For this film we focused on recreating the trailer of the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
We soon realised this would be very hard to do in the time frame given, due to the amount of shots that would be required and the heavy editing needed. We had originally planned to shoot some shots outside of school however it became apparent some group members were not as enthusiastic about the project as the rest so we ended up doing the full suede in school time.
For this project we wanted to make it look as accurate as possible whilst enhancing the comical suede atmosphere suede's often have. In planning we decided the key scenes of the trailer we would be able to recreate in addition we then time tabled days and locaitons we would shoot these scenes on. In the group I acted as the main camera man and as I felt it was unfair on the other group members I would often let them set up the shot directed by myself instead. Composition was something I wanted to keep very accurate throughout so we tried to find identical and unique low budget ways for achieving this (ball room scene where we got to almost a rooftop to look down on the dancers in the courtyard of the school). I feel as a group we were very productive when filming and adding production value with props and costume. In the suede we aimed to include as little vfx as possible so decided to conduct what we could practically rather than adding it in post. We were able to the fire scene using science in school which I think was the strongest scene in the suede. We used a green screen in order to have the protagonist flying past the castle as seen in the trailer. We were later able to Ken Burns this background in order to make it look like the character was moving. We worked very hard on achieving the correct angles and compositions ensuring each character was presented as in the trailer.
Many of the props were made on set which added to the suede factor and lead to comical values being presented throughout. For the mad eye moody scene where the shot is a POV shot we even used a cup in order to distort the image and make it seem as if we are looking through the eye of "Mad Eye Moody". Mostly the shots were not shot at extreme angles and the majority of shots were at eye level however when appropriate we took into account the low and high angles based on the trailer.
Editing was a very weak part in the group I feel as poor decisions were made to split the group into 3 in order to each edit a different video. This lead to inconsistency and some sub groups adding parts the other 2 were not aware of. This lead to some very weak edits including my own.
We used Final Cut Pro to edit the suede. I was the primary editor for my sub group and wanted to follow the order of shots from the trailer. I did this by watching the trailer repeatedly at the side of the screen then adding scene by scene. We had made a paper I dent as we found very often suede's use paper in order to show text (idents and titles). I wanted to keep the edit very short as from the trailer I had noted the speed at which the scenes were cut and realised it was a fast paced trailer with a lot of different elements of the full movie incorporated. We did not have time to colour grade any shots however I think this worked well for us as most shots were shot in the mood they should carry, using white balance and exposure to give an almost mood to the shots. I had used digital titles for the outro and subtitles throughout the trailer as I felt these carried more impact and were available on FPX for no additional charge. The soundtrack was recorded by myself and George. We used the iPhone camera microphone which gave us a very good sound quality from the microphone. The song was not accurate to the trailer however we felt using a more iconic Harry Potter song would give more impact to the audience and create more links to the film its self. On first render I had noticed there was moments where the cuts were not aligned so therefore there were a few frames of black between each shot in some cases, this was a weakness to the film as it mean the video did not play back as smoothly as needed, I blame this partially on technology however as the playback speed in FPX was incredibly jittery so it was often hard to spot these moments in editing.
In conclusion I felt the suede underperformed. We chose a very ambitious and hard film as a group which would have required a lot more work and dedication as a group that I feel was not put in by many. On the other hand I feel the film gave the comical suede feel to it and the shots were executed with accuracy and as a group we were able to complete the project utilising the different skill sets each person had to offer and I feel time was managed well.
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