My Individual developments

Today (Saturday 30th January) i decided to look through all the footage we have shot and i wrote down all the time codes of the takes i felt where best in order to make it easier later on during the editing stage.

Some of the problems id noticed was the microphone sometimes being in the top of some of the shots, i also heard a lot of crackling in some of the scenes which can be eliminated next time by fiddling with the sensitivity of the microphones and maybe not having two microphones and sticking to the one in order to control the sound closely.

Development of the Website

As a group on Tuesday 24th November we visited the CLC centre in order to learn how to use a programme called iWeb. We was taught how to create our own webpages and also creating games that can be played on them.

People present:

Me, Thegla and Natalie N.

We all experimented on our own computer practicing and experimenting on what was available. We got our work saved onto Cd's and went back to school. however once we had got back and attempted to retrive our work it only came up as a picture so we was unable to edit it further.

So we came to the decision on making a new website together at school, so combining all of our developed skills and techniques we began on deciding which templates and colours to use, I drew out a plan for what styles and fonts we wanted and we began designing.

...........................................................................................................................................

The downside of iweb is that we can only use the computer that we started on, there isnt a way of saving our work and moving it somewhere else, so the time we have to work on our website is limited to school hours only.

................................................................................

Tuesday 26th January

Today i had a look at what the girls had been up to with the website, i gave my input with some of the designs and colours and booked in a day i was going to do some too. We have character pictures which are hyper linked to their pages, which say their favoroute colours, foods, films and music, it also outlines their character type in the soap and has a small gallery of on and off set pictures.

We also added competitions where people can win a day on set and meet the soap characters. This helped it look realistic and can help draw in people from different age ranges.

........................................................................................................................................

Thursday 28th January

Today Me and Natalie M stayed behind after school for a few hours to add a few more things to the website, we discussed colour and font, i suggested to change the font to "Bradley Hand ITC" i felt that this looked nicer than just Arial and it looked more appropriate for a young audience. We also decided to change the colour of the titles to red, this stood out more drawing in attention to the important points on our page.

.......................................................................................................................................

Tuesday 2nd February

Today as a group we went through the website again, everybody gave their input, i asked other people in the class what they thought and if they think i should change anything on it. i took in all useful comments and applied it as much as i could.

When looking at the pages i felt as though they seemed empty, i decided to put speech bubbles on the characters pages, i wrote comments from the real characters and quotes that best represented the characters, this helped fill up the pages, making them look more interesting and allowing the viewers/fans to get a real understanding of the characters aswell as the people who they are played by.

........................................................................................................................................................

Tuesday 4th February

Today we altered the website again slightly, i asked the group what they thought of the colour on the homepage, we decided to change it to something more plain.

when looking over 'Andrea's Diary' i felt as though it was very plain and basic, Natalie M agreed and so we tried to think of something different to add, i came up with the idea of putting stars on two of the sides of the page, i experimented with the amount of points on the stars i wanted, i added shadows to highlight th

em more, we couldn't find a way of adding colour but the shadows gave a good effect.

.................................................................................................

Our drawn website plans and the macs with the website character page open.

Final Draft of Magazine Front Cover

I designed my magazine front cover based on the 'Radio Times' i believe that it looked lot more proffesional and still targeted a variety of age groups. I felt that this best emphasized our soap, leaving it to look more professional and most importantly watchable.

For the design of my front cover, i used photoshop.

I used different colour schemes and fonts, i finally found the font i felt best suited my design and the most beneficial colour.

I experimented many times creating many rough drafts, id finally found what id wanted and i used a tool which made the background look asif it had been drawn, this helped target at the younger audience.

I also advertised the fact that it was a new soap and went against the idea of promoting the first big story line of 'MURDER' and instead stuck with a critics comment.

Pictures from Filming Day Two

Group Filming Day Two

Saturday 23rd January 2010

Today we began filming for the trailer of our soap. Thegla, Natalie M and I met together early and organised set, we set up the camera and the microphone, altered the lighting and organised the props.

From the last filming day being less organised that we had hoped, this time around we typed up all the shots we needed etc (on the blog above)

After everything was sorted on set we got together and went through the plan, we decided to do all the over the shoulder shots first, then allow time for Thegla to prepare to get in character and cry for the reaction shots and close ups. We again managed to get numerous shots from many different angles so that when we are at the editing stage we would not be limited in our choices.

So we got filming, the over the shoulder shots where the hardest, we had to make sure we never moved anything/ or placed things back in the right place before filming again. We had the slight problem with Thegla sometimes moving in front of the camera but we filmed this take so many times there are still many to pick from. Some of the shots we experimented with where: Zoom, close-up shots, over the shoulder shots , panning shots , wide shots, reaction shots.

Me and Natalie M took it in turns to film and to hold up the microphone to which we attached to a pole in order to get closer to out actor and it not pick up our own movement.

With the lighting we used the daylight to our advantage, in the close up scenes the daylight lighted up half of Thegla's face really adding to quality of the picture as well as the emotional effect we was aiming for.

Some problems we experienced was with the text on the phone, it came up very small and the camera found it hard to focus, so we came up with the idea of taking a picture of it from the newspaper and leaving it widescreen.

We also changed the plan slightly, mixing up the order Thegla finds the notes leaving the audience more questionable and confused.

Overall today was extremely successful, we covered everything we needed to and there where no problems throught filming.