The process of our class movie

I’m very glad to announce that our class movie finally got on to the youtube. Now you can see it or even download it from youtube. The link is below. After some adjustment, it’s now 61.2 MB.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQyboA05C2c

Frankly speaking, the process of this movie it’s not smooth at all. The reason is partly because none of us has done a similar job and partly because I am kind of idealist. Now I would like to introduce it to you.

The story began from the point we decided our movie scene to be the God father. We choose God father because it’s a famous movie and it has many characters in it. Unlike Sound of music or Forest Gum, most people know the name of god father but not too many of them have seen it. So we can draw most attention and expectations from our audience. As soon as we decide on the movie, I search for the script of it. With great luck, I found a fan of god father and he provided a whole script which used by the director. So we didn't waste any time on writing the script.

The next step is to choose actors and arrange works. First of all, I combined and separated the jobs of workers. The job of director was divided into three parts. The job to correct the emotions and gestures of the actors was given to Yangxiao, because she had read the whole novel and know each character very well. I named the job supervisor. The job of keeping time went to Lingxue and the job of putting the stage properties went to Bowen. Our stage properties were also bought by Bowen who was the purchaser of this play. Next, as for the actors, I chose from everyone’s appearance and speaking styles. So finally we got everyone acting.

Then we began to get familiar with the words and act together. You can find the videos about our rehearsal in the links below. After several nights of practise, we finally finished the recording in three days time. I believe that the process is known very well by us now, so I will not introduce more about it.

After I got the clips, I renamed each of them according to each characters scene. Then I tried to put them together by the movie maker. But the format was not accepted by the movie maker. So I had to convert it into the format for movie maker. As soon as I added it to movie maker, I found the pictures were twisted because the video is in 4:3 rates. In order to make the video larger on the screen, I need to cut the original video to 16:9 rates. Unfortunately this kind of conversion broke down my software and it could only convert 2 videos a time. So I convert the 50 clips for a long time. When everything it’s done I put these clips in order. Things never turn out to be easy. I found that there are many missing words in the beginning due to the slow reaction of the camera. So I had to cut the sound from the original movie. Now we can hear an original sound of Tatali and the sound of Xinyu hitting on the table clearly. The most different things to do were to synchronize our movie with the original movie. I cut ours and cut the original ones. Because of the limitation of the software, I didn't do a good job to these clips. Finally when I came to the step of finishing the movie, the software told me that there are too many clips to combine together. So I had to separate the movie into four small parts and use nearly an hour time to get the final movie. The last step was to put our movie and the original movie together. I used the Adobe primer pro to make. I made three copies and each cost more than an hour’s time. Unfortunately the movie is unclear and extremely large. However, I brought the movie to the rehearsal and the judges only wanted it brighter and having subtitles. So I make it brighter by movie maker and got another copy which is only 61.2MB large. As for the sub titles, I think that the variety show it’s to show our play to the audience. They should watch our play while listening, not reading the subtitles while looking at the pictures. It’s too distracted. In the end I didn't make it.

By making this class movie, I really learned a lot. First, I find out that everything needs a thorough preparation before it gets started. Second, think more about the methods before do anything. Or many things will cause troubles in the future and cost you a great many of time. I believe I can do a great job next time. After all, practise makes perfect.