First Filming Evaluation - Final Film

Hello!

As you know we have been panning to create and produce the beggining of a film. Recently we went out and did the filming and thought it went well. 

Main Strengths:

• Creativity - We had a few shots, the river shot in particular, that were impossible to shoot. The river shot was impossible to use because the whole of the local area had flooded and therefore ever puddles or rivers that were approachable did not work because the water was very dirty and therefore no reflection could be seen. However, we over came this by looking at our back up ideas for shoots and using our creativity to produce a new shot. We had to do this without thinking or planning it before hand which was a challenge and also lost us a bit of time. However we did well and managed to film another idea to replace the one that would not work. This was a massive strength as it meant our final product wouldn't be affected too much.

• Time Planning - Another strength was our time planning/schedule. Because of this it meant that we got the filming done when we needed to and could effectively use our actors time. It also meant that each shot was on schedule and we moved locations on time.

However, after the filming we decided to look back at the footage before our editing stage to make sure it was all okay. This is when we realised our main weaknesses:

• Rushing - As we were focused on keeping to a schedule we rushed our filming. On a few of the shots we didn't check them first we just presumed that they would be fine and moved on. However we were wrong because it left us with shots that could have been easily improved and made to look exactly how we wanted.  

• Shot Planning - We feel that we did not look at enough openings in our genre to get some ideas about what to include. Because of this, although in our heads the shots looked brilliant, the shots that we filmed were very boring. When we thought about putting it together we realised that there wasn't really anything to grab our audience's attention.

• Basics Loss - Because we were so focused on our storyline and the legal paperwork ect, we forgot about the basics. We realised that we didn't have any techniques that we learnt at the start of Media AS in our filming (shot reverse shot, match on action, behind shoulder shot). This again, made our filming and ideas seem very poor when we watched them back.

Becaue of this we decided that we need to sit down and think up some more ideas. Although we will keep the story line exactly the same, we think we need to think of some more exciting shots to ensure that our audience enjoy it and want to watch the rest of the film, while still keeping a few of our ideas.

This time we will:

• Watch some openings to get some inspiration and ideas. Although we do not want to copy any openings, we definitely need to get some ideas that we could use in our film, however with a different and unique twist.

• Also, we will take our time with the shots. We will book our actor in for more time to ensure that there is no need to rush our shots. Also we will review each shot straight after it is taken to consider whether we need to shoot it again or if it can be improved.

• Another think we will do is ensure that we get basic filming techniques in. We will include shot reverse shot, over shoulder shot, match on action and 180 degree rule in our filming to ensure that it is seen as good filming and skill.

In the next few days I will be uploading an updated location plan, costume plan and story board as this will be dramatically changing. Also, as we are planning to make our next ideas much more exciting, we will use many more props. Therefore, we will need to create a budget list that will also be uploaded soon.

See you soon.

Evaluation So Far - Final Film

Hello!

We have completed the evaluation of our progress and planning so far. To do this we split it down in to three questions that we asked ourselves. 1. "What did you learn?" 2. "What surprised you?" 3. "How will you use this in your production". Here is our response:

Part 1 - What we learnt: 

The first thing we learnt was that females are more likely to watch a tragedy drama, therefore we only listened to what the females were saying which changed our plans and ideas dramatically.

We learnt that most people we interviewed would prefer a female main character. However, two people said male, therefore we will include a few male characters in the main story line, and base it around the female. Also, out of the people we surveyed, 70% said they wanted a teenager to be a main character. Therefore we will definitely make the main character a teenager. We will also include a victim and a prisoner as they had 10% votes each and we are able to include these characters.

Also, we learnt that the people we interviewed all wanted the film to be set in a small town that’s a real life experience. We think that this would be a good setting because a tragedy drama has to build sympathy for the viewers. Therefore, we are happy with the setting that the audience want.

When we surveyed people, we included the question “What would you prefer the storyline to focus on in a drama film?” The responses were quite equal apart from one, crime solving. 40% chose suicide, 30% said prison and 25% said murder. Therefore, we will include all of these aspects in our storyline, making suicide the main aspect that the story is based around.

We learnt that most of the people we interviewed and spoke to only go to the cinema once of twice a month. This is mostly because of the expense and the other options that there now are such as free streaming. To get around this we will not put our film through the cinema. Instead, we will release it on DVD as a limited edition for a month to get our viewers hooked and make them go out and buy it. Then, after another month we will release it on to free streaming companies.

The last things we learnt is that drama is a very popular genre with our audience. And in drama, tragedy is the favourite subgenre, which is a massive relief.

Part 2 - What surprised us:

The biggest surprise to us is our audience’s cinema habits. We all enjoy going to the cinema and think that once or twice a month was surprising.

The other surprise we had was again, the target audience. We were set on males and had written up a ‘Target Audience Profile’ that we thought was perfect for our movie. However, it just shows how important research is because we were totally wrong! It seems that females would prefer our film much more! Now we look back over our film ideas, this makes sense. In our interviews and questionnaire we found that females wanted it set in a real life situation with a female main character their age. This is because females are much more effected with emotions and therefore would be much more interested in a dramatic, saddening tragic film where they can place themselves as the character and be moved by the film. It is understandable that females and much more likely to want to be moved by a film than males.

Part 3 - How we will use this in our production:

The first thing we changed is our target market, originally we thought males would be more likely to watch a tragedy drama because although they don’t get involved in every day drama as much as females, they prefer eery films that involve a big blow. However, we found out that females would be more likely to watch them as they prefer sad films and it would affect them more.

The second change is our male character. We had planned from the start to have a female character. However, when it came to surveying our audience, although females got the most votes, a male main character was also popular among a particular group of people. As film producers, we want to ensure we suit as much as the female gender as possible. Therefore, we decided to keep our main character as a female, however we have made the male character more of a big character who plays more alongside the main female character and is featured a lot in the film and is a huge part of the story line.

The final main change we have made is the plot line. We originally wanted the plot to be about a prison break. However, when surveying and interviewing our audience, we could that many of them would prefer things like murder and suicide and much deeper things. Therefore, we decided that we would keep a prison break as a part of the story line, however focus it around suicide and incorporate murder. This has dramatically changed our plot line. 

Our next step is create a new Target Audience Profile for our new and improved target audience: females!

See you soon!

Preliminary Task Evaluation

We had great fun making it but of course had some troubles along the way! Here is the evaluation of our task:

I think our main strength is teamwork. We each had our own job in the group and worked well together, helping each other and being loyal to the group by completing the jobs we had to do. I was the camera operator and editor, this meant I had to arrange all of the filming and then put all the clips together to edit the film. I think the hardest part of this was putting the sound effects on. It was a struggle to put edit the sound effects into the film as once I had chosen them, I had to put them into the film so that the sound matched the action. This was tricky because I had to get it just right otherwise it was obviously edited, and this wasn't the look I was going for. Another thing that I found surprisingly difficult was the timeframe. We all planned what we were going to do before going out and doing it, however I had no idea how long it would take us to film all the clips. This is because we needed each clip to be perfect before it could be used, therefore we had to take at least 15 recordings of each shot, which took a very long time!
Another strength is the shots used, we have included Match On Action, Shot Reverse Shot, 180 Degree Rule and Over The Shoulder shots, all used to effect. We use Shot Revers Shot along with 180 Degree Rule for the conversation in our product between Ellie and Beth. We also used Match On Action through pretty much the whole thing, when Ellie is walking to the meeting there are match on actions of her going through doors and up lifts and after the meeting there are match on action shots of her walking down the stairs.

I think our main weakness was the thought process in the planning. Although most of the planning went well, we originally wanted it all to be in a documentary style, however we did not realise how much the environmental noises would effect this. When we tried to film as a documentary, we listened back on some of the clips and realised the amount of noise that was being caused by things such as wind, other people talking, the microphone being fuzzy and more. Our first thoughts were to record the voices separate from the video and edit them in but then we decided that this would be very tricky and as it was our first task, we probably would have struggled with this much editing. Therefore, we put the idea of a documentary on hold and filmed the main chunk as a normal film. This allowed us to edit the sound out and put sound effects in such as doors closing and lifts working, then the little speech that was in the film was inside and so the noise distractions were not too bad. Then we put in our documentary idea at the end as a little add on. We think that this worked really well in the end because the noise distractions (the wind) in the documentary did not sound too bad as it actually fitted in with the documentary style. However, we are still glad we did not do this the whole was through as the distraction noises would have been too much.

Another change we had to make was one of our settings which was Buckingham lay-by. At the time of filming, this lay-by was full and therefore impossible to film walking in! Therefore, we moved to right outside the school, meaning Ellie had to walk round a slight corner and then up the steps, which wasn't too much of a problem in the end.