evaluation

For this project we have created a short film. We started the process by doing some individual research, looking at short films and researching directors. We then created our individual proposal. My proposal was about a college student exploring the college and revealing a secret about the college and its staff. We then were put into groups and we decided which proposal we wanted to do. We decided to do a short film about a college student having his bag stolen and he chases the thief around the streets but eventually loses him. The thief opens the bag and the bag lights up.

For the first few lessons we watched a lot of short films and learned some new techniques like cross cutting editing. We watched different films some with dialogue and some with no dialogue at all showing that we can still make a good film with no dialogue. I didn't use any of the short films as inspiration when coming up with the idea for my film.

For the planning we knew the basics of what we wanted to do, We wasn't too sure about the locations we were going to use. We filled out all of the paper work that was needed, we knew all of the props we needed to use, It didn't take us long to create the storyboard since we knew all of the shots we were going to do. All of the research we did was primary research we did not use the internet or anything else to help us plan our film. We went out to find the locations and also in other lessons when we were out we found locations and thought it was a good place to do a certain scene. We had to fill out a health and safety form agreeing not to do certain things that could be dangerous. We filled out a location recce so detailing what the location was like. We had no issues dealing with private property or anything. The only issue with it being a public face there is traffic and a lot of people in the scenes. Also there would be a lot of noise but that could be edited out in the editing. We also put people in charge of what they needed to bring in, Like the props, booking the camera out, bringing the SD card. This worked well since we didn't forget anything.

The equipment we used on the day was, a camera, a tri-pod, SD card, we also used a simple bag as a prop. The filming went well however on the first time we had off stead in so we weren't allowed to go off and film we all had to stick together, This delayed our filming a lot since we had to go to other people's locations and we weren't going to use them locations so we had to wait until we went to a place we could use. Also we had to be careful on some scenes because there was cars around that also delayed some of the filming because we had to move out of the way. We had bad timing on the first day of filming and we ended up filming at break in the courtyard at college so it was pretty busy and there was a lot of people around so we had to wait for them to pass before we could start filming.

In the editing first we put all the shots in so we could see what we liked, what we want to take out and what we need to retake, We did a quick skeleton edit after the first day of filming so we knew what shots we still needed to take, after the second day we decided it was too short so we wanted to add some more shots. We started to play with the effects. We used the dip into black so the beginning would look better. We also flipped a couple of shots and spent a lot of the lesson cleaning up the work making sure it looked good. We added some of the music in, we thought it worked well with the shots.

If I was to do this project again I would have spent more time trying out different shots so we have a wide range to choose from, We stuck to the original idea and we didn't try anything else, if we had more time I would of tried out different shots at different locations. I would of also tried out different edits in the editing part, we stuck to the basics that we have used before we should of looked at different edits that we haven't used to see if they would work well. Overall I am pleased with how the film turned out.

Short film idea

My Film would be set in the college and a student who gets lost arrives at a secret room which looks like it has been abandoned. The student would reveal a secret about the staff at the college. I dont know what kind of props would be used it depends what is available at the time and what we can fit into the story. There only needs to be one actor or maybe more if we have one of the staff confront the student however this will be harder to shoot since we cant really have someone play an adult.

I am not sure what the student would reveal yet and idea I have had is that someone in the college is hiding evidence of a criminal act in the abandoned area of the college,