Calendar| Engineering | Programming | Design/Photography | Animation | Audio/Video | Summative

PRE-PRODUCTION 

The first day of shooting on a movie set is never the first day that film is being produced. Days, and sometimes weeks, months, years, or—in the case of James Cameron’s “Avatar” —decades can go by from the beginning of a film’s inception to when cameras just start rolling 

• Script your dialogue

• Storyboard your shots, 

• Secure your talent

• Location

• Budget

• Assign timelines, areas of responsibility and identify and book required resources

Although it's EASIER to simply "wing it" and start shooting without planning, experienced producers know that an UNPLANNED product WILL be:

• Inferior and amateurish

• Harder to edit, and may require reshoots

• Take more time to produce, and

• Leave the producer with regrets

PRODUCTION

The primary aim is to stick to the budget and schedule, this requires constant vigilance. Communication is key between location, set, office, production company, distributors.  

Sometimes lumped with principal photography, this is when the camera rolls. It is nearly always the most expensive phase of film production, due to actor, director, and set crew salaries, as well as the costs of certain shots, props, and on-set special effects. Everything that has happened up to this point is to make principal photography go as smoothly and efficiently as possible. 

In this stage you're shooting your "footage". Skillful production will work around challenges in the environment and make optimal use of:

• Camera Prep

• Shooting

  • Shots and Camerawork

  • Lighting

  • Audio

  • Framing

  • Lead In and Lead Out

• Storage (folders for organization, daily backups etc...)

POSTPRODUCTION

Editing the footage can be the most time consuming part of the process, and offers the most effective opportunities to enhance the production and give it a "professional" feel by adding:

• Select or "trimmed" clips from your footage

• Transitions between clips

• Audio elements

  • Music

  • Voice Over Dialogue

  • Sound Effects

• Titles and Credits

• Text and Graphic overlays

• Composited clips like greenscreened elements or matte elements

• Special effects and filters that can clean up, or modify the original video clips Post Production also involves rendering and publishing the final product to the desired output format like DVD or web-friendly files

• Simple editing activity given the clips for editing folder.

• Demonstrate:

  • where to save the project

  • what format, framerate and aspect ratio mean,

  • how to import footage, 

  • how to navigate the timeline, 

  • how to trim both in the trim preview as well as on the timeline

  • how to cut a clip

  • how to export

Class 3-5: Editing

Class 6-9: Preproduction->final product

SHOT ANGLES

Shot types and angles

Taking pictures needs to have that same attention given to the angle and distance from your subject to clearly capture the detail and mood that you want your audience to experience.

The Angle From Which you Want to View the Main Subject

The angle from which you take your picture or video will have an impact on how your audience sees and reacts to it. This is very important in setting the mood in a shot.

• A low camera angle is created by placing the camera below the normal eye level. With the camera looking up at the subject, this angle gives the viewer a feeling of inferiority or even fear.

• For a high camera angle, the camera is placed well above the normal eye level. Viewers are looking down on the subject and feel as if they are in control.

• An eye level angle is obtained by shooting at eye level with the subject. This allows the viewer to feel like they are part of the action as this would be the way they would normally view things.

Identify the following shot types

Class 9-15

Types of common transitions

1. A cut, the most basic type of transition, is a transition with no duration; when one shot ends, another one immediately begins, without any overlap. All other transitions gradually replace one shot with another; when one shot ends, another one gradually replaces it.

2. Fade: This begins with a shot at full intensity and reduces until it is gone. A fade-in begins with a shot at no intensity and increases until it is full. These are the common “fade to black” and “fade up (from black)” transitions.

3. Cross dissolve: This involves two shots. The first shot fades out while the second shot simultaneously fades in. During the cross dissolve, the two shots are superimposed as they fade.

4. Wipe: This is where the screen splits, moving from one side of the image to the other to gradually reveal the next shot. It is more obvious than a fade or cross dissolve.