Overall i am happy with the outcome of our short film although i still feel it could be a lot better. Parts which i am really pleased with is the variety of shots which i managed to film in the pub even though we had a small time allocated to us in there. i feel visually the shots are very interesting which is the key to keeping our audience interested. I also feel the cutaways we got of our main character relfecting in the mirror are very powerful, although only used shortly twice. Showing less and less of the after math and the attack keeps your self interested and lets your imagenation fill in the gaps we didnt show which is always a lot more powerful and we avoided the risk of making our piece becoming cheesy. Another part which i am very fond of is the ending when it cuts from here monolouge to her walking and then to the PREY logo. i feel the grains added to the shots of her walking home and out side also help make the piece visually flow well as it isnt a huge contrast change in the brightness of the sceen.
Parts which i feel could have been improved are for example the cut between the monoluge and the shot of the two girls in the pub with the older man.
I feel that the cut glitches and this really bothers me. I also feel we could have either changed the location of the monologue or added a grain. The intentions of an all white background would have worked although it was shot to static and is too bright and doesnt fit in well with the darker or grainier scenes. Maybe adding a grain to it would of helped it stand out less. The idea of a white surrounding was to mislead the audience of purity and clinically clean and although it slightly works its too bright and our actor is a bit too enthusiactic in parts which she should have been a bit more sutile. I also feel that we could have made the script a bit better, maybe a bit more harsh and blunt to create a bigger shock factor.
If we would of directed the actors a bit better as well she could of also givien the piece a bit more of a darker and sinister feel. We could of made her speak more about the event especially when we never planned to show or film the attack which happens within the short film. This could have made our piece raw and chilling and much clearer. Because our actor was a musical theatre student i feel they are probably much more used to being and having to be an ethusatic performer. As far as comforming to the rules of a short film the time limit is what we have conformed to. Having an authentic and “crazy” or different nar
rative, what many shorts hold, is what we have captured for example like ‘About a girl’. But it is hard to say as the time limit is the only real code and convention. The idea and aim of a short film is to express and experiment with new and different methods of editing and filming which i feel we have accomplished although i think we could have pushed the bounderies with out editing. the only problem with this is the risk of our piece becoming cheesy. We have also broken the fourth wall which is used within the majoirty of shorts, which is when a character speak to the audience or camera.
Given the oppertunity to change the piece apart from being very pleased with the sound levels i would like to have changed the sound level of the two girls in th pub talking to the older man. before hand it was a very loud shot and i lowered the level to make the cut seem less harsh although now it seems to low. I would also insure that we direct our actors much clearer for example i wished we had instructed the second actor to act more drunk when in the bathroom on the phone. I am happy with the shots of them drinking but feel we should have been prolonged to strongly empthasis heavy drinking.
During planning i had already learnt from a previous production how important full and thorougher planning helps everything else run more smoothly. I did a lot of research on the internet about contracts for both talent and location. We wanted to do evething properly and legally especially when the plan was to film in a club. I produced both the talent and location release form, choose and wrote about the locations along with shannon, i organised the pub for filming when our club location fell through and i organised two of the actors as well as shannon organised our main girl. I got hold of the makeup artist for the bruise which is my mums friend and Shannon and i also arranged the props and what props we needed such as the clothing for the actors and the drinks for the pub scene. I produced both the production shedule as well as the risk assesment forms and i developed the budget and found a company which we were going to approach to help fund our short film for the powerpoint presention for our class which i organised and created. This helped us get a much more proffessional feel to our work and made us have a better aproach to all work when planning filming and editing.
Whilst filming apart from the dates, we didnt stick to anything else on our production plan due to everyones availabilty. We needed to shoot the monoluge during the day to get the best lighting but i had work that day so i had to make it up with filming the majority of the night scenes. A part i am very proud of is the shots i managed to produce whilst in the taxi, i did the back seat filming of the driver and the view of him in the rearview mirror and Lavinia managed to shoot felicity in the cab from the front seat with a large flash light. All filming went well although there was a major panic when the taxi firm we had organised wasnt corroperating well. As well as this i love the shots i managed to film in the pub. For example the shots of them talking and laughing and smoking out side. I wish they were more relevant for us to use them. I feel we have accomplished our ambition of standing.
