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.
