Thursday, 29 April 2010
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Reflective analysis
Creative Process
For my film project i chose to create a short film in the genre of a post apocalyptic thriller. I took inspiration from this through films such as 'I am Legend' and '28 days later' as these were the films i found to be most interesting to analyse in terms of micro and macro elements. The creative process of the production was much harder and longer then i thought initially as a lot of our time was spent planning ahead and re scheduling events. The first step within my creative process was researching and listing several different ideas based around the post apocalyptic genre. I found that this was very beneficial as we changed our narrative around several times before we decided upon the film we had created. This was an important process as it allowed me to gain a deeper insight into the genre and also allowed us to better our narrative. Within my group consisting of me and Josh Holtby we thought long and hard about what features would appeal to our target audience and how we could create a film that would use many of the conventions of an apocalyptic thriller. With the Aims and Context created it gave me a clearer idea of how i wanted and needed the film to look by having a lot of high angled shots, eerie music and slow motion effects.
The next step within the creative process was to create a storyboard which would indicate the shots and screenplay that would be used within the film. However most of all the storyboard helped me to see how the narrative would look in a film context which was very helpful as some of the shots did not make sense together so i was able to alter them and vastly improve the quality of the narrative. I then turned the storyboard into an animatic which involves taking photos of the storyboard and putting them together into a film style slide show on windows movie maker. This allowed me to improve on our timings of the different shots as it allowed us to see it in motion. Throughout the creative process of the project myself and josh had various production meetings which helped us to reflect on ideas and discuss what we need to complete. This was a very helpful step in the creative process as it allowed us to keep on top of time management and also to improve the quality of the Film.
Within the creative process we encountered a number of problematics which at the time proved to be very serious. The first problem was that as soon as we started filing our protagonist had a very noticeable hair cut. This set us back a lot as we had planned and put a lot of time and effort into sorting out various props and locations. Also we was very happy with some of the shots we had captured on the day. However we overcame this problem by rescheduling a new shoot which proved to be a big improvement on the first as we thought again about the cinematography and added more variations of shots.
Another problematic was realising that our footage was not going as we planned as some of the various shots from the animatic were restricting and didn't work well within the context of the genre. To overcome this i made various changes to the narrative which we were much happier with as this change allowed us to be much more creative and gave us a lot of opportunity's for some great shots.
Looking at the creative process through a cinematography point of view was one of my favourite things about the whole of the project. Doing things such as selecting the perfect angles, movements and shots to fit in perfectly with the genre. We tried to make the college look as empty and creepy as possible by using cantered angle, high angle and long tracking shots to emphasise the isolation of our protagonist. I decided to change and improve the shot types as some of them didn't fit in well with genre. Once we had completed the filming we uploaded it straight onto the editing suites using a fire wire cable and began editing on adobe premiere.
The creative process of the editing was the most interesting part as it was great see the sequences coming together to create something that looked very fitting within the genre. The rate stretch tool proved very useful because it allowed us to create a slow motion effect that fitted in very well with the genre conventions. The only part i found tricky within the editing was the timings at the beginning fitting in with the music as at first it juxtaposed with the sequence however after looking at the film again and again i finally found a way to place it in correctly making them work harmoniously together.
I definitely think that working in a small group was a great way to tackle this project as it gave us just the right amount of time to plan out and execute our specific individual t6asks. This also helped because it allowed us to keep improving and bettering our film by disagreeing and bouncing ideas off each other.
I believe that my film has been very successful in relation to its audience, aims and context. The first reason for this is because we planned to appeal to an audience who preferred a thoughtful narrative to high octane action. The narrative which we have created makes you think about it and also involves you emotionally within the diegetic world. My aim was to use the stylistic elements which i learnt last year and apply them to my film project which i think i have done very successfully. The only thing i didn't feel was successful within our film was the lack of acting skills which our protagonist possessed as his lack of emotion proved to make the narrative less effective and believable.
For my film project i chose to create a short film in the genre of a post apocalyptic thriller. I took inspiration from this through films such as 'I am Legend' and '28 days later' as these were the films i found to be most interesting to analyse in terms of micro and macro elements. The creative process of the production was much harder and longer then i thought initially as a lot of our time was spent planning ahead and re scheduling events. The first step within my creative process was researching and listing several different ideas based around the post apocalyptic genre. I found that this was very beneficial as we changed our narrative around several times before we decided upon the film we had created. This was an important process as it allowed me to gain a deeper insight into the genre and also allowed us to better our narrative. Within my group consisting of me and Josh Holtby we thought long and hard about what features would appeal to our target audience and how we could create a film that would use many of the conventions of an apocalyptic thriller. With the Aims and Context created it gave me a clearer idea of how i wanted and needed the film to look by having a lot of high angled shots, eerie music and slow motion effects.
The next step within the creative process was to create a storyboard which would indicate the shots and screenplay that would be used within the film. However most of all the storyboard helped me to see how the narrative would look in a film context which was very helpful as some of the shots did not make sense together so i was able to alter them and vastly improve the quality of the narrative. I then turned the storyboard into an animatic which involves taking photos of the storyboard and putting them together into a film style slide show on windows movie maker. This allowed me to improve on our timings of the different shots as it allowed us to see it in motion. Throughout the creative process of the project myself and josh had various production meetings which helped us to reflect on ideas and discuss what we need to complete. This was a very helpful step in the creative process as it allowed us to keep on top of time management and also to improve the quality of the Film.
Within the creative process we encountered a number of problematics which at the time proved to be very serious. The first problem was that as soon as we started filing our protagonist had a very noticeable hair cut. This set us back a lot as we had planned and put a lot of time and effort into sorting out various props and locations. Also we was very happy with some of the shots we had captured on the day. However we overcame this problem by rescheduling a new shoot which proved to be a big improvement on the first as we thought again about the cinematography and added more variations of shots.
Another problematic was realising that our footage was not going as we planned as some of the various shots from the animatic were restricting and didn't work well within the context of the genre. To overcome this i made various changes to the narrative which we were much happier with as this change allowed us to be much more creative and gave us a lot of opportunity's for some great shots.
Looking at the creative process through a cinematography point of view was one of my favourite things about the whole of the project. Doing things such as selecting the perfect angles, movements and shots to fit in perfectly with the genre. We tried to make the college look as empty and creepy as possible by using cantered angle, high angle and long tracking shots to emphasise the isolation of our protagonist. I decided to change and improve the shot types as some of them didn't fit in well with genre. Once we had completed the filming we uploaded it straight onto the editing suites using a fire wire cable and began editing on adobe premiere.
The creative process of the editing was the most interesting part as it was great see the sequences coming together to create something that looked very fitting within the genre. The rate stretch tool proved very useful because it allowed us to create a slow motion effect that fitted in very well with the genre conventions. The only part i found tricky within the editing was the timings at the beginning fitting in with the music as at first it juxtaposed with the sequence however after looking at the film again and again i finally found a way to place it in correctly making them work harmoniously together.
I definitely think that working in a small group was a great way to tackle this project as it gave us just the right amount of time to plan out and execute our specific individual t6asks. This also helped because it allowed us to keep improving and bettering our film by disagreeing and bouncing ideas off each other.
I believe that my film has been very successful in relation to its audience, aims and context. The first reason for this is because we planned to appeal to an audience who preferred a thoughtful narrative to high octane action. The narrative which we have created makes you think about it and also involves you emotionally within the diegetic world. My aim was to use the stylistic elements which i learnt last year and apply them to my film project which i think i have done very successfully. The only thing i didn't feel was successful within our film was the lack of acting skills which our protagonist possessed as his lack of emotion proved to make the narrative less effective and believable.
Props, location, cast
The cast has stayed the same even though we changed the narrative. However we have added in some more characters to give the story more depth. However these characters may be only dead bodies they make the narrative more believable. The dead bodies are:
Mike Davies : Class mate
Ben Underwood : Brother
Josh Holtby : Cousin
Alex Nicholson: Mother
Tim Anderson : Teacher
Geordan was chosen to play the protagonist role because he fits into it perfectly. He is innocent, small and helpless which adds to the sympathy and emotional effectiveness of the narrative. However his acting abilities are not the best we didn't have much choice of people to play the role as there wasn't many people willing to star in it.
The location of the film reflects geordans every day lifestyle within a college and school environment and together with the mise en scene
Mike Davies : Class mate
Ben Underwood : Brother
Josh Holtby : Cousin
Alex Nicholson: Mother
Tim Anderson : Teacher
Geordan was chosen to play the protagonist role because he fits into it perfectly. He is innocent, small and helpless which adds to the sympathy and emotional effectiveness of the narrative. However his acting abilities are not the best we didn't have much choice of people to play the role as there wasn't many people willing to star in it.
The location of the film reflects geordans every day lifestyle within a college and school environment and together with the mise en scene
editing
The editing for me was a very interesting and creative process in which i was allowed to use what i learnt from previous projects to my full potential. The rate stretch tool became very handy in creating the desired slow motion effect we had been looking for to emphasise the isolation of the protagonist. I really like how the end track is edited perfectly to create a more powerful and dramatic effect for the audience. I feel that i have been able to deploy good continuity editing and convincing match on action edits. One of the great things about adobe premiere was that it allowed you to vary the colour contrasts of shots. This became a great help as in the shots of people who are dead we changed the colour tones to make them darker giving the whole effect of evil and horror. The thing i found very challenging within the editing process was the fact that we did not capture enough angles of various sequences which would of kept the audience interested instead breaking up the shots that went on for to long.
Cinematography
As i was the cinematographer it was my job to capture the perfect angles, movements and shot types required to empower my desired effect for the narrative. I chose to capture various long, cantered and high angled shots to create the effect of our protagonist being confused isolated and inferior. The most challenging thing about the whole of the cinematography process was making sure i had all of the right shots i needed which would go together well in the editing suites and keep the continuity.
New Synopsis
Our project is an extract from our film Forsaken, which is set in our protagonists house, the streets which our protagonist walks down to reach college and finally Wyke College itself. The narrative follows the story line of The Quest. 19 year old James Woodlock awakes in his bed one day to find that the human race has been wiped out. With no clue what has happened until he reaches college. When he reaches college, this is when he finally learns of the virus and the catastrophe it has caused. James sets out to look for any survivors and to get a deeper insight into the virus. As he looks around the derelict town were he used to live many of his memories come flooding back to him at several different locations.
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