The film project was moderately successful but had room for improvement. It was left too late in production, forcing compromises that hindered quality. Using student actors without training and a university location instead of appropriate settings lowered professionalism. With more preparation time, a better script adaptation, trained actors, and suitable locations, there could have been a much better outcome. As director and editor, the individual took on major roles, heavily reworking the script to fit limitations and directing actors through techniques like Stanislavski's realism. However, untrained actors had limitations. In the future, using trained actors as a standard could improve quality and realism.

1. Edward Lockyer
Individual Critical Reflection for Producing Drama
In the end the film project as a whole was a success. The production ran a little
rocky but our collective idea came together to create a film we are, as a group,
moderately happy with. However, this project did not reach it’s full potential and
has highlighted a great deal of areas to improve on for the future; both for my
role as an individual and collaboration with a group as a whole.
The production of this film was left way too late, forcing the choice of screenplay
for the most practical instead of interesting and hindering the overall production
value. The level of professionalism of the project was brought down due to using
actors that were university students and using a location of a university hall. The
reason this occurred was because of the lack of time; therefore the screenplay
had to be adapted from an adult couple in a home, to a student couple in
university.
If there had been use of the actors with a level of training, an interesting location
and more work put into adapting the script, there would have been a much
better outcome.
I took on the roles of Director and Editor, which were two major roles in the
production. I believe they were key roles in making the most out of the situation
the group had. Most of my time was spent heavily modifying the screenplay to be
the best it could to fit our situation with actors who didn’t fit the age of the
characters and a location that didn’t fit the one that we had to work with as I
have already explained.
Directing actors with no prior experience took a lot of acting techniques, and a
fair few takes, to get the right delivery of lines.
The directing approach I took was geared towards Stanislavski’s realism, due to
fitting the characters real life situation and drama narrative. An acting technique
I used was to make the actors try and relate their own lives to the characters
emotions. I told Caleb, the actor of John, to picture in the scenes where his work
is disturbed, that the beeping noise is the people who live next door to him in his
halls who play music very loudly all the time. This gave a sort of emotion
memory to go by for an understanding of how it feels to be aggravated in a
similar situation. It helped with a baseline for tone of voice, body language and
movement; such as rolling his eyes, quick and sharp movements when searching,
muttering under his breath, etc.
As well as this, I also wound up the actors through making them deliver the lines
over and over again. This had the affect of the actors becoming tired and grumpy,
of which was the intended state of the characters. Like the characters who are at
the end of their wire with there failing relationship, the actors were at the end of
their wire with their jobs. It is much easier to get into character as someone who
is grouchy and going to snap at the simplest thing (the beeping noise), if you are
actually in that state yourself.
However, looking at it critically, there is only so much you can do with a person
with no acting training. As mentioned before, in the future there should be the

2. Edward Lockyer
use of actors with a level of training as a standard. The consequence of using
these actors was lines being dropped/tailing off, the lines lost their punch,
aggression and overall effect. Another consequence was just an ‘amateur film’
feel to the whole project, with a general un-believability of the characters and
story. This was disappointing as the drama genre is about realism. I felt the
screenplay’s concept of a time bomb and a failing relationship had some
potential, after the dialogue and action had been re-created.
Editing the drama by myself was good for consistency as everyone has their own
style. The main positive of directing and editing was the ability to place the shots
and their run time with the edit in mind. Which meant when it came to editing
the footage, I had a clear picture in my head of what I wanted the finished film to
look like.
An example would be the pause before the character John reacts to the noise in
the first two shots, as when shot I waited then gave a signal to react to the noise
that would be put in the edit. I had a clear picture in my head of when the ticking
would be in the shot. Therefore when it came to putting in the noise it was easy
due to the gap and then the reaction giving a clear indication.
Another example would be directing the actors to get gradually more aggressive
and faster in pace with lines back and forth when arguing. The intention was to
build up tension between the characters, but also for the idea of incorporating
the ticking noise. It gave a chance for the ticking noise to build up and show that
there is a connection between it and the narrative, that it is not just a piece of
diegetic sound that it starts off as. That it displays a foreshadowing of the
relationship’s downfall and eventually ‘exploding’.
However there were a lot of lighting inconsistency’s that had to be patched up
with a lot of unnecessary time spent colour grading and messing around with
highlights, shadows and mid-tones etc. This did unfortunately hinder the quality
of some of the shots.
Transitions between shots were kept in mind when shooting. This allowed for an
extremely easy time with stringing the shots together. Also the trick of saying the
scene and take number before each shot was fantastic for locating which Tascam
recording was for which piece of footage with ease. Also clapping in front of the
camera was great for syncing the footage and Tascam recordings quickly.
Overall I believe the drama came out all right. In the future it is definitely key to
put more time into finding actors, location scouting and refining the final
screenplay.