post 3 – evaluation

In this post, I will evaluate my creative process and the product that came out of it. I will Compare my work to the established characteristics and practitioners that I identified in task one. (which where thriller and noir) I will also reflect on how well I deployed practical production skills.

camera work

overall I like most aspects of my final film but there are many things I could improve, firstly I will talk about my camera work. generally, I think my camerawork was quite good when planning I tried to think a lot about the look of my film I wanted it to have its own style and feel without feeling too out there, I wanted something fresh yet familiar. this is why I was so comprehensive about lighting but I will go into more detail about that later.

fig 1

my opening shot (fig 1) was the hardest to film but I think it also looked the best out of all the shots I did, and from the feedback, I can see that the audience thought it was the best shot. “Good slow motion intro.” “With regards to camera work, the opening shot is very interesting…” in future I will change the camera settings or add more lights to make it just a smidge brighter.

fig 2

fig 3

as for the close-ups of zak, I think that they were good for the most part, apart from the shot where Zak explains why he is on edge as that shot is out of focus which a few people noticed “Work on the out of focus shots.” (fig 3). the  I also filmed zak’s character from a low angle to show he has power but not many people picked up on this, but people seemed to like the close-ups overall “Good camera work with the close-ups.” in future, I will make sure that all my shots are in focus.

andrews close up shots were better than Zaks close-ups but that could be because the lighting was better but it does also look like they are more sharply in focus. people also seemed to like these shots better.

lighting

on the topic of lighting, there is a lot to talk about, firstly I am going to talk about how I use lighting in the opening shot, to make the scene feel tense. as I was in the studio I had lots of options when it came to lighting, I ended up using two divas and one dedo light (spotlight) this gave the shots the noir feel I wanted. I especially liked how the opening shot turned out because of the way Zak walks in and out of the light which gives a really nice effect. for the close-ups, the lighting was also very good but they looked a bit different from each other which made the conversation look a bit odd, I will make sure that the lighting is more consistent in future.

audio

I think my audio design was good and fell in line with the characteristics of my chosen genre, first and foremost I think the music worked and although I identified most thriller films having orchestral scores, the base and synth in the song I chose worked quite well and made it feel tense which is the main thing I wanted it to do, people seemed to like the choice of music “Good choice of music”. There is a lot more I wanted to do with the sound design of my film as it is such an important part of thriller films as it is used to create atmosphere, but I didn’t find the time to add it, but I will suggest some changes I will make for my final film, for example in the establishing shot I really wanted to add footsteps as this would have added a lot of atmosphere, I also would have liked to add a wildtrack to the film to make it feel more like a warehouse. apart from that people said that the quality of the audio was quite good.

editing

for editing, I established that my chosen genre uses a lot of fa

other elements

another thing I think I could improve is my location and set design, this is because the tv studio I used was pretty convincing but it was completely outdoors and that isn’t really what I wanted, originally I was going to use a warehouse I even had a risk assessment for that location, but due to the lack of time I had to shoot combined with the struggle of getting the equipment, and cast over there meant that it was easier to film in college. next time I will make sure that I have enough time to film on location and that all my actors are able to get there.

summary

In conclusion, I believe that my film was mostly successful as I stuck to the characteristics and conventions of my chosen genre throughout the proof of concept, an example is how I used lighting to add tension. despite this, there are many areas in which I could improve, for example, the lighting was different on the close-ups so continuity is one example, I also need to work on my time management as it will be really important in my FMP.