All my pre-production work can be found in the following links and pictures:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yoWw45XqJXsosG21pgAyllk6Ky0hMLqN5t6Ctxucyec/edit?usp=sharing
Evaluation:
Overall, I am happy with the way that my short film turned out, although it was extremely stressful towards the end and there were a lot of things that I would have changed if I had more time, and were to re-make it again.For starters, I left it extremely late to film. The reasons for this were that I had to find a suitable time for all my actors, me, and my other crew members to be able to spend the weekend filming, and this was quite late in the month. I had to book time off work - as did some of my other actors - and I also had to hire out the location and book it for a later date. This only gave me a few days to edit the video, but I think the final product was good for the amount of time I had.
During pre-production, I think I worked well. I managed to get everything done for the production - including proposals, treatments, contracts, schedules, scripts, storyboards and more, which meant that on the day of filming I knew exactly what I wanted to do, when and where. In some ways, this was useful, although nothing really went to this plan when we actually filmed. I managed to hire actors by going down to the first year actors in the college and explaining to them what my film was about. A lot of the class said that they wanted to help out with it, but I'm extremely happy with the actors that I did choose in the end. They worked well together, were enthusiastic, learnt their lines, turned up for rehearsals (and the day of filming) and played their parts extremely well.
I gave the actors the first draft of the script a few weeks before we actually filmed the production, and then that progressed to the second draft of the script as I worked more on the dialogue. During rehearsals, I managed to instruct them to tell them how I wanted certain scenes to play out, and I think it paid off on the day as they knew exactly what they were doing. I also wrote up some character profiles to give the actors more information about their characters so that they could portray them more accurately.
However, on the day of filming, I filmed the same scene a few times from different angles, and as I did this, sometimes the actors would turn in a different direction, or hold out the wrong arm or sit on the wrong knee, etc. etc. This made editing slightly difficult for continuity, and I had to try and work with the clips that I had to the best of my abilities. Also, occasionally the actors would mess up their lines and say the wrong thing that made no sense compared to the rest of the film, so I had to cut to another shot and get them to dub in the right line. Because their face wasn't on camera at the time, however, I think I may have gotten away with it as they did not have to lip sync that small part of their line.
There was also a shot that went missing for some reason, and was quite possibly my favourite shot of the entire shoot. After the brothers knock out/kill the guards outside the bunker, there was an improvised scene where Jack (who plays Jason) throws the cloth at Nathan (who plays Luke) in response to him killing the guard. This would have added a lot to the scene, and I am completely sure that I recorded it as I played it back. When I transferred all the clips onto my portable hard-drive, however, for some reason it did not appear, and went missing completely. During this scene, I also should have made it more clear about what they were doing. The idea was that Jason had planned to simply knock out the two guard with chloroform. However, Luke tosses the cloth aside and breaks the guard's neck instead because his character is more ruthless and brutal, whereas Jason would prefer not to kill the guards as he believes that they have no choice but to work for the government. This just simply adds to the two characters and makes them more believable, however during the scene it's not actually clear that they have chloroform on the cloths, or even what their plan is. I should have added some lines into this part of the scene to clear things up with the audience, however, because it could be slightly confusing.
When it came to the day of shooting, as I stated before, it didn't quite go to plan. I scheduled for us to start filming at 2pm, and finish at 8pm - but we didn't get out of the bunker until around 10pm at night, and then I had to re-film a number of scenes the following day at Priory Park, Southend and also at the college during the week. The reasons for this was that mainly the lighting aspects of things. I hired out lighting equipment on the day, but I never actually used it. The reasons behind this were having to transport them throughout the location, as well as setting it up - although I wasn't really sure how to use it either. I will definitely learn how to use the lighting equipment before my next project, so hopefully I won't have the problem of some shots being extremely grainy, dark and completely unusable. I re-filmed the bad shots on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday in both Priory Park and the college campus, and they looked better - although the shots of Cane and Atlanta, the two brothers rescuing her and the shots of Atalanta looking through the door seem slightly strange as it doesn't quite match the locations of the original shoot. I believe I may just be able to get away with using them in the film, however.
The other main issue on the day was the microphone. I borrowed a stereo videomic which plugged straight into the side of my DSLR camera. The issues were that it didn't clip onto the top of my camera properly, and so it kept falling off, and the microphone also didn't actually work properly. Sometimes there was absolutely no audio picked up whatsoever, sometimes it was extremely quiet with hissing noises, and other times the audio was really loud and lots of background noise were very audible. Because of this, nearly all of the audio was completely unusable, and therefore I had to call all my actors back in to record some ADR and get them all to dub the voices once again. Also, every single sound that's heard within the film were audio that I put in myself - mainly from freesound.org because I did not have enough time to record all the audio and sound effects again. I think in the end it sounded decent. Although some of the voices were slightly echoey, and the audio isn't all the same quality but this is mainly because I had huge issues with finding somewhere to film. Wherever I went to try and record the dubbing, there were either noises in the background, or we were asked to move somewhere else. That's the reason that some of the voices sound different from the others, although I tried to even this out through the editing stages to make it sound similar. I also planned to alter Luke and Steph (Cane and Atlanta)'s voices during the opening to make it sound like they were speaking through a radio, but I didn't have enough time to actually do that as it was due in soon.
During the credit sequence of the film, I desperately wanted a song to play, as I thought it would work well. I know a singer-songwriter personally, and one of her songs - 'We Are Slaves' - works extremely well for the film. I asked permission to use it, and she was more than happy to let me, and said that she would even write an entirely new song for me to use in the DVD version of my film, but she would not have time to do it just yet because she had her final exams coming up. The song I used in my credits plays over a little bit of the film too, but quietly, before building up to it as if the film is going to continue on from that point. I think this works well, and adds to the end of the film as it makes the audience want to know what happens left, as I did leave it on a cliffhanger on purpose to interest the audience in possibly me making a sequel to this film at some point in the future.
During the last scenes where they begin to walk through the tunnel to leave, I play some very quiet music in the background that I think adds extremely well to the scene and increases the tension that the audience would feel. The music is very subtle, but combined with the sound effects, voices and the noise of the siren - which I personally feel should have been slightly quieter - I think the soundtrack works extremely well for these scenes. It drags the audience into the action, and makes them feel more involved as well as making the scene more dramatic and sudden. During the rest of the film - with the exception of the montage at the beginning, and right at the end before the credits - there is no background music, only ambient noise. I didn't feel that the other scenes needed any music as they were involving the audience enough with the sound effects and dialogue, and didn't want to make the scenes too overpowering with the soundtrack.
I spent a lot of money on this film, however it was mostly spent on hiring out the location. I managed to get a student discount of £65 for three hours filming inside the nuclear bunker, but then I also had to pay £7 entry per person to get all my cast and crew inside. There were eleven of us in total, so that was an extra £77. We also had to pay out another £65 because we were there for far longer than three hours, but I think it was a reasonable price for hiring out the location. We filmed parts of the production whilst the bunker was still open to to public, so occasionally we would have to stop filming to let people pass. Also, apparently some of the younger children got slightly scared by my actors - but I was not aware of this until afterwards because I was busy filming. When it was closed to the public, however (5pm), we had the bunker all to ourselves. There were supposed to be a group of paranormal investigators using the bunker from 8pm onwards that day, but they never showed up, so we were allowed to continue using it as late as we wanted to.
The bunker had many different locations that we were able to use. We used many of these places, as it looked like a military headquarters, and outside looked slightly derelict so that worked well too. However, by the time we started filming outside, it was around 9pm, and therefore getting dark. We tried to use phone lights to light the actors up, but when we watched the footage back, it didn't work, so we had to re-film those scenes again the next day.
We were also allowed to borrow the decommissioned guns from the bunker as well as the military outfits for no extra fees. This saved me some money in having to hire them out, and also looked good because they were real decommissioned guns, not simply fake ones. This meant that they were heavy, but my actors chose the guns that they wanted to use for the days so they had ones that they could handle without hurting themselves. However, one of my actors - Nathan - somehow accidentally managed to break a clip on his AK-47 gun that held it together right at the beginning of the shoot, so it kept falling apart during scenes and we kept having to stop filming to fix it. Eventually he tied a hairband around it to stop it from breaking - which worked - but it wasn't noticeable in the film which was good.
I brought other props myself from websites like eBay, however. The masks, the handcuffs and the walkie-talkies were all bought by me to use, and I tried to keep it as cheap as possible because of the amount of money I had already spent on the film. I bought myself a Cannon 700D to film on before starting the project because the last time I used the college cameras, for some reason it would only let me film for several seconds. I wanted to make sure I never had this issue again, so I bought the camera out of my own money. It also means that I can film whenever and wherever now, as I do not have to book out a camera from college. However, when filming, I did borrow a 50mm lens for my camera to make the shots look nicer - as it recorded a lot better than my kit lens did. I will be buying my own microphone for my next project, however, just to eliminate the issues of the sound that I had during this film. I also borrowed a dolly and tracks, as well as a tripod from the college to use on the day. I really like the shot with the dolly and tracks, but because of the size of the rooms that we were filming in, we were only really able to use it for one shot. The tripod was used for most scenes, however, because I have a very unsteady hand when it comes to recording on cameras so I thought that it would look better to use a tripod. During one scene we filmed at the college - the one with Cane and Atlanta talking - I was not able to borrow a tripod, and you can clearly see the camera shaking. I would've greatly preferred to use a tripod during this point, as even with balancing the camera on some railings, it wasn't steady enough for my liking.
Because all the filming wasn't completed at the bunker on Saturday - and some shots were unusable - we all met up on the Sunday at Priory Park to re-film some shots there, as well as working on the montage at the beginning of the film as I did not get the chance to film any of those clips on the Saturday. It was slightly morbid, however, as we brought three wooden crosses with the character names to the park and some people gave us some weird looks. We had people on standby to explain what we were doing, however. One of my actors also brought along his own decommissioned hand gun so that we could film some scenes with them. We made sure to be extremely careful with this and did not film until there was no people around, and kept it out of sight until we needed to use it. Once again, we also had people around to explain and warn people who wanted to pass through the area so that they didn't panic and call the police. The shots filmed in the park came out extremely well, however, but it was a very hot day and that made it difficult to film as everyone was still wearing all their costumes.
The shots filmed at college were extremely rushed because I was running out of time to edit. They were filmed by a fire exit near the nursery, and also in one of the classrooms on the third floor. I personally feel that the contrast between the locations is extremely noticeable, but people who have seen the film tell me that they only noticed after I told them that this was the case, and wouldn't have caught on that it was in another location otherwise. I personally feel that these shots look extremely out of place, however, and probably could have made it look like it matches more by colour correcting the clips, or adjusting the brightness/contrast.
During one scene in the security office with the guard reading the newspaper/watching the security screens, I actually wanted to green screen shots of the location looking normal/the two brothers rescuing Atlanta so that the audience could see what the guard was reacting to. However, the tripod would not fit into the room, so the shots of the screen were extremely shaky and I was not able to use it to green screen in the footage. Also, I did not have enough time to actually be able to put in these effects so I had to simply cut out the shots of the front of the screen, but hopefully it still makes sense to the audience.
I also wanted to include a flashing red light as a siren, and maybe adjust the clips to look like there is a flashing red light in the locations that they are walking through. I did not get a chance to do this, however, as we couldn't find a red light that would flash, nor did we have any coloured film to shine a light through. I was then considering doing this in editing instead, but I ran out of time completely to do it.
Because I edited my short film on Final Cut 7 on the college macs - something that I don't have at home - I wasn't able to do any editing whenever I got home. This meant that I was arriving at college at 8am every day of the week and not leaving until 9pm so that I could get it done. When I was at home, however, I edited the credits sequence on a different editing software - Sony Vegas Pro 12. I then rendered this and simply put it into the end of my film to save time, meaning that I didn't have to worry about it when I was at college and could focus on the film completely. However, because I hadn't finished the editing stages, I didn't know what sounds or special effects I would use, so I left it blank. I forgot about this until after I uploaded the project, so the credits for the sound/special effects were completely blank, but I will fix this for the DVD and simply include those credits in the description of the YouTube video for now.
I also wanted to work on adding muzzle flashes and blood for scenes with the gun fire, but because I had to focus so much on the soundtrack, I wasn't able to have time to do this. I will learn how to use Adobe After Effects for the DVD and add these in, however, to make the final, final film look even better than this one that I have had to submit. I also didn't get a chance to really work on colour correction, brightness/contrast, or real editing of the clips in any way except for the beginning montage, however. I would ideally have loved to have done this to make the film look more consistent and fluid, but I ran out of time, and once again this will be worked on for the final DVD version of the film.
I also had an issue where, for some reason, there was 12 minutes of black, silent footage at the end of the film. I can't figure out why it saved like this, but I had no time to change it and simply had to upload it as it was. The film itself is only 12-13 minutes long, including the credits, so the black footage was just simply a glitch when the video rendered, and will be fixed for the DVD.
When I was rendering the project for the film, it was slightly late in the college. Me and another girl - Paige - were trying to save the files but a caretaker came round and asked us to leave. We explained our situation to him and that we couldn't cancel it because it was our FMP and he told us we could stay, but he would be locking the doors soon. My video finished saving, but Paige's was still taking some time so I went to stand in the college reception to make sure that they didn't lock us in. They attempted to pull a false fire alarm on us to try and scare us into leaving, but I heard their conversation before they set the alarm's off and warned Paige to make sure that she didn't panic. However, she asked that I come back upstairs because she was getting a little freaked out, so I did. By the time that her film had rendered though and we went back downstairs, they had locked us - and another teacher - inside the building. We went towards the automatic doors to see if they would open but it only set off the alarms, and the teacher called the estates up to try and unlock the doors. However, I hadn't eaten all day due to constant editing to get the project done so I went through the fire exits and around the back of the college to leave because I desperately needed food and drink. It was an interesting evening, for sure, but next time I would make sure I have somewhere else that I can render the file instead of only relying on the college computers.
Before I put the film on DVD to give it to my actors with all the behind the scenes and outtakes, however, I will try and fix the majority of these problems so that the film runs smoother and looks/sounds nicer for them, as I am not completely happy with it and would like to fix these issues to make the film as good as I possibly can before handing out copies of it.
If I were to make the film again, I would definitely sort all these issues out. I would also leave myself more time to film and edit, and although I will be able to sort most of the problems out for the DVD release of the film, I would have preferred for them to be fixed before the deadline of the project so that the film could look exactly how I pictured it to when I handed it in. Although I am happy with the outcome of my film, I know that I am a perfectionist, and because of this I will always see mistakes and things that I could change to improve it. For a first project, however, and considering I planned the majority of it on my own, I do believe that the outcome was good for an ambitious project such as this, however.
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