Short film evaluation..

Short film evaluation..

• 1.
  Short Film Evaluation. Pre-production. Lastyear we started our pre-production. First of all we were put into a group of three. Myself, Emily and Becky. Between us we had to produce storyboards and mind maps of a genre we’d like to do and what our idea was. Once we had all agreed on the genre, we then had to produce the script. We each did one and then between us we had to choose which personally we thought was the best. However we only had my own script and Emily’s to look at as Becky hadn’t yet wrote hers. We picked Emily’s script. After we had picked Emily’s script we then had a group discussion to see if I and Becky felt anything should be added to it. After changing parts of the script such as the ending, we wrote up the final script. Mark later joined our group and added to the script. When this was complete we then had to create a budget report of the things we thought we would need and then find out the total. Things such as props and cameras and the equipment. All of this was then uploaded on to Blogger as Evidence. I have kept a project log since we started filming, listing what we did each lesson and what problems we may have encountered. I feel our idea was quite original and a strong one as we planned everything well. I feel I contributed often to the group and during group discussions, giving my input where I felt needed. Later on in the group we had to assign ourselves job roles. I was director, Becky was the camera man and then Mark and Emily were playing our characters. Nick later joined the group as another actor when we couldn’t get the original person. Nick then carried on being in our group and edited the same footage. We also had to Production. We faced a few problems when filming, such as the camera lens wasn’t focused in enough which then led to some shorts being blurry. This has actually had a big impact on my film I feel as for the first scene shot 1 when the actors are walking down the hill, their facial features are obscured and blurry. We didn’t have the chance to re-shoot this shot as the members we needed were off. I’ve had to try and work around it but I still feel it’s extremely noticeable. I think over all as a group we could have worked harder when it came to filming. Members of the group were off often on filming days. We still had reshoots to do so have to cut our film short and not film the ending. If I was to improve anything it would be to have the actors wearing different clothes as I don’t think they worked very well with the genre as they were maybe too modern.
• 2.
  When it cameto continuity, I think it worked out quite well as every time we filmed we used the same clothes, the only problem we did face with this was the weather change as one day it would be dry and then the other it would be raining. However we found once we turned the film to black and white and looked at it on Premier, it really wasn’t that noticeable. Post-production. Looking at my final edit footage, I see that the composition of the film as a whole could have been a lot better, due to the weather change, the lighting varies throughout. At the start we had a few problems with the camera shots being too mid shot and cutting out the actors heads, however in the end I think we got the shots just right and overall it worked well. I think this was just because we hadn’t had a lot of experience with DSLR cameras before. At first I wasn’t very confident using Premier as I’d forgot the basics but once I’d remembered them and got to grips with the editing effects, I was fine. I used the cross dissolve and dip to black most as I felt that fitted more with the genre of the film, as it’s quite an old setting I didn’t want to use anything too obvious as that’s not what films looked like in the olden days. In the end I only used two effects as I didn’t feel any more were needed as I had shown the passing of time already. The effects I used were quite simple and the only reason I used them was to show a passing of time as my film is a short film so I couldn’t move the camera. I felt I understood what I had to do a lot better now as I’ve had previous experience on Premier. After I’d edited the film in Premier and done the final edit, I then had to open my work in Adobe After Effects to add the old film style effect. I played around with adjusting the lighting and colour correction, by doing this I could add different shade tints to the film. Because it’s an old film I also wanted it to be quite grainy and have the line going across the film. By doing this I think I succeeded in making it look like an old film. I had some trouble when it came to finding an audio track for my film. In the end I chose a Charlie Chaplin audio track from the film Circus. I felt this fit the theme of my film well, silly, upbeat and careless. When I came to downloaded it, the first few sites I used to convert it to mp3 didn’t work so I had to search for another. When I’d downloaded it I re-opened my edited adobe after effects film and dragged the audio to the audio bar and then re-rendered it. When I went to watch my finished film edit, I noticed the audio wasn’t playing. So I then had to reopen the finished film on Premier, re add the music and then render it again. When this was rendered I then had to reopen it in After Effects and render it out. Then both the film and music worked together. I then uploaded the final film to YouTube and Blogger.
• 3.
  I found thisprocess quite stressful as I had to keep renaming things and changing programmes. However I am happy with the final outcome. By doing this project I feel I’ve learnt to time scale my work better and now have skills and experience in Adobe After Effects as I hadn’t of used it before this project. I feel if I was to do this again I would do the project as a whole a lot quicker and to a more professional standard as I’m now more comfortable with the editing tools on both Illustrator and Adobe After Effects.