Production for my ident was long and slightly difficult, but eventually we managed to film all that we needed to and the ident was ready to be edited. During production there were different phases to getting the ident finished.
Pre-Production
I started by composing a brief storyboard which I went over with a few peers who said that they would be happy to help, those student peers being Jacob Lees, Sebastian Bignell and Harrison Kelly, the latter of the three being my cameraman with the other two featuring in the ident as actors. The storyboard was simple, my character would go on a trip around the college following the clues of a mysterious figure who would eventually lead me to them to answer the question that they themselves had asked me, the question being “What is Strode College?” This is a nod to the college’s OFSTED Outstanding grade, something that I wanted to feature in the ident.
The planning was very brief and most of the ident’s production was done fairly spontaneously with plans being suddenly changed, locations reconsidered and new supporting actors recruited, there were lots of changes that had to be undergone in order to get the ident filmed in one day. Something which was eventually accomplished.
Production and Filming
Me and my crew started filming in a classroom almost parallel to where we have our Tuesday and Wednesday media lessons, it was here that we got our first shots. We then ventured to the learning centre and after that, the sports centre where the penultimate set of shots were filmed before a trip to the front of the college to film our establishing end-shot as well as the final “Strode college, its outstanding” shot outside the front of the C Block.
As idents go, this was fairly complex to make, the filming took place across multiple locations and required a lot of different shots for all of the scenes that would eventually amount the run-time of the ident to an excessive 2 minutes. This was of course far too long and changes were made in post-production.
After recording the clips that we needed finished, I took it upon myself to edit them all the same night, I used InShot which for video editing is not a highly-recommended software to use, but its cutting and effects tools proved useful for the final product and I was not at all displeased with how the ident turned out and feel I did a good job of editing the ident.
Post-Production
On the day that I write this, on Thursday the eleventh of January 2022, the decision was made to significantly cut down the ident from being over two minutes to a mere 14 seconds. This was done to make the ident a suitable length and meet the criteria required. Since then the ident has been handed in to Microsoft Teams with only the two final shots of the ident remaining, those shots being ones that I deem significant due to the fact that they include the “Outstanding” quotation as well as the final establishing shot which I am very happy with.
Romano G Media 