What I have learnt..

Scripting/Story boarding

Before creating my film, myself and my partner had to decide what type of film we will be making and brainstorm the ideas that could potentially be the plot of it. This was difficult as we had to base our film around the idea of ‘the day in the life’ and had to base it around the location of school, so at this point we thought we’d base it around a student, and as you can imagine there are plenty of ideas that came flooding in with this. We chose to plan our film around a storyboard as it was easier to schedule our time, what had to be done or said and how long this may take. So planning our film using a storyboard was very beneficial. We had to think about the mise en scene and location whilst producing the story board, to enable us to think about in detail which areas of the school we’d use, what the actress would wear and with this what impression she’d give the audience through costume and makeup.  Through producing a story board, I also learnt to consider the potential use of editing and the types of shots that could work well, this helped us to try things out first without expecting everything to work out perfectly. This was useful as a lot of things we planned didn’t seem to work out as we wanted them too, as we had to make quick changes that we’ve now learnt from.

Locations

We were limited for the location as we were told that we had to film within the school; this meant that we could only film inside and outside of the school premises. As we chose to film half of our story plot outside, the weather limited us a great deal as a lot of days we planned to film, it rained. This meant that we had to reschedule our plan and make quick decisions on other work we could do to replace film. For example, editing clips that we already had, finding/searching for appropriate sounds we could use, and creating the credits. I learnt that the weather impacts a lot on our progression as it held us back from filming and it also hindered our scheduled plan.

Talent

We had to decide who would be filming and who will be acting between the two of us.  My partner and myself worked well together as I was more confident acting and she preferred filming. I learnt that acting isn’t as easy as it looks and it can be quite nerve racking when having an audience. Because I was nervous and I wasn’t as focused which led me to giggle at times and lose concentration. I also learnt that when working in a team, you can’t always rely on people as they may be off due to illnesses, appointments, as well as lack of motivation. We also had to rely on people who we didn’t know very well to participate in our film as we wanted a class of students. As we didn’t know what their acting skills were like we didn’t know how the end product would turn out, likewise we knew a close friend who was good at acting and had previous acting experiences so we involved her more to speak in the story line.

Organisation

We had to focus on organisation skills within the scripting writing and story boarding to enable us to plan out our time, so that we knew when certain things will be done and give them a time limited to how long they’d take to do, such as the editing and putting the filming together and in action. I found this part of the project was pretty hard as things always seemed to go wrong or prevent us from doing things, such as filming outside due to the weather. This therefore took us backwards, as at one stage filming outside was the only thing we could really do and the weather stopped us from doing it. However, we did try filming outside by covering the camera with an umbrella, but unfortunately the clips could pick up the sound of the rain.

On top of this, we also had to organise a group of people, which acted as the class; this was pretty hard as we had to emphasis the feelings and emotions we wanted to express and get across to the audience. We also had the problem with time slotting and having to rely on whether the majority of the class were free and were willing to do it.  We then had to organise where the class was going to sit and where the camera would be placed, correctly enough for when it was going to be moved, there wasn’t much jultering and it would be smooth.

Teamwork    

As the girl that I worked with was a very good friend of mine, we found it very easy to work together as we were comfortable with sharing both our ideas and we also knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses well. This also meant that we could work together in our spare time and any free time that we had, which made it much easier for the work to get done. I’ve learnt that teamwork is very important when creating a project like this, as you need a lot of communication between the group and within the group you need to feel comfortable with each other in order to achieve your full potential.

Editing

Unfortunately we left it to the last minute, and found it difficult to get all the editing done on time. This was due to the editing stages, as we were unsure on how to produce the ideas we had in our head, onto the film. It was the first time me and my partner even used the type of technology we were given to edit, meaning we didn’t have a clue where to start; this held us back a lot as our time schedule was then messed and changed around. 

The final product

Bringing together the final product was very difficult as we had little time to put it all together for the exact deadline. This meant that we ended up rushing and cramming in a lot of the work and editing, which obviously affected the overall piece of work, as the end product wasn’t as good as what we thought it would be; this was simply because we didn’t get the point across to the audience like we intended and imagined it to come across. I have then realised and learnt how important time management is when going through the processes of filming, and how important testing your ideas out first before thinking they will come perfect and as you would want and expect them to be.