1. What was your initial concept for your final project and what were the reasons behind your choices?
My initial concept for my FMP was a comedy short film, I knew I wanted to make a short film and thought that doing a dialogue heavy comedy would be interesting and new for me to do, especially as during the formative units, I had to make a script and I thoroughly enjoyed that which lead to me wanting to create a something that needed a script for my FMP as well. I really wanted to make a comedy as I felt it was something I had never really done before but something that I personally love watching. I felt like a comedy is something I would have a fun time planning and making especially since I have good knowledge about comedy films from my own experiences of watching them.
The concept of the short film was to be about a girl, a girl who is really in tune with her masculine side, being uninvited to her friend's birthday party because she didn't feel comfortable and like herself if she wore a dress. She finds a mirror left on her doorstep, a strange mirror that doesn't show her reflection, she soon finds out that there is someone inside the mirror, instantly not wanting to deal with such a creepy concept she tries to throw the mirror away only for it to reappear on her bedside table. The mirror speaks to her, berates her, teases her and tries to change her, tries to make her more feminine. The girl eventually gives in to the mirror's persuasion of helping her become more feminine so that she can go to her friend's party only for the girl to slowly start to realise that, that isn't what she wants and that she felt happier as she was.
The theme of the FMP is "Mirrors" and I wanted to use both literal and metaphorical interpretations of mirrors in my project, the literal form comes from the girl finding a mirror with someone inside who talks to her, the metaphorical form comes from the mirror actually being a reflection of her inner thoughts and feelings. Everything the mirror says to her is something that she thinks deep inside, even if she doesn't show it on the outside. The comedic aspect of the film comes from the back and forth bickering and banter between the girl and the mirror, they both insult and throw jabs at each other every time they interact.
2. How has your research and planning helped you develop your final project?
Research and planning has helped me develop my final project in a massive and essential way. During my planning phase, before I even had an idea of what I wanted to do for my final project, I researched different metaphorical ways a mirror can be interpreted, I made a spider diagram showcasing all the different interpretations so that I can have a clear visual and gain a few initial ideas off of them.
During my research phase, I researched different comedy genres, I already knew I wanted to make a comedy but didn't know how and in what ways I could make my project a comedy, after researching the different comedy subgenres I found three that I thought would flow very naturally for the kind of film I was making: Slapstick, Satire and Dark Comedy.
3. Who would be the audience for your final product and how do you address them?
My audience for my short film are people in their late teens, early twenties, people who are still figuring out their life and self identity and enjoy comedies or short films. My short film explores the concept of struggling self identity, a concept that many people will relate to, especially those in their late teens and early twenties who maybe haven't fully discovered or are content with their own identity. There is a considerably large and wide audience for the comedy genre and a much smaller but still prominent audience for short films, My audience are those who enjoy the niche of both comedy films and short films and who are between the ages of 16 to 25.
4. What have you learnt about media technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During my time constructing my project, I have further improved and advanced my skills in editing on Premiere Pro. This is important as the software is deemed as an industry standard in film and media, both industries that I'd like to be a part of and knowing how to use the software is crucial for that. During my time using the software to edit my short film, I had to use many different of it's features such as editing, sound control, effects, colour grading and title animation.
A big part of my short film included someone being portrayed semi transparent within a mirror, to do this I had to use Premiere Pro's keying tool to key out the green screen, but it didn't stop there as I then had to make my actor semi transparent, I played around with different ways to do so as a test before editing my actual film and after a lot of trial and error I found a way to do so, by giving the clip an opacity layer called "light overlay" however whilst editing my actual project I found a better way by reverse feathering the clip which I in the end deemed the best and used. I'm really proud of how it ended up looking.
During this project, I really got into the audio editing part of Premiere Pro which I had never really used in depth before, which has really improved my audio editing skills substantially since the start of this project when I really didn't know what to do when it came to audio editing, after a lot of practising and testing I finally got somewhat better so now my audio in my project is of a satisfactory rate which I personally am very proud over because when it comes to audio editing, all my previous projects have always lacked that.
5. How closely did your final product resemble your initial ideas and expectations?
My final product is something I'm proud of considering I had never done such a dialogue heavy film before however, along the way there were many bumps on the road which ended with severe changes in both expectations and timeline of finishing production. Being a filmmaker means having to adapt quickly, which I was forced to do, during pre production, I had initially casted someone else as the character of Penelope, Jessica was perfect for the role, she truly embodied Penelope's humour and style and it was going great, we even filmed half the short film which did unfortunately have some technical difficulties leading to everything we filmed having no sound. We had to reschedule and she would often reschedule day of filming and to make the situation even worse as we were about to reshoot the scenes Jessica pulled out which left me in a bit of a corner since in my timeline, I was meant to have filmed everything by a certain date so I would have enough time for editing and my evaluation. When Jessica pulled out, I had to be quick and recast her and set a date for filming as soon as possible, That is when I asked my friend Iona for a favour, she was then casted as Penelope and we filmed the following week.
Excluding the sudden recast, my project ended up being more or less exactly how I envisioned it during my planning phase, I did have to cut out some parts to make my project shorter but in the end I am really proud of how it ended up looking like. If I could redo anything I would redo parts of my scenes so that there is more continuity, some clips jump from one pose to another but for the most part I did try to keep the continuity of my film.