Y2 FMP: Evaluation

Proposal
My proposal is effectively the start of planning for my project. It
involves items such as rationales and the concept, creating a
base idea for what I would develop over time.This is usually not
my strongest area, so I wanted to make sure I added plenty of
detail into it.This made my proposal a lot more detailed than it
used to be, a lot more than from my FMP last year.There are
plenty of positives with this, for example, I’m very pleased with
how my rationale turned out.There’s a lot of detail in it and I’ve
spent a lot of time making it near perfect. I also think my
timetable is a big strength. It has a simple list of tasks that I’d
need to complete each week but it also has a lot of detail,
making it one of my best areas in my proposal. It proved to be
very useful and I used it consistently throughout my FMP. One
area of my proposal that I think I need to improve on is the
audience classification. There looks to be a lot of detail, however
I don’t really think I believe some of the things I said in it. For
example, I don’t really think audience classification has a lot to
do with social class. People of all classes like films, so it would be
a difficult one to judge.

Context andTheory –
Presentation.
Context and theory was a very important way to start off my
PowerPoints. I did some research on various different
directors and other assortments of people. This gave me
plenty of ideas with what style I want to do. So far I don’t
really have much of a style, and it’s just a mesh of other
director styles, so this was a good way of helping me find
my own.The biggest positive from this is my contextual
research element. I had plenty of detail about the directing
styles of different people and my contextual research was
finished well. What I didn’t like as much was my theoretical
research. Although I had plenty of information, I didn’t
really feel like it was very useful to me. Sure, it’s good to get
some theoretical knowledge into my head, however it didn’t
really come into use all that much use for the rest of the
project.

Context andTheory -Video
This video was by far the best bit about my context and theory presentation. I put a lot of
work into it, creating a script, and finding relevant clips to show on the video. The script
was important as I’m not great at speaking, so since I could follow a script, it made talking
easier and I could finish it a lot faster than without one. It also allowed me to put forward a
lot of extra information that I otherwise would have difficulty writing down in the
presentation. Because it’s different, it keeps things fresher, making everything seem like it
goes by quicker, and allowing people to not just keep reading presentations over and over
again. A negative of this video is how I spoke. Although I followed the script and it sounded
a lot better because of this, I still stuttered every now and again, and it was difficult to
speak properly sometimes. It’s really just a matter of building confidence, as I do things
like public speaking and creating more videos, I’ll get better at speaking.

Research – Presentation
Research is a very large PowerPoint consisting of the
research of different products, audience research, and
subject research.This was very important as I learnt a lot
about what a specific audience wants and doesn’t want, as
well as looking at a variety of films, learning about staples of
the genre and finding inspiration for certain shots. I admit
there were ups and downs with my research, but I was still
pleased with it.The part I am most pleased with is my
survey. It was very useful and I learnt what people in my
target audience do and don’t want to see in a film of my
genre.There are a lot of cliché’s with the horror genre that I
want to avoid, and these people who answered the surveys
helped massively in which ones I decided to avoid. The
biggest negative, in my opinion, is the subject research.
Although there is a wide variety of films and tv shows, there
isn’t really a lot of information on them.

Research –Video
This video was very different to my context and inspirations video script. Rather than
giving lots of additional information, it more explains how all the information I’ve
already given links in with my short film. It summarises my research as well, as 54
slides is a lot to go through.The biggest positive of this video is that it links all the
information, making it all mean something. A big part of this project is making
everything mean something, and so doing this makes it link. A negative of this
however is that it’s not as useful in comparison to my other video. It’s still useful, just
in a different way. It doesn’t give all that much new information to the presentation.

Problem Solving
The problem solving presentation involves the discussion of the
technical and practical problems I may come across, the
theoretical problems, and my experiments. It’s a shorter
presentation, however it’s one that’s equally as important as all
the others. It involves a lot of lists about what could go wrong,
and how I could solve it if it does. This proved to be very useful
as something big did go wrong which I talked about, a global
pandemic that stopped me from being able to go to college. My
best area from this section was my experiments. I did a lot that
ended up helping me when production finally came along. As
you can see from the first experiment, there’s a lot of
similarities between it and my final poster, showing how my
experiments came into use. My biggest weakness with this
presentation is my technical problems. Although I have a lot on
there, they’re all generic problems. They’re important to write
down too, of course, but there’s nothing more specific than the
generic items.

Planning
For planning, I had a wide variety of techniques to help me
through production. It was a very strong PowerPoint, and
definitely one of the more enjoyable ones to make. It
consists of different variations of planning, for example as
you can see on the right, storyboards and shotlists. It also
has everything to do with my production, figuring out
camera settings, location scouting, making the script, etc.
There’s plenty of positives to this.The biggest in my opinion
is the shotlist. It allows me to film a lot more easily since I
have a list of every single shot I want to do. In the end, I
couldn’t do all of them and had to make some changes
since I had to work the camera and act, but it still helped a
lot with plenty of shots. A negative of this has to be my
weekly production plan. It wasn’t really useful at all, it’s just
a summery of what I wrote in my proposal, so I didn’t use it
as much as all the other areas in my production. Next time I
do something like this, I’ll probably just leave it out and
concentrate more on the parts that I’ll use.

Production – Poster 1
My first poster design is inspired by Halloween, and other 70s
style posters.The main takeaway from it is the cartoon-like
design. And although the styles are different, the base idea is
the same. Of course the professional poster is better, but I
still like my own design here. A big similarity between the two
is the colour scheme. Both posters follow a black, white and
orange set of colours, which is a classic scheme to do with
horror films.This could be due to the film Halloween,
however either way, the scheme is to do with horror.The
placement of everything for the posters is similar, with the
images being in the centre, acting as the main item of both. A
key difference, however, is the title. My title is much more
prominent than the poster I’m comparing it to.The reason
the other title isn’t is because they wanted to make the art
the centrepiece. Although I did that as well, I also took up a
lot of room with my title, making the picture less of an
attraction than on the Halloween poster.

Clear title at the top
Tagline
Art at the middle
Billing Block
Key Differences:
There’s a couple of key differences these posters, though they are very similar. Firstly is
the art style. Mine is a lot more cartoon-like than the other piece of art.The thing is, I was
limited to making art on photoshop, as I’m useless at drawing otherwise, whereas this
person making the Halloween art is a professional artist.This isn’t necessarily a negative,
because they’re both different, but I would’ve loved to make something like that.The
other difference is the tagline. I originally had one but decided to replace it with ‘coming
soon’ as I couldn’t think of a good enough slogan.They’re a key part of horror posters, and
next time I’ll hopefully come up with something better.

Production – Poster 2
Poster 2 is a more original idea, something less inspired
by classic film posters and something more original from
me. It didn’t turn out quite as well as I wanted it to but
let's start with the positives.The base idea was good, and
I did the masking well, creating the image I wanted to. It
was a good start.The problem is that black and white is a
difficult background to put a title on. I couldn’t find a
good colour to put in the foreground, and this is where it
started going wrong. I don’t like the title colour at all,
even though I tried several different combinations. Next
time, I know that I shouldn’t have a predominantly black
and white poster. It has created all sorts of problems for
me. I’m glad I created another poster as I’m not a
massive fan of this one. However, another positive is that
the idea is actually original. I’m glad I could come up with
some good ideas, and although it wasn’t executed
perfectly, it was still good that I could come up with
ideas.

Production – Other
I’m pleased with how myT-shirt came out. It’s a minimalistic design that looks good
and isn’t too complex. Compare it to the otherT-shirt designs and there are plenty of
similarities between the two. Notice first the black shirt.This is more common with
these genres as horror is dark, and so black shirts are seen more often. Next, we
move onto the actual designs. Although also different, there are plenty of similarities
between them. First, the two on the right have the movie title. So does mine,
although it’s smaller, it’s still present. Next, look at the picture. All three are again
very similar in one specific way: they show one of the most iconic images of those
films. Of course I can’t say my image is iconic in any way, however it’s my favourite
picture from the movie and when I think about it, this is the first image I see, similar
to how we think of those images when we think of Halloween or Friday 13th. If there
was one item I’d want to improve on it would be the outline to the square. Right now,
it looks fluffy, however I’d much prefer something like a spray paint pencil and colour
it dark red or orange. I don’t dislike it as it is now, but I just feel like there’s always
room for improvement.

Production –Trailer (Aesthetic
Qualities)
My trailer had both its strengths and its weaknesses. It was by far the most enjoyable
area to edit, but it is in by no way perfect. The main aesthetic was originally going to be
something dark, but I only managed to achieve that for half of it. I added a dark filter but
that only does so much.The only day I had to film was extremely bright, and that comes
across in a lot of the film. One thing I do like about the trailer is how it shows off the wide
variety of close ups and wide shots.The entire point of the trailer is to get people hyped
for a film, and it does this by showing the most exciting, and appealing shots, and I think
it achieved this well, another thing which I think is good about this trailer. A negative
however is some of the shots. For some areas, I used autofocus on the camera. This was
useful in some areas, as I was both in the film and working the camera, however it proved
to also be difficult, as it wouldn’t have as good focus as if I used manual focus.

Production –Trailer (Technical
Qualities)
My trailer is a lot more focus based on technical qualities than aesthetics. There’s a
lot of cuts and layers going into this.The technical qualities actually help with the
story. Fast cuts allows for a lot of information to be taken in a short amount of time.
This is perfect for trailers as it has to convey a lot of information about the movie in
a short amount of time. I think this is the best thing I’ve done out of everything in
my production. My trailer is definitely what I’ve done best. Look at other trailers and
you tend to see frequent cuts, with the best moments of the full movie lumped into
a three-minute trailer. I’ve stuck the best parts of my film together, withholding
certain bits of information to save for the film, and showing other parts that would
make people want to see it. A downside of this trailer is the length. To pad it out to a
minute, I added a lot of darkness and quotes, with a lengthy title, there isn’t actually
all that much footage. I didn’t have too much footage for the main film, so I didn’t
want to show too much for the actual trailer, so everything was shorter than
originally intended.

Production –Trailer (Technical
Qualities)
Another thing I think I did well was the editing as a whole. As you can see below, a
lot of effects and keyframing went into it. Look at the sound for example. It’s
important for it to be the correct volume at different times, so keyframing to
gradually increase and decrease the volume when it’s needed really improves the
overall trailer. As well as this, using fades in the right places works.When the
screens go to black, I’ve used fades. I want to control the speed of the trailer,
sometimes the speed is fast and sometimes slow. A fade, slows the whole trailer
down when I want it to.

Production – Film (Aesthetic
Qualities)
My final film has more aesthetic qualities than my trailer
does. Firstly, I added a darker filter on it. It was pretty
bright when I filmed so adding a darker filter gives it a more
horror-like feeling. Another way I used aesthetics was
through the use of depth of field. Having a high depth of
field, as shown on the bottom right, creates a more
cinematic look.These are positives of my aesthetic
qualities. I’m not going to go too deep into the meaning
behind aesthetic qualities as I made an analysis video for it,
but it all has a meaning. A negative of my aesthetic is that I
since I was behind the camera and acting, I had to use
autofocus.This means that sometimes the camera didn’t
focus as perfectly as I wanted it to, creating some not so
perfect shots. Autofocus didn’t do a terrible job, there were
just some areas that it didn’t do as well as I would’ve with
manual focus.

Production – Film (Technical
Qualities)
The technical qualities were the saviour of my project. I wasn’t pleased with a lot of
my footage, so my editing made it a lot better. Starting with the positives, as I just
said editing made my final piece a lot better, how I used sound helped the audio
massively. Using music in the right places added to building tension and using
silence in other parts also creates a scary feeling. It’s all about how different sounds
create different feelings, and sometimes silence works best. A negative is how I use
some of my cuts. Sometimes I made cuts that I didn’t need to make, creating an
unnatural feeling for my film. I needed to do these cuts to avoid people seeing the
actor look at the camera, so the shots were quicker than originally intended, but
they were too quick, and it ruined the ending. I prefer my trailer to my short film, as
I’m best at editing, but under the circumstances, I don’t think the product I made
was too bad.

Time Management
Time management is a very important part of the FMP. If my timing for
every section is off, then my PowerPoints will be very inconsistent, with
some being filled and others almost empty. Since this project is graded
based on the worst section, this wouldn’t work out very well. Luckily, I
think I handled time management very well. I kept to a strict schedule the
entire time, and so I never went behind on my work. Everything was timed
so well, that I managed to finish early enough to make improvements. I
know all my work is good, but I have opportunity to make it better, already
knowing that I’d finish with a good grade so there’s no stress on me when
I’m doing work either. Really, there’s no negatives with how I managed my
time management. I did everything well and on time, if not early, so there
was absolutely no negatives to this. Everything was both finished and
uploaded on to my website in time.

Person 1
■ Can you name a positive and a negative about my posters?
– Really likes the design of poster 1, and the moving versions of both are
nice touches
– For poster 2, the title doesn’t look great.
■ Can you name a positive and a negative about my trailer?
– The editing is really well done, lots of frequent cuts like there would be in
a real trailer
– The black screen lingers and could be too frequent, it takes up a lot of
time
■ Can you name a positive and a negative about my film?
– There’s a wide variety of shots and it looks nice
– There’s no obvious story and it’s confusing

Person 2
– Poster 1 looks professional, a real horror film-style poster
– Moving poster 2 doesn’t work too well, the masking wasn’t done too
well.
■ Can you name a positive and a negative about my trailer?
– Liked the editing, thought there was a lot of information packed into a
minute trailer
– Thought the music took away from the final piece too much
– Liked the technical qualities, e.g. good use of depth of field.
– Some of the shots lasted a weird amount of time, which took away from
the film.

Person 3
– Also really likes the art for poster 1
– In poster 2, her hair sometimes gets mixed in with the black and white
■ Can you name a positive and a negative about my trailer
– It did its job well, like it looks very professional, as though it could be a
real trailer
– Black screen lasted too long
– Looks really nice, got a good variety of shots
– Confusing, some shots don’t last long enough

Feedback Summery
I agree with most of the feedback I got. I’m not as proud of my final film as I am with
the others, so I know there’s plenty of negatives, and everyone got it pretty much
on point. However, I am proud of how my trailer turned out and so I found out about
negatives about that which I didn’t know about before, however looking back,
they’re right, the black parts do last too long. One thing I don’t agree on is the
trailer negative from person 2.The music was done very well and compliments my
style very well, but this was the only one I disagreed with. I also noticed that the
negatives from the posters all came from poster 2. Again, I agree with what they
had to say, and it seems like the common consensus is that my first poster is better,
which I also 100% agree with. I took a lot more time with that one and it shows.
However, I stick by the idea that I wanted one cartoon poster and one rea one. Even
if one is a lot better than the other, I still like both, and I’m happy that I did 2.

Y2 FMP: Evaluation

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