Shooting and Cutting

Filming ran fairly smoothly, with the exception of rain stopping play on the outside shots. This meant we had to split the shoot over 2 days, leading to possible issues with continuity. We avoided any inconsistencies by watching back the scenes from the previous days shoot immediately before filming to ensure the clothes being worn, the way the bag was being held, positions of elements in the background etc. were accurate. As predicted, several additional shots were used, while sticking to the basic flow of the storyboard.

Having captured the footage and made a rough edit, we found we were a minute over the briefs 2 minute limit. Being unable to trim enough from the clips to meet the limit, and not wanting to loose any shots, we elected to speed up some of the shots which didn't contain essential action to reduce the overall running time. Although this brought us within the time constraint, the visual effect of cutting from regular speed to 400% speed wasn't pleasing. To explain the change between speeds, and make the effect less sudden, we overlaid graphics of video controls over the footage to pause and fast forward the action. We also added a video filter to the speeded up sections to give it a slightly distorted quality.This eased these sections into the rest of the film in a much smoother fashion. The overall effect on the video is not detrimental, and in fact adds an interesting visual element.

How to... create a how to animatic.

This is the first animatic for our 'How to..... empty a bin' instructional video. My partner Katherine did all the hand drawing of the storyboard, as her technical abilities in this area are stronger than mine. We then scanned the images, and I added colour to the frames in photoshop before taking them into Final Cut and adding sound effects to create the animatic. Overall I think it gives a fairly decent feel for the flow of how the final video should look. I'm pretty sure we'll end up needing a few additional shots when we start filming, or find some shots will have to be modified to fit with the physical restraints of the final filming location, but as an overall guide it works well. None of the shots should present too much of an issue when filming, there is very little to be shot outside so the elements and natural light aren't going to present a problem. We just need to achieve the correct lighting in a dingy kitchen. The animatic runs to 1 minute 13 seconds, which gives us plenty of room to add additional material if needs be, without running over the 2 minute limit.