Evaluation Question 7

Preliminary Project

Location

The preliminary project was filmed in my own house. This was due to the time limit I had on producing the film. It displayed the hall, stairs, landing and bedroom. Little imagination was needed.

Characters and Plot

The main and only character was a young boy played by my cousin, Mitchell. He did not fit the tense genre though acted well. The actual plot however was very abstract and without any real reason. This was mainly due to the fact that I thought it up very quickly due to the time limit.

Lighting

Arguably the lighting was quite effective. As the character enters my room a light flickers upon him - actually i very impressed with the end result. However, the dark surroundings triggered night vision on my camera. This was a problem as it led to a large enlightened circle upon the shot. This did not look very proffessional.

Props

Like I say, not much thought was put into the actual story line and so props were not essential. The film did however show a biscuit aswell as a large arm chair.


Sound

Rather disappointingly I didn't have the chance to add music to the preliminary film. This reduced its tension and thus quality. The diagetic sound of the door opening and the main character speaking were the only sounds used in the whole piece.

Inter-titles

Again, there were no titles used in the whole film. There was no place to insert them and the drama started halfway through. This reduced the overall quality of the film as vital information was not able to be dispalyed to the viewer.

Main Project

Location

Many locations were used in the final piece. The scenes show a computer room, a staircase, hallway, common room and alleyway. This gave the film a feeling of diversity and enabled many forms of emotion to be experienced by the viewer. eg. tension, fear, excitement, anxiety, energy etc.

Characters and Plot

It was a hard task to produce a 2 minute film with a fully understandable plot. I did manage however. My film shows the basic storyline of a computer hacker that steals a CD belonging to the antagonist. He escapes with the CD and is chased into a cliff-hanger situation. This time I developed characters that both fit and challened form and convention. I used the stereotype of a 'skin head' as my antagonist and that of a computer geek for my protagonist. I did challenege the latter by altering his abilities to become more agile and urban.

Lighting

The film was filmed completely by day and so the majority of shots show natural lighting. This enabled the film to be more realistic. The staircase for example shows dim light being projected through milky, narrow windows. This gives the scene an archaic feeling. The alley ways flood with sunlight, and in some scene this appears to be disorientating for the characters. For example, there is a scene where they leap over the character blocking out the image of a large, distracting sun-disk.

Props

I took much care over props in my main task. Props on display include the CD and hacker's retro glasses. However included in this could be the full costumes of both characters. This would include the protagonist's hood and dirty jeans and the antagonist's leather jacket.

Sound

Music was very important in the main project. I used it to reflect the images of the screen and produced it in 'Garageband'. The diagetic sounds include the breaking of the glasses and the ejecting of the disk. Sound was obviously necessary in increasing proffessionalism.

Inter-titles

The titles at first appear interlinked with the 'computer hacking theme'. The name of the film company and film titles are shown inside a screen of binory code. Later the names of the actors appear on top of the film as they race around the computer room door in slow motion.




What have I learnt?


I'm glad I started with a preliminary project as it allowed me to see the individual changes that needed to be made in order to create a professional piece of film. I discovered the vast difference that it makes to compose music around a piece of film. Working with accurate cooperative actors made a change to using my own family, and this allowed me to stretch out into different emotions and subtleties of expression.


Another dramatic improvement in my final project came from the preproduction of storyboards. Filming with storyboards meant that it was much quicker to organise the shot angle and character's position as it had been earlier planned. Planning the editing before hand and jotting down on paper proved better than guessing whilst at location.