Transition for AS to A2.

A2 Media has proven to be more of a challenge than AS Media on a lot of scales. Things such as a longer time line, more equipment and the complexity of the editing along with a range of other things had to be taken into consideration when we were preparing to film our production but overall we all wanted to push ourselves and show we have used and also advanced the skills we had learn t at AS level. The are extreme differences between the opening to a film and a music video for instance the shots in the our music production has to fit in the the lyrics of the song depending on the relationship between both lyrics and visuals.

The first thing that we had to do was to improve all aspects of the techniques we used in last years project as we needed to show we have acquired skills in the previous year. During filming we had to do twice more extra footage as firstly the video has to be over 3 minutes and 30 seconds and we felt its better to be safe than sorry and not having enough footage or back up clips. Due to the ambitious nature of our video and the number of cast members we wanted it was essential we had back up footage as it was a hard task to manage every body's schedules in the first place and would of proven even harder to arrange meetings again. We were at a disadvantage and an advantage with being able to film in the half term as people wanted extra shifts at work etc, we overcame this and had the majority of our filming was done outside of the college premises. When we edited our filming we felt we needed to 'jazz' it up a bit and decided to film clips of our band and add it in, this was done in the college studio.

Filming also had to more advanced and more techniques had to be explored. Some of the shot types we used last year we used this year to show we understood them and that was the only aspect that was kept the same as well as the usual camera and tripod. We used a crane in our band shots in the studio and used 3 different high tech cameras and then cut between each of them to gain more a music video, professional feel. Things such as the 180 degree rule wasn't necessary in our music video as there was no dialogue in the videos lyrics and didn't really follow a narrative.

Editing again was so much more advanced and professional as one of our group members, Jake Perry Gardner has had years of experience using Final Cut Pro and thus putting us at an advantage. Editing was more complex due to the time line as a lot of footage was needed and also the lip syncing had to be very precise, down to the millisecond as any shots that didn't fit could not be used which was proved a task in itself. A lot of effects were added such as the due saturation affect on the band shots, a slight flicker has been added to give it a 90's old feel a long with cross cutting to give it a smooth transition throughout. Time management hasn't been much of a problem in our group as we are all quite organized and as soon as we were allowed to film we took the opportunity to get it done and out of the way which meant we had more time for the blog and the digipack. We also felt that if one person was more advanced at a certain feature that they should have the majority of the time working on that feature. For instance Vanessa and Peter were assigned onto the blog and Jake and Caitlin edited. This worked well for us as we didn't feel we needed more time or were pressured by the deadline. This helped us to juggle all of the tasks evenly and we were always on task, for example at the moment the editing is close to be finished and then a production meeting take place on ideas for our cover.