As per my proposal, my plan for this year’s FMP revolved around trying to create an entertaining short film that showcases my screenwriting ability. In doing so, I agreed to work with a friend who specialises in the technical side of filmmaking, an area in which I have previously had difficulties in. Our belief was that by collaborating, we would be able to support each other in the areas that the other struggles at.
My main goals for this project were to demonstrate my skills and how much they have improved over the last two years at college. For almost every project, I have felt I have always been well prepared, but the final product never meets the high expectations I set myself due to difficulties in directing and camerawork. Therefore, not only was I hoping this project would promote my skills, but also my personal growth through my confidence.
Compared to past projects and last year’s FMP, units in which I had explicitly stated that I did not have the utmost confidence in the quality of my final product, however this year I can wholeheartedly say I am highly satisfied with how the film turned out. This proves how much I have improved in my personal growth and my practical skills, ultimately allowing me to meet my primary goals set in my proposal.
I also mentioned that like always, I would be producing a reflective journal that displays everything I have completed and learned, followed by my thoughts on those events. I set myself to update the journal weekly and in great detail, to which I feel I can conclusively say I have done. Unlike in the past, I ensured that the journal would be a truly personal document with reflections that I am completely honest about. This led to further evaluation to be found within that.
Within my proposal, I described the basic structure of my project as well as our plan on how we would research the project. We agreed on attempting a “dark comedy” inspired by other short films and characters such as ‘Mop’ and Tangerine & Lemon from ‘Bullet Train’.
Due to it being a joint-creation, we decided to sensibly split the research between ourselves, with Ben focusing on the technical aspects while I focus on the deeper contexts, themes and audience. This proved to be very helpful in balancing the work between ourselves, consequently reducing the amount of time spent on research and ensuring the work is up to a professional standard where we are confident on the relevancy of the research. I had also planned to incorporate some of my previous research on Edgar Wright into this one as it would allow us to already have a strong base on how we wanted the film to be set out.
In terms of my specific research, I concentrated my research on the ideology and information on the Mafia as well as the common themes and genres associated with them. Moreover, I wanted to research in-depth about our target audience and the gender stereotypes that exist today within crime and comedic media in our hope to subvert those conventions within our final project. As an aspiring screenwriter, the more information I consume benefits me when writing; to create the story and characters to present my views and the contexts behind them. Therefore, the research I conducted ended up being massively useful to me. In my opinion, the research period went very well as both of us managed comfortably while also collecting a varied selection of information to be used within our pre-production. There wouldn’t be too much I would do differently, but I would definitely be more organised when choosing the areas I researched as often I would go down a tangent that admittedly wouldn’t have much effect on the wider project.
Continuing to the Pre-Production phase of the project, this consisted heavily of preparing our film for our shooting dates listed in our schedule. Unsurprisingly, I was in charge of writing our scripts. After compiling the information through my research, I created a sheet where it listed all the characters’ personalities and motives, something I haven’t done previously. This proved to be enormously helpful and contributed to my perceived success of the script as it gave me a suitable start to base the characters’ dialogue and actions around. As mentioned in my reflective journal, I believe that this script was the best that I have written so far in my early career, with nice praise from our trained actors. Consequently, this has given me a big boost of confidence for the future and allowed me to be more confident in showing off my work. However annoyingly, I feel I could have massively improved the script more if I had completed one or two more drafts, with only two being created within this process.
We both helped work on the other pre-production documents such as the storyboard and shot list, both of us contributing efficiently through my knowledge on the story and his knowledge on camera work and framing. I feel like we have worked extremely well together over the course of this period and have clearly shown how both our opposing strengths and weaknesses can contribute to something that represents the best of our abilities.
There were certain areas that we didn’t cover but in hindsight feel should have been an important part of the process, and that was in the costume department. Although I researched on fashion within crime groups, we had never really discussed the specifics for what we wanted our actors to wear and feel like if we had put more importance on this, then our final product would have been enhanced due to the bigger connections to the crime genres.
Something that we quickly learnt was the need to have a backup in case of any issues that arise. After setting up shooting dates, one of our actors said that they felt they weren’t in the right frame of mind due to upcoming exams, something mildly similar to my previous FMP. Obviously this was frustrating, but we quickly found a solution when asking our other actors whether they knew anyone who’d be up for acting under short notice and luckily we found a replacement ready in time. Although neither Ben nor I knew the actor, on the day we all got along well and communicated well enough to break any awkwardness in the situation.
But soon after that, our other main actor said that they couldn’t be available for the dates planned, so we had to delay shooting to Monday and Tuesday of the next week. Due to us having to start later than we wanted on Monday, Ben and I discussed ways we can balance out the workload over the two days. So we agreed on filming our shorter montage sequences and ending that day, with the larger majority of the story being filmed the next day. As said in my journal, I feel we handled the situation well as we were able to communicate with each other clearly and calmly found solutions quickly without any stress.
On the day 1 shoot, the main issue we encountered was through the weather and the predicted forecasts of rain. Throughout the day, Ben and I would discuss our ongoing plans and at one point, I suggested that we could try and reschedule depending on the rain at the planned time of shooting. However, we kept to the plan and were both determined on getting as much completed as we possibly could. Luckily for us, we only encountered light rain and other than a few scenes, a majority were filmed in clear conditions. At that point, it helped relieve the pressure on us and allowed us to take more time in our shots rather than quickly rush through them.
Despite being an outlier in terms of weather, we should have prepared better in the event that there would be rain and darker skies. One solution would have been to bring an umbrella or a source of coverage to protect our documents and make sure we could set up our shots to be near exactly to how we had planned prior.
Also due to the weather conditions, it meant that we weren’t met with the colours of the sunset like we planned to have. However, we still shot what we needed, which ended up being the best decision as we wouldn’t have had the availability to film late in the evening the next day.
For the first day, I was content with the footage we acquired as at times I felt we got some nice shots, but others were rushed and lit poorer than normal. The main hindrances would be the quick turnaround. The turnaround of needing to be at our final location for a specific time meant that we would have to rush certain shots and capture less angles of each, leading to having less options when editing something that I’ve been subject to in past projects, particularly in last year's FMP.
On top of that, I was tasked with being the main director for the project and as stated in previous evaluations, directing is something in which I’m not as confident in and have criticised myself in the past. Despite this, I feel I had done a much better job this time around as I had a clearer idea of what I wanted from the shots, which shows the improvement in our pre-production. I felt I was communicating better between what I wanted from the actors and Ben, who would comment on any improvements or issues that occurred, to which we would work around fairly well. In turn, directing was also made a lot easier due to having proper actors who would understand what was being asked of them.
In preparation for the second day, Ben had asked one of our friends to help out due to the difficulty we sometimes felt the day before when it came to setting up our shots. This allowed us to continue with the scenes at a much quicker rate as they were able to operate the boom mic while filming. This also made us feel a lot more comfortable with the pressure and stress naturally found when shooting a project, so I am happy that we had arranged that.
Filming went fairly smoothly in my opinion as due to us having larger amounts of dialogue, we were able to film multiple takes of a conversation from one angle, and repeat it from another - a majority being over-the-shoulder shots. This worked well in the aspect of recording audio and not losing the chemistry and continuous feel of the conversation. I made sure to follow the shot list and storyboard a lot closer than I have in previous projects and that proved to be vital to us getting the shots. When directing, I was able to follow the structure of the story well as well as the shot descriptions we’ve applied before, therefore regressing the stress I tend to feel.
Overall, I was a lot more confident for the editing process compared to how I was prior to filming as well as compared to previous projects where I’ve never been too confident with the footage I acquired. The main takeaway is the possible issues with lighting and how that would translate into Premiere Pro. We should have prepared our lighting a lot better, even when filming with natural lighting, which can be seen within the darker scenes where there was slight grain and a lack of key lights. Ben had also suggested we would use a reflector so we wouldn’t have as much overexposure within the shots.
Due to us preparing and clearly laying out our film structure, it meant the editing process was made much easier, which was helpful because of the soon approaching deadline. In total I spent the course of 9 days carefully editing, colour grading and adding sound effects before exporting the film in the 4K footage that we filmed in.
As explained in more detail in my journal, the main issues that I encountered were in the lack of transition shots to break up actions, leading to a few minor continuity errors. To combat this, I altered the structure of the film’s opening by adding a few seconds of blacked out screen in order to break up the sequences. In my opinion, I think it turned out to be a good decision as when combined with the opening title card, it created a moment of tension and mystery, fitting for the crime genre. Ultimately, these missing shots are something that I needed to prepare for when creating the shot list and directing the actors. This would mean for each scene, we film multiple takes to ensure that we have enough footage to break up any longer shots that could break up any momentum in the film.
Throughout the process, I took advice from various YouTube tutorials, particularly when mixing the audio. Prior to this, I had never gone in-depth with audio mixing and sound effects before, so those videos contributed massively towards my end product. In the end, I feel I successfully mixed the audio together to create a realistic tone within the film while also enjoying the process much more than I predicted. If I were to do anything differently, it would be to organise my files and timeline in a clearer way, therefore reducing some time spent on compiling and finding each shot and sound effect.
Moving on, I started on the colour grading. As I already had the vision of making the film look realistic and grounded, associating with the crime and comedy genre, I was confident in achieving this look. Colour grading is an area in which I have previously found enjoyable, so I was looking forward to starting the process. Learning from the organisation issues from before, I made sure I changed it to look neater. In doing so, instead of placing the grade on the video clips itself, I used adjustment layers and placed them in a visual track above, which proved to be quite helpful as it allowed me to compare shots a lot easier.
Overall, I was proud of my final video and feel it is the best video I have produced in relation to the storyline, visuals, audio and colour. After finishing the video, it allowed me to reflect more on the writing specifically as it is my main aspiration for my future. I believe the aspects that shone out most were in the concept and characters. Through inspirations from ‘Mop’ I felt I was able to incorporate some of those elements and combine them with elements of my own to create an interesting concept that I could easily have developed further whether I had the time and/or resources to do so. That and using proper actors definitely helped flesh the personalities out more, helping to differentiate both soldiers and gain an understanding on where they stand on both their morals and ideologies.
However, one area in which I think suffered the most was in the story’s pacing. This is seen prominently within the ending and the short time between the montage of the soldiers carrying the body and the ending. I feel if I had more time to write and prepare for filming, I could have extended this period and added more depth to further flesh out the character’s personalities and their struggles.
In terms of outside feedback, a lot of the praise was aimed towards the comedy and the last montage sequence. After hearing the feedback, I felt proud of myself as it proved that my writing did turn out enjoyable for our target audience and that the editing fit well with the storyline and added to the comedic effect, so what I was aiming for.
On the other hand, the improvements they suggested were towards the scene where the man wakes up and the cuts that surround it. This was something that I massively agree with due to us missing another shot, leading to the scene to be way too long and halting the momentum of the story. This was something that I tried to adjust while editing, but had to leave it as it is in the video unless I wanted a continuity error. Like previously said, if I were to do a production like this again, I would have to be more organised and ensure that we shoot additional angles and/or set up a re-shoot day where we can recover anything that we may have missed.
In conclusion, I have thoroughly enjoyed this whole experience, from collaborating with a peer to overcoming past issues seen in previous projects. I believe that the full process has helped achieve my goal in improving my confidence and belief in myself and abilities, particularly within production. Although not entirely reaching the expectations I had at the start of the project, I can confidently say that I am proud of how my film has turned out, despite some of the problems I’ve encountered throughout the process. I feel I have also strongly shown my strengths in writing and drastically improved my understanding of the technical side of filmmaking. No doubt the latter was greatly assisted by Ben, who used his knowledge and experience to guide me through those areas, ensuring that I wouldn’t struggle as much as I’ve done previously. I also feel like I have assisted Ben an equal amount in terms of the theory writing, hence proving how we worked very effectively together.
From stepping through the college doors for the first time, with little knowledge of filmmaking and its processes, to two years later where I believe that I have made something genuinely good and worthwhile, I think I can be enormously proud of myself and look forward to any opportunities that may arise in the future.