November 28th

In todays lesson we decided to start cutting the sound clips so they would fit in with our video clips. This process was extremely challenging as getting the sound to synchronise precisely with the video footage was very awkward. To resolve this, we resolved this issue by starting over again, which allowed us to cut the video clips and sound clips concurrently.
Although we found the process of restarting quite frustrating, it did not take as long as we thought due to the fact that we had only recently done it so we could remember how most of it was arranged.
We reflected the thought of dubbing over the film but agreed it would prove a difficult, long process and felt that dubbed sound would not have the same effect.
We agreed that the sound would not be essential as our film opening does not include an excess amount of dialogue, However we felt the lack of diegetic sound would reduct the value and quality of the film.
I felt this lesson was productive in the development of our film opening and hope next lesson that we will complete the sound/music aspect of the project.

November 25th

In todays lesson, we were planning on having an hour of looking back on our work and progress so far on the course. Whilst viewing our film to date, we came across a major problem which needed solving urgently. When the film played, the clips worked fine, however none of the clips had accompanying sound. To solve this problem we dragged the clips onto the timeline again. We thought this may cause the sound to connect with the clips, however, this was uneffective. After this failed attempt, we looked for advice from our fellow classmates who were, alike us, also editing on Final Cut Express, hoping they would be able to figure out a solution. We found out that after dragging their files onto the timeline, the sound clips were already attatched to it, which was not the case in our situation. Our final resort was to pass our queries onto the computer technician, who managed to discover the cause of the problem, (the problem being that the camera we used did not have an adequate voice recorder that was compatible on the Final cut Express software. He managed to rip the sound from the video clips. This allowed us to import them into the programme as ditatched files. This was quite a problematic experience, however it taught us how to overcome this problem in the future.

November 24th

In our lesson today we managed to file all of the clips into a correct order.Before we started to edit our film, we first started to search for suitable music to feature in our horror opening. Our first obvious option to find music was on the iTunes store which was available on the school Macs. Whilst searching for music/sounds we had the aim to find a certain type of music, i.e fast paced in places - adding tension, eerie and sinister. After a long search we felt these particular tracks were perfect for our opening:

Dark Mysterious Tone - 15 seconds
Dark Mysterious Tone 4 - 27 seconds
Door Slam - 8 seconds
Mysterious Sound - 3 seconds
Nightmare on Elm Street - 36 seconds

These sound clips vary from diegetic ( obvious sounds like door slam, which would be expected in the frame, aswell as non diegetic sounds, like background music)

The only problem we faced with the music was the high prices of the tracks. As most of the songs were 3 minutes long, we felt we would be wasting money when we would only need short, 30 second clips of sound. We came to the conclusion that instead of buying and downloading the music, we could record the previews on a phone and import them into Final cut Express. The short sound clips could be repeated and re-used at significant parts of the opening, which helps create a sense of repetiton and continuety.

November 22nd

We did not manage to fulfill our target set last lesson (finish ordering clips and start to add effects and transactions). However, we did manage to cut all the clips to the correct length and started to create a sense of order on the timeline. We propbably could have finished putting the clips in order, however we hadnt considered the fact that each clip had to be rendered after cutting, therefore it took longer then we expected. We feel we will definately have all of our clips in the correct order by the end of next lesson.

November 21st

In todays lesson we imported our clips into Final Cut Express nd start cutting and selecting the relevant clips to use. We thought this would be easy as we had already done this on Windows Movie Maker previously, but we were proved wrong. The camera we used to film our movie recorded all the clips together as one long piece, which meant we had to manually had to troll through the whole film, cutting it apart, creating seperate scenes. I found the process very difficult and almost infuriating due to the fact that we had done various takes of the same scenes. This added to the confusion, making the process take twice as long as it should have if we had used a normal school camera. If we were to re-do this we would have deleted all the scenes that were useless as soon as we filmed them, instead of having to sort them out on the editing programme. Next lesson we plan to get all our clips into a chronological order once again. Once our clips have a sense of order we can then move on, adding in transitions and effects which will improve the overall quality of our opening.

November 10th

In todays lesson, the class was given an introduction to the editing software available on the Apple Mac computers at school called 'Final cut Express'. After being shown the proper use of the programme, aswell as important key features which would be useful when editing our film, for e.g. how to import, cut and move around clips on the timeline, aswell as adding text ( which would be helpful when adding credits to the opening).
Our group came to the conclusion today that by using the Final cut Express programme, our final film opening we have to produce will be higher quality and will be a huge improvement compared to using Windows Movie maker, as this new software is more flexible and will allow us to develop our film further. Although this meant we had to delete our previous efforts on Windows Movie Maker , import the clips into Final Cut Express and start again completely from scratch it will all pay off in the end when our final film opening is of higher quality and generally improved.

November 4th

In our previous lesson we chose Windows Movie maker as the software we would use as all of our group members were familiar with it as an editing programme and felt its simple, easy to opperate style would contribute to a good quality opening.
Yesterdays lesson was very productive, allowing us to select certain clips/sections that we thought were visually effective and that we felt should be included in our final cut. This allowed us to start cutting these chosen clips down to a more suitable length. The only main proplem we came across today was the timeline situation. cutting the clips proved difficult and inaccurate as the timeline was too small, causing our clips to be cut in the wrong places and an incorrect length. We overcame this problem quite quickly though, and cutting the clips to an appropriate size was alot easier, after realising the programme allowed you to zoom in on sections of the timeline.

November 3rd

In our lesson today we were ready to upload our footage onto the schools computer. after importing our clips into Windows Movie Maker, we to started to pick and choose which of the following clips we were going to include and cut from our final product. We then took the selected clips and layed them out in a rough chronological order on the timeline which gave our opening a sense of continuety. Today our opening started to come together infront of our eyes and i am very pleased with its progress.

November 1st

In the half term break, i met up with my group and shot most of the film opening. This gave us a head start so we had plenty of time to edit our opening when we got back to school on the Macs. however, we came across a few problems whilst editing our clips due to the fact that the Mac software did not recognise the camera on which we filmed our opening. We worked together as a team and put our filmed clips onto a hard drive and connected it to the school computer to solve this problem we were faced with. If we were given the chance to re-do our film again, we would use one of the schools cameras as they connect easily with the school computers which would save time and effort.