Today I uploaded our film onto the blog.
I am impressed with the final result of our film, but feel it could have been longer and contained better scenes if we hadnt had as many disruptions.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Friday, 23 April 2010
Evaluation
Creative Process
For my Film Project I chose to create a short film in the style of a post apocalyptic thriller.
The creative process of the film took a lot longer than initially planned, with lots of problems and disruptions to our schedules. Although this made it hard to film within our time constraints, it was beneficial to our film, as we had time to change our narrative and improve on it.
The first step to creating our film was Genre Research, our genre was the Post-Apocalyptic Thriller, this was a great help to our creative project as it gave me a greater understanding into how the film should be made to fit the genre, and how the narrative should flow within the film.
Within my group consisting of Myself and Benjamin Underwood, we thought for a considerable amount of time about which features of the post apocalyptic genre would appeal to our audience.
With the Aims & Context created it gave me a clearer idea of how the film needed too look, with lots of long eerie shots, close ups and eerie music, and we needed to give the impression that our character was alone in the world, which was a very difficult task, with only specific times in which we were able to film without being interrupted. Although it was a difficult task we managed to achieve our task of a convincing film with only one character. Another useful addition to our creative process was our storyboard, as it showed Ben & myself what the project would look like in a film context. We then turned the Storyboard into an Animatic, this involves taking photos of your proposed scene, and describing timings and character actions, this was very helpful as it helped establish what the film would look like in motion and helped to narrow out any scenes that would not fit well with our narrative.
Within the creative process we encountered a number of issues, firstly, our only actor had a noticeable hair cut, which meant we had to start production again, from the very beginning, this was a major set back as some of our initial shots were ideal, but we overcame this when we shot the second set of scenes the following week, this added a lot more variation to our shots and made a vast improvement on the film. The second problem we encountered was that we found some of the shots impossible to achieve and very time consuming, and with a change to the storyboard we found that the shots we altered we’re still as good as the originally planned shots.
After our film was complete, we uploaded the film onto Adobe Premiere editing suites and began to edit all of our shots together, the editing was the most important part of the process, as the way a film is edited gives it a distinct impression on how it should be perceived.
The techniques used in our film are used in such a way to give off the impression that our character is alone in the world, the first of these techniques is the House scene, in which our character is seen in various locations around his house, interacting with his family members which the audience knows are dead, but he does not, this is almost ironic as the soundtrack at the beginning of the film is very happy and gives off a false impression of the film. We used many close up shots in the house scene, this gave a sense of isolation, and the fact the house was deathly quiet added to this mood.
For the next scene, The College scene, we was finding it difficult to film the travel process without seeing people in the background, so we used a fade-in fade-out technique showing the college is desolate and empty, with an eerie soundtrack to go along.
We tried to make the college look as empty and creepy as possible by using cantered angle shots, high angle shots and long tracking shots to emphasise the isolation of our protagonist.
The rate stretch tool came in very handy towards the end of our project, with the final scene in slow motion, in which our protagonist finally realises what has happened and has the flashbacks. I believe the slow motion gives a sense of realisation and was the best way to portray this.
My role as director was a crucial role, I set up the shots, picked out locations and for the second half of the process, when Ben was unavailable, edited the sequences. I believe my role as Director was successful and the camerawork and acting were both worthy efforts due to my input as director and obviously Bens camerawork.
I believe my target audience will view this as a post apocalyptic film, who prefer a more thoughtful, intelligent film rather than a high octane action film. The narrative involves you emotionally in the film and we are able to empaphise with the protagonist. My aim was to use what I learned in my first year of Film Studies and bring it into this year to make a successful short film extract, which I believe has been achieve through mine and bens efforts.
There are however a few things which I would change if I was to do this film again. Firstly, plan ahead. Although our planning was good at first, it fell apart when problems arose, so planning is definitely crucial when trying to film, and it is also crucial to stick to your planning.
Secondly, I would use an experienced actor, although my actors skills weren’t terrible, his lack of emotion and stage presence were a definite hindrance whilst trying to film.
Thirdly, the lack of communication between myself, Ben and my actor was the greatest problem we had, with our actor having 2 haircuts in the process of filming.
In conclusion, I do believe my film has succeeded in what we set out to achieve, and is definitely convincing as a Post Apocalyptic Thriller.
For my Film Project I chose to create a short film in the style of a post apocalyptic thriller.
The creative process of the film took a lot longer than initially planned, with lots of problems and disruptions to our schedules. Although this made it hard to film within our time constraints, it was beneficial to our film, as we had time to change our narrative and improve on it.
The first step to creating our film was Genre Research, our genre was the Post-Apocalyptic Thriller, this was a great help to our creative project as it gave me a greater understanding into how the film should be made to fit the genre, and how the narrative should flow within the film.
Within my group consisting of Myself and Benjamin Underwood, we thought for a considerable amount of time about which features of the post apocalyptic genre would appeal to our audience.
With the Aims & Context created it gave me a clearer idea of how the film needed too look, with lots of long eerie shots, close ups and eerie music, and we needed to give the impression that our character was alone in the world, which was a very difficult task, with only specific times in which we were able to film without being interrupted. Although it was a difficult task we managed to achieve our task of a convincing film with only one character. Another useful addition to our creative process was our storyboard, as it showed Ben & myself what the project would look like in a film context. We then turned the Storyboard into an Animatic, this involves taking photos of your proposed scene, and describing timings and character actions, this was very helpful as it helped establish what the film would look like in motion and helped to narrow out any scenes that would not fit well with our narrative.
Within the creative process we encountered a number of issues, firstly, our only actor had a noticeable hair cut, which meant we had to start production again, from the very beginning, this was a major set back as some of our initial shots were ideal, but we overcame this when we shot the second set of scenes the following week, this added a lot more variation to our shots and made a vast improvement on the film. The second problem we encountered was that we found some of the shots impossible to achieve and very time consuming, and with a change to the storyboard we found that the shots we altered we’re still as good as the originally planned shots.
After our film was complete, we uploaded the film onto Adobe Premiere editing suites and began to edit all of our shots together, the editing was the most important part of the process, as the way a film is edited gives it a distinct impression on how it should be perceived.
The techniques used in our film are used in such a way to give off the impression that our character is alone in the world, the first of these techniques is the House scene, in which our character is seen in various locations around his house, interacting with his family members which the audience knows are dead, but he does not, this is almost ironic as the soundtrack at the beginning of the film is very happy and gives off a false impression of the film. We used many close up shots in the house scene, this gave a sense of isolation, and the fact the house was deathly quiet added to this mood.
For the next scene, The College scene, we was finding it difficult to film the travel process without seeing people in the background, so we used a fade-in fade-out technique showing the college is desolate and empty, with an eerie soundtrack to go along.
We tried to make the college look as empty and creepy as possible by using cantered angle shots, high angle shots and long tracking shots to emphasise the isolation of our protagonist.
The rate stretch tool came in very handy towards the end of our project, with the final scene in slow motion, in which our protagonist finally realises what has happened and has the flashbacks. I believe the slow motion gives a sense of realisation and was the best way to portray this.
My role as director was a crucial role, I set up the shots, picked out locations and for the second half of the process, when Ben was unavailable, edited the sequences. I believe my role as Director was successful and the camerawork and acting were both worthy efforts due to my input as director and obviously Bens camerawork.
I believe my target audience will view this as a post apocalyptic film, who prefer a more thoughtful, intelligent film rather than a high octane action film. The narrative involves you emotionally in the film and we are able to empaphise with the protagonist. My aim was to use what I learned in my first year of Film Studies and bring it into this year to make a successful short film extract, which I believe has been achieve through mine and bens efforts.
There are however a few things which I would change if I was to do this film again. Firstly, plan ahead. Although our planning was good at first, it fell apart when problems arose, so planning is definitely crucial when trying to film, and it is also crucial to stick to your planning.
Secondly, I would use an experienced actor, although my actors skills weren’t terrible, his lack of emotion and stage presence were a definite hindrance whilst trying to film.
Thirdly, the lack of communication between myself, Ben and my actor was the greatest problem we had, with our actor having 2 haircuts in the process of filming.
In conclusion, I do believe my film has succeeded in what we set out to achieve, and is definitely convincing as a Post Apocalyptic Thriller.
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