DEADLINES REMINDER

You should now have finished all planning and research. I'll be marking these slowly over the next week or so. If I spot any massive fails on your part I'll let you know and give you a new short deadline to fix it while I continue marking the rest.

PRODUCTION DEADLINE: Friday 9 March. This is a realistic guide as to when you should have finished filming and editing... its 2 weeks from now... Ultimately you have a further couple of weeks after that to hand in a DVD - but you have the evaluation to do aswell.

EVALUATION DEADLINE: Friday 30 March. This is the last day of term. Your grades will be sent off soon after this deadline - there will be NO extensions to the deadline.

Each individual needs to hand in a DVD featuring their preliminary task and opening sequence.

NO COPYRIGHTED MUSIC ALLOWED

You must think about and design your soundtrack well.

This includes:

• Looking for copyright-free soundtracks on the web (check under Resources on the left of this page).
• Recording 'wild track'
• Recording 'foley'
• Looking for sound effects (ask me for the DVD of sound effects and check Resources)
• Mixing everything together in Final Cut Pro

The rule against using copyrighted music is a strickly enforced one. If you download a soundtrack from a website such as incompetech get a screen-grab to prove it is royalty-free and post it to your blog like this:

Planning and Research Improvements Deadline: Mon 27 Feb.

Ok so none of your blogs are worth a level 4 (A/B) yet.


Most of you need to continue uploading planning documents such as storyboard, script and shotlist etc. Most of you also need to write up your audience research - write a summary of what you have learned from it or how it will influence your work.


All of you need to work on the presentation of your blogs. Add more images, embed more video and add more links to other blogs and websites... that is what blogs are meant to do.


Remember the level 4 grading criteria:


- Planning and Evidence will be complete and detailed
- There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience
- There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes and props
- There is excellent work on shotlists, storyboards, scripts
- There is excellent care taken in presentation
- Time management is excellent.




MAKE ALL IMPROVEMENTS BY 9am MON 27 Feb.

Shot-list

A shot-list is a checklist of all the shots you need to make your opening sequence. It needs to be specific. So if you are going to shoot a conversation you need to shoot the whole conversation in Midshot, over one shoulder in Close Up, then over the other shoulder in Close Up, then maybe over each shoulder again in Big Close Up. That's a total of 5 shots.... It will be the editor's job to cut it down into a flowing conversation.

You can use a blank shot-list form such as this... (Downloadable from Blackboard under 'course materials')

Cam Shot List

Scripting

Whether your opening sequence has dialogue or not, you must create a script for it. The script MUST appear in the correct format - or a very close approximation of it.

Scripts have very specific formatting rules. Have a look at the example below. It gives you some rules and asks you to observe and work out other formatting rules.

You script should look like the example given.

Type it up on word, then use http://www.scribd.com/ to upload it your blog - every member of the group should have it on their blog.

Scripting

Storyboards

Cinematographers - it is your job to produce a storyboard. You should draw it using pencils and preferably a black fine-liner to go over the outlines. You MUST do this BEFORE filming. It is useless to produce it after filming - and you won't get any marks for it.

Here's an example of what I want:

Story Ideas - how to show brainstorming on your blog