Editing and filming evaluation (AS Media)

The filming of the preliminary exercise went as planned, we had booked the room and we all met at the specified time with the proper equipment and props that we needed for filming the preliminary exercises, aside from not being able to track down a clock for use in the scene, we rectified this by filming a few seconds of a clock after the exercise which we mixed in with the rest of the footage during the editing. We also failed to obtain a poster of anti bullying content for use in the exercise hence why we had to use a black and white print out of one instead of one in full colour.

When we started to capture the shots that we needed we realised that the layout of the room was going to make it rather more difficult to get the shots that we had planned to get, we still managed to achieve the shots by moving the desk forward a small amount and placing the camera behind it, which doesn't not come across as a problem in the final product.

We also had an issue with our actor who kept swinging on his chair without meaning to which resulted in us having to shoot a few shots a few more times than we thought, but we managed to get the shots we needed in the end.
We also realised that when we filmed our actor entering the room from outside that her bag was already inside the room which she picked up at the end of the sequence when she attempted to leave, this is quite a big error in our continuity but not worthy of a re shoot of the whole sequence, it is just something that we will remember and take the experience to our main exercise.

Unfortunately due to absence I was not able to be a part of the final editing process which was a shame because that was the initial role I was assigned to do and one I very much enjoy doing, this meant that the other members of the group had to edit the final product, this gave them the opportunity to do something that they initially weren’t assigned as a role which gives for a good learning experience considering I have a decent amount of previous editing experience and the rest of the group may not have had the chance to edit much film in the past, this is good experience that the whole group can bring forward to the main exercise.

Metal Gear Solid and Cinematics in gaming (JUST FOR PRACTICE)

Metal Gear Solid: The rise of the cinematic videogame

The first time I played metal gear solid (commonly abbreviated as MGS) I wasn’t expecting it to be anything other than a mediocre action shooter game, being quite young at the time and having not played the previous NES titles I was pleasantly surprised when I ran into a room and alarms started to go off and I was dead within a few seconds whilst crouching and lying on the floor not having thought to learn the controls before playing, then I thought to myself hang on there is more to this game than other similar looking titles such as syphon filter and other FPS titles such as doom and Quake, what if you have to avoid being seen by the enemy or avoid direct combat completely?

Metal gear solid is truly the seminal stealth video game spawning numerous sequels and spin offs including several games, a radio drama, comics, and novels. The series influence is clearly visible in more recent titles such as the splinter cell series and many action adventure games have a so called "stealth level" these days the most recent notable example would have to be the museum infiltration in uncharted 2: among thieves which for me was an extremely nostalgic MGS moment.

I can remember the first time I played MGS from start to finish and at the end I thought "great game, bit too much like a movie though" being quite young at the time I failed to realise how important of an aspect this was in modern video gaming, the 90s was the decade in which games became for want of a better term "socially acceptable" but they had not yet truly become such a powerful story telling medium that could even come close to reading a book or watching film or television, metal gear solid took us one step closer to realising videogames were becoming a powerful story telling device, along with the actual cinematic of the game which included all the camera angles and movements we were seeing in Hollywood film at the time, and on top of all this MGS was fully voice acted which had been done in games before but not to such an extent that it was effectively a movie with regards to its production, as well as having the characters brilliantly voiced they became characters you couldn’t help but care about especially when certain game play elements decided these characters fates in some cases for me the most poignant example of this is when Meryl gets shot by sniper wolf and you have to back track through the game to get the object needed to help her, all this time she was bleeding to death and that created such a sense of suspense and urgency more than I got from any game beforehand or possibly even since.

Metal gear solid is undeniably one of the most important gaming achievements in the last fifteen years if not the most important bar final fantasy VII making Japanese rpg games popular with the western market. Having had a remake created just six years after its release, and with another spin off planned for release this year the franchise isn’t going away just yet especially since a film is also in the pipeline (with Christian Bale expressing interest in playing Snake) which in my opinion is an ultimately pointless and circular adaptation of a videogame more so than any other title considering that the game is arguably a film in its own right.

Here is an example of Metal Gear Solid in the form of a fan made tribute video which includes footage from MGS 1-4 and also the remake for the Nintendo Gamecube and Portable Ops for the Sony PSP



Credit for this video goes to:
http://www.youtube.com/user/majinsweet

First skills audit G321 foundation production

We have now finished all of our preliminary paperwork and research for our short film sequence and are now ready to start filming.

The pre production process went very well without any major problems occurring , we all worked well and efficiently together to ensure that we stuck to our production schedule as well as possible, overall I was more than happy with how the preliminary paperwork came together.

Ihave worked in groups on similar tasks before so there were aspects of the exercise that I hadn’t had the chance to experience before, for example on this piece of work I had the chance to draw up the diagrams of our locations for filming which is something I enjoyed doing very much.

The genre of our short sequence we decided was going to be a drama set in a school/college setting purely on the basis that setting the scene in a school considering we would most likely be filming in college would help us achieve a much more realistic piece of film, for example one of my initial ideas for the short sequence was to create a crime drama and possibly film in the college canteen (masquerading as a cafe/restaurant) I then came to realise that this would most likely give for an unrealistic final product because the canteen doesn't resemble a normal cafe it is clearly either a college or place of work, and this is when I started to think more towards just setting the scene in a school.

With regards to the research on the genre and target audience for our short film I looked mainly at dramas and soap operas, for example i looked mainly at BBCs Waterloo Road and the children’s drama Grange Hill, the soap I looked at was Hollyoaks, these programmes would be the style that we would try to emulate the most because they have the same target audience as planned for our product which is 15 to 17 year olds, but waterloo roads content also seeks to appeal to an older audience because you are also shown the story from the teachers perspective so you get both sides of the story in effect.

I am fairly confident that filming will go ahead without any major issues occurring with regards to our own technical abilities at least, I feel that the pre production work went as well as can be expected so we are as prepared as we can be for the filming.