Evaluation Activity 8

What targets will you set yourself for G324 next year – when you make a trailer?

Although I can see an improvement in our work since our preliminary, and am pleased with the opening we have produced, there is still room for a lot of room for improvement. As we found through the process of filming, we grew in confidence the more we did. Although this was annoying as it resulted in having to film the same scenes 2 or 3 times, it was also beneficial and helped to expand our knowledge. From the start of the process I can honestly say I knew close to nothing about the industry. All of the editing process and technology was new to me, and although I was aware of the different types of camera shots and their purpose, I had never actually put my knowledge into practice. Similarly, mise-en-scene and sound was a completely new aspect to me and while I knew that it existed, I had never really paid much attention to it. Having said this, the whole process has been something I have enjoyed, and feel that now I have a little more experience even though there is still a lot more to learn.

I think the my main error was over complicating everything. Being a bit of a perfectionist, I was not used to having to adapt and change my ideas so much, nor was I willing to take the simplest route. This was essentially my biggest downfall as it made the process less enjoyable for me because of all the added stress I unnecessarily caused. I think this was partly due to my inexperience as my group and I were not entirely sure what would work and what wouldn’t, which meant that quite a lot of things were accidental and unplanned due to our need to experiment. This was not always a downfall as sometimes ideas that we accidentally stumbled upon by experimenting were better than our own, however it meant that the majority of things were last minute and so they had to be rushed. As said earlier, this definitely was a steep learning curve and I think we learnt more from getting it wrong and having to redo it than we would have from just doing it all perfectly.

Next year, we will be planning a trailer so it will be slightly different, however there are many things we will do differently. Firstly, we will make sure we plan a lot more in advance, even if we are not entirely sure of some things. For example, we overcomplicated things even more than we needed to by not doing the simple, yet necessary things such as planning what time to film or the exact location in which the filming would take place. This wasted time and caused disagreements which certainly could have been avoided. In a similar way, we also need to make sure we do not leave everything to the last minute as again it causes unnecessary stress due to the need to meet deadlines, just because we decided to prioritise other things. I also think it would be beneficial to try and film in the shortest amount of time possible in order to avoid a change in weather or lighting which caused issues this time, and again could have been avoided.

I’m not sure if we will choose to change our genres next year. Again, I think we slightly overcomplicated things by using three genres, and I’m not sure whether we made this choice because we couldn’t decide or because we based it around a plot which we had already formed. I think our chosen genres were not the best choice for an opening scene because we didn’t have enough time to illustrate their expected stereotypes. In a similar way, we did not have the desired skills necessary to portray our genres to a standard in which we were happy with – we were unable to successfully create an action film which conformed to the genre due to our lack of experience. It might be easier to use these genres in a trailer as it shows smaller snippets of the genre, and allows more choice meaning we could conform to the parts of our genres which suited us best. On the other hand, it might be easier to change our genre to another such as horror, however this would involve more research and again would be completely new to us so might cause similar issues of inexperience.

To make progress next year, I think we need to focus more on the sound. We found that mise-en-scene was quite easy to incorporate successfully into our film, such as the use of costume and how it conformed to our genres, and camera composition was not too difficult after experimenting.  Sound on the other hand, was something we found much more difficult. This was partly because we were unaware of how to film the picture and the sound of the same device, and partly because we were unaware that we could have done it differently. After researching it, we came across ADR which stands for Additional Dialogue Replacement.  It is the process of replacing the dialogue in the scene when it isn't clear or there is a lot of unwanted background noise. This is something which I feel would have improved our film massively as the sound is not clear at all, however we chose to just cover it up with background music. We made this decision because we were already having difficulties editing our film, and felt that this was too complicated and definitely above our standards. Saying this, I think it is something we could work towards next year, and aim towards being able to incorporate it into our film as it is something which would certainly enhance its features.

Next year, I would like to set myself targets specifically aimed at the four technical areas, mise-en-scene, camera composition, editing and sound. I feel that by setting these, if I was able to follow them I would improve my knowledge and understanding of the subject which in turn would help me to produce work of a better quality. Firstly, for camera work I feel like I need to try and incorporate some of the technical areas within the category, such as being able to illustrate the 180 degree rule and match on action. This is something I have mastered before previously, however due to a combination of the plot and the genres, we did not feel, as a group, that incorporating would add to the production value. We probably could have adapted the plot purposely to suit the use of the technical methods; however we did not feel like we had time or were comfortable with making such changes. For next year, I feel like I just need more practising with the editing. By the end of our editing process we all felt a sense of achievement having grasped the equipment, and were certainly more confident using it however I feel like I need to experiment more in order to get full use out of all it has to offer. For example, the use of colour grading is something we could have incorporated more into our film, however did not have enough time to fully look in to the best ways of using it. This is something I would like to look into next year as I feel that by making small changes such as experimenting with the use of colour, it would have enhanced our project. 

Sound is definitely the area in which I have the most improvements to make. Firstly, I would like to learn how to record the sound in a way in which it would be suitable to use without having to spend a lot of time correcting it – i.e. by having to use ADR. I found that our sound was quite muffled and difficult to hear due to a mixture of all of the background noises which could be heard when filming.  Saying this, I would also like to learn how to use ADR in order to increase our choices and be able to use it if we wanted. Similarly, I need to pay more attention to the different opportunities I have in order to use a different variety of sounds, such as diegetic and non-diegetic. Finally, although I am pleased with the costumes that we used and think that they suited the genres well, I would like to experiment a bit more. We decided as a group that it would be best to try and conform to the stereotypes as much as possible as we felt that it would be easier to gain ideas in this way, and we have proof that the methods we followed had a successful past. I think it would be interesting to try and push our boundaries more next year, and create something new by ourselves rather than following the stereotypes so religiously. Although it may be easier to stick to the stereotypes, I feel like it would be more fun to produce something new and a bit quirky just to expand our knowledge and help us gain more experience.

Despite all this negativity, I am pleased with the opening scene we produced, and have enjoyed making it. The most important thing I have learnt from this process is to have more confidence in myself, not to over complicate things so much and to have more fun!