Major Project: A Writer's Wit

A couple weeks back the four people who decided to write scripts (Myself, Sam Wilder, Ashley John and Scott) decided that for the visual element of the task we would each produce an interview detailing what we have undergone in this project. In this interview we would talk about The Idea, The Writing Process, What we Enjoyed, Hopes for the Future and Our Overall Experience of the course.

After coming up with the topic we wanted to talk about we then decided on how we were going to shoot it. These interviews would be shot on single camera in front of a green screen which would put us in a location relating to our screenplay (e.g. I would be in front of a tennis court whereas Scott would be in a garage). Though we wanted them to be different we also wanted them to be a part of a series where the opening, cutaways and astons would all be the same.

We filmed over two days, and made sure that everyone who was doing an interview would be able to help out with filming them (e.g. helping with lighting, camera, etc.). The trickiest thing with filming these interviews was getting the lighting right on each interview. Since we were all in different backgrounds we all had to have different lighting and since none of us were lighting experts we had to have some help from Fergus, he would give us advice which was very helpful.

With filming finished, we checked the footage which turned out great so we put it through Final cut before editing the green screen clips with After Effects before going back into Final Cut to put the finishing touches on our videos. Having never used After Effects or Final Cut X this was a completely new experience to me, After Effects wasn't too hard to learn but I did stumble at parts which trying to get the green screen come put correctly. Final Cut X on the other hand I felt I picked up pretty quickly after I got going. I was very comfortable working in Final Cut 7 so after I knew where everything was I was ready to go and felt really at home with the software.

The last few things we had to do were coming up with the name of the series and the jingles that went with it. The jingles were pretty easy to find but we each had trouble trying to find a name which we all liked for the series. In the end we decided to go with A Writer's Wit. This is the name that we all thought was acceptable and seemed quite professional.

This was by far one of the most enjoyable parts of this task. I love working in a team and I felt that together we all worked very well and we all produced some good looking footage which also promotes us as writers as well giving people an insight of what we have done on this project.