Editing

for the editing of the film, me and Rabbi used the mac software that we have in college. it was the first time we were using any kind of editing software, and so we weren't really sure what we were doing. It took us a while to get any clips onto the PC, we couldn't connect the camera to the PC, we kept swapping bits of technology around to see if anything made a difference, but it still didn't work. we then tried a different wire that connects the two and we eventually found one that worked. After it had connected we couldn't get all of our clips onto the PC, we got our film pitch on there and that was it. I asked around to see if people could help, but we still didn't get anywhere with it. we tried twice to get the clips on, but it always stopped after the film pitch had gone on.

Thankfully, we tried again and it finally went on the PC and we had to wait quite a while for it all to be imported onto the PC. then we could start editing. we had to ask for help again because we hadn't a clue how to edit and we didn't want to delete or lose anything by accident. we were shown how to edit and then from then on it seemed quite simple once we got the hang of it. we went through it and edited it entirely. adding in some titles along the way.

we made a back up of all the clips on Rabbi's memory stick just in case anything went wrong and we needed to get the clips back. But everything in the end went fine and we just had the music to add on. we had to have help again because we didn't know how to do this. we have a friend called Jon who we know had used the same software before and he was happy to come and help. we had a song called 'everlasting sadness' for our film that we got from freeplaymusic.com. he added the music on and then after that all we had to do was make all of the clips black and white. we thought the film would look much better if it were to be in black and white. i went through them all and changed them and watched it through and the effect really suited the narrative.

originally we were going to have a strike through design for our film title-

I'm not okay

but in the final title on the film the design looks like this-

I'm (not) okay

Original idea compared with final version

At the very start of this media project, me and Rabbi wanted to do three separate stories within our short film, we wanted an issue about arranged or forced marriages, but we had problems with getting actors to be in the film and so we couldn't do this issue. From the very start we had the idea of the pregnancy storyline, and we have kept that throughout and it has made the final film. but for the third and final story we always had problems, we changed it many times and each time was because we had a problem with actors. so we thought about a storyline that we could realistically do without having actor problems. which is when we came up with the idea of a story surrounding the issue of self harm, we would be able to film that with myself acting in it. for a while we had the idea of doing a storyline with a girl who has an imaginary friend, she had him ever since she was little, but she never 'grew out' of being with him. she was going to be 17 and still have only her imaginary friend as company. but we decided that again we didn't have the actors and that this storyline, if we ever did it would have to be a separate short film in itself rather than part of a 3 way story narrative. so we got rid of that one.

our third story was then going to be about child abuse. we had the actors to be in it and we even filmed that story, but looking back on it, the lighting was terrible and so was the acting. this story wasn't included in the final film. the only two stories that made it was the self harm one and the pregnancy one. which i think now looking back at it is better than having three stories. have three would make the short film too long and i prefer the idea of just having two best friends and their lives behind the smiles they put on.

original ideas
- Pregnant girl
-Muslim who is in love with a boy outside of her religion - forbidden love-
-imaginary friend

final ideas
-self harm
-pregnant girl

other
-child abuse

Music

i have a piano at home and so we got together to try and come up with some music that we had composed ourselves. we used our phone recorders to record what we came up with, but then we decided that this wasn't the best way to do the music for our film. we looked on freeplay music.com and i made a list of songs that i thought sounded good. i could only judge by the description though, because i was on the college computers and they do not have itunes so i wasn't able to download and listen to the songs. so i made the list and then when i got home, i went on the website again and downloaded all of the songs that i had written down. i went through them all and listened to them, none of them really stood out to me at first, they weren't really suitable for our film even though the genre and description made out like they would be good. Rabbi came round my house to have a listen and she agreed with me that none really stood out. but in the end we decided on one named 'everlasting sadness' it is an emotional sounding song and so it goes well with out short film.

yesterday we added the sound with the help of our friend Jon and we are happy with the outcome. we have the music playing throughout the first scene and on every title that we added in. the music sounds appropriate for what the film shows.

The characters in the final version of the film

Oringinally we were going to have  3 main characters in our short film:
Jade
Emily
Ashley

But after filming Ashelys story, we decided that the quailty of film that we were able to get wasn't good enough to have for the final film, so we haven't used that. this turned out well anyway because with the third story we would have gone way over the time limits.

so now we just focus on Enily and Jade and thier background stories. as i have mentioned, emily has found out that she is pregnant with her boyfriend stan, who doesn't take the news very well and he wants her to get rid of the baby. wheras Jade goes home to find her parents arguing about the fact that they don't like that she has turned out to be gay, her father says that he wants to kick her out because of her sexuality and this makes Jade very upset and she turns to self harm.

Emily used to live near Jade and they were able to spend a lot of time together, but in the film, emily has moved away and so they don't get to see eachother very often. They spend the day together, but we only see a small part of thier time together, when Jade says how much she misses her friend, this suggests that something might be wrong, but neither of them say what thier lives are really like at the moment.

They depart and that is when we show what thier lives are really like. we show Jade's first, as she is the last person we see leaving, and so we follow on from her.

we have put a few titles in the film which just say simple things to the audience, such as "are you really okay?" and "happiness doesn't last for long" these just give the audience something to think about whilst they are watching the film, they might answer the wusetion in thier head and wonder if they are hiding thier feelings from anyone.