For the past month and a half, I have been creating a ten minute drama just using a single camera. After a lot of consideration, I chose to base my piece around a very common subject that is hard hitting for a lot of the audience. My film portrays the feeling of sadness felt by my character that the fact that she lost both of her parents on the day of her 18th birthday. The film follows Holly on a journey through woods and fields as she goes over how she much she misses her parents and blames herself for their death.
This was an individual piece and is all of my own work. I took on all the roles needed to create this production including Director, Producer, Camera Operator, Editor and Casting Director. With a little help from my colleague Oliver Potter, I was able to create a hard hitting script as well. With the list above, it proves that I undertook a lot of responsibilities during this project but i have to say one of the most challenging roles for me was the camera operator. This is because I didn't fully plan the shots that i wanted to use throughout my film so when it came to the day of filming, I didn't have any idea what i was doing. One of the easiest and most enjoyable jobs i had throughout this process was becoming the editor. Editing is one of my favourite things to do in a production process as i have a wide range of knowledge about Final Cut Pro and was able to apply all of my skills into this project.
I think there are a lot of strengths about my dilm and in my opinion, I think I handled the sensitive storyline very well and in an appropriate manor towards the audience members effected. My actress played the part of the girl better than i expected. As she is taking a BTEC Diploma in Performing Arts, I had confidence that she would be able to portray the correct feelings and emotions and she did but even better. Using different facial expressions to express the feelings really helps the audience understand how the character is feeling. The amount of shots I gained in filming was another one of my strengths because I was able to to have more of a choice when it came to the editing process. During post production, I think the editing process was one of my major strengths because i used a lot of different filters and speed changes to create a more emotional piece. The use of the soundtrack really added more emotion to the voiceover. I really liked the fact that is was an instrumental cover of a famous song as it can relate the audience if they have bad memories of the song.
I will never think that I have a perfect short film because there are some errors in the film breaking the flow on continuity. As i lost part of my footage due to having a broken SD Card, i had to film some of the scenes again. The actor work the same costume but forgot about the hairband on her wrist. It isn't majorly noticeable but i know it is there. In the future, i will make sure that i look very carefully at the actor and what she is wearing before reshooting. Not sticking to my contingency plan was one of my biggest mistakes as it caused to have have to waste time in re-filming some of my film. This caused me to waste a lot of valuable editing time. In the future i will make sure that i save all my footage and sound recordings in more than one place so that if the SD card does break again or even get lost, i will still have the footage i have shot.
Overall i think that this whole project has been a success for me and i am hoping it is worthy of a distinction but that i will not know until results day. I genuinely think that the film could of had a lot of potential to be better but with the time frame that i was given, i am happy to think that i have completed the brief given to me to the best of my ability. I have really enjoyed undertaking more than one role on this individual project because it gave me a better understanding to what it is like in the industry and the pressures they face on a day to day basis. In the future, i would give myself a clearer structured time sheet so i know what I'm going to be doing at all times but overall i think i handled this project really well considering it is the first time i have ever worked on my own.
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