Preliminary Task

Over the last week, we have filmed and edited our preliminary task, to practice how to film lip syncing. We only had one lesson to film, and so it was also a good opportunity to practice working to a deadline. For the first time, we were working with HD cameras, creating a better quality, but did not particularly effect the functioning of the camera compared to last year.

Firstly, we had to get the song 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart', by Elton John and Kiki Dee, from the apple mac to a portable device, such as a phone. However we faced a problem in the fact that none of our phones seemed to be able to support the audio. For this reason we used youtube loaded on a classroom computer, with lyrics on the projector, meaning we had the words if we needed a prompt. From here, we had to film myself and Joe singing the song, to each other, in one take for around a minute. This altered from our normal filming methods, as it was just one long take, rather than a number of short ones. This made it easier to edit. Next, me and Joe were filmed singing only our lines to the camera, individually, which we were to incorporate into our main film in editing.

Editing the Film

To edit the film we first had to upload the music, along with each of our complete takes onto individual layers. We have had to get into the habit of locking each layer into place, and only unlocking the ones that we're working on. From here, we had to remove the sound from our filming, and set the videos from a particular point along the song, so that the music was synced with us singing, so it looked like we were singing. not Elton and Kiki. After this, we played around with various final cut tools, to work out how to switch between layers, using straight cuts and dissolves. We also practiced putting two shots into a single screen.