Editing Video

After we had finished filming we inserted the frames into Adobe Premier Pro to add the voice over. This signified to us that our animation was too short and we therefore need to film more.
This also highlighted that there was some frame where a hand had been shot in the frame and therefore we had to go back and edit out these frames.
In some instances throughout the production there is times where the frame shoots off the snooker table and you can see that people are moving around the table. We did this to allow a realistic feel so that it actually looks like a public place and there is real life going on around the table.
Furthermore, we also realised that our animation does not cover the rules of snooker by not hitting one red and then one colour, we feel however that this is irrelevant.

(Tom)

Filming Process.

During our filming process we realised that it was going to take us a long time as although the film is only aimed to be 5 minutes long, we miscalculated how many frames that we were going to take per second and after filming 4 minutes of footage, we realised that the film would actually be too long for the brief so we edited some frames which we did not need so as to keep within the time frame. Also, to make our piece seem more authentic we wanted to keep changing the characters' expressions. When it came to making the characters talk we decided, rather than making a stock pile of mouths and facial expressions (which we have seen elsewhere in Southpark for example in our research), we decided to move their mouths as this made the characters look more realistic and natural in their flow of movement. We struggled with this constant reshaping of plasticine as the mouths kept sticking together which meant that charcaters needed to be repaired on more than several occasions. However, we maintained this lengthy process as we wanted individual facial expressions to match the script and the action and felt that a stock pile of expressions would take away from the audience's total understanding of meaning. We also had to take a lot of frames on the speech sections as the footage was too quick and needed to be slower so as to match the speed of the speech - again, proving to be lengthy in our time. Not to be beaten by such challenges, we also played with the expressions of extra characters to add to the meaning of the script for the audience and show the other characters' feelings, thus adding to the effect of mise en scene.
Another difficulty we faced was the plasticine constantly marking the felt of the snooker table which meant using blu-tack (the best tool we found!) to wipe the table inbetween frames. This also ate into our filming time and was another problem we dealt with during filming.
Once filming was complete, we faced one final hurdle - we had filmed the animation in 2 sections (I began filming a scene one day and failed to add it to our current production) which meant the 2 parts had to be joined at the end of the day. Stop Motion Pro V7, whilst easy to use to take frames, became difficult when joining these 2 parts together - an unclear and again, lengthy process.
Now that filming is complete, we need to complete the joining of these 2 sections, add the voiceover (which we need one more female voice to complete the cast) and then check we like the complete version!

Self-assessment needs to then be completed and we will then want to know what our audience think of 'Point of Cue'!

Pryde and Dix