Evaluation

PowerPoint Presentation

The Best Days Final Presentation from LauraBriscoe98

Evaluation

Throughout the production we encountered many problems. The problems began after the pitch as we couldn't decide on which idea to proceed with. This meant we wasted a lot of time going back and forth between the two ideas rather than getting on with the work. Eventually we decided to continue with Andrews Time Travel idea. We spent a long time developing this idea so that it was simple enough for us to create but also that it would fit the brief. We created a script for this idea with many revisions of it but in the end scrapped it all. I made this executive decision as we did not have the time, budget or location to make this idea work to its full potential and it still didn't fully fit the brief. Therefore we set out to create another idea. One that would fit the brief and be easy enough for us to do in the now little time that we had left. At this point Molly, our cinematographer decided to go home for a full week due to her boyfriend breaking up with her. This occurred during shoot week. There we are on shoot week with no idea and no cinematographer. Brooke came up with the idea for The Best Days on the Tuesday during shoot week. It was the best we'd got so we decided to run with it however once we had sorted out filming with our actors and looking into Studio 17 for the location we realised there was noting we could do until Molly came back. At this point we didn't know how long she would be gone for, had I have known I would have taken over as cinematographer myself to ensure a better project for me and my fellow team members. I now know to do this in the future as I am not happy with our final result. When Molly finally came back we had one week to complete the film This required us filming in a three hour slot as this was the only time we could use the workstation and we had lost our slot at Studio 17. This meant a lot of rushing around to fit everything in. On top of this Molly was ill on the shoot day. This lead to many shots been in soft focus or out of focus all together. There was also an issue with equipment bags and personal items in shot. Throughout the shoot me and Andrew asked Molly multiple times if she was okay, whether she wanted to carry on or for us to take over which was fine but she insisted upon fulfilling her role. Upon asking Molly about the framing of shots and if anything was in the background that wasn't supposed to be she said it was fine. We trusted Molly's judgement and so carried on with the shoot, it wasn't until later that day when we uploaded the files and began editing that we realised the mistakes. At this point it was too late to do anything to change it as this was our only shoot day and due to personal appointments and commitments to other projects Charlotte's only editing days were Tuesday and Wednesday. We stayed late Tuesday evening to edit as much as possible and came in again early Wednesday morning, staying till late again, to make the most of the time we had available to us. Charlotte did a brilliant job of editing the project, working with the lighting changes and the lack of continuity to achieve a relatively good edit, it was the best we could do with the little usable footage we had. After that we had an issue with the sound. It was all recorded correctly thanks to Nick but we couldn't sync it up easily as there was no sound on the camera. This made Brookes job of syncing the sound extremely difficult. However it was me and Andrew that were in the edit suit Wednesday to Sunday going through the sound files and matching them up to the correct clips. Brooke joined us for a couple of hours on the Wednesday, where I gave her a tutorial in how to work Pro Tools, before leaving for work. She also came in briefly on the Friday and Sunday however Andrew did the majority of the sound design work. From this project I have realised that I need to take charge more in order to get my ideas heard but also to keep on track of time. I defiantly should have stood in when Molly went home for the week to benefit myself and the remainder of the team. One strength I have found while working on this project is my work with sound, I was able to help Nick with his understanding of recording sound but also help Brooke with sound design on pro tools. In the future I would like to develop other film making skills especially editing. I got some inspiration for The Best Days from a short film called I Miss You that I found on YouTube. The film goes into detail about what one person misses from their relationship. I feel that the film fits in well with what we were hoping to create as it gave me an insight to the sort of relationship Kyle and Sarah could have and gave me an idea for a back story for the two characters. The use of voice overs in the film also gave us the idea to use them in our film as Sarah talks about missing Kyle and believing in him. This Boy is another short film I looked at on YouTube. The story follows a girls love for her neighbour although she misses the oppertunity to be with him. At the end he surprises her with a message on his car telling the girl that he really likes her. This is a cute and unexpected moment and you realise the feelings the two characters share. This Boy links to our film as there is an element of surprise. Kyle is hoping to surprise Sarah with what will eventually be there new hoe, however Sarah's reaction is different from whats expected.
I Miss You
This Boy

Evaluation

Since September I believe I have come a long way. As a person a feel much more comfortable communicating with my peers and asking for help or advice from them if I need it. Although I still struggle with presentations I am starting to feel slightly less panicked about them as we have done quite a few this year. The experimental task has been my favourite so far, I think this is because this was the start of my journey. I was able to mess around with different objects to find the different sounds they make and really get to grips with using the zoom H5, a piece of equipment I had never used before. This is one of the skills I've learnt during this module and managed to improve on throughout, all the way to helping others in the final drama piece. Another aspect I enjoyed about the experimental piece was exactly that, that it was experimental, as I had never done anything like that before and it gave me and Charlotte a chance to get to know each other, listen to and work on each others ideas. During the experimental project I was able to work with both the XF 100 and the DSLR. Both cameras I hadn't used previously. This meant I was able to play around with the different features and figure out how to set up and focus the cameras. The documentary piece was also fascinating to me as I hadn't made a documentary previously either. The use of the different microphones throughout this piece and the different ways to conceal them intrigued me. However; as I was working on sound design in this project and due to only a small amount of us being able to be present at the shoot due to the size of the shop, I wasn't able to be there to help out with the sound recording. I realise now that during documentary film making you will have to record the answers multiple times and that you need to communicate with your contributor to get the best results. As I wasn't at the shoots I couldn't have a say and help out with this. During the drama project I learnt a lot. I feel that this is the worst piece of work I have produced due to many issues previously stated. From this I realise that I need to help people out more, even if they say they don't need it. If people leave at a vital time rather than waiting for them to return we need to proceed and progress with the project, with or without them. As producer on this project I have found there is a lot of planning procedures and paperwork that goes into creating a film that I was responsible for.  During this project I helped with the script writing and found that this was much harder that I had first imagined. Attempting to make a script that doesn't sound forced and include some humor is difficult to do, especially to keep it realistic.