10 Second Film - Assessment Two

For this assessment, I was asked to create, edit and produce a 10 second film. The 10 second film could be about almost anything (within reason). The 10 seconds does not include titles at the beginning of the film or the credits at the end.

I had quite a few initial thoughts about what I could film. I originally wanted to burst a water balloon and then slow the playing speed down so that the whole sequence lasted ten seconds. When it came to filming this, it was very hard to burst the balloon without obscuring the view of the ball of water as it fell. It was also very hard to capture the whole process within the constraints of the viewing field.

I also had the ideas for filming an essay being created and speeding it up to 10 seconds but I couldn't find a way of having both hands, the keyboard and the screen within the viewing field. I also wanted to film an hour of what life looked like out of my window, but because I tried filming this on a Sunday, it was incredibly boring and not really worth keeping.

I finally decided to film an amateur game of Texas Hold 'em and speed the game up so that it fits within the ten second constraints. I first tried to find a way of filming from a 'birds eye view' of the game but this turned out to be near impossible as there was no way of attaching the camera to the ceiling. I settled on pointing the camera so that it was just above table level. This meant that the whole game could be captured and includes the player’s hands and some additional props. I included a drink for each of the players, the playing cards, a green mat, an open poker book and the poker chips.

I edited my video using Adobe Premier. I used this because I found using Avid very difficult and I was able to easily find my way around the software and was able to familiarise myself quite quickly.

After brightening the film and adding a very basic title and credits I thought that I had a ten second film to be proud of, but after watching the whole film through a couple of times, I realised that sound of some description was needed. As I am not very good at creating my own music, I thought that it would be a better idea to add a copyright song to the film and then not submit my final piece to the 10secfilmfest website.

I needed to add a song that fitted well with the video and to keep up with the pace of it too. So I chose "I'm a Scat Man" by Scat Man John. With a little bit of editing and careful positioning of the video, I have been able to nearly perfectly set it so the video starts and finishes at a near perfect position in the song. Using this song means that I cannot submit my video to any website, including the 10secfilmfest due to the copyright laws. Adding the soundfile is shown below:













I then included transitions so that the blend between the film and the end credits is a lot smoother. I have used two cross dissolve transitions so that the film fades to black and then the black fades into the end credits. I chose the cross dissolve transition because it seemed to make the whole ending of my film run very smoothly. Adding the transitions is shown in the screen shot below:

My film plays using Windows Media Player. This means that it can be played on the majority of computers quite easily. On playback some of the image quality is lost but not a major amount.

This website, Blogger, does not allow me to publish videos and due to the copyright laws, I have not been able to publish my video onto any other websites. This means that the video cannot be seen over the internet. Therefore; I cannot show any previous edits of my video.