Thursday 8 May 2014

Evaluation

For the documentary project my group worked around the idea of a homeless football club that we had found in Liverpool, this was quite different to our initial plan to do a more experimental documentary instead we followed a more standard documentary style with a lot of single person interviews. We didn’t want to limit our audience in anyway as the point of film was to both raise awareness that such an amazing project was happening and to try and change the stereotype of homeless people, that said a younger audience may not grasp the full extent of what this project is about and for that reason I would say our target audience was anyone of adolescence or older. We tried to move away from having the film target simply male audiences due to it being football by including members of the women’s football club in the documentary.

I have mixed feelings about the finished project as a whole particularly because as the editor of the group I feel like I could have done better putting it together. The biggest problem I have with the project is at the start where it cuts straight to black several times, the initial plan for this was to have a montage of training footage which would fade to black after each shot and then quickly fade back in while a montage of voice was played over to intrigue the audience. I feel like this would have worked really well in gaining the audience’s attention but our director decided that he preferred the direct cut to black and was rather stubborn on the point the result is a confusing first couple of seconds where the audience aren’t sure if there is a problem with the video or if it is meant to be like that. I would say a positive for the film for a large part is the cinematography; there is some really good footage in the film that makes it pleasing visually. I also think the film is easy to follow while also intriguing to watch, we made the decision to hold off revealing it was a homeless football club until about half way through the film this means that the audience’s opinion of the players won’t be tarnished by their ideas of a stereotypical homeless person instead they hear what the players have managed to accomplish and then realise that they have accomplished that while also being homeless.

The idea for this documentary came about fairly later into the project’s planning stage and so we didn’t have much time to get everything organised as much as we would have liked, thankfully we had a strong producer who managed to save what she could of our planning stage but despite this I still feel like this was something that impacted on the finished project as some members of the group weren’t fully sure what sort of footage they should be getting. That said this didn’t impact so much on or organisation while we were on location in Liverpool as thankfully the football clubs staff were very supportive of our idea and really helped us make the most of our time there. Due to this slight confusion I as the group’s editor had a lot of pointless footage to trawl through when it came to the editing stage. This then combined with the major problem our project faced which was our footage had to be continuously rendered in the editing software, which even the technicians couldn’t fix, although this didn’t impact on my editing skills much it did add a great length of time to the editing process which meant we had little time to make changes. Another problem we faced is that our initial sound editor was unable to work on the project during the time when the editing process began this was due to family reasons that we had been aware of at the start of the project, thankfully we had another sound design member in our group that stepped in and saved the sound for our project.

From this project I’ve learnt now more than ever the importance of planning especially if I’m filming on location, there were a lot of moments where we got lucky for some reason or another which I feel could have been avoided if we had organised things more in advance. A specific skill I’ve learnt this project is that of colour correcting in Final Cut Pro, this was something I had never really done for and I now feel like I have a fairly good handle on it which will allow me to improve my skills in this area further in the future. I also discovered that I am fairly good at lip syncing audio which is another skill I feel will come in handy in the future.

In terms of my team for this project, it is probably a team I’m not likely to work with again. There was no problem with people not contributing as everyone felt strongly about the idea and contributed as much as they could. As I mentioned before there were problems with organisation that made such a time restricted project more stressful than it should have been, the producer and I really struggled to get the rest of the group to the right locations at times and we also faced problems of equipment not being charged or the cameras’ memory cards being full while we were on location. In all I feel that communication was a large problem for everyone in my group including myself as most people seemed to have different ideas as to what the finished project we going to look like and the meanings it would convey. I am already aware that my communication skills are one of the weakest areas in my teamwork skills and I aim to improve this for my next project.

For my drama project the idea we wanted to create was something akin to a classic 1950’s noir film, I say akin because one of our main influences was ‘Sin City’. The film will follow Johnny a down on his luck private investigator, Johnny is hired by Rita to follow her husband and discover if he is cheating unfortunately Johnny becomes obsessed with Rita. This results in the death of Rita’s husband and the death of either Rita or Johnny though we left the ending ambiguous with the screen going black followed by the sound of a gunshot. Hopefully our audience find the film as suspenseful and entertaining as we hoped it is, if we’ve done our job right the audience will also see how Rita’s character goes from a nervous stereotypical woman to a colder more in control woman that are commonly found in noir films. Our main idea was to show Rita rise in power by the end to become that woman, while in contrast the audience see Johnny slowly lose control and become more unstable. I would like to say due to its style and genre the film would appeal to older audiences but I feel that the use of younger actors may limit our audience to a teenager to young adult audience.

I’m really proud of the finished work as a whole, I feel like the black and white noir style we went for really creates the idea of a dystopian world that is common theme within the noir genre while the splash of red through the ‘Sin City’ effect highlights the theme of desire that we used as Johnny’s motive. There are a few continuity errors in the film that we have tried to hide due to mistakes made while filming but those are just minor flaws. One thing I have begun to question is whether or not it was wise to show that both characters have guns at the end of the film as I feel that this takes away from the shock of the gun shot at the end. I’m also wondering if we made the right choice with the actors, I’m not complaining about the actors as like Amy said they were perfect for the role but I’ve begun to think that maybe if we’d had older actors it would have given the film a grittier feel that would fit with the noir genre. That said the voice over was without question the right way to go in my opinion our actor Matt nailed the voice that we wanted which adds age to his character, it also gives an insight into Johnny’s character as the audience only really hear his thoughts and not what he says during the actual events.

As the sound recordist my main role in this project was to record the voice over but I also made sure to record any improvised dialogue that the actors did while we were filming and I record on set sounds like footsteps and general movement. This is because we felt the film would be kind of unnerving if there were no sounds to match the characters movements and actions. I also acted as an extra in our restaurant scene so that it didn’t look staged. The end result in my opinion fits pretty well with how I visualised it would look although I would have preferred to have found an actual office space for the office scenes. The set for the office scenes was the biggest problem we faced as despite all our searching we couldn’t find one available to use so as a result we used Chris’ flat and got creative with the lighting. This meant we had to abandon some ideas we had for the set design which was unfortunate but not disastrous.

This project has really taught me the value of good lighting on a set, much of our time and effort on this project was spent trying to get the lighting right in the office scenes but I believe the end results really show the worth of this. I had been unsure of lighting at the start of this project but I feel like I’ve got a much better understanding of it now and more knowledge on how to better set up lights. This is also the first project I’ve worked on that is set in a different time period and I now realise the amount of work involved in such projects, we had some difficulty sorting our props and set designs as we had to remove anything that wouldn’t fit in the era which also meant we had very limited props to use. We were fairly lucky with the actors having the right sort of costumes already for the era the film was set in but in future I’ll be aware of how much planning I will have to undergo in order to do a film set in a specific time.

Although we picked a particularly difficult project to undertake I do believe that I had a strong team to attempt this with. We were all very passionate about this idea from the first meeting and everyone has had a large contribution in getting the project to fit our vision. Compared to the documentary project communication between group members has been really strong this time and we have had many meetings to discuss ideas and problems. A problem with my team work skills would be at first I wasn’t very confident and suggesting my own ideas but as I continued working with the group I quickly grew more confident at suggesting my own ideas for the project. I’m already aware that my confidence can be a bit of issue when it comes to communicating with my groups but I am working on this by making sure I communicate more in the first meeting of each project I’m in so that I get used to the idea of communicating quicker. My strength in terms of team work is that as my role was a large part for this project I was always helping others with their roles and helping getting the set ready.

Monday 5 May 2014

Post-Production

My role for this production finished when we finished filming and as such I haven’t really been a part of the post-production. That said I have checked in occasionally to see how the project is progressing and to make sure that they don’t need any help. I know Beth is having a bit of trouble with some of the clips after she’s turned them black and white, there have also been a few problems with the ‘Sin City’ effect as for some reason the walls of the diner have patches of grey on them when this effect is applied. I know she is working as hard as she can to try and remedy these problems before the deadline and I have suggested that if shove comes to push we could just make the diner scenes completely black and white.
One of the problems our Editor is Facing


One of the shots that has come out well
Despite the problems the overall structure and look of the film is looking really good, Beth and Ellie have done a remarkable job getting everything together ready for our deadline.

Monday 14 April 2014

Second Day of Filming

The second day of filming has gone as smoothly as the first day of filming, there was a slight change of plan as the manager of the diner asked if we could move everything forward one hour but this didn’t massively affect our film. There was also a slight change of roles this time as I had to play an extra in the film Beth had to take over with the sound recording as obviously I couldn’t record and be in shot at the same time. Overall I’m happy with how the filming has gone.

My role did return to normal on the second half of the shoot though as we moved on to record the staircase scene and the voice over, it was only during the voice over that we realised there was some static coming through on the recording. We are hoping that this doesn’t affect the film too much as it has gone undetected until now and if it is only for the voice over we may be able to solve it in post-production.

Friday 11 April 2014

First Day Filming & Gathering Sounds


Our first day of filming has gone incredibly well, although we had a fair few worries when we realised we didn’t have nearly as much space as we thought we did we worked around that as much as we could. Our actors really did suit the characters as much as Amy had said they did, I’m looking forward to see how it looks after Post-production. Although we weren’t recording the voice over this time, I did make sure to record most scenes so that we sync sounds just in case Ellie wanted to play around with them a bit. We all chipped in together when it came to setting up the set and thanks to the organisation of our producer we all knew what jobs we had to do and the time limit we had to do them in, my group were highly organised during this filming session and once again I am proud to be a part of this group.

Ellie’s gone over the sound recordings I got during the shoot and has highlighted what sounds we still need to get, we have discussed which sounds we can get outside of the shoot and which ones we could probably create ourselves.

Myself, Chris and Ellie have been out recording the sounds we could get outside of Sundays filming; these sounds included things such as street and restaurant atmos sounds and the sound of a door opening.

Tuesday 8 April 2014

Last Meeting

The first day of filming is quickly approaching and we still don’t have an office set ready, despite all our best efforts we have been unable to acquire one. As a result we have decided to film in Chris’ flat hopefully with some clever camera and lighting placement we can disguise it as an office space. We have had one final meeting where we have finalised some details and finished up some last pre-production details such as going over the developed storyboards and writing up a sound list for what sounds we need for each shot. We’ve also gone over the floor plans Chris drew up and so we were all clear where everything was meant to be.

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Gathering Props

We all spent the weekend gathering the finishing touches needed for our production, this included gathering different props that we still hadn’t acquired for the shoot. We also continued to search for an office space to film in, as we were told the studio wouldn’t work for what we wanted. Alongside the missing office set we also encountered some bad news of our lead actor may not be able to film on the days we had scheduled anymore, there are two possible alternative dates which may work for him that he is checking at the minute. On the bright side we have received news that we have equipment for filming on the 13th.

Friday 28 March 2014

Storyboards


With a location and script in mind we met up again to start work on the storyboards, we decided the best way to do these would be for us to split up into pairs and work on different scenes and then Chris and Kirean to go over them again at a later date and polish them up. During this meeting we also sent a list of equipment to Debbie as she said she would try to get us permission to have equipment over the Easter holiday