Depict End of Project Evaluation

Depict End of Project Evaluation

My Role
The aim of the depict project was to work as a team in order to produce a 90 second short film about whatever we wanted. Although it was a group effort, we were accessed on our own individual contribution to the project and how well we as an individual worked as part of the team. Overall, I feel like I played quite a significant role in the group although if I were to do the project again there are a few things I would change. I believe that when it came to coming up with ideas I was a key member. This is because I’m a natural leader and took charge of leading the discussion when we were thinking of ideas and also contributed lots of ideas also. I also played an important role when it came to pre-production, this is because we fairly distributed the work load so I was responsible for a quarter of the paperwork which I successfully completed in the time limit. When it came to production though, I didn’t play as much of a dominant role as I would have liked. I was the only member of the group who was not in the film so I was in charge of behind the scenes. This meant that I was responsible for filming, recording sound, lighting and directing. As there was a lot to do we needed the help of other members of the class. We had a few issues with recording sound though and we weren’t satisfied with the lighting in some of the filming that I did so we had to reschedule to refilm some of the footage again in our own time which did not fit in with my timetable so meant that two members of the group had to refilm these scenes by themselves. This also meant that not much of the footage that I filmed was actually used in our end product. If we were to do it again I would have worked harder to ensure that we didn’t have the same issues behind the scenes which would mean that we wouldn’t have had to refilm and I would have planned better to ensure that I was present to help the rest of my group. Also, when it came to post production it was difficult for all four of us to contribute with the editing when we only had one computer between us all which meant that one member of our group ended up doing most of the editing. I tried my best to make use of the time by sourcing the royalty free music that was used in the end product as well as suggest ideas on how we could structure our film but if I we were to do the editing again I feel as though we should have split into two smaller groups editing different sections to be more time efficient and have more influence over the editing of the final piece.

Pre-Production

The main focus of the unit was the importance of pre-production and how it has an impact on media productions like our depict short film. We were tasked with completing industry standard paperwork for our short film which included a story board and risk assessment. We decided to allocate the work load equally amongst our group making each person responsible for a few pieces of paper work. I was in charge of the production schedule, location release and location recee. The production schedule sets out what shots we had planned when during our filming time. I scheduled the shots based on location so that for each day of filming we were focusing on getting all the footage at a particular location so we didn’t have to carry around the equipment. I used  the template to assist me with this and my production schedule looked professional however, due to over running on some days and other unforeseen circumstances that impacted when we were able to film such as a lack of equipment meant that we were unable to fully stick to the plan. Moving onto the location release, this is a document that states where we aimed to film and when. As in the professional industry this is an official legal document, it was important that I stuck to the template to ensure that I didn’t miss out any details. Again, I manged to use the template to make it appropriate for our production and got it signed by the correct person. Finally, I was also in charge of completing the location recee. This is a document that states information about all the various locations that we chose to film at including the address, availability and parking which are all things that would need to be considered when deciding a location in the professional industry. The location recee also required me to take photos of our locations. This is something I was able to do successfully as all our chosen locations were at college so were accessible, however I wasn’t able to get any photos of W12 as it was always fully occupied. If I were to do the paper work again I would have tried to go to this location out of college hours to get the photos to make all the recees consistent and more professional looking.    

Finished Product

We were able to complete our short film in the time limit and were reasonably happy with the end result of our short film. The end result was very similar to our storyboard and the vision we had when we first started the project other than a few minor changes such removing a section we had planned due to running out of time. One thing I really like about our end product is the way that the action flows, this is due to us planning in advance how we were going to transition between scene which meant that the entire short film flowed. I also like how the choice of music really fits in with the different themes we tried to portray in our film, for example the music we used for the silent film scene is very stereotypical to a silent film and easily recognisable to the audience. One thing I think could be improved however is the lighting in some of the scene. If we were to do the project again I defiantly believe that we should use artificial lighting in order to make some of the scene more visible and the film as a whole more professional looking.