Task 4 Post-production: Self-reflection and evaluation:

Year 10 Creative Media Short Film Production – Term 03 Mr Andrews

Task 4 Post-production: Self-reflection and evaluation:

Discuss your feelings about the post-production and editing task:

·       Are you satisfied with the final result?

No I am not satisfied with the final project. I am satisfied with my own scene, I think that I did my scene very well, apart from the transition when Skylar and Katie enter the lair, I could have made the sound fade-out better. I am also not quite satisfied with my final scene, because I only had one afternoon to do it. I believe that if I had the time I could have fully edited the lighting, editing and sound track.

·       Did the editing require more/less time than you originally thought?

I thought that the soundtrack wouldn’t take as long as it did, but I re-organized my timetable and took a Saturday afternoon at the school library and I had it done to a good standard.

Also, I did not plan to do other peoples editing for them, so that took time when I thought they could do their part on their own.

·       Would like to change any aspects of your final film (scene editing, music, dialogue etc)?

Point 1) at the start, instead of having the elevator buttons, it would have been better to have Skylar writing in a diary (a typewriter would be more effective but I don’t think anyone would have one). An over voice would be over the top and narrating the introduction (E.g. something along the lines of explaining who they are, and it would be their greatest case yet…). Then to have that continued throughout the film in parts that may have needed more explaining (who victor and ella are, why they let ella go…)

Point 2) I would have liked the soundtrack for the entire film to flow better and that could have easily worked out if other members of the group read the emails I sent them.

Point 3) In the final credits, to have small shots of the characters coming up with their names would make the whole thing more intersing

·       If you could start the project again what would you do differently?

Pay more attention to the plot because I think that I could have made the story line more interesting. Also to have check points even for the rest of the group where we put it all together step by step so I know they aren’t leaving it to the last minute (note: not everyone in the group was bad)

Respond to each of the following dot points (using complete sentences or paragraphs). You should include as much detail as possible in your responses.

·       Discuss whether your film has turned out the way you pictured it?

The film didn’t turn out quite as I pictured it to be. Firstly because of our acting, but more importantly because I think that some scenes, the lighting could have been done better. I believed that the lab scene was too white, and we needed darker objects to contrast it. I believe that this is because some scenes of the film was obviously done rushed, and time wasn’t taken to make the film look good rather than average.

·       Describe whether your film clearly depicts the intended genre and describe some specific editing techniques you have used to achieve this;

The film clearly depicts it’s “crime/film noir” genre because of the black and white footage that is commonly used in ‘film noir’ films. The plot line of two detectives finding a thief and drug lord are also common the crime genre. The costuming, setting and lighting, particularly in the “lair” scene, really show the contrast of black and white, which is a common element of the film noir genre. The costuming also portrays the clothes style in which most film noir genre films are set. The use of guns, magnifying glass, gloves all contribute to building the crime genre. I believe that because of these techniques, my film has an easily identifiable genre.

·       Did you have all of the necessary shots to complete your film?

The film had all the necessary shots to complete the film, the story flowed and the story didn’t jump because of missing shots.

·       Would additional footage or reshooting some scenes have helped during the editing process?

I believe that if we had the change to re-shoot, I would have completely re-done the lab scene and don’t it all together so the lighting wasn’t too different. However by editing the scene I was able to correct that after Emma thought she had finished the scene. I also believe that we could have made some shots more dramatic and added more professional lighting to the scenes outside the lair. I believe that the lighting worked really well in the lair and brought interest to the film and I wish we had done that with some of the other scenes.

·       Describe whether your group worked effectively or whether most of the work was left to one or two people;

Our group did not work effectively and most of the work was left to me. By reading over the previous blogs throughout this assignment, you will be able to see that this is true. At the beginning of the project, I steeped in and began organizing the group – this I quite happy with. I would help people with bits and pieces and I enjoyed that. However when it came to shooting, quite a few times we could not film because people didn’t bring their gear. The first afterschool that we organized to meet, Emma didn’t turn up. When filming, I also noticed that (apart from Laura) they didn’t have a full shot list and it was a lot of guessing and checking and I really took over for most of their scenes because I had come up with the plot line and Emma really didn’t have much of idea of what she wanted done. For the first part, I was the one who logged all the footage and it was getting really stressful for me, however, Laura was more than willing to help and she took over – so I’m am not complaining about that.

When the filming was done (and at this stage I though the next part was individual) I already spent 3 afternoons editing the film before Mr. Andrews told the group that we were working collectively. I didn’t particularly want to do this because I had already spend so much time on it, but no one else had done anything and they were keen, so I sighed and went on with it. I gave everyone (who turned out to be just Natalie at that time) the complete files of my edited film. Now I had only cropped bits and pieces and taken sound out of some places so each scene needed more editing. Now back to the hard drives, Natalie was the first to get the drive, then it was Alice. Emma never got the files till I let her borrow my dodgy hard drive because she hadn’t really done anything and she could never be bothered to get even a memory stick. At the end of each lesson she would ask if she could put it on mine but by that stage it would have taken far to long to load.

More problems happened when people started finishing their scenes and they weren’t at all finished. Emma handed me her lab scene and saying that it was done and was so easy. So from the start I knew she hadn’t done it properly. Turns out all she did was turn each shot black and white and she didn’t even export it. So when I was staying afterschool I fixed her lighting that was completely and obviously not right and exported it so she could work on her sound track. A similar thing happened with her first draft of her final scene, but I wasn’t all that keen to do that scene for her so I just told her what to do and left her to her own devices.

I ended up co-editing the chapel scene with Natalie but I didn’t mind that so much because she was new and really did not know what she was doing.

Now I must state that Alice and Laura worked really well and if it wasn’t for them I would have pretty much collapsed, they both did what was needed and had it done in time. So they are all glowing angels.

When it came to the day it was due in, I had my part ready to just export and hand in. But no, I spent the whole entire lesson helping the others with their editing and soundtrack. I was completely furious because that should have been done and at the end of the day, once again it was me that had to stay after, export my file that I couldn’t do in the lesson and hand it into Mr. Andrews afterschool. So by that last week, both Emma and Natalie were walking on egg shells because I was just so angry at them because I knew that I was doing their work for them. But I didn’t not want to do it because I knew that if I trusted them, it would not be done and I had already spend so much time on the project, I wanted at least to not want to delete the project once it was all said and done. But in that last week I found that Emma had “not noticed” that I must have accidently given her half the final scene, so she didn’t even finish editing, let alone do a soundtrack even half the scene she was supposed to do. At least because I corrected the Lab scene, it looked good, but her soundtrack was completely opposite to the film and sounded like something off Shortland Street. But this was the day before it was due. I told her that I would be staying afterschool and help her with that scene, but she couldn’t do it because she (and I quote) “had to walk home”. I literally did her final scene for her, going back to my original draft, so it had nothing to do with Emma. I fully edited, corrected, made the soundtrack and exported the scene. So also that night I re-did the credits because, mainly, I did it in a way that allowed everyone to get proper credit (for who directed, edited, sound tracked and finished) each scene because quite often more than one would be doing it. But also I changed Emma’s name on the final scene and put it, quite correctly to mine because she did not do that scene.

I know I shouldn’t have done all the work for the girls but it is a group assignment = group mark and as I said earlier, I wanted to be at least marginally happy with the final product.

·       Explain whether you used Final Cut Pro to effectively organise your project (through the use of appropriate clip names, bins, sequences) and what you could improve for future projects;

I think I used final cut Pro very effectively because every bin was named and labeled in accordance to the scene and in that folder was all the labeled (scene number.ordered shot number.discription of shot e.g 4.24 Katie opens door). So it was all very tidy and it stayed that way.

·       Describe any problems or difficulties you encountered during post-production and editing. These may include; technical difficulties, corrupt or missing files, difficulty using the editing software, problems exporting sound or video etc;

We had organized to re-do the sound and go over the top which was the plan from the start, however when I took the chip out of the recording device, no computer would pick it up and the files were undetectable. Other than that, it was quite fun for me to experiment with all the settings and see which worked best for colour correction, lighting, contrast etc.

·       Clarify how you made use of storyboards, shot-lists and the rough-edit during the editing process;

I would use my storyboards mainly for the shooting, but the most dominant use for the footage was the shot list, and through the logging process we would match the number of the shot to the shot list. This allowed that when editing, each clip was already like the shot list and I didn’t really need my shot list after that because all the information was on the clips. Laura was the member to complete the rough-edit, but I am sure that this orginisation method was of great use.

·       Discuss whether you made effective use of the EDL and Sound Design templates to support the editing and decision making process;

I transferred the information from the shot list to the EDL and then used it to make memoes of what I needed to add. The sound design template was a little less helpful because I already had most of that information on the EDL, but for marking purposes, I transferred that over. But overall by noting down things that needed to be changed and when to start a new sound, it made the editing process very organized. However for the final scene I did not know that I would be editing that, so that full scene was done on the spot.

·       Clarify any time-management issues you or your group encountered during the editing process and describe the steps you took to improve in this area;

Well as stated before, Alice and I had all of our aspects completed in the reasonable time by spending two after schools a week in the creative media room. I also spend a Saturday figuring out the theme song for the film. Emma and Natalie did not have adequate time management and especially in the case of Emma, I had to step in a lot.

·       Discuss whether you undertook adequate and detailed reflection to throughout your project. Have you provided enough evidence to support your work? (Look back at your blogs/journals and think about whether it looks like a whole terms worth of work);

I can up most and definitely say that I had enough blogs. I did a blog for almost every day I did anything to do with the project, and if I didn’t I would take about that day in the next blog.