2. What was the theme of your project and
what attracted you to it?
• The theme of my project that I chose from the list of words was
fantasy as it seemed like one of the stranger ones I could think of
ideas for and I knew id be able to make something quite weird and a
bit abstract from it so I thought about what I could bend the fantasy
genre into and thought back to growing up as a youth and how
everything back then seems like its from a fantasy novel or film as
your imagination can really wonder when your out playing in the
woods or exploring the fields near your village.
• I thought id be able to make a good photo/video project with this
theme of fantasy leaking into childhood.
3. What research did you undertake and how did it help
develop your project?
• Since I had an idea of what I wanted to make I knew
there was a few photographers that I liked the style of
and had similar ideas to what I wanted to make so I
went onto the websites/online portfolios of these
photographers like Dylan Hausthor and George
Muncey their websites were great help as they had
high res large images of their work to look at and gain
inspiration, I was already familiar with a lot of their
work but going back to look at it with a sense of and
idea was really helpful as I could take specific things
away from the images and it meant a lot more to look
at them to help my own project.
• The things I looked for were techniques id like to use
which one of the main ones I took away was using
hard flash at nighttime instead of doing long exposures
as the flash gave the images an eerie dark look.
4. How did you develop and improve your ideas throughout the
project?
• During the making of my project, I kept going back to my
research to look at scenes and images to keep refreshing
ideas for my own project so there was times where I
thought I needed to fill up a section with images and I
was struggling for ideas, so I just went back to look at
what id researched and that helped think of techniques I
could use to fill up the section.
• In the first week of production I was making the title
screen for the short film and was struggling to make it
better than just a still image and text so I did some
thinking and looked at my research and came up with an
idea that would fit my theme and add to the section
nicely so I added a plane of blur around a circle and
trimmed it to the edges to almost add a depth of field to
the image to highlight the center text and then added a
really slow key frame zoom going into the text which
sounds like small tings but they really add to the finished
project and it’s a big step up from just having a still image
and text.
With use of blur
Without the use
of blur
5. What was the outcome of the project/task?
• The outcome of the project is a short experimental film that shows off
the fantasy elements of the surrounding areas where I grew up in a
dark nostalgic dreamy way which has a lot of cutaways and short
bursts of images mixed with video. Its all shot in black and white to
keep on with the dark effect and it doesn’t really explain itself its
more for what the viewer wants to think about it I wanted it to give
people a weird nostalgia of getting creeped out when its starts to get
dark when you were playing out as young kids and lean into the idea
of thinking there was fantasy elements to normal life like creatures
and people living In the woods waiting for it to be dark to come out.
6. Personal Response
This section will explore your thoughts and feelings about the
experience. This will help gain a understand of how your personal
feelings may have impacted the final outcome.
7. How did you feel about the project before you started?
• I was quite exited to make this project as it was quite different to
anything I had made before which as a good thing as I wanted to
make something a lot different to what I was used to, and this project
was a good place to test out ideas and make something quite
experimental I also wanted to use some of the skills id acquired from
the last project I made which was video based and I really enjoyed
that project and wanted to make more video based work using
certain styles and ways of filming that go well with my visual style
from my own personal photography.
8. What do you think about your project development and how did it help
you to refine your idea?
• I think over the time spent developing my ideas with the planning and
experiments I had a good time to get a style down that I wanted for my video
and managed to set the tone nicely with the dark eerie style. While developing
my project I used my time to go back and make sure my images and video was
fitting in with what id planned and was matching the style that I wanted it to
look like.
• This helped me refine my idea down to making sure it stayed as a short film as
I dint want it to be clogged with unnecessary images that weren’t fitting to the
other ones which I had to do a lot as not all images went together well, and
some didn’t fit the aesthetic
9. Did you collaborate on your project or engage contributors,
etc.?
• For the first half of my project, we did a group section where we did
designs for the grid together. For the group section we made a
website about trave art and photography and made some idents and
website screenshots for it. In photoshop I made a collection of fake
screenshots of hat the app would look like with a layout similar to
Instagram which matched the planning we did for it with color
schemes and how we wanted images and text to look for it. My other
group members made logos and website screenshots and even a
short ident video.
• For the 2nd part of the project, I worked entirely alone as I dint really
need anybody to help me and even if I did, I would have struggled to
find anyone to help me take images in the night as I was going out
very late at night when most people are in bed.
10. How did you feel when the project was completed and
why?
• I felt my project had gone well but was quite relived when I had finished as I
struggled finishing off the edit as it was hard getting the clips and images to
convey what I wanted. Since it was my first time making something of this
style, I had to figure out how to layout the film while keeping it all relevant.
• I felt like this project went well as I put more time and effort into my
research and planning which I usually struggle with my other projects so to
practice for the FMP I tried to be more in depth. I enjoyed making this
project and when I finished, I wish id had more time on it as it was quite fu
to plan and make my short film and I really enjoyed the idea behind it so it
could be something I re visit in my own tie for a personal project.
11. Evaluating the project
In the previous sections, you have been commenting upon the project development. The
evaluation may include some similar information but it will also include critical comment.
An evaluation must include information about the good and bad points of the project and it
is important to be honest. Finally, you should make a judgment about the effectiveness of
the success of the project
12. What were the good points about the project/task and what did you learn from
them? [try and think of at least 3, more if possible]
• I think one of the good parts of my project was the visual style as its something I was
thinking about a lot from the start of the project as I knew it was going to play an
important part in my short film, in fact the main focus was getting the look right for the
film as without it the whole thing wouldn’t work as is all riding on the back of the tonality
so I'm glad I got it to look how I wanted it too with the dreamy nightmarish eerie look of
the woodlands and nighttime village style. I learnt a lot from this project as it helped me
create a style for an idea that I produce and how I can use my inspirations to create what
I'm thinking with my use of planning and research.
• I think the research on this project was much more detailed than others as I had some
good people that I investigated that really inspired my project and I quite enjoyed talking
about them in detail I learnt a lot from my research as seeing how they took the subjects
and made heir own style on the photos really helped me find the style for my project
• I think the theme/idea for my project was a good point as I really liked the idea of doing
something quite personal to some people and I liked the idea of making it nostalgic but
adding the whole creepy dark aesthetic to it I thought could be really cool plus I've not
seen anyone use the idea before.
13. What challenges did you face and how did you respond to
them? Try and think of at least 3...
• One of the main problems I struggled with was fitting the images together as I had a lot of images
but not all of them fit together nicely and I couldn't decide ether to have some have transitions into
the images or just to have them as hard cuts so in the end I ended up doing a mix of both and
ended up removing images and video that didn’t fit with the rest of the clips id already used.
• Another thing I struggled with was focusing at nighttime with my cameras as I used a wide variety
of lenses and cameras and with no light it makes it really difficult to get good focus on subjects so a
way I went around this was pulling my car up to the places I wanted to photograph and shine the
light onto my subject then dial in my focus then turn the lights out which worked really well and I
even ended up using the lights from my car for a few of the video sections I did so it ended up being
a happy accident.
• I think one of the main challenges about the experience of making this project was using all the
footage and images id taken and making them fit into an order that works how I waned as making
this project was experimental and I wanted it to be like that to keep it looking odd and dreamlike,
but it was hard to get the point of the video across I think next time I would have added some
narration or maybe a bit of voiceover to add to the video which I think would have helped fill it out.
14. What were the negative points about the experience, and what
could you have done to improve them?
• I think the main negative experience from this project was the timing as for
the week of production I had a really busy week of work where I was
working late nights so most of my free time to edit and film had to be done
really late at night which affected how well I could focus. I think to avoid this
I could choose something that didn’t need to be shot at certain times of the
day and focus on getting all my video and images on weeks where I know
I'm not going to be busy.
• I think another negative part of the project was not having enough time on
the production for the solo work as I feel like I could have done a lot more
with mine if I had another week to go out and film which would have made
my video a lot longer as its quite short.
• I could have improved on this by managing my time a lot better and maybe
taking more footage to fill out my project.
15. How would you rate the final piece? [think along the lines of poor,
satisfactory, good or excellent...justify your rating]
• I think I would rate my final piece along the lines of satisfactory and
good as I feel like there was a lot more that I could have done with its
things like making it longer and adding some narration I think one of
the big things I would have done if I had more time was maybe
added a poem over the top of the video and images as I toyed with
this idea during production, but I could never find one I liked and I'm
definitely not able to write one myself.
• I think this grade is justified as it isn’t entirely what I planned it to be
in terms of conveying my point I think my visuals are what holds it
together as some of the shots I'm quite happy with as they really
work with the project theme.
16. What is your opinion of your final piece? What elements do
you think are successful and why?
• I think overall my film is good I really like some of the video shots I did and
some of the effects I made for the images, and I think it could be the start
of a really good project if I were to work on the idea more in my own time.
• I think some of the more experimental parts are really great like the key
framing inversions at the beginning was quite cool and the use of my car
headlights in some shots worked nicely with the ideas I had.
• I also really like how well the black and white worked as I think the whole
project just not have anywhere near the same kind of effect without it
being in black and white it really gives everything this gloomy dark look and
really helps get the ideas of fantasy elements of in my images.
• I think my idea to use hard flash on certain images worked nicely too as I
knew it helped highlighting my subjects but keeping the dark backgrounds
which was key to keep a bit of mystery In the project of what could be
behind the darkness.
17. Some examples of edits I
did for the video making
them fit my theme much
better with he black and
white and the darkness
style.
18. How well did your project apply the characteristics and
conventions of the medium you worked in?
• I think my project applied the conventions and characteristics well
as I knew I wanted to make an experimental short film and I knew
that there was certain ways of going about this so I watched and
researched a lot of similar products to help me get the
characteristics down I was recommended a film le jete which really
helped me get an idea of what kind of short film I wanted it to be
and I got some ideas from that to make my project seem like a
short film as I wanted to make it seem nothing like anything else
especially not a YouTube video styled thing.
19. How did your design appeal to your target audience?
• I think my design appealed nicely to my audience as it was marketed towards
16–24-year-olds and I wanted it to be for people who enjoy looking back at
their childhood in a nostalgic way it was also mainly marketed to people who
grew up in small villages in the UK so I centered my whole video about the UK
small villages at nighttime and it is all about nostalgia so I used familiar scenes
I could find and made them eerie to fit my dark theme I think this appealed
well to my audience as it takes everything and morphs it into one small short
film.
• I used specific fonts to cater to the UK with old English type text to further
push the Britain theme of the villages and I also used lots of images of
woodlands and locations that could be seen as familiar to anyone who's not
even been there like gates into fields with horses in and stick forts in woods
these are all things people will have seen many of growing up in the UK.
20. Analysis
In this section, you will focus on the details of the project and make
sense of what happened in the project. You should demonstrate how
your decisions informed the project development and the success of the
outcome.
21. In what ways was the overall project a success?
• I think overall the project went well as I didn’t run into any massive
problems that disrupted the whole project, I managed to get
everything in on time and make it up to a standard I was happy with
even though there was things id like to improve on if I had more
time but that’s just how it goes.
• I think it was a success because I appealed to my target audience,
and I made what I had planed and set out to make from the start
which was a short film that showed of dark fantasy elements in UK
small villages.
• Visually I believe my project was a success as I got it to look exactly
how id planned which I thought I would struggle with as I don’t do
much shooting in the nighttime and thought I may struggle with the
limited gear I have.
22. What elements did not go well and why?
• I think some of the elements that didn’t go as planned was the length of the
film as I planned on it being around 2-3 mins long, but it ended up being short
and only just over a minute as I didn't really have enough footage to make it
any longer than I could which is because I didn’t take enough and thought
what id taken would do me plenty which as not the case.
• Another thing that didn’t go as well as I wanted was getting across the points I
wanted in the short film as I wanted it to kind of tell a nostalgic story in images
but that was a lot harder than I anticipated and it ended up being just sort of a
montage of video and images related to the subject I chose and it doesn’t tell
much of a story, its in a great need of narration or some voiceover.
• I think some of the clips I used made sense to me but maybe not everyone
would make the connections to what was trying to get across in this project so
if I could go back id probably find a lot more images and video that worked
better than some of the one's id chosen.
23. How did your skills develop during the portfolio? [remember, skills aren't just
technical, remember things like organization, time management, communication,
etc. as well]
• I think my skills developed a lot during this project as I chose to do the video side as I
really enjoyed the last project which was all video based and felt I still had a lot to
learn so I decided to make all this project video based using some images as well but
really decided to test myself by shooting most of it at night and in black and white
which is challenging to get the lighting right and keep it looking how you wanted it
style wise for the project So I really learnt a lot more this project for shooting video
learning skills like shooting at night and getting focus in the dark.
• Another set of skills I learnt while making this project was finding certain things I was
looking for as I struggled to find some of the thing's id planned to shoot like the tree
forts so I did a lot of research online for my local areas and found reviews for walks in
the local area tat mentioned they had seen stick forts so this was perfect, and I could
go walk there and take the images.
• This was a good skill to learn for finding things I needed to shoot as most time I just
guess where things could be and do a lot of trial and error to find things, I like to take
photos off instead of going super deep into websites and review pages, this will help
me a lot in other projects I can imagine if there's something specific, I need to find
again.
24. What meaning and messages did you want to convey and were
you successful?
• I talked a lot about this in previous slides but there was a big focus on this
project to convey nostalgia and fantasy elements that you imagine as a young
teenager while exploring your village so things like thinking there was
monsters and people living in the woods that only come out after dark and
that there could be ghosts and creatures that live in the dark alleyways
around your village as these were all things me and my friends used to fear
when we used to go playing out as kids. The point of the video was to make
those feelings a visual experience as a short film with the use of video and
images I took. I think to a point this was successful as I was happy with a lot of
the video and images, I made but think it would be hard without context to
take the whole meaning away from just watching the video which is why I
wish I had done some storytelling narration or voiceover on the short film just
to really make the point clear for the viewers that don’t already know the
context.
25. What feedback did you get from your peers and viewings?
• I showed my family and friends my short film and a lot of the responses and
feedback I got was similar to what I already knew about the film things like it
not fully showing off what the meaning of the video is without having some
background context before watching and that it needed something extra to
go with it like some talking or some people explaining through narration what
they're looking at which I think is right to an extent as I definitely should have
added some kind of voiceover or narration but I didn’t want to fully explain it
all straight up as I wanted some mystery left to the viewer.
• Something I was surprised about was none of my peer feedback was anything
to do with the length of the video as I thought people were going to say it
was way too short but no one mentioned it but its still something I am taking
as a criticism as it needed to be longer.
• The feedback got ended up being what I thought which proves the points I
thought about doing things better next time and these are things ill remeeber
to work on.
26. What would you do differently in the future and why?
• I think if I were to do things differently in the future it would be to think about
what the end product is going to look like more and make sure its going to be
full enough as with this project there was much more, I could have added to
make it a much fuller piece of work with the use of narration or voiceover.
• I would plan ahead to make sure I knew all the footage I had got was going to
be enough or at least make more than I think I'm going to need when it comes
to filming so I can make my projects longer even if I don’t end up using the
footage, I will be good to have as back up incase its too short like my project.
• I would also plan my weeks a bit better I terms of filming as I had to do a lot of
my filming after work really late at night when I made this project which was
not too bad as most of my footage needed to be at dark, but it was way too
late, and I wasn’t focusing enough as I was tired when making the video work
.
27. What knowledge have you gained that would help you in the future to improve your
project? Also, what knowledge from academic literature and professionals has helped and
why?
• I think some of the knowledge I've gained would be to plan things a bit better
in terms of getting the filming done and making sure I've got enough footage
for what I need as that was a big problem with this project and has been a
small problem in some of my other work too. I also think making sure I know
where my project should be when it's done as I think I didn't think about what
it would look like when id finished it, so it ended up feeling a little unfinished.
• I've also learnt that diving deep into my research helps a lot as this project I
actually did a lot of watching of films and other reading and seeing people
work and I kept going back to it during this project to get the look of my video
down and it really helped so I need to do this with all work I make.
28. Action Plan
This section will identify what you would do differently in the future and
identify ways you could develop.
29. If you were making a similar project in the future, what would you do
differently?
• I would definitely take more time to make sure that during my filming
and editing section to get all the footage I need and more as this time
I thought I had plenty, but it ended up not being enough footage to
make it as long as I wanted which hurt the overall project. I would
also take time to film/record some voiceover as this project would
have benefitted from a poem or some talking over it just to help add
that more depth to the whole film.
• I would also do m y best to seek out some even better video shots
even though I was really happy with some of the scenes I made I think
there could have been some shots replaced with much better ones if
id taken more time to travel and look for them.
30. How could you develop your skills for future projects? Please identify the
appropriate resources and courses. For example, webpages, tutorials,
books, short courses and qualifications.
• I could help myself by using YouTube videos for techniques I could use
that were similar/ theme oriented for this project as it was quite
stylized and I'm sure people have some great ideas online that could
of benefited my video for ways of filming or taking images.
• I know there's some paid online teaching videos you can get online
from lots of famous photographers that they upload every couple of
years like masterclasses which photographers like Alec Soth which I
always thought about looking into watching as they help you think of
ideas and show you their workflow so you can teach yourself some
techniques which could benefit my understanding of video and
photography for another project.
• I also have a mountain of photography related teaching books at
home that I still need to rea which will defiantly help me learn some
skills
31. What personal attributes could you develop to ensure you are
working at a professional level?
• I could manage my time a lot better in terms of editing days and filming days
just so I'm not worrying about missing out on time getting extra footage as
most professional stick to a tight plan on what days to which is something I
usually struggle with and end up having to do lots of editing from home.
• Also just making sure my work is ready as a draft to be able to showed to
people to get feedback before I hand it in instead of doing it myself as I'm sure
there's a lot that could be changed before hand that I could work on as im not
very good at wanting to show people my work as I usually think its going to be
critiqued a lot which is something I need to work on to help me get a better
finished product otherwise I won't learn what's going wrong and need
improving
