Evaluation:

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.