have become very familiar of the in’s and out’s of the software, so I am now able to put a rough edit of each video together in a reasonably quick time which was important on this project due to the short timeframe I had set myself but still being able to produce work of a high quality at the same time.
The editing style I adapted to my reviews was inspired from a style of reviews I’ve seen in a web show called Zero Punctuation, which although is an animated review show was something I felt I could adapt to my own review. In Zero Punctuation the reviewer edits his footage (in this case his soundtrack) to keep him talking at a constant pace with little or no gaps between pieces of dialogue. I felt that I could use this in my own reviews as it would help to keep them going at a lively pace possibly even putting myself across as a hyper host as an attempt to keep the viewer interested because nowadays if the viewer isn’t grabbed by the video in the first few seconds they are very likely to change it over. Also my editing out the gaps between pieces of dialogue it helped to give my videos a much leaner running time.
One thing I also added into the reviews is some still images of the cast, crew and movie posters as well as some humorous images to give my reviews some comedic value.
To edit the remake shorts I found a copy of the scene I wanted to edit and included it on the editing timeline so I could sync my shots to the original keeping them the exactly same length as the original as well as being able to include the same transitions and effects as well. The only short I had to change slightly was on the Psycho shower scene. This was due down to the restrictions I had when shooting that it wouldn’t of been safe to have the camera in the shower to get the acquired shot so I had to use the crop function to create a split screen effect which although it wasn’t the same as the original shot it had the same effect.
This wasn’t the only problem that I came across during filming. Originally I was going to struggle form a lack of equipment as what I needed from the university was always booked out but I over came this problem by using the equipment of my classmates mainly Alex Campbell’s camera, so this saved me on needing to rely on the availability of equipment. My main issue came when I was trying to upload my videos, at my student home our internet has been terrible at the best of times recently, we were told this was down to a high usage of the internet in the area. But due to this my Internet was going so slow that it was going to take as long as several days to upload a short video. This prevented me from uploading a video once a week and I’ve only recently managed to get them online. In future I would plan ahead when it came to uploading my videos to the point where I may use a friends internet to upload my videos if needed and that their internet is working at an acceptable speed as well.
When reflecting over this project I feel that despite some minor quibbles concerning my Internet aside that this project has worked well for me. It has helped me to develop working to a tight time schedule on a regular basis, it also helped me to create and execute ideas quickly rather than sitting on an idea for a while, it helped me to be more creative having to think up ideas on the spot for example if a problem happened while filming I would need to sort it there and then like if a shot didn’t work I would have to find an alternative. I plan to use what I have learnt on this project to develop into my idea for after the half term.
Here is my remake of the shower scene from psycho
My next video will be a remake of the Shower Scene from Psycho
Here is my remake of the Pottery Scene from Ghost
My Next Video will be a remake of the Pottery Scene from Ghost
Here is my review of Breaking Dawn
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, commonly referred to as Breaking Dawn, is a 2011/2012 two-part romantic fantasy film directed byBill Condon and based on the novel Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer. The two parts form the fourth and final installment in the The Twilight Saga series. All three main cast members, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, reprise their roles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIpeBi6SG4A
Here is My Trailer For Eclipse
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, commonly referred to as Eclipse, is a 2010 American romantic vampire film based on Stephenie Meyer’s 2007 novel, Eclipse. It is the third installment of The Twilight Saga film series, following 2008′s Twilight and 2009′s New Moon. Summit Entertainment greenlit the film in February 2009. Directed by David Slade, the film stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner, reprising their roles as Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, and Jacob Black, respectively. Melissa Rosenberg, who penned the scripts for both Twilight and New Moon, returned as screenwriter. Filming began on August 17, 2009, at Vancouver Film Studios, and finished in late October, with post-production began early the following month. Bryce Dallas Howard was cast as Victoria, replacing Rachelle Lefevre who previously played her.
