Creative Media Practice Project End of Semester2000-word Individual Self-Evaluation
Explain the concept for your work, try to outline your idea clearly and concisely and indicate where your influences and inspirations for this piece have come from? Consider the intended audience for your work and consider how you would like the project to be received; is there a particular age group or background for example that the work is aimed at?
In our experimental film we wanted to create something that neither of us had attempted before. This finally digressed into playing on the aspect of black and white, silent/instrumental audio only films. In these films we recognised that even with none or little audio they were still able to be entertaining or at least thought provoking. We put a spin on this aspect and want to see if we could incorporate this but the other way round. We decided to create a film with a very full audio, but visually very plain and mundane to see if like silent/instrumental films, it could still entertain/provoke thought. We wanted to choose a physical and vibrant place as our sense of space to fit with our aim, and managed to get permission to record audio of the children and film the rest of the school with the children not present in a local Sheffield primary school.
I don’t think our piece has a specific age for our target audience; it just relies on the audience being active rather than passive. This is because everyone has been to primary school and can relate to the piece. In the finished version our intentions were, that the short film is to act as a memory link for the audience to their childhood experiences of primary school. The black and white distorted imagery with the loud and overwhelming audio, is supposed to represent not just this specific Sheffield primary school, but primary schools in general through the eyes of a child. We edited to include soft fades and slow pans, so the audience has time to think and reflect on the audio.
We took inspiration from silent films that were shown in taught sessions which encouraged us to research more silent films and discover how they told the narrative through one medium, and if we interpreted the director’s aims correctly. One film we looked at was ‘Deadly Romance’ (1906) we was visually entertaining, but only seemed to marginally get across the narrative. We then came to 'The Artist' (2011). The Artist was very intriguing, as it is able to create and deliver a movie primarily focused on visual story telling through the camera alone, while still remaining entertaining. This is very uncommon in modern cinema, especially to the scale to which this film was produced. The director 'Michel Hazanavicius' mainly told the story by conveying emotions by the actor's projection and relying on the audience being active, rather than passive in following the plot line. An earlier film called ‘The Great Train Robbery’ (1903) got across the narrative well and encouraged us to try to look for films that use mainly audio. After a thorough search of struggling to find anything of relevance we came across a YouTube video called ‘Telling A Story Using Only Sound Effects’. This got across the narrative brilliantly and didn’t include any dialogue or an image it just used sound effects. I found this impressive, but thought it sounded too playful and wasn’t serious enough to follow for our piece, as we wanted to make the audience think, not just entertain them. We settle on creating a narrative throughout the day with the use of the bell to break the slow pace and keep the audience engaged until the end. We included dialogue, but as it was natural and wasn’t forced or scripted I think this worked well.
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Give a detailed critical analysis of the finished piece of work for this project, try to consider your work as a member of an audience and recognise what has worked well and what has not been as successful in your project. Try to be objective and weigh up the pros and cons focusing on the positive outcomes as well as the areas that have room for improvement. Reflect on what you would change if you could make the work again?
I think a number of the close famed shots we used worked well, for example the pull focus on the dice and the game of snakes and ladders, fit perfectly with the sound of the dice rolling and the children in the background. Another shot I thought worked well was the tilted tracking shot of the bench in the sports hall. This worked well as I thought the thuds of the children in the background accompanied this blurry, black and white tracking shot of a bench beautifully and conveyed a dream like aspect, which I thought was appealing.
I think that our aim to provoke thought for the audience has been successful, but our short film runs for just under 3 minutes and is maybe slightly too long, as this film is not packed full of action and was not made for the entertainment factor. This may be an issue as the audience may disconnect from the piece if they feel it’s too long. I would probably cut it down to 2-2:30 minutes if I was to do it again. Another aspect I would change if I were to do it again would be, to recorded better quality sound and film better quality shots. I would also have liked to see what the shots would have looked like with a more eerie aspect to them. I would have liked some more close framing shots with things moving without anyone being there. This might have affected our intention to make a slow piece if we included many of these shots, but I still would have like to see what a few aesthetic shots with movement looked like.
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Describe the process of making the work and your individual contribution. Did things work out differently from the way you had visualised them at the planning stage? What production issues did you encounter that caused problems during the creative process?
At the very start of the planning stage, we were going to take a slightly different visual approach. We knew straight away that there was no possibility of filming the children and tried to think of ways around this. At this stage we knew we wanted to provoke though about the audiences experience at school. The original idea was to sit in and observe the average day of a child in primary school. We would then use these observations to direct external actors, who were adults, to behave in a similar way throughout the day. We thought this would work quite well and give a simple, entertaining, but also eerie aspect to our piece. However due to strict shooting times, we were restricted to a couple of hours on just one day. We also had a shortage of available external adult actors, so had to rethink and that’s how we came to our current idea.
Even though it was an interesting experience to film on the location of a primary school, in the future I will avoid using children as much as possible as it caused too many problems and made the creation process restricted. However I thought the challenging location helped me gain valuable experience, especially for cinematography. But it has thought me that a tough location can be worth it, as the audio we collected of the children is very interesting through their innocence nature. One of the problems we faced was that we could only film on one day in a short time period and if we caught any of the children in any of our shots we had to delete it immediately for us to legally film in a primary school. This caused problems as it was clear in edit that some of the shots were rushed and the white balance/gain on some of the shots were quite poor due to this. Through colour correction and the use of smooth cam I was able to salvage many of the best shots and the choice in filters helped improve the quality also, but the amount of footage we could use was limited due to the numerous interruptions. This was also the case for the audio as well, as the innocent nature of the children that we were trying to capture slightly back fired, as they were constantly making contact with us while recording, breaking the forth wall and therefore making that piece of audio unusable.
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It is important to write in detail about what you have learnt during the project both technically and creatively. Outline specific skills you have developed because of making the work and new methods or approaches you have experimented with.
I thought the project was very beneficial and enhanced my ability and knowledge in various equipment and programs specifically, the Canon XF100, Soundtrack Pro, Pro Tools 11 and Final Cut Pro. In postproduction I improved my knowledge of Soundtrack Pro, as sound reduction was needed to remove the background noise in almost every audio file. This was a process that was initially hard to get to grips with, as it was difficult to keep the balance of providing a completely clean and clear sound and an audio piece that is full and doesn’t feel forced. This was also the case for Pro Tools, as every sound we imported needed effects added. The 7-band-EQ was a tool I wasn’t familiar with before this production, but it was essential on nearly every piece of recording. I also used other tools such as the compressor, Air-Kill, Reverb and general volume levelling. One very useful aspect of Pro Tools I have learnt through this process is that I can add a master bar at the bottom of my clips, which saves a lot of time, as originally I would have to individually turn them up if it was too quiet etc. My knowledge of the effects and transitions on Final Cut Pro was vastly improved in this project as It took a lot of experimenting with different effects to get to the final product, as it was an aspect that hugely affected the way the audience will perceive the film. This project highlighted the effects of rushed cinematography, and definitely taught me that even if it looks acceptable on the camera it probably wont look the same when you get back to the edit suite. Even though on this occasion there was nothing we could do as we had to rush it, It has taught me that even though white balancing, adjusting the gain and making sure the shot is also perfectly in focus can sometime takes quite long, it will really benefit you in postproduction and you will make the time up.
Most of the projects I have worked on in the past have been graded on how conventional my finished project looks to existing pieces of work. I think because on this project we experimented with originality and tried something maybe out of our comfort zone it help improved my creativity. This is because we adopted a completely different method and approach that we normally take in the making of a film. This was also the case with production, as normally I am used to either recording the visual or audio at the same time or shooting the visuals first then adding the audio later. This different method definitely made us focus more on the audio side of the project and I think it benefited because of it.
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Reflect on how you worked as part of a team. Did all members contribute equally? What are your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to teamwork? How can you improve your teamwork skills?
My individual contribution to the work slightly outweighed the contribution of my group member Rhiannon Pattinson as she was absent due to personal reasons for a chunk of the creative process. I was the editor for both audio only and the experimental film and the main cinematographer for the experimental film. Rhiannon was the sound recorder for the audio only. However she did become available again toward the final stages of the process and briefly gave her recommendations for editing adjustments. I think Rhiannon and I worked adequately as a team, but I took a lot more pressure and responsibility for the project than other projects I have worked on, as for large parts of the process I was the only one available to work on our project. However in other circumstances I think that we could have worked very well as a team. I think I’m quite strong when it comes to group work, as I am always dedicated to the project and contribute as much as I can towards achieving the best quality of work we can produce. Although sometimes I can be indecisive over certain shots that I feel passionate about when it comes to editing, and need to improve on looking at the big picture and what’s better for the film as a whole.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc7wWOmEGGY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8K9AZcSQJE
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655442/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8K9AZcSQJE
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655442/
