MOVING IMAGE PRODUCTION NARRATIVE MODULE
EVALUATION
PROFORMA
YOUR
EVALUATION MUST BE 2000 WORDS IN LENGTH AND MUST ADDRESS THE POINTS BELOW - PLEASE
NOTE THIS IS AN INDIVIDUAL PIECE OF WORK.
1.
CRITICALLY REFLECT ON YOUR FINISHED FILM AND IT'S STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES -
ANALYSE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT YOU INTENDED TO DO AND WHAT YOU HAVE
ACTUALLY ACHIEVED. (APPROX 600 WORDS)
If I was to pick out the
strengths of our film I would say that it is very visually appealing and the
story is quite simple but effective. First of all with the aesthetic side of
the film I would say that some of the locations were very nice to look at
especially the city centre in the evening and the park scenes. When the visuals
of the film were at their strongest was when the angles and shots were not
predictable and framed the actress and the location really well, I found it
noticeable which shots had been storyboarded and which ones were simply there
for coverage and with better planning all of the shots could have been much more
interesting. We also got a lot of good cutaways to show how the things inside
the protagonists head differed from what was her reality and this was an
intention that we had from the start but had not really described to each other
in very much detail how it would work visually therefore it was a bit lackluster when it came to the final film. Our intention was also to have a
very strong sound design as we wanted to do a lot of jarring and experimental
things with the sound of the film but in the final film the sound design was
very disappointing. Nobody In the group was a dedicated sound recorder/editor
as one of their choices and the person who decided to do it clearly wished they
had chosen not to. The sounds of animals over aggressive youths attacking the
protagonist worked quite well but could have been a lot richer and more varied
but the worst thing with the sound was how the ambient tracks were sometimes
non-existent and foley sounds were sparsely spread out around the film,
sometimes not making any sense. Examples of this would be breathing going from
really low down In the mix like it should be to randomly spiking up and being
noticeably loud and adding the same really heavy footstep to every single
characters footsteps even though it did not even sound like a footstep. (It was
mistaken for fireworks when three people walked at the same time, no footstep
sounds would have been much better in this scene) I would probably say that the
biggest pitfall in the film is this poor sound design and I would prefer to
have had it a silent film if possible as it really made the story world hard to
believe as the sound simply did not make any sense. I think a strength of the
film was also the performance of the actress and I believe we managed to convey
her mental Instability quite well as she believes herself to be a child within
her own mind but she is in fact an adult. Little child-like quirks and
mannerisms aided in making this more believable. Unfortunately we do not tell
the audience what her condition is at any point and I do not think it was
possible to read between the lines and figure out what it was as it is
something quite rare and technical that most of the public are not aware of. (Our
intention was never to raise awareness but any kind of awareness would have
been helpful) Another weakness to the film was the slightly dull narrative in
which not much actually happens, there are a few dramatic parts of the film but
on the whole the journey is not that interesting. The ending is quite open as
It allows the audience to feel the same sort of escapism as the protagonist by
putting them in a point of view of her on the swing and then ending on a freeze
frame where no peril can be seen even though the girl is technically lost and needs
to get home.
2. REVIEW THE PROCESS OF MAKING THE WORK AND WHAT
YOU HAVE LEARNT FROM IT. (APPROX 400 WORDS)
During the process of
making this film I would say that the biggest learning experience for me has
been that without proper planning it is really easy to get behind schedule. We
started with quite good storyboarding for each scene but we did not have a producer
on most if not all of the shoots and because of that we had no production
schedule or anything of the sort. This meant that everybody got very restless
and just wanted to rush through the filming as fast as possible. Also in a few
parts of the film the storyboarding was more sparse and vaguely covered the
scene therefore we had to get extra coverage on location meaning that I had to
go out on my own and pick up bits of coverage with the actress that we needed
to make the narrative make sense. I have also found that during filming it
helps to follow professional practices because a lot of times I would be
filming something and it would be working very well (for example a long take of
antagonists moving towards the camera) and the sound recordist would suddenly
shout "Cut" repeatedly if they had the levels wrong ruining the whole
take even if we did not need sound for that part, this often got quite
frustrating and made us end up rushing to get a re take and it would not look
as good. I have also learned during the process of making the film that
dressing appropriately is very important as I had to get some point of view
shots and the cold was forcing me to shiver ruining the take as the camera
shook too much. I would also say that making most of the film at night meant
that I had to get to know the camera settings a lot more (with magic lantern on
the canon 550D) and I have learned to get clear picture without grain in very
dark locations which should be useful in future. It also meant we could get
really aesthetic shots of the city at night increasing the visual aspect of the
film greatly. We also had a lot of filming to do in the city meaning that
members of the public would be moving around us and in shot very often, I would
say that by the end of filming we learned how to be inconspicuous not drawing
too much attention to ourselves and we also learned how to politely tell people
that we were trying to film and divert them behind the shot/camera.
3. DISCUSS YOUR INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTION TO MAKING
THE WORK, YOUR APPROACH TO GROUP WORK AND ANY PROBLEMS OR CHALLENGES YOU
ENCOUNTERED WORKING AS PART OF A TEAM. (APPROX 400 WORDS)
I was the cinematographer
for this film meaning that I filmed everything and worked closely with the
director on every shoot we did (apart from the pick-ups in which I went alone
with the actress) In my approach to the work I mostly had free reign to do
whatever I wanted and follow my storyboards although with some of the shots we
would discuss possible changes or alternatives to the storyboard. I did not
find it much of a challenge working as part of a team as most of the team did
not have much to do and I only really had to work with the director and the
cast on most of the shoots. I did find it frustrating on a few shoots when the
sound recordist kept shouting orders and undermining the director as it was not
only confusing but he would often shout out during filming ruining a take. A
problem we encountered when working as a team was that we all had different
timetables and some of us have jobs meaning that we had issues all getting on
location for each shoot, in fact the producer missed every single shoot. The
way we got around this was changing the script so that we could shoot most of
the film at night, not only meaning we could create a better juxtaposition
between the safety of the day and the perilous night time in the city. The team
had to turn up quite late so it meant that in the night shoots we had to stick
to storyboards and make sure that we were as efficient as possible as people
needed to get back to the train station/home at a reasonable time (for example:
people who needed to catch the last train of the day) We also found that during
filming with a moderately sized team meant that we had to move people, bags and
equipment about every time we wanted to move the camera so that none of the
crew ended up in the shot. We also wanted to get sync sound during the shoot
but the sound recordist did not book out an adapter for the DSLR to connect to
the rifle microphone meaning we had to get a sound recorder and then sync up
the sound in the edit, this gave the editor extra work that was not necessarily
needed.
4. WITH
REFERENCE TO THE TEXTS GIVEN IN SESSIONS AND THE MATERIALS ON THE READING LIST;
REVIEW YOUR APPROACH TO MAKING THE WORK AND LOCATE YOUR PRACTICE WITHIN A
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK. (APPROX 600 WORDS)
In the early stages of the
course we were handed an assignment to go into the city centre and observe
members of the public writing down their traits and common practices. Using the
notes we had made about these people we had to create a back story about them
that explained their strange mannerisms. The person I observed was dressed
quite strangely almost child-like and we went with this character for our film.
We had to research into mental conditions that would make somebody act like a
child even though they were clearly an adult and we found that quite rarely
people with severe autism could show these traits. This also led onto us
choosing locations for our film that would show the hypersensitivity to light
that some autistic people could have so that this could be a subtle hint as to
the characters condition. We also had to pick a place where a lot of people
would be moving about but the character would not be able to interact properly
with members of the public so we settled on the city centre near the Christmas
lights. We also used situations that a normal adult would easily be able to
solve in their head but made our character incapable of functioning properly
such as being lost in the city and walking straight past the map of the city;
in fact somebody literally reads the map right in front of her. The film
utilises a lot of point of view and also sort of dream sequence or what is
going on inside the characters mind. This was hard to convey so we had to use
filters and make the stuff inside her head clearly contrast with reality. I
believe it was worth making this effort as it added something to the film
making the whole thing more interesting and helping the audience build a better
emotional relationship with the protagonist. It also served as a way of telling
the audience what the character wants without literally having to tell them
with narration or dialogue which most films would do. In the book film
directing shot by shot: I read about how framing and making certain characters
dominant in the frame can allow the audience to figure out which character is the
prominent character. I used this knowledge to aid me firstly in framing the
main character in the scenes full of people and it was especially useful for
the scene where the main character gets attacked by youths as I purposely made
her the main focus of the shot and then you see the other people in the
background appear with a pull focus. I also used this knowledge to only use the
protagonists point of view as using other peoples point of view confuses the
audience as to who's viewpoint the audience is seeing the film from. I would
say that this film ended up being slightly more experimental than I had first
anticipated from looking at the initial script as the script almost looked like
a documentary of a day in the life of this random girl but by the end of the
film I would say there was a lot more depth due to the experimental style that
we went for. We also added a few different filters and effects onto the footage
for the dream sequences which not only made the audience aware that it was a
dream sequence but also broke up the realism once again leaning the film
towards an experimental style.
