Production: Reshoot

  This blogpost explains our decision to reshoot multiple times and the ways, we improved on our footage. It also addresses key difference between past revisions and our final video and why those decisions were made.

Shoot: 1

For the first shoot as you can see its very rough as I was shooting the video and this was my first time operating the camera so the camera movements were not flexible and the shots were less than optimal as well we hadn't practiced the fight choreography before hand and we had to basically make it on the spot that's why the fighting felt slow and stiff. 

Shoot: 2

Link:https://drive.google.com/file/d/16gXSWqkI_Ou0ymEVO2qjSk0ND6B7SWYN/preview

In the next shoot we decided to swap over the camera duties to our group mate Kenzo as he was more experienced and better behind the camera as well we used the experience from the first shoot and feed back from our teacher (which was to add more camera angles and cuts) to experiment with different camera angles and improve our fight choreography as the first shoot acted as our practice. As well we decided to overhaul the opening sequence where as in the first shoot the opening opened with Mark Choi going up a stair case which made for a very mysterious opening with hermeneutic codes such as who is this character as it started with a back shot of him concealing his face but then we decided on Mark Choi instead riding in on a motorcycle which made for a very cinematic action packed opening and also this characterized him as a cool character and helped conform with genre conventions of an action movie.

                                                                            Shoot: 1

Shoot:2

However in this 2nd Shoot we decided to bring in our friend to be another character. He was first seen in the toilet as Mark Choi tries to find an entrance. We wanted him to be some sort of bodyguard or the boss's goon and to avoid a plot hole of why he didn't during the fight we decided to make him help the boss defeat Mark Choi and the problem with this was that his introduction and scenes was far to long this made our video over shoot the 2 minute maximum time and to the overall story he was unnecessary so we made the choice to cut him for the next shoot. As well another problem we encountered was a continuity error as we took a long time between takes and thus the time of day between the shots were different and thus the scene cut from day to night and for that is why we decided to reshoot for a 3rd time.

Shoot: 3 (Final)

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rFx8CC9fU2o7wIcz1Eyw5h3BxiHkKGG7/preview

In the 3rd shoot we just learnt from the mistakes from the last 2 shoots and applied them to make the best scene. As for the sequencing it was mostly the second reshoot but removing the unnecessary character and refining the choreography and camera angles/movements.

Screen Test: Audience Feedback

This post explains how we showed a rough draft of our film opening to some members of our target audience in order to receive helpful feedback. The questions were made together. Data collection was made done by Maha and Candra and the blog/analysis was done by Gusde

The purpose of a screen test is to gain audience feedback about our work and see if their are any improvements that can be made. We decided to use Google for to create a survey to share with our audience because it's easy to use make a forms from and has all the features we need such us uploading videos, and a variety of question types. Here are our questions: 

1.Which of these options do you think fits our movie title the best?

2.What do you think is missing in our movie that could be added or improved?

3.Which of these typefaces/fonts would fit the title?

4.How well do you think we portrayed the characters in this movie and how can we improve the representation of our movie?

5.Optional : what song or score would fit our fight scene? (Please Mention name of song and artist.)

We chose these questions because these were the areas that we needed the most feedback and outside opinions for We showed the clip to 4 members of our target audience to ensure that the feedback we receive is appropriate. Finding people for the screen test was easy/difficult because well four people is not alot of people some may not be motivated to watch a short film then answer questions which sometimes aren't multiple choice. Here is the draft that we showed audiences for the screen test: 

Video

Here are the results from the audience feedback:

From the feedback we learned firstly on the negative side we needed to improve our editting which is fair but we hope to soon fix this by using Capcut premium which has more unlocked features which gives us more creative. Also the sound was a bit bad as we didnt have proper mics our sound equipment in the location and our sound effects also need to be improved. Lastly one participants aswell commented about the supar video quality probably due to the use of phones as the lack of light in the location. But on the good side people said our acting was very good and as for the questions about the type font people choose Zenaida and for the title people liked Mark Choi: No Mercy.

We are going to change the use of forms as due to it being online peoples responses were minimal and lacked more information. I think next time well use focus groups instead as it allows for more indepth data collection which can give us more feedback and opinions.

This screen test was a useful part of our process because it gaves us feeback to help us improve and gave us a second opinio which helped settle decisions for us.

Reflection: The screen test was fun to make and it was fun to show people our work and it helped us settle decisions and get feedback on what to improve. and next time we will use focus groups.

Type face development : Title and Credits

 This is our process and prototypes of the creation of our type face and font. Made by Kenzo and Gusde

This is the link to the original file

Post Production: Editing

 This is a blogpost outlining our editting process. This was made by Maha

This is our first shooting for the Opening Scene

Advice :

• More camera angle
• Give music
• Better cut
• Typeface

This what we make on our new shooting,which we add more close up and camera angle into the video

this the close up on our new video,which we dont have in our last shooting

We also uses song for the first scene of candra riding motor bike which is

Like A Stone by Bon Jovi

And Livin On A Prayer for fighting scene

WE also give better cut although There is still jump cut,I put a black screen in middle of the video.

For the type face we take it from Canva,and Kenzo make it

Reflection:

I was not completely involved in the editing process but I did contribute by suggesting music recommendations and audio effects. I think next time I want to try editing in a diffrent software with diffrent style.

Production: Organising our footage

This is how we organised our footage between the drone shots and camera shoots. We used whatsapp to preview and send clips and communicated and google drive to save videos in high quality. This blogpost was made by CANDRA

organising our footage

The apps we used to edit are : 

 

We use Capcut to edit our video and uses Canva to edit our font and typeface . We chose to use Capcut to edit our intro , because Capcut have a lot of feature such as many choices of effects that we could use and  we could acces easily and the app are mostly free , so it is the best option for us , and we could acces capcut easily . 

we used this app as a way to control the drone and transfer footage from our drone. A problem I encounter was due to connection issues controlling the drone would be hard as there was a noticable delay which made it hard to do micro adjustments and keep the drone in a good position. To solve this problem I had 2 solutions: A I would get a controller and be able to use DJI’s proprietary wireless solution instead of wifi from my phone to the drone but that would include buying more expensive equipment. So instead I trusted the drones ability to fly and track targets autonimously but this meant I had no control over the drones actions. Aswell during the transfer of the footage the drone would often disconnect from the phone which meant it had to be reconnected to continue the download, again the only solution to this was to get a remote as it could transfer faster and would be in the form of an SD.

ONLINE

Google drive: 

Google drive is very useful to store videos as it keeps the resolution of the video the same unlike other apps which might reduce the quality of the video , this helps us to organise which clips do we use and which typeface and fonts we use we put it in the google drive , however the time needed to upload the video into the drive is a lot , which makes it longer to share videos through the files , our solution is to use other device first so that we could use time as effective as possible

whatsapp : 

Whatsapp really helps us communicate long distance , also we are used to using this app which makes us easier to communicate with each other , also this app has a call feature which helps us communicate through call so that we can have better communication between each member of the group , however when sending videos or photos through whatsapp the quality of the video or photo would be bad , so we use google drive to share the videos and other important things related to our project .

Aswell a majority of our footage was in Maha's phone as it was him who recorded everything and editted everything.

Reflection: 

Our footage organisation was on point all our footage was nicely put into google drive links which we shared on whatsapp. This made it very easy to share lossless footage from one device to another especially with my drone to Maha the edtor's phone. This was also very important in our whole process as it meant all our data wouldn't be lost and easily acesssed and also made it easy to pick and choose between takes.

Production: Behind the Scenes

 This is a collection pictures taken "behind the scenes" of our production process. This was made by Kenzo.

Creative And Arts Crew:
Storyboard Writer: Kenzo
Set Design: Kenzo, Gusde
Make-up artist: Candra, Maha

Camera and VFX Department: (The tech people)
Lighting Technician: Gusde
Editor: Maha
Camera Operator: Kenzo (stunt cameraman), Gusde (drone operator)

Above the line: (The one in charge)
Director: Gusde
Assistant Director: Kenzo


Pictures of Behind the Scenes (taken by Kenzo):

This is the drone that we used to record aerial footage of our character riding a motorcycle and climbing the walls. This device made it extremely useful when it comes to recording far-distance third-person point of view.

This picture depicts Gusde and Maha discussing about how we're going to use a drone to shoot Candra climbing the wall.

This picture shows us reviewing the footage that we shot after the take.

This picture shows our actor "Mark Choi" getting ready on a motorbike to shoot our very first scene.

This is the picture of our actor playing as the criminal boss of the underworld.

This picture shows us shooting the final scene of the film opening where we used red food colouring to act as blood and we needed assistance from Gusde he will splash red food colouring onto Maha's face.

These videos shows how we recorded our film opening for the fighting scene.

Reflection:

Overall the production process was fun. We really got to push our creativity to the limits when making the fightscene we brainstormed diffrent ideas choreography until we found a result that was desireable. Aswell I was able to use my drone to record some clips which was really fun as I got to push it to its limits in terms of speed and sometimes it was crash and hit things which was amusing because thank god it didn't break. Although we did run into problems such as the lighting as we relied on natural light when shooting so changes in time would effect the lighting in set which could be fixed in editting and the drone had problems with disconnection and running out of battery

Dominant Reading

 This is our table of dominant readings in our texts and how we plan to achieve this. This blog post was made by me

This is just a quick catch up session that we did as a group. We thought it would be a good idea to check what our intended dominant readings are for the different things being represented in our film opening. We have recently learned about Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory with Dominant, Oppositional, and Negotiated readings. For our media text to be successful, we want to make sure the message is clear and able to reach the correct audience. Below we will discuss our intended readings, and compare them to the intended readings we made in our Statement of Intent earlier on in the project. It will be interesting to see if our ideas have evolved. 

	List	Our intended  Dominant Reading	How we will achieve this with technical elements
Individuals	Boss Mark Choi	Powerful in terms of strength and influence Dedicated smart strong Reckless rash underprepared naive	Mise en scene: Suit, Luxurious Chair, Menacing smile Camera:Low Angle
Social group	Criminals	We wish to represent criminals and be evil and unjust.	This will be primarily shown with the bosses fighting style being dirty and unfair.
Places	Boss office	We want to show the bosses main “office” to be a place fit for a king and extravagant a reflection of a his  power and influence	As we can see here this is done with dark moody lighting. The dark wooden floor gives a rustic and luxurious feel. The boss also sits in a central position showing power within the room. The room is also a bit dirty and industrial with exposed piping this shows that he may be a careless person.
Events	Fighting	The fighting in this opening will be intense and over the top which we hope will add to the comedic	~ Abusing multiple cuts (make sure it has enough time frame for the audience to understand) ~ Close up shots
Overall Message	We wanted to show that evil or bad may be good in the short time but good will prevail in the long run.

How are these similar or different from your Statement of Intent?

• The bosses character traits are similar

• We want to reduce the vitality and amount of guards but we will still use them as comedic value.

  
  

  Reflection:

  The dominant readings were really helpful during the creation of CCR1 as it states our
  dominant readings and how we represented certain groups. Aswell this made us really think
  about the message we wanted to present to our audience and how were intending to do it 
  which also helped us during filming.

Filming schedule

This is my filming schedule for the compenent one .  

Scene	Date/Time	Location	People	Props	Equiptment	Other
All Scenes	Monday 21/01/2025	Maha's House	Maha (Actor), Candra (Actor), Gusde (Drone Operator), and Kenzo (Cameraman)	Motorbike, jacket, black suit full set,	Drone camera Phone Camera	During this day, Kenzo couldn't come to our set location because he was busy so we had to shoot the film with the 3 of us only.
All Scenes	Friday 31/01/2025	Maha's House	Maha (Actor), Candra (Actor), Greg (Actor),  Gusde (Drone Operator), Kenzo (Cameraman)	Motorbike, jacket, black suit full set, red food colouring for blood, Knife, newspaper.	Drone camera, Phone camera, Clapper	After what happened on Monday last week, the opening scene we recorded was not what we expected. Due to that, on this day we decided to reshoot the whole thing with a new unofficial member added to our production crew named Greg (one of our friends). We are more prepared on this day as everyone in the group can arrive on the scene.
All Scenes	Friday 07/03/2025	Maha's House	Maha (Actor), Candra (Actor),  Gusde (Drone Operator), Kenzo (Cameraman),	Motorbike, jacket, black suit full set, red food colouring for blood,	Drone camera, Phone camera,	On this day we decided to reshoot some scenes, especially the fight scene as it was badly choreographed. We also removed one actor in our film which is Greg because the scene that he was in was unnecessary. We had a few visitors during our shooting who wanted to see the process of how we film and gives us feedback on what to improve.

Classwork: editing practice

 This blog post contains the work I did in my lesson on how to successfully edit. My teacher filmed the footage but I worked with Maha to edited it together. My teacher also provided the template for the blog post. 

Why is continuity editing important?

Continuity editing includes making sure that items like props or costumes stay consistent from scene to scene. But the more important work lies in editing shots together in a way that leaves viewers thoroughly grounded in both time and space.

Different types of continuity edit 

• Straight cut (cut)

• Eyeline match 

• Shot /reverse shot

• Cutaway / Insert 

*Match cut

Footage

Here is the footage that my teacher shot which utilises a variety of camera angles and movements. The scene is very simple, it involves a student standing up and leaving the classroom. A single shot here might be quite boring for the audience, by editing and combining the shots together we can make the scene feel more dynamic. 

My editing process

First we looked over the clips that our teacher had recorded for us then we decided the order of clips from when the actor was leaving the seat to leaving the room then uploading set clips to Cap Cut. We decided to use Cap Cut as it is free easy to use and has a bunch of templates for effects and transitions which really helped fulfil our creative visions. 

For the first edit we decided to use simplier cuts without any effects we used this as a rough guideline or a plan of how we are going to sync up orientate and time the cuts.

For our next edit we started to play around and experiment with different effects with digital zooms and camera movements and transitions.

Refection:

This helped me get a better understanding of video editing as I have rarely done it in the past. Overall it was a fun process and brought back memories of when I was a kid and we used to splice together random videos. I think this will help us be able to better edit our videos. As for challenges it was probably the connection as more than 20 people were all simultaneously downloading clips from a google drive which was stressful on the bandwidth. I think next time I wanna try using different software and experimenting more and hopefully create an appealing but unique style.

Scene recreation

This post contains a mini project that helped us learn how to shoot a cinematic scene. we did this as a group

Lesson Description: My teacher told us to find a scene from a movie in our genre. Our chosen task was to recreate this scene from John Wick where he and the film's main antagonist conversed with each other engaging in a deal. 

Original scene:

Story board:

Recreated Scene:

Problems, How to solve them and What to do next time:

1) We do not have the proper camera equipment, so sometimes the camera movements are a bit unstable, making it look unprofessional. We could not solve this problem besides the least we could do was to get someone from our group to have stable hands when holding the camera. Next time we would be required to buy new equipment that would stabilize the camera when moving to create a better quality film for the audience and avoid shaking the camera.

2) The backlight when we were filming ruins the recreated scene as the original scene was in a dark gloomy weather. There was nothing we could do as we could not control the weather and we did not have enough time to find a new place to film. Next time we would need to take our time to decide which location would be suitable for the environment to match with the original film. Though the silhouetting of actors did make them seam a bit more menacing and mysterious

3) There were background noises from the area where we filmed which caused a disturbance in the audio every time the character was speaking even though we had a phone microphone near the voice of our actor. We solved this problem by muffling the audio from the video however this makes the character's voice low and unclear. Next time we would need to buy a proper microphone attached to our actors so their voices can be heard loud and clear. We also would need to clear out the area of our filming set to avoid unnecessary audio or disturbance from entering our film.

4) We had a problem with our cameraman due to his unprofessional conduct where he accidentally recorded the scenes in slow motion. Luckily we had a solution where the videos would be sped up to cover the mistake of our cameraman from the audience. However, this solution would not fully solve the problem as some of the scenes are still in slow motion to match the pace of the original audio. Next time we would probably have to switch our cameraman to someone else as this can prove to be a really dangerous conduct towards our final film.

REFLECTION:

Overall I found this task really amusing and fun as we recreated our favorite movies scenes without million dollar budgets but the tools and items around us. We constantly had to improvise props such as the cards out of paper and think on our feet. I think this also gives valuable experience on how to shoot our final video and acts as a nice warm up on the day to day of media studies.