Dear Mother – Short film evaluation.
Introduction:
In the process of making our short film has been both eventful and successful, they have been both eventful and successful for the reasons that we as a group, we have worked very well together whilst planning our pre-production and taking action to film, we were ready to film weeks before the film date so to pass time we finalized our shots and added any additional ideas even though we might not of needed them. As a group we worked very well, every group member constantly had input and I felt as though our film ideas were limitless. Each member of the group I was in had chosen our individual roles towards the near end of our pre-production and the roles taken on by each member was performed to a level of satisfaction.
Pre-Production:
The pre-production stage went amazingly well, the whole process of putting forward ideas for what our three minute short film raised a lot of questions within our group; what would we record that would make sense in three minutes? How would we execute our ideas at equally make sense to the audience viewing our work? And, Would our work be effective enough to get a high grade? As we all equally had questions we met up outside of college to plan our work and as we progressed with our pre-production the questions answered themselves. Meeting up outside of college to plan our work was another strategy used to effectively work together and this helped because I felt that this made us closer as a team. We planned our each element of our pre-production at the same time, for example; we had taken the action to create our storyboard, write our script and finalize our project idea. I put forward the idea that a middle aged man who visually is seemingly looking like he is doing well for himself, as the film continues we should visually show evidence of how bad a day he is having, as the day precedes to continue the characters thoughts get deeper along with his mental state and the selected character having such a bad day he contemplates suicide. We had several discussions of the ending of the short film and as we were to do individual edits we came to an agreement that we were going to have endings which differ therefore whilst filming there would be shots which we may decide to use and there would be shots which we wouldn’t use, we also came to an agreement, for the days during the creation of our short film, if there were any last minute shots that needed taking then we would film when we had the time. We also talked about budgeting if we needed a budget for our film to be spent on props, travel or anything else which money may become an issue but in this talk we decided that the only time money may become an issue is to be used for travel, travel wasn’t much of an issue. Another conversation we had were what we had access to for example office space, would we be allowed to film in public sectors such as train stations and hospitals, the limitations of filming such as would some shots work with the locations that we have chosen as a group. Also as some of the locations were in public would pedestrians get in the way of filming, if that is the case how would we prevent this? Our answer was simply we would film in an open space where the public would be instantly notified that we are filming or filming when there aren’t people around to help make our shots effective.
As we were planning our work I mentally planned how I liked my final shot to look, as I thought out media techniques I had a range of techniques I liked to use such as adding sound bridges, the types of shots id like to use such as over the shoulder shots and long shots and also planning how I wanted my short film to turn out I thought using an asynchronous technique would be effective, it would have been effective because I believe it brings realism to a scene and for the fact I haven’t used it before I think its something new and is a good technique to use in film. As the pre-production went well we were ready to film, the planning process was easy as we met up outside college we were confident as a team to film.
Filming:
The filming process was eventful; I found it fun and challenging at the same time. I found it challenging because to get my thoughts of how I planned my work mentally to actually be processed on the camera it was tricky in first instance but as I got the hand of what I was doing the task became a slight bit easier. I found it eventful because I had a lot of fun and filming with likeminded people and to have fun whilst working I found it easier to work as part of a team and I felt that the filming went fluently. There were a few error’s we made during pre-production that we decided to leave during filming, for example; whilst filming we had our storyboard on hand, as we reviewed our storyboard as to what shots we need to complete, there were a few shots we decided as a group to leave out as we felt that they were irrelevant to our work and neither one of us would of used the footage. At times it would have been difficult to film because of location guidelines such as filming outside a hospital, it was hard to get permission and this prevented us from achieving the shots we wanted so we made do with the resources we had and moved on to other locations.
We as a group were supposed to film over a four day period, Monday and Tuesday for two weeks, as progress was good, we finished filming in the first and began to edit our work during the time other groups were still filming, there were some shots on the second Monday we needed to re-capture due to personal faults such as the camera angle not being straight enough. We soon and very easily fixed this problem and were on our way ready to edit.
Editing:
The editing process was challenging, eventful and fun. Taking on the bull by its horns and putting my mental thoughts to action by creating a sequence I imagined. To juxtapose each clip to create a matching sequence that tells a story was challenging, by using video transitions, sound effects and using audio recoded on the days of filming the task became easier. After I got the hang of editing it became a fun task. I did not request much help from my teacher other than requesting help with how my audio sounds and the how my voiceover should sound to the audience, at first my voiceover was my character how upset he was with life but the issue lied with there was no root reason for my character to contemplate suicide, I hate talk with my tutor and he gave me a range of options I could use, my final choice was to record a letter to the characters deceased mother.
As I completed my video edit the only thing that was left to complete was my voiceover and that took me around ten to fifteen minutes to record. Once my voiceover was completed I imported the sound clip on my computer and uploaded the audio into premiere and by using the razor tool I cut the audio clip and placed it in areas that I needed.
Once I finalized my work, I was ready to export my work, I also asked classmates as well as teachers for their honest feedback. Whilst exporting my video I made sure my export settings were correct by setting my video to H.264 and 1080p.
What went well:
I felt that during the process of filming we worked well as a team and everybody who was in our group had creative input, which was a major advantage for everybody in our group. We all got on and worked well together, equally we all had our set goals of what image we wanted and had no objections to additional ideas.
What I would improve on:
One thing I would improve on is whist filming, I would like to be more diverse, by this I mean I would like to use my creativity to its maximum capacity and whilst filming I would like to film more of a variety of perspective shots to grasp the scenery to help create scenery.
Feedback:
I also received feedback from classmates as well as teachers and have recorded them onto an audio file format by using my cell phone, they’ve had mixed opinions of my video.
ondreroach 