Pre-Production and Production Reflection/evaluation:

Media Arts: Short Film Production – Term 02 2013

Pre-Production and Production Reflection/evaluation:

Respond to each of the following dot points (using complete sentences or paragraphs). You should include as much detail as possible in your responses.

Teamwork during Pre-Production:

·      Describe any problems or difficulties your group encountered while developing your plot, concept and characters;

Whilst developing our plot our group did not encounter many problems or difficulties. We did encounter some disagreements within the group but nothing major. A problem we encountered was finalizing what we wanted our main theme of the film to be about. By this I mean some group members wanted the initial murder to be the main problem of the film where as others wanted the girl that found the body to be the main problem. We also had different ideas of where we were going to film majority of our film. I think the main difficulty that our group encountered was getting the same pictures in our head of what was going to happen throughout the film. Once our whole group did this we found it a lot easier to understand what the other group members were talking about.

·      Explain whether your group effectively used the pre-production and planning templates to help refine each idea prior to filming;

I think our group did use the pre-production planning templates well for our initial filming. We used the shot list the most out of everything but it also had the script on it. This assessment was the first time I had actually used the planning and it actually assisted our group in what we were doing. We also used the storyboards not as much, but they still contributed to a quicker amount of time spent on the individual shots, as we knew exactly where everything had to be and where we had to have the camera. I think overall our group planned really well and I think this really showed in our final rough edit of our film.

·      Describe whether your group made effective use of their time in class during pre-production. (Did each group member; contribute; have set tasks at all times; know their role in the group etc.)

I think majority of the time our group used our time really well. I do think maybe we could have spent less time on finalizing the whole film at the start as we did this whilst doing our shot list any way. Most of the group members in our group contributed equally except for one small issue we had with the editing. But we soon fixed this with a couple of us doing a bit extra so we could submit the rough edit in time.

·      List some steps your group could (or did) implement to improve in this area;

There is nothing we could do to improve on spending less time finalizing the whole film at the start; it is just something that we will all know not to do next time. To ensure everything is done in time equally by each group member we could have a between communication system and should have asked each other before the final lunch time whether or not everyone had everything done or if they needed help with it. This would have saved our group from the last minute stress of editing.

Teamwork during Production:

·      Discuss how your group used storyboards, shot-lists, prop-lists and a shooting schedule to assist during the filming and decision making process;

In the planning stage our group made storyboards, a shot-list, a prop-list and a shooting schedule to follow. We each then uploaded these to all of our blogs so we all had access to them and their was no excuses of why we didn’t know about something. We used our prop-list the most out of everything as we had it with us every time we filmed. The shot list included the dialogue, shot type, movement and lighting. This was really helpful, as whenever we didn’t know something we could just refer back to it and we would know what we were doing. We did use our storyboards but not very much, we only really referred to them when we wanted to know if we were zooming, panning, or moving the camera. Our prop-list was also very helpful when we were packing our bags the night before and needed to know what we needed for the next media lesson and lastly we used the shooting schedule. We used the shooting schedule to make sure we were on track at the end of each lesson. This was to ensure that if we needed to catch up we could and if we were ahead it would be even better.

·      Did your group experience any organisational issues during filming, (i.e. members who were absent or did not contribute; finding suitable times to film; forgetting shot-lists, costumes; not booking equipment etc.) How did you manage or work around these difficulties?

Our group only experienced one organizational issue whilst making our film and this was with the editing. We all agreed to edit 2 scenes each and put it all together the lunchtime of the day it was due and one member of our group was unable to complete it in time. We overcame this by splitting the 2 scenes apart and quickly editing them. Luckily we got it all done before it was due. We also had to organize a time to meet up on a weekend to film at Bella’s house as that was where majority of our film was set. We organized this early and had to get Bella’s mum and my mum to organize leave for me as I was a boarder.

·      Did your group complete all shots as detailed in your planning?

Our group completed all shots reasonably detailed in our planning. The shots were detailed enough to use them for camera position, dialogue, lighting and any camera movement.

Discuss your individual feelings about the rough edit:

·      Are you group satisfied with the final result?

I think the final result of our rough edit was reasonably good, but I think there is two scenes we could have improved on. These were the two scenes that were rushed at the last minute to get complete. Although these scenes were not complete, I was still satisfied with the final rough edit.

·      Does the rough edit meet the time requirements for this task? If not, describe why? (i.e did you expect it would be longer? is it incomplete? etc.)

The rough edit did not meet all the requirements for the task as it was a bit under time. I expected the rough edit to be if anything over time then under time, but obviously I was wrong. We did complete all the shots in the film though which is really good and shows that we had really good time management.

·      Does your film require additional scenes, or reshoots?

I think our group could reshoot a couple of scenes in the final film. There are some scene we are a bit more blurry then we thought they would be and this would improve the film a lot more if we cleared these up a bit, but so you still had the dizziness effect. We may have to also reshoot a few more scenes to add into the final film to make it long enough. We will have to think really wisely about this so we don’t ruin the story line or make it more confusing from adding these in.

·      Would like to change any aspects of your film?

If I could change any aspects of the film it would be putting in a scene that shows her hopping out of bed and walking to the staircase as that bit might confuse the viewer. I think we could also improve some of the some of the shot changes throughout the film to make it more dramatic.

·      If you could start the project again what would you do differently?

If I could start the project again and do it differently there is nothing I would change. I think we did our film the best way possible and there would only be minor changes that I have talked about above that I would make.

·      Did planning and filming take more or less time than you anticipated? Define why?

Planning took a fair bit of time out of our actual filming time starting our project. I do think if we didn’t do as much planning as we did our film wouldn’t be as good as it has been made. I do think that doing as many storyboards as we did was a bit over the top and I do think that we could have done less. Doing the storyboards did take a lot of our time as we still weren’t completely sure what some of the settings we were shooting at looked like and this made it really hard to visualize (Bella’s House).

Consider whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection to throughout your project. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work? (Does the work on your blog/journal represent 5 weeks’ worth of work).

I think I uploaded everything onto my blog as pronto as I could have but I do think I could have completed more reflections. I think that I did not have enough evidence that wasn’t planning on my blog to support my work. On the other hand I think I uploaded plenty of planning work to my blog to support my work and think I did a good job of being efficient with that this term.