Charlie Beadle reflects on improving their skills in research and planning, construction, shot composition, lighting, locations, and sound design for a film project from their preliminary work to the final product. They learned about implementing proper storyboards, shot lists, and analyzing other films. Through practicing with software like Final Cut, they improved at steady shot composition using tripods and gimbals. Their final product featured varied day and night scenes shot in town and a forest. Sound design was a strength, using Cubase, GarageBand and Audacity to add voiceover, music and balanced audio levels.

1. Evaluation
Question 7
CHARLIE BEADLE

2. Research and planning
During my time in research and planning I learnt how professional film makers
create texts, and complete their research and planning. From storyboards to shot
lists to the analysis of other products, thee is a lot of work that goes into the
research and planning of a film tat I didn’t realise happened. When I researched
into the forms and conventions of normal horror films, I realised that there was a
lot of tins that go into creating the thins that we all take for granted when
watching films. Through looking at professional texts, I saw that I could have met
a higher standard with my work, and make it look more like an actual film plan
rather than the work of a college student.

3. Construction
The construction of my product was hard, as I had never used final cut before.
But it was even harder when I was doing my prelim. I have progressed a lot in
how I use he software that is available to me, this will be shown in later slides
with side by side comparisons. I leant a lot about physical shooting as well, such
as the first time I went out to get footage, it was raining and the lens was
covered in water, making the shot out of focus. I later corrected myself and took
a lens cap so that the lens stayed clean.

4. Shot composition
When I look back on my prelim exercise, the shot composition wasn’t too bad.
However, it could be improved drastically. The use of the shots in my prelim
didn’t go with continuity editing, and were out of sync when it came to
positioning (as shown below). The shots are just switching sides, and not
following each other wen edited together.
Where as these are more complex, at different angles and show a wider
range of the location.

5. Holding a steady shot
Throughout the filming of my product I used either a tripod or a fig rig
for every shot, apart from one, that was done by hand, but was
supposed to be an unsteady shot. These items of hardware allowed me
to hold a steady/ stable shot throughout my filming. The tripod kept the
camera still for the sots that it was used for, and the fig rig kept the
camera stable and in line when holding a tracking shot. I also used it for
1 or 2 pan shots as the tripod couldn’t get to the area I needed to film.

6. Lighting
In my product, half was at night, half was at day. This was to make the
opening see two different times, and expand the time it seemed like it
had taken place over, however in my prelim the lighting was bright and
clear as it was filmed in college. The filming I did when a night wasn’t the
best, and I attempted to fix what went wrong but I couldn’t. The problem
was, my camera isn't very good at filming in low light settings and so the
footage wasn’t very clear, however I compensated for this by slowing the
footage down so the frame stuttering wasn’t as noticeable, and then
edited together the shots that were worse quality in quicker succession.

7. Locations
The locations used in my prelim was just one room in the college,
which isn’t varied and was just as a practice, but after I did my
research and planning I decided to film in more than 1 location. I
decided to film in both town and in a local forest (as shown by the
pictures below). I did this to expand the timeline, as explained in the
lighting slide. After I researched the forms and conventions of real
world films, I realised that if I filmed in a isolated location and kept
the diegetic sound quiet then the audience would think that the
person was also isolated, giving the impression that the character is
alone, which is what I wanted to happen. I didn’t think about factors
such as this when filming my preliminary production.
Prelim - Actual product-

8. Sound
The sound in my prelim was simple and rather bad. I believe sound was one of
my strongest fields in my actual production. I used Cubase to create my
voiceover, garage band to make my music, and audacity to put it all together. I
believe that the use of these programs made my product better and allowed it to
gain a storyline, as without the voiceover, it wouldn’t have any background as to
what is happening. In my prelim, there is music and there is diegetic sound,
however the music is overlapping some speech and it just stops for other areas
of speech. The sound is my biggest improvement as I have levelled out the
loudness in each block of the audio in my main product, allowing the viewer to
hear every sound that is included. I used the forms and conventions of real world
horror films and found that the use of sounds that are out of the ordinary and
are not normal intrigue the viewer, hence why I used the high pitch sound at the
end of the first scene. I used these real world conventions to my advantage to
create a suitable soundscape for my product.