Unit 3: How the film was edited

My work on how the film was edited by Alex:

Alex edited the film in Adobe Premiere Pro CC, bins were used to organise the footage:

The clips were assembled on the timeline and cut down using the Razor tool:

Colour correction was done using the Lumetri Colour panel:

As our graphics were quite simple, we thought there was no need to use Adobe After Effects, so we simply used the 'essential graphics' panel within Premiere Pro:

The audio was inserted onto the timeline and levels adjusted using the mixer and audio effects panel:

Unit 3: How our conforms to the Genre

My work on how "Live For The Weekend" conforms to the "Drama" Genre:

Our film is a "Drama". This means it should exhibit a real-life situation with realistic characters which we see develop throughout the film.

The Protagonist "Chloe" is a school girl that is bored of her studies and just wants to have fun with her friends. As the film continues we see her developing into someone who no longer cares, she starts to take risks with drugs - this storyline follows the main conventions that make up a 'Drama' film.

"Drama" films should also involve some social interaction, have some conflict and a storyline which plays on the emotion of the viewer. Our character meets her friends on multiple occasions and is often offered drugs from the boys. Initially, she and Nikki are against this, however, the boys win over Chloe. This is something that eventually leads to her death and the close of the film.

The film also uses some technical conventions that are common in "drama films" - handheld camera work is used in multiple scenes to create a sense of realism - that we as the viewer were just following someone around the 'real life'.

Often, "Drama" films can be cross-genre. Meaning they conform to more than one genre. Our film could be described as a Tragedy, as 'many horrible events' do occur to our protagonist.

Unit 3: How the exported media product meets the brief

Our film, "Live For The Weekend", successfully meets all aspects of the brief.

The brief states that our film should:

• be a "Short Narrative Film" that runs for a "Maximum of 15 minutes" - our film runs for 00:08:37. It follows the story of a young character over a weekend telling the story of the events that took place. 
• it should be able to be entered for an "Independent Directions Film Festival", be made in a "maximum group size of three" and be of a "recognisable film genre" - our film was made by three students with no support from any production company. It is a short "Drama" film. 
• each member should have "specific roles within the group" and "be original and produced by us" - I took the role of Director of Photography and Sound, Alex was Editor, and Patrick was the Director. All content in the was made by ourselves aside from the music and SFX, these were sourced from a copyright free site.
• The target audience for our film was young people. Our film is suitable for this audience because it contains young characters (all teenagers) who want to party at the weekends and who are a bit bored of school. Young people will be able to relate to this, making them more likely to watch it. We believe this will be true because of similar programmes such as The Inbetweeners which have proved very popular in the past.
• The final video is in mp4 format in h.264, this makes it suitable for uploading to the internet and viewable across most video playback devices. This format also makes it suitable to be edited into promotional material that could be shared on social media. The final film was exported in Full 1080P HD meaning it would be suitable to play at a festival on a larger screen and still appear to be good quality.

The film conforms to the "Drama" Genre by:

• The film conforms to the "Drama" genre in multiple ways as our film follows many typical conventions. The film follows a young girl living her life as a teenager. We see the girl amongst friends and in various environments where young people traditionally 'hang out' such as a park scene, in friends houses and the bedroom. This results in very naturalistic acting which is expected within a Drama film. 
• Various shot types usually seen in a Drama film were used in our film. We used many long shots to establish the scenes, this is best seen in our park scene, it establishes the location and places our main character in the location - helping the viewer understand what is happening. 

• We also used Extreme Close-Ups throughout the drug taking scenes, these were done to exaggerate what was taking place - to make it obvious to the viewer what was happening. 

• During each scene, the film uses multiple camera angles from different positions around the characters (it wasn't just a fixed camera) - this ads 'realism' to the scene, it doesn't feel like we are on a set. 
• The titles of the film break up the first scene with a black screen and white text. This is a conventional way to start a drama film but also a way we picked up from the research of "party" films such as "21 jump street" which follow a similar genre to what our film was based around.

Unit 3: The Final Cut - Live For The Weekend

The final film - "Live For The Weekend":

Unit 3: Rough Cut 4 - Live For The Weekend

Alex (The Editor) has now added the music and stylised the titles. 

There are a few cuts that we want to tidy up within the film before it will be finished.

Unit 3: Rough Cut 3 - Live for The Weekend

I conducted research into how films of a similar drama genre to ours use titles at the start of our film. In '21 Jump Street', a film that we have used previously to gain inspiration from. The titles 'interrupt' the first scene with a black screen with titles overlaying this.

I passed this research onto Alex Hargraves (The editor) and he has put placeholders into our film of where the titles will cut in. In this cut he has also adjusted the colour corrections further - this is now complete. 

Before the Final Cut, we still want to adjust the style of the titles (as they are currently in default font) and also add the music that we have for the film. 

Unit 3: Rough Cut 2 - Live For The Weekend

In the second cut of "Live For The Weekend", Alex Hargraves has started colour correction on the film to make the shots look more appealing. This was done by tweaking each of the individual shots to make sure the adjustments were made specific to each scene that had different lighting. The correction was done in Premiere Pro using the Lumetri colour panel.

There is still more work to do: titles need to be added and music for the party scene and wood scene.