The Final Cut

This is the final cut of our sketch show 'Laugh Out Loud'. 



Please enjoy it and if you have any feedback then that would be great. 

References.

Television Programmes which we were influenced by in producing our television programme:

• Balls Of Steel - (Channel 4)

• Sam Pepper's Youtube Videos (Especially his interviews) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEie0Q_fbiw

• Punk'd - (MTV)

• Armstrong and Miller - (BBC/ Hat Trick Productions) 

Bibliography: 

- Young, R. (2009) The Focal Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro 7. UK: Focal Press.

- Apple (2005). Soundtrack Pro User Manual . USA: Apple Computer, Inc

Evaluation

• Overall looking back at the work that me and my group have produced I am really pleased with the final outcome. 

• All of us have tried our best and worked really hard on 'Laugh Out Loud' to produce a high quality piece of work. I personally have learnt a lot more than I already knew about Final Cut and other software programs which we have used to make this production. 

• We wanted this programme that we produced to not look like an amateur student constructed project, but instead a professional piece of media that we are all proud to be a part of and have made.

• Everyone within the group has put in an equal amount of effort into making this production in each of the planning, practical, research, and production areas. We can definitely all work together as a good team. Both Shannen and Carys are dedicated, hard working, enthusiastic and reliable, and I would absolutely work with these guys again in any future projects. 

• We have all decided that we are going to spend some of our spare time next semester producing some other videos together. This will help to keep us focused, improve our research and planning, editing skills, working cooperatively as a team, and will also help us build up our own portfolios of work. 

Software

• We used Final Cut Pro 7 to edit our work. 

• We all have had experience with using this programme before from doing other projects. 

• Familiarising ourselves with the software didn't take very long, and the techniques and shortcuts were quickly picked up again. 

• The green screen was also easy to get to grips with, we found adding all of the effects and filters for it a lot easier than last time. This was mainly because it was just us presenting and all of the green screen shots were the same set up. Because we had past experience with using green screen we planned it in a certain way so it was straightforward when it came to the green screen post production. 

• Taking lots of coverage shots left us with scope and space to play around with the clips if we found that any of them weren't in focus, were shaky, or they simply just didn't fit as well as we hoped them to. 

• Because of the boom mic issue we used Soundtrack Pro to add effects and filters, get rid of the booming wind noise, and to make the quality better. We are all pleased with how well this worked and the interview clips sound nearly as good as the others. 

• When we did get stuck with editing in Final Cut Pro, we looked up 'How To' videos on Youtube (see this for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9a9LKMoVE). These were really quick, helpful, and gave us hand on advice that we could very easily follow step by step. They include videos of the screen so you can see what exactly you need to click and where exactly that is within the programme. We also used a few pages from 'The Focal Easy Guide To Final Cut Pro 7- Rick Young'. 

Our Green Screen Virtual Studio.

• This is the image which we are using for the virtual studio as our green screen background. It will be used as a background on screen when Shannen, Carys, and myself are presenting and introducing each of the features within our programme. We have chosen this specific one because it's bright, vibrant and fun. Other programmes of the same genre, and also aimed at similar audiences to ours, (such as MTV, and Balls of Steel) all use brightly coloured, bold, and vibrant backgrounds that easily catches the audiences attention.

• Our aim is for the programme to appeal to a teenage/ young adult audience. The humor which we have written into the television programme will suit them perfectly at this age category. We feel that marketing the show at this age group will hep us attract more views because they are roughly the same age as us and will therefore understand the comedy and humor we have put into the programme. 

• Social media sites such a Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr will also help to attract a bigger and wider audience. Pople of this age group (roughly 15-35) are more likely to use social media websites than any other age group. We have decided to reach out to certain members of the audience that might be on Twitter or Facebook by incorporating it into our programme. This is done by directly asking them to voice their opinion and point of view on the programme, which characters they like, and also getting them to vote which challenges they want us to complete. This is very easy and accessible for anyone that wants to contact us and ask us questions about the programme, or suggest features. 

Audience Feedback

Even though we still have quite a bit of editing work and polishing to do on our production, we have already received a few bits of audience feedback. All of the comments given to us were very positive and assuring which we are all very happy about. People commented on the scenes and features in the programme saying they were highly comical and that they made them laugh. This was great news to us because we all had some fears within the group, that what we thought was funny and comical wasn't going to be humorous and entertaining to the audience. Therefore the show would just be a massive failure, so this feedback from people was really good to hear. People also pointed out to us that the music we had used in some of the features really helped to bring out the humour and comedy. The comments also made us more motivated to get the programme finished so we could screen our work to others.

Filming Update...

We have now filmed all of the footage needed for our programme. It altogether went very well with only a few minor problems along the way, which we easily overcame. 

It took five main shoots to film everything for our sketch show: 

- The interviews in central London.

- Shannen's house to film paranormal activity and some of the challenges. 

- A multi-storey car park in Kingston to film some footage for the 'Annoying Chav'.

- Shannen's house again to film the rest of the challenges and another section for the 'Annoying Chav'      feature. 

- The green screen room at university for the introductions for each of the features.

• The main problem that we had when we were filming the interviews in central London was that the boom mic wasn't functioning properly. We made a bad mistake in not actually testing any of the equipment before we went to shoot at this location. When we got to our first location of the shoot (at Covent Garden) we realised the wire that connects the mic to the camera which we had been given from the loans room was faulty. There was not much that we could do about this, we had lots of footage to shoot, a tight time limit because of the daylight hours, and also didn't know of any technical shops in the area which could sell us a new cable for the boom mic. Because of our tight schedule, and the fact that we had all taken time to travel into London and meet as a group, we made the decision to try and film the interviews anyway. We thought we should see how they sounded when we got back to the edit suite, and if we decided that the quality wasn't good enough we could go back into London again and film the footage with the fully functioning boom mic. Unfortunately the weather was fairly windy on that specific day so the sound quality of the footage we took wasn't great. However, when we uploaded the footage onto Final Cut we played around with it for a while and managed to add some effects and filters and the clips all now have a good, clear sound to them which we are very pleased about. 

• The change in lighting was also an big issue that we faced when filming. Because we filmed the footage in the autumn, the times at which the lighting and brightness changed was different from shoot to shoot. In each of the shoots we were on a very tough schedule to get everything shot before the brightness changed and the light disappeared. We were very aware of this issue when filming, we made sure that there was no big difference in brightness from shot to shot, we knew we could get away with a little bit of difference by changing the filters and settings in post production on Final Cut. 

• Getting people to answer questions for the interviews was also an issue which we came across when filming. Approaching people and asking them to answer a few questions was much harder than we first anticipated, when some people saw that we had a camera they seemed to get scared of us and avoided us. At first it was quite daunting going up to complete strangers with a camera and a tripod and talking to them but as the day went on we all got more confident and we were getting better answers and responses to the questions because of it. 

• The green screen studio shoot was really successful. We all had experience of using it from different projects that we did last year so we made sure everything was planned and thought about before we went into the studio. This meant filming these scenes were very straight forward and took a lot less time than it could have done. Because everyone in the group had experience of using green screen before the editing of this was also made very easy and once we got the footage onto Final Cut it was very straight forward and the technique's needed for this quickly came back to us.