Feedback

Now with a finished film, I wanted to present it to my target audience of 16-24 on the medium of my choice (Youtube) to see their reactions and general thoughts. This was a stage I wanted to do now rather than at the beginning of my process as this was always going to be a niche film that I personally had interest in. Now it was time to see how well it is received. This could be seen as an oversight on my part as the audience may not respond well to it. However, I don't believe it is as, seeing this film as an experiment, I wanted to pitch the finished film then see how viewers will take it. Due to this being a free Youtube production, I decided not to do more upfront research on this topic. To gather my feedback, I sent out a survey to friends and classmates as they all fit the target age group. Then, with this feedback research, I can tinker with my finished film, seen on the previous page, to create an edit that can go public. The limitations of this will be I can only affect the edit and not the filming stage. 

The survey will be slotted throughout the rest of this page.

Evaluation

To create this evaluation, I have referred to the Gibbs Reflective Cycle. 

Proposal

At the beginning of the FMP, the first thing on hand was writing a proposal to state my progress through the year so far, what I aim to create and what I want to focus on. Now, looking back on my original proposal, my main priorities were editing and scripting. I think as the process went on, I lost sight of scripting slightly due to the changing plans in the pre production stages. However, the script, which I will get into more later, was fairly successful in putting the themes and story across but not fluid and easy enough for a viewer to follow. In terms of my editing progress, this project was a significant upgrade from my previous work as I spent a lot of time on it. However, there is still a lot of room for improvement and had my schedule worked out differently with better lighting, I may have been able to gather a more rounded edit. Time is definitely an enemy in these projects but overall I think I managed my time well with spaces to catch up if necessary. Continuing with my rationale, I mentioned that I hadn’t properly planned an assignment yet as they had been smaller productions or teams where I would be put on the production and editing sides. I made sure in my schedule to give myself lots of time to plan and alter events which paid off as I am proud of the film I achieved. There were points when I tried to push myself through the process faster as my classmates were ahead with filming. However, sticking to my initial schedule was the best and, although there was a location change, I had time to change things around and be more flexible. 

Also included in my proposal was my evaluation. I said at the beginning that I will make weekly reflective journals to guide you through the process. However, when I began the ten week process, I realised that doing a weekly review wasn’t possible with my personal timeline as I have a lot of commitments and forget. Instead, I resulted in doing a journal for each major section of the project which made a lot of sense and is useful when navigation my portfolio. If it had been week by week, it would’ve jumped all over the place as my timetable ended up being slightly disjointed. Ideally, that would’ve been the way I presented things but I think this method worked as well and shows a clear journey through the portfolio. I believe that my portfolio presents a clear progression through my short film and that there are clear links throughout. My objective in the proposal was to present my idea development and growth. The main place to find this is in my synopsis/ story treatment page through to the second script. In the future, I will make sure to follow my proposal in terms of reflecting and constantly updating my journal. To do this however, I will als need a more in depth schedule from the start. The schedule in my proposal is good but a little vague which meant that I would move things around as I knew I had lots of spare time earlier on, only to realise I was running out of time by the end. For example, early on, I researched all the appropriate areas and saved the links so I could get on with the pre-production and write up the research when I was void of other work before filming. This then became an issue as there was always something going on whereas the process would’ve been smoother if I just got it all done at the beginning. At the end of the process it became a balance of editing, writing up research and finalising the portfolio. 

Idea Generation

In my ideas development, bottom of the context page along with pre production, I only lightly touched upon target audience and platform. This was because I was passionate about the topic and had a vision from the start. Therefore, I moved my target audience research to the end of the process to see how interested people were in the finished film. Everyone who reviewed it agreed that this film was well designed for YouTube as my chosen platform. However, some weren’t as connected with the characters as I had hoped. For a 16-24 audience, I think what I would change, due to this research, would be the demographic of characters interacting in the film. I would probably remove the adults, mainly the luxury lady, as this doesn’t mean anything to a younger audience. Mainly, I created parts for people I knew would be in the film to think realistically. With more time and a greater presence, I would create the characters based on personal experiences and cast them later so the audience would be more invested. In future, I will conduct my target audience research before the project to hone in on a perspective they agree on. In this case, I don’t regret how I went about this project as this was an idea I didn’t want to tamper with as much. Inspiration for this film came from my brother as we have talked about making a film on the subject for years. It’s a simple pastime that we would play. Retrospectively, I should’ve focused on that brotherly bond and view of the world to connect the idea and ground it. This would also make scripting easy as I’d be drawing from my own experiences. In this section, I will also cover the story treatment. The story went through many redrafts. My main issue was the ending as it’s an activity that can just keep going. I wanted to come up with a twist that tied the film together but was unexpected to the audience. This resulted in the involvement of me, the director, appearing in the film, as a self aware nod. With hindsight and the feedback from my classmates, I now think this was an unnecessary plot thread that could’ve simply been one person breaking the fourth wall and talking to camera. This could’ve also helped with casting as I would have one major part talking to camera rather than the slightly confusing film I made where he sees her walk past then begins to talk to her, as a manifestation of his thoughts. It ended up having too many unnecessary layers and none of them were built in enough depth. 

Additionally, continuing on the line of idea generation and refining, the themes and motivations of the film were slightly lost, making the film slightly hollow. It’s still an enjoyable feature but investment in it is lost as topics such as first impressions and the way we see ourselves are reflected in as mature a manner as I wanted to initially go for. Doing this again, I would recalculate the need for a big cast and make the situations discussed by the two leads more specific and believable rather than a simple game that doesn’t really conclude. I think in the finished version it would’ve worked better without the director twist and simply answering the question of who she really is, rather than leaving it to the audience to decide. 

Research

My main evaluation of the research is that some of it didn’t end up being as useful as thought it would be. Continuing from the previous section, I ended up straying from the central themes for a more light hearted short film atmosphere with twists and turns. In future, I would stick to assessing those themes and attempt a more grounded approach. It was all useful information for me to uncover as a director and creator as they influenced my decisions both for scripting and directing smaller details for my cast’s action. The main issue is that this doesn’t translate to the audience as easily as intended. 

Another area of research that wasn’t as useful as initially intended was the music feedback. I was very happy with the survey I carried out and picked out a few of those songs to represent the moods and hobbies people have. However, when I was in the edit and figuring out a rough cut, many of those tracks didn’t fit the atmosphere of the scenes they were in so I ended up removing most of the surveyed music. If I were to do this again, I would send the survey to a wider demographic of people in all categories and then model my characters around those in the first place rather than retroactively. 

A positive evaluation, however, was that I am very happy with all of my efforts on colour grading and theory research, along with the survey. It was very useful to make sure my views on certain colours aligned with viewers so that the finished film would have the right meanings. In addition to that, having a director as inspiration really guided my film and helped me shape it and understand my composition far easier. I feel I could’ve used his style more clearly in my production as at the moment his style is lost on the piece, which is good as I don’t want to copy his style exactly but in future I could use the space more effectively to explore each colour in depth.

Another section of research was my analysis of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s writing style and advice. This was useful when it came to writing my script but, in the dialogue, I do think that I lost some of the advice as the finished result was slightly unnatural and, from my feedback survey, some people were a little lost, getting the message overall but not understanding details. In future, if I was doing this again, I would make sure to have several iterations of the script, showing this to my tutors and classmates along the way to make improvements and strengthen the plot. I believe the advice I found was useful but I just needed to lean into it more and draw from more personal events rather than fictionalising events too strongly for a one time short film.

The final aspect of my research was my technical research, involving lighting, aspect ratios, audio and the JVC cameras. I didn’t look into the JVCs further than the user manual which was fine as I am comfortable using them. I only needed to remind myself where to find a few of the settings in the menu. I’m glad I investigated aspect ratios as they really helped form the story and layers of my short film, changing only when necessary. From my feedback, people were positive about the changes and they really helped as a guide through the narrative. With audio, my research made me think more about the quality and staging of the scenes. I didn’t know there were laviers available at college before this project and they were a great idea due to the nature of the film. Where my technical research dwindled however was with lighting. My main issue was not considering a lighting setup for the changed location, although I looked into lighting outside. The information I found was good but I needed to follow up on it rather than casting it aside for ease.

Pre-Production

Moving onto pre-production, My main issue to evaluate came with my location handling. Originally, I wanted to use the local coffee shop ‘The Square’ as it is a location I’m familiar with and walk past most days. A couple weeks into the process, I asked them if I could use the shop and they didn’t reply for a couple of weeks. At that point, I should’ve instantly gone to plan B which was using the local common instead. However, when they responded with a friendly email I got too optimistic. There was a decently lengthy email chain between us and it got to a point when we had smoothed over any major issues about timings, privacy of customers and such. However, about 2 weeks before we were going to film, on the day of my read through, they pulled out regarding health and safety which was previously discussed. This didn’t have as big a hit on my process as I thought purely because I was set on those days and times for filming with the cast and I had scouted my second location. During this project, I became very ambitious, wanting a large cast and private location. If I were doing this FMP again, I would stick with a public space for my first location and design the plot further around that instead of needing to change it. The change in location set me back about a week as I needed to redraft my script and use that new space. Originally, all the characters were going to have their own tables in the shop so blocking would’ve been very different but I knew in the shop there was space for everyone and I could get a variety of angles and shots. However, on the common, I needed to reassess as there were limited benches and nothing was able to move around. To help me along, I made a blocking script that tracked each character’s position. Some of these had to be changed on the day of filming due to the unrealistic distances. In retrospect, I should’ve visited the common with someone so not only could I get images of the space but we could do a test shot and find the right angles and distances to block it out.

Additionally, I thought I generally dealt with changes in schedules well, especially with the cast. From the start, I had a few names in mind for each of the two leads to make sure I definitely had people who could be in the film. In the end I used my first option for Theo and second for Dani due to scheduling conflicts. For this project, I wanted to be ambitious and go with a large cast so I could show how well I can manage people on set from both a logistics and directing standpoint. The rest of the cast was comprised of parts I could easily move around and change due to the nature of their appearances, being walking through the scene. Moving onto equipment, I added an additional camera to the list discussed in the ‘Equipment and Crew’ document which definitely helped as I would be able to get sections of the shot list done quicker. I was fairly happy with my shot list and script. The script definitely could’ve done with more work and if I was doing this again I would get various people to proofread it along the way leading to production so that the story doesn’t get confusing.  

Next, I quickly glossed over a risk assessment which I saw to be good practice and nothing more. The nature of the film wasn’t at all risky. However, had I gained the Square as my location, I would’ve needed a thorough risk assessment. If I were to do it again, I would go to the shop in person to look around and make notes for a risk assessment to send through to them and my actors in advance of receiving clearance to show I am aware of the situation and in control. Finally in pre production was the music. As stated in the research, I didn’t end up using many of the surveyed songs and instead chose my own off of lyrics and song titles that fit the moods. In future, I would have a more structured approach to this rather than simply finding individual songs. In the music section were also the sound effects. A lot of these were found inside the shop such as a door chime and boots on wood. However, These weren’t used. I ended up making additions to my sound library in the edit. In future, I would prioritise getting the main production and filming done then find the appropriate sound library in post to suit my rough cut. 

Production

Production was, surprisingly to me, very successful and everything seemed to go to plan. In this instant, my main takeaway was that spending that many weeks planning and researching was the best use of my time to make sure the production on the day went smoothly. I had printouts of the script and blocking script for reference as the day went on. We had a good systematic approach on Day 3 and 4 of doing a take with the script to walk through and block it out before taking it away for the full shot. On day 3, I was supposed to have a classmate as an additional cameraman but I couldn’t come. In future, I will include any crew earlier in the process so they are committed to the film and we can work out schedules. This was a case of him agreeing to an already planned day for me without realising he was busy. 

I believe it was a good idea using a clapper board to help myself in the edit, especially with multi-camera work, and this is something I will be doing again. In terms of equipment, the only issues I had on day 3 were that one of the tripods was missing the slider disk so I couldn’t actually connect the camera and had to rest one of them with a spare cast member to hold it in place. I got another spare cast member to be the boom mic operator as well. Luckily for me, I was able to improvise and use the large cast around me to help out instead of sitting around. Another day 3 issue was that the wires for the laviers/ body mics were shorter than expected so the camera couldn’t move too far away from the scene. I was able to solve this for day 4 by using additional XLRs as extension cables. In a couple of shots from day 3, you can see the standard cables leading to the camera which doesn’t look professional. 

The major issue during production was the lighting. As mentioned before, I didn’t follow through on the lighting research as I was unsure how to handle the lighting outdoors. In my situation, this probably ended up being a good thing due to the limited crew and time. If I did the project again, still with the common as the location, I would’ve secured a larger crew from the beginning to assist me and we would then use more artificial lighting. The lighting issue I had was that the weather on the two days was fairly different, with moving clouds as an extra complication. To avoid the cloud issue, I could’ve set the film in the evening and use artificial lighting to intensify the scenes. As is, I captured lots of moving shadows, not assisted by the fact that we shot the film out of order so the continuity doesn’t hold up. 

Finally for production, the issue I had with Day 4 was timings, both with cast and equipment. Due to jobs and availability, on this day I had talked to the cast about arriving at different times. The issue we had was waiting on people for sometime then rushing other sections near the end. We had to go back to my house to charge the cameras then return for the last few shots which lost us a portion of time walking back and forth. In the future, I need to make sure I have contingency plans of exactly what to film when rather than the list of shots for that day on my physical shot list. This made us rush over the last scene and so the execution wasn’t ideal. Overall, I was very pleased with filming and will make sure to focus on using lighting on set in the future.

Editing

Following production, I spent hours sorting files then began the edit. The main struggle came with the lighting and continuity issues from filming days. My aim was to make the main common scene as neutral and connected as possible though this was made even more difficult as I had the JVCs and my personal SLR setup differently with saturation and contrast. In future, these are things I need to check on before the shoot. Furthermore, I was very happy with the ‘VHS’ filters for the flashbacks. However, as good as the audio quality was, I need to make sure I balance the music and dialogue better so I have paid attention to that with my re-edit. My main feedback comments for editing were about the audio differences and the colour palette difference between the normal bland world and the main section needed to be more significant to make the story clearer. I also found in my edit that a few shots at the end didn’t work very well so replaced them with still images and additional recorded dialogue. Luckily, I had already gathered excess background noise from the common in case of this situation so I merged the new audio with that. It’s not perfect but I’m happy with the result. I’m still not convinced of the ending and there are still too many layers in the re-edit but I couldn’t help that for now. That would only be fixable if I was redoing the whole process.

Feedback and Redo

Now, using this evaluation and the feedback on the survey, I am going to partially re-edit the film before I make it public on Youtube. Since I don’t have long until the deadline and extra filming would be a waste, I’m focusing on any editing notes in the feedback. My priorities will be the change in colour palettes between the real and fake worlds and trying my best to clear up the confusion with the lead girl, Dani, at the start. Additionally, I want to neutralise the audio levels for a more succinct film. Below is the re-finished short film. 

I also received additional feedback from my brother, who studies English at university. His main comments were that I tried to achieve too much in too little a time. I completely agree and, acting on that, I would want to remodel the entire project in future to suit around a 20 minute runtime to give it a bit more air and better dialogue. He also commented that there were too many layers and maybe focusing on one of them would’ve produced a greater project in a short time. I wouldn’t be able to act on the runtime in this re-edit as that is a major step but it’s a good point to think about in future: make sure my projects are manageable under the constraints.

Conclusion

To conclude, I am happy with the finished outcome although there is lots I can work on in the future. My priorities going forward should be lighting and still scripting. If I had more time, I would remodel some of the script and gather reshoots to flesh out the ending of the film in more detail.Overall, I believe you can see a clear journey through this portfolio and I look forward to learning from this and working on the areas needed.