Analysis on my Project

Pre-production

I thought that my pre-prod went very well, I took my time with it and that meant that when it came to filming my piece I ended up already having a very clear vision in mind on how I wanted my film to look and sound. I spent a lot of time on my script making sure that it made sense and was well paced for the 3 minutes we had. 

I did my research and found some techniques that other short films used and I used them to my advantage when it came to filming particular scenes. I also had a very clear vision on how I wanted to characters to behave and react to things in my film. I showed my actors the character piece that I wrote so that they could build on from the characters back story. This was the same with the story board and shot list, I got all of them to look at the shots that I had in mind and we discussed weather or not they were the best plan of action or not, it was very useful to find out what the others on my team thought about some of the things that I had in mind and it ended up looking better than what I originally had in mind. This means that I am probably more of a, 'creative artist' type director like we talked about at the start of the project. Some of the things I wrote about the characters did not go ahead due to the whole film not looking quite right and sometimes making the characters out of place.

Production

When it came to my production the whole team worked very well with each other and we managed to get the whole thing filmed in a decent amount of time they were also very enjoyable to work with and we had a fun and good time shooting. Two out of the three scenes were shot outside so that meant that I did not have to pre book a place to film, this also made it less stressful. 

On the day of filming the weather was nice, it didn't really effect the lighting at all and made the actors and there clothes very easy to see, the setting didn't clash with the actors clothes. We had to set up a room for one of the scenes but this was easy to do and we managed to make the room look as much like a home as possible. The only problem we faced was with the college sliding doors, this kind of ruined the whole home feel and I tried to avoid filming that area as much as I could. 

The mic worked well and picked up everything that it needed to, we managed to work around the cars and the public as much as we could. When we moved from the college to the outside (Scene 2-3) we shot half of scene 3 and then I noticed that the microphone had been off for that entire scene. I had checked before on the two scenes before that but had forgotten on the last. This was a minor set back, however next time I am to shoot my own film or help with someone else's I will always make sure to check that all the equipment is on and is working properly. I think the only major problem we had when filming was the script, some of the actors found it hard to remember certain lines so we had to cut quite a lot, this ended up making the film look a bit jumpy with all of the cuts. Next time I would make sure that I give my script to all of the actors at least a week before so that they can be a bit more confident with their lines so that the cuts would be reduced majorly.

Post-production

When it came to editing, this was really may first ever time editing something with a lot of different shots so I found it quite hard to start off with. However I managed to get my head around the software, I experimented a lot with what certain things did so my audio/video and I ended up using some of these tools that premiere offered.

I think one of the most annoying things that I had to deal with is that, when we were filming we did not notice that the aspect ratio on the camera was set to a lower setting than usual. This ended up making the whole piece look a little more unprofessional. Ed tried to help me with my problem and we ended up adding bars around the top and the bottom of the video, this did not fully solve the problem but it did make it look a bit better. Next time I will make sure that the cameras aspect ratio is to the right setting and that everything looked up to par. 

We had shot a lot meaning that it took me quite a long time to go through all of the recorded footage. If I went to shot next time I would make it clear that what was being filmed as alright for the final cut, maybe I could do this by saying something after a recording has gone successful.

Conclusion

To conclude I thought that my whole project went well, there were a few minor and some major draw backs but I managed to overcome them and make a film that I am quite proud of. I think if I was to make another film I would defiantly make sure that I am fine with everything before I click film because I think the actual production side of things went the worst for me. I would also reduce the amount the characters have to say so that it doesn't become to script heavy like I thought this project came out as. Now that I know what I'm doing I will defiantly be more confident in the future when it comes to filming.

After looking at Jules film I have gathered a few things that worked quite well in his piece that I could incorporate in my project next time. One of these things is using no background music when something important is going on, for example in my project in scene two I could have cut the music off entirely when Jerry enters the room to create a bit more tension. Jules also used a variety of different shots in the end scene to create tension, if I had done this in my last scene I think that it would have had a bigger impact on the audience. Like Rory mentioned in him peer assessment I think that my project could have featured more shots for the same sorts of reasons as he stated.