The document provides an evaluation of the production process for a post-apocalyptic film trailer project. Planning was challenging due to scheduling actors, but filming went smoothly thanks to clear communication. Additional tension-building shots were filmed on a whim and improved the final product. Post-production took a long time due to extensive sky masking to achieve the desired bleak atmosphere while retaining contrast.

1. EVALUATION

2. INTRODUCTION
Having almost finished the final edit of my work, I will start to
reflect and evaluate how I progressed through the project in
detail about all aspects, especially decision making points
where I changed from the original plan, why I did this and if I
thought the outcome was a better result.
At the start of the project I already had an idea about what I
wanted to create as I’d taken some inspiration from a project
that I had done last year. I liked the idea of a post-apocalyptic
style setting but without much time and not a lot of planning
notice, the project didn’t turn out as I’d hoped which is where I

3. INTRODUCTION
made the decision to do a similar thing as I felt I could do
better this year with more time and planning to really set
the scene. Of course I didn’t want to make it exactly the
same as last time so I thought about how I could make it
different, deciding that doing my research would help
greatly to expand the few changes and filming locations I
had in mind which had come from a previous project and
an old building near to a relative's house.

4. RESEARCH
In terms of research, on reflection, I would do a bit more of an in
depth look of what was physically shown, such as how often
main and side characters are shown and what kind of shots they
were used and why I thought that they were used in that way.
While I think I did take some parts of my research in account
when I was looking at other trailers, I should have analysed them
more and how I could possibly have used that kind of thing in my
trailer. I did however look at colour, the brightness of shots and
pace to get inspiration for how I could effectively create the
atmosphere I wanted visually without solely relying on being told
audibly or with text on screen.
When looking at production techniques, I felt as though it

5. RESEARCH
was better to look at different types of techniques and things to
consider rather than look at a lot of title screens, giving me too
many options to choose from. I actually struggled more than I
expected I would to find the sort of tutorial idea that I had in my
head. I was definitely quite relieved when my preferred tutorial
was done in Premiere Pro rather than After Effects as I’m a lot
more confident with that software. It was my intention to spend
some pre-production time testing this out to see which approach
would be best when it came to production. I never got the
chance as I got distracted doing other things with pre-production
but I decided that as long as I had the tutorials I would probably
be okay. The other things that I looked at

6. RESEARCH
were to try and make the best out of my scenes such as making
subtle points to what I want the scene to say.

7. FINAL CONCEPT
The final concept for my film ended up being an extended trailer
in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic setting where an unspecified an
event or, possibly, number of events have caused the current
structure of society to collapse and everyone has turned to only
looking out for themselves or close-knit groups. I purposefully left
the cause of this happening out of being revealed so that the
audience could decide from themselves and with the knowledge
that the answer would theoretically be revealed during the whole
movie if it were to be made. I did consider at the start of the
project to have a typical sci-fi convention of a natural disaster
being the cause of the setting. I decided that I wanted the moral
to be that humans were responsible for the problem rather than
something out of our control.

8. PLANNING
I think my biggest problem when it came to doing my planning
was figuring out when I can organise the times to film with my
actors. With my main actress having a different college
timetable to myself, arranging a time to meet and discuss
filming times took longer than I anticipated. If I’d been able to
know and plan more in advance then I might have be able to
film more quickly to give me more time to edit. However, the
days I ended up filming on had very similar weather which
meant I could mix shots from different locations more easily.
With hindsight, I should have also been quicker with my
storyboard. I’d wanted to try the graphics tablet so I

9. PLANNING
didn’t have to hand-draw my storyboard and then scan them
into the computer where the lines might not be as visible and
then spend more time making them show up and be easily
readable. Having my storyboard already on the computer did
mean that I wasn’t able to continue it at home, it did however
mean that I stuck to just getting the point of that shot across as
opposed to making the scene unnecessarily detailed. It also
meant that I could easily show the rest of my crew when we
filmed to help explain what I wanted to do more easily. They
turned out to be easy aids in describing what I wanted to get
from each shot and my crew picked it up easily.

10. PRODUCTION
Luckily I was able to organise a time to film on the weekend
that production started which I turned out to be so grateful for.
Having made sure I finished the storyboard for what I wanted
to film in the first location, explaining and showing the scene to
my actress, Isabelle, and she didn’t need much direction and
what direction she did get she took really well, asking
questions to clarify on anything she wasn’t quite sure with.
Everyone else I brought were also clear on their roles when
they were required, even offering help where they thought it
might be useful and was in most cases. While I felt worried
that I would forget something or an unforeseen circumstance
would go wrong on both production days, resulting to me
having to reorganise filming which would leave me

11. PRODUCTION
less time to finish everything else, the actual days of filming
turned out a lot better than what I’d been worried about as
they were all successful filming days. Thanks to what I said
earlier about communicating with my crew, I got all the scenes
I wanted to film each time. Since I was on camera operations,
I trusted one of my crew members with capturing the diegetic
sound and relevant background noise. At Pately Bridge, the
person who I gave the sound job to already had experience
with the recorder and did really well. At Askham Bog things
were slightly different as the person who was doing my sound
hadn’t used the equipment before but myself and one of my
actors, who also knew how the sound recorder worked, taught
her the controls and tested how steady

12. PRODUCTION
the microphone could be held to get crisp sounds. This worked
out really well in the end and I didn’t really have problems with
those sound recordings. When I was at Askham Bog and had
filmed all of the parts that I’d put in my storyboard, something
was lingering in the back of my mind. I wasn’t sure if I liked
how my storyboard ended or if I was confident that I had
enough footage. I’d been looking back over my research and
thinking that I currently hadn’t planned to have any shots that I
could have play quickly to build the tension and anticipation
that I saw the other trailers I doing. Deciding to film some extra
shots as backup when I was at Askham Bog turned out to be
one of my best on the spot decisions. Thinking about what I
could remember from my research and

13. PRODUCTION
trailers I’d seen in the past, I directed my actors to do a
selection of different short sequences that I thought could be
used universally throughout. I wasn’t sure at the time if I’d use
them, and instead stick to the teaser trailer theme I seemed to
be going with at the time. However, once I got back to college
and putting my new clips into my timeline in the order I had, I
definitely felt that something was missing. I ended up putting
my clips in and I thought they added so much to it, there was
no way I’d take them out. I used most of these shots in my
trailer in the end so it was definitely worth it, especially from
the fact that they could be set at any point beyond what I’d
planned and filmed and I was really proud of them.

14. POST-PRODUCTION
The post-production process turned out to take a lot longer
than I’d intended. This was predominantly due to taking on the
extensive task that was masking out a lot of the sky on a lot of
my different shots to make sure the sky wasn’t too bright and
overexposed. It did however mean that I would spend most of
my remaining production time doing this. Due to the nature of
how my video went, I had to go through each frame to adjust
several masks which could take me a long time. I also had to
sometimes do it several times if I made a mistake which often
resulted in me having to start the mask again. Once I’d done
the mask, I’d add the lumetri colour to the mask so the colour
grading wasn’t as harsh. While it

15. POST-PRODUCTION
did take most of the production time to complete across my
trailer, I really think it was one of the best contributions to the
overall mise en scene. Having the blanked out sky as what the
colour grading did make the landscape look all the more bleak as
if it had been wiped out but as I’d already decided I wanted to be
the cause be people turning on each other, I thought the sky still
being blue could act as a subtle but nice contrast to enhance my
idea. I found it really frustrating to spend all the time I did on
making sure the sky was what I wanted it to. This ended up being
the main problem to do with post-production from the sheer
amount of time it took to duplicate the layer of film and go
through each frame to make sure that the

16. POST-PRODUCTION
mask covered the sky and blended seamlessly in the treeline
without covering the faces of my actors as it meant it was too dark
over them and their faces were too dark with the overlay and the
colour grading. With me having to zoom in so far to ensure the
points I placed were accurate, it meant that a lot of the colours
were similar and difficult to distinguish between what I was
masking out. This was the
hardest part and in some
shots I really struggled
with distinguishing
between shadows and
Isabelle’s hair or the
shadow of trees and the
wall in the archway I
filmed in.

17. POST-PRODUCTION
This led to a lot of tweaking of where I’d placed the points.
This unfortunately meant that any changes I realised I needed
to make to placements often resulted in me having to restart
the masks since it meant that it sometimes flickered. However,
I sometimes preferred this to having to realign each frame to
match the previous. Even in some other shots, my actress’
face was still too dark for my liking so I added another mask
loosely around her face to lighten it up.

18. POST-PRODUCTION
While the mask was less precise and used on fewer shots, I
still had the same problems with the tracking animations
though this was easier to get through. It took a bit of getting
used to and after at least three weeks and a lot of frustration, I
was finally satisfied with how my film looked visually.
Another part of my trailer which I was really proud of was the
colour grading. While I’d initially thought that I’d be okay with
the tutorial that I’d researched, it did make it quite dark. Having
then remembered that I looked at the colour grading in
Apocalypse World from Supernatural with a coloured tint to it
and a higher contrast which

19. POST-PRODUCTION
gave a similar atmosphere as the one I wanted to create.
Not being able to then choose between the two looks that
I liked, I decided to go with both, adding a third to balance
out the difference. It did of course make the sky
completely white which led to my other problem but the
colour grading contributes to much to the meaning I want
to convey.

20. MANAGEMENT
Managing time during the project expectantly went downhill.
From my past experiences with projects, I knew that I often
ran out of time towards the end of them. I’d done better than
others this time in terms of keeping up with work but I didn’t
assume it to last. I presumed that other things would come up
and push my time back but not quite as much as what
happened. However, I do think that I was able to catch up
fairly quickly, and being set back in time actually helped me to
make different decisions in my work which turned out to be for
the better. I also think I could have managed my planning a
little bit better as I feel like I could have been prepared

21. MANAGEMENT
more initially when I started planning so that the filming days
felt a little less rushed but they seemed to work out all the
same in terms of getting similar weather and being able to
have crew available throughout without any real major
problems.

22. CREW FEEDBACK
Did I make your job outline clear?
I felt very clear about what my role was during filming and was instructed on what
I needed to do at what time and where.
Was guidance and support offered where required?
I was given support whenever I was unsure about what I needed to do.
Were instructions given clear and understandable?
Instructions were given to me in a clear way and was made sure that I
understood what I needed to do.
Were there any problems or issues?
There were no issues. Everything was planned and set up in an
organised way with all appropriate equipment and resources.
Did I manage the situation well?
You were very calm and had planned everything you wanted to do.

23. CREW FEEDBACK
Did I make your job outline clear?
Yes you did. You made it clear for what you wanted me to do, especially in terms
of where i need to stand and what i needed to say.
Was guidance and support offered where required?
Yes. one example would be when i kept forgetting my lines about five times. you
pre-reminded me of what you wanted me to say.
Were instructions given clear and understandable?
Yes. i understood what to do on the day and the different roles that you
wanted me to do.
Were there any problems or issues?
Nothing major.
Did I manage the situation well?
Yes you did. The day was very organised, and you knew what you wanted to be done
and how it was going to be done.

24. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
“ The beginning is a bit of a slow start up. Personally, maybe
shorten the bit where she’s walking around and perhaps start
the overlaying monologue sooner? Also when she and the guy
are talking is a bit hard to hear him over the music. ”
“ I loved your trailer. It was cool and honestly a movie I'd love
to see. My favorite line was 'i have a plan. Is it a good plan?
No. " Like honestly if anything were to happen to society. That
is how it would happen. And yeah I wanna find out what
happens. I mean are her family still alive? It's has the kind of
same feel as the The Host did. Honestly I don't think I would
change anything. The video was great. The voice over and the
text and the quality. Everything. ”

25. AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
“ An excellent plot, a favorite of mine actually (the whole world
being wiped out and fighting for your life). While easy to follow it
also had it's own parts that you needed to work out for your own
before it said so (the beginning was a good touch, showing the
character being chased but not immediately telling why or by
what). The setting was great and little details really added to it
(the character grabbing canned food was a nice detail since
most canned foods are good for years but I just like little things
that make a big picture). Very well written both script and the
main character especially with her "trust no one and don’t mess
with me I'll mess you up" attitude. I liked that because with
these types of movies it's live or die and you can’t afford to put
your trust into someone so that was also really cool. ”

26. MEETING INTENTIONS
As a whole, I’d definitely say that my product meets my
intentions. The only downside is that due to the nature of
extensive editing that I was only just able to ensure my trailer
was finished and not on a poster, which I initially thought I’d
have time to do during production but the trailer of course took
priority. My final product does resemble the idea I’d had in my
head when first coming up with the concept. I am really proud
of how my colour correction overlays turned out, I really think
that it makes the tone and atmosphere so much more real and
thought provoking to the audience. Evidenced by my audience
feedback, this, among with everything else I

27. MEETING INTENTIONS
included to put this message across, was successful in doing
this and I’m really happy that it worked and I didn’t have to
solely rely on audio and the narration to explain the situation to
the audience. But the music and narration also enforced it. I
was really pleased with the way the music turned out and how
I was able to mix a light, peaceful with a more dark and
sinister song to create a whole new tone. Initially I just planned
to use the darker one but once I combined them I knew it was
something different and potentially really effective.
What another person who did my audience feedback

28. MEETING INTENTIONS
said was that she thought that it started up quite slowly with
the opening short being a bit long. Part of me does agree with
this as I do feel it might have been a little bit long and I could
have shortened it a little bit. However, the reason I made that
clip longer was so that it was visually shown just how alone the
main character is and that she feels even more alone when
the rest of the trailer plays out. I also agree that I might have
made the music a little bit louder than it needed to be,
although I still think both of my actors could be heard fine
throughout.
Overall, I’m really pleased and happy with how my trailer

29. MEETING INTENTIONS
ended up now that it’s finished. I didn’t expect the masking to
take so long with making mistakes and generally taking time to
go through each frame so I was happy with how it looked.
Some of the masks I’m not completely happy with but they’re
not completely noticeable and I don’t think it subtracts from the
mise en scene.