Film Evaluation

Research

My first thoughts/feelings about research were excitement! I usually love doing research as I feel like writing is my stength. Unfortuantly it took a lot of time for me to get motivated, as I dislike watching videos as it tends to distrupt my productivity and for this task i had to watch videos. 

For research our task was to evaluate different products similar to what we are doing (in this case short films in horror, sci fi, film noir and western), we also had to find out the target audience for these films. The reason for this research is to get inspiration and start thinking of ideas. Evaluating similar products in the genres you are doing is very helpful, it gave me a chance to see what other people have done and what i feel had worked and hasdnt worked. The first thing I researched was the history behind the genres, who were popular directors of them, what era they were and what the core features were. This gave me a lot of information about how I should present my short film to fit in the genres. A commonality that makes a big diference to genre is music, music and mise en scene. The music and outfits can all represent an era or a feeling, like film noir features jazz and was made from 40s-50s and usually in black and white, and mystery, these are common identifiers for a film noir.

I evaluated; sound, camera, colour etc etc, to see how it fit into the genre and the story. I tried to find similarities between the films and what similarieies the genres shared. I came to the conclusion that the genres of scifi, horror and film noir all shared a theme of darkness and uncertainty, also the genres make the audiences question thoughts and ideas they may have. I also wrote about the core theme of uncertainty in these genres and how that affects the people who watch these genres and why people may choose not to. The thoughts about uncertainty are my own and from my personal experiences and own observations, but it is also noted in lots of research articles. These findings helped me to find the target audience of each film. I could have chosen to do a survey and find a more acurate target audience but i decided against that. I must admit I didnt think much about these core aspects of the genre whilst filming but I did note setting, outfits and uncertainty. The thoughts I had about uncertainty in the genre is what helped me write my script. Also, whilst doing my story board I came across another short film I really loved and it gave me a lot of inspiration for my own.

The research I did really helped give me inspiration and ideas for my own film. Brian Bells I love me, was probably the one that helped me the most. I thought that film was really cool and it was what inspired me to add a car scene to my short film, and some of the camera angles and shots also inspired me. I also took information from the horror short I watched about the hat man, the inspiration I took was basically that my main character would be wearing a hat, to make him mysterious and odd. This idea also worked in all genres.

Overall I feel like I did a decent amount of research. I think next time, I should watch more short films to find more unique perspectives and gain a range of ideas.

Pre Production: 

My main and first idea took a while to come up with. My starting point was a line about asking someoene the time, I had already decided the outfits I would wear and that it would be set in the 40s as Film Noir was my main inspiration. I basically came up with a random storyline about a girl asking the time and being told weird answers instead of the time, I wanted it to be so the viewers are in her position, not understanding what is going on. For a few days I only had the first half of the script. I decided to listen to music and incooperate lyrics into the script, this idea helped me to create an unsettling dialogue and added to the confusion the main character felt. I did this at college on a day I was feeling particulary distracted. I started listning to the high school usical 3 song 'stick to the staus quo' which is why i added the line "are you stuck to the status quo? be your own creator' a line that doesn't make much sense, which is why i liked it! I then came home and continued my research and watched the horror short which gave me the idea to add a man with a hat. This thought reminded me of a short film ive always wanted to make and so I started writing a script similar to what I was thinking, which is reflected in my research page.

I  sepnt the most time storyboarding. I was really far behind everyone else and I had noticed they had all filmed in one day, yet I was nowhere near filming. This is because I find it really difficult to visualise my ideas on paper, but i also couldn't start shooting without a shot plan, so I felt really stuck. This lasted for a few days until I decided to listen to a podcast (which suprisingly helps me focus) and start my storyboard. I took each line and carefully thought about what I wanted the shot to look like and I used an online storyboard maker and started planning my shots. It me a few days but I was really determined to finish it. This storyboard really helped my production, it meant I knew exactly what kind of shots I wanted to use and how they would look alongside other shots, without this careful planning of my shots, I wouldve struggled to get started.

Ever since i thought of my first line in the script i knew exactyt where i wanted to film as it was visualised in my head. I think I mightve gotten inspiration from the horror short as that is also filmed down a street. I just pictured where it would be filmed and I didnt want to change that. I didnt scope my location, I also forgot to do a risk assesment which I had to go bcak and do. Scoping my location before filming wouldve been an essential task that wouldve helped me perfect my shots even more as it meant I couldve taken practice shots befroe fiming. The main reason I couldn't do this is because I was filming at my house and didn't have the camera for a long enough time as I wanted to get filming done first. These 2 tasks are something that I will make sure to do for my next project as I can see them really helping me perfect and visualise the shots.

As I was working on my own I didnt use many pre production worksheets, call sheets werent very useful to me, but for my next project i may do a little actor profile explaining what scenes each person is doing and when. Also because i hadnt planned when I was going to film, nothing was really set in stone. As mentioned before, for my next project i will make sure to do a location recce and risk assessment beforehand, so that I can be safe and plan better.