Reflective Journal

Proposal:

5/3/19

Today I began unit 13, where I had to create a post named ‘Contexts and Critical Perspectives’. This post included the location of my film, along with the purpose and target audience of my film. The target audience that I had previously created during unit 9 was 15-21. I believe I included sufficient reasoning as to why this target audience was suitable for the type of film I wish to create. I do however think that I required a more in depth analysis of all of the possible film festivals that I could enter my film into. This is as I only touched upon a few festivals and their pricing and awards, rather than explaining why they would work best for me and my film. If I was to rewrite this section, I would attempt to include more justifying reasons as to why I personally decided this genre, and how it relates to me.

8/3/19

This is when I started my proposal. The proposal had to include information on the film, what it was and how it was going to be created. This was to demonstrate the idea we had in our head and it made sure that we fully understood what we were doing. The proposal had 3 sections, the first of which being a rationale. The rationale was used to portray why we were inspired to create our project, and what meaning they had. I believe I completed this section well and fully explained my inspirations behind the idea. The second section was aimed to further explain the plot of the film. If I was to do this section again, I would attempt to simplify it in order for it to be clear and make sense to the reader. The final ‘evaluation’ section was used to explain how we are going to create our films, as well as how and when we would complete written work to support it.

Research:

25/4/19

The research phase was a large post consisting of primary and secondary research on techniques, ideas and tutorials. My research was designed to show evidence of how I learned new and relevant techniques to my production, as well as what people believed would work best in my project. For example, I analysed tutorials such as Hollywood lighting techniques and I also completed a photo shoot with this technique. Secondly, I did textual analysis on relevant films such as ‘Taken’ and a few student projects. I believed textual analysis helped me gain an understanding and an insight as to what creates a good drama production. Textual analysis consisted of analysing direction, cinematography, sound and editing. This was all in an aim to get a clear in depth lesson of each aspect of production. This helped me gain inspiration for the style of editing and direction that I would use in production. Overall, I believe that research went well and I gained a lot of techniques and inspiration to commence my own production.

Planning:

The planning process was remarkably simple and quick. The script I developed didn’t take a large amount of time and this resulted in the end product staying within the requested length of 3-5 minutes. The only minor issue with creating the script was how there was more improvised speech than choreographed. This meant that I first had to create a shot list, in order to grasp the basis of where the characters would be and what the general theme of their dialogue would be in each situation. This made the script a quick process. The location recce was also simple due to how I already knew the locations from the proof of concept as well as them being local to me.

Production:

The production spanned over a week to create my film, with multiple problems having to be faced. One of which being equipment malfunction. The cameras quickly died out when filming, to deal with this we kept a spare battery on charge when we were inside the house. When filming outside, we made sure both batteries were fully charged before leaving to shoot the scenes. Another problem was the audio equipment as it would not gain charge or turn on. This had to be overcome by using camera audio as well as having to use music in post production to cover the faults in audio. Apart from this, production ran smoothly, with actors being prepared for each shoot. The canon 800D’s used created great image quality making the cinematography very easy. If I were to produce this again, I would better prepare my equipment booking, and make sure to order many more batteries to ensure the life of each piece of equipment.

Post Production:

The post production phase was the busiest part, as I had to fix many problems and work my way around bad sound quality and unusable footage. With my extensive knowledge of post production software, I was able to overcome each problem in order to create a satisfactory finished product. I do wish I had spent better time on production to reduce the problem solving in editing, but I also believe I created the best product possible from the footage sourced. I did encounter a small issue with the files, as they temporarily appeared as offline. To fix this, I had to transfer them into a different drive in order for the software to recognise and find the files easier as they weren’t as deep in the system. If I were to post produce this film again, I wouldn’t change much except possibly the edits on the house scenes. With time being an issue, I could not waste it on excessive edits just to minorly improve the project. I would however decide to record some foley audio after production to fix any of the sound errors during the film. I  believe that this would increase the quality of the project as it is lacking in sound design.

The post production phase was the busiest part, as I had to fix many problems and work my way around bad sound quality and unusable footage. With my extensive knowledge of post production software, I was able to overcome each problem in order to create a satisfactory finished product. I do wish I had spent better time on production to reduce the problem solving in editing, but I also believe I created the best product possible from the footage sourced. I did encounter a small issue with the files, as they temporarily appeared as offline. To fix this, I had to transfer them into a different drive in order for the software to recognise and find the files easier as they weren’t as deep in the system. If I were to post produce this film again, I wouldn’t change much except possibly the edits on the house scenes. With time being an issue, I could not waste it on excessive edits just to minorly improve the project. I would however decide to record some foley audio after production to fix any of the sound errors during the film. I  believe that this would increase the quality of the project as it is lacking in sound design.