Report
How we handled finances -
In both our film and our pre-production we didn't consider finance as a boundary this is as for many things it would be inconsequential and irrelevant. As all our equipment and editing software was provided by the school, had this not been the case there would be workarounds and yet this would result in the quality of the production dropping.
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The creative process through pre-production -
This would certainly be our strongest aspect in my opinion. This is as we spent the most time here constructing ideas, motifs, music, themes and focal points. We also collected the most evidence for this aspect with our surveys and our conversations with many tasks being completed to ensure that there is a solid and coherent idea about our films core themes. And yet I feel as though we could have improved upon our execution of this to ensure our final product would be as high quality and possess that quantity required.
Review pre-production of a digital media product
As a team we were asked to create a thriller film opening. Our brief was to create a thriller film opening that challenged outdated styles of thinking. I worked as part of a group but I understood that my individual role would entail taking upon responsibilities of all aspects from planning to execution. This is as we decided we would all try and participate in every aspect of the film to best maximise the amount we learnt from this project ensuring we would all be competent enough to do this again in any department.
Onset of the project
During our first team meetings we discussed what the audience would be interested in as well as plot character designs and soundtracks. Eventually deciding that we would take surveys to best gauge what intrigued the audience most. And found that music would be a vital aspect and that location would also play a major role. Eventually deciding on our location and our means of transport and times of filming.
Our team meetings were productive because everyone contributed equally important and original ideas that would help progress the production process as well as improving the quality of our production. We delegated duties equally not applying any one duty to any one person instead opting to cycle roles ensuring our group would learn more about all aspects of production instead of tunnelling into one. This allowed our group to find their preferred roles and learn an array of skills vital in film production. This could however have slowed production and yet maximised learning and enjoyment of the group. We however falter in our planning neglecting to consider a third lockdown and subsequently this greatly impacted our films production halting it completely. With hindsight I would plan to work around this and employ different methods of editing and proactive behaviour.
Research/Creative process
Initially, we researched other generic thriller films mainly paying diligent attention towards the titles and their presentation (such as font and the way they would fade in and out of shot). We found out that oftentimes the colour of text would reflect the corresponding themes and thrillers. With colours having established implications such as white Boeing innocence and purity, red being hate or love and blue being a cold hard sternness or absence of love. We understood that to be successful we would need to complete further research into the thriller genre. And titles as an art. Our focus on titles would come as a result of our task as they are pivotal in indicating genre and any other information when constructing a film opening. We did this by analysing clips of successful thriller films that would not be too detached from our own. This was beneficial as we found various colours have various connotations and that the format of text and fading in and out can have an impact in building suspense when paired well with the background and musical score.
Overall the research completed helped with production as we learnt how to professionally handle titles and other key conventions of thriller films that we could transfer into ours, ensuring we had the most entertaining and professional film. Despite this due to the unforeseen circumstances that we experienced we didn't make proper use of this planning resulting in our films eventual incompletion. We could improve the research by making it more applicable and by ensuring we transferred what we learnt from the planning into our final production.
Our pre production involved story boards, shot lists, location recces, filming experiments and title production experiments. Evidently our pre production process lacked in collecting sounds instead we would often speculate about the nondiegetic sound as well as the more obvious diegetic sounds that would correlate with the location. Furthermore we didn't have a professional attempt at editing evidence this would be a great fault as we would never truly get the opportunity to try our hand at moulding the footage collected.
Logistics
Throughout filming and pre-production we had to consider logistics and whether some ideas would be logistically impossible. As a result of this we had to ensure filming times would co inside with bus times and school hours as anything out would be especially inconvenient. To transport our equipment we would walk by foot this would take a considerable time and as such would affect the amount of footage collected. Nevertheless we used a detailed pre-production plan to help ensure that filming was as effective and productive as possible while being able to maintain some degree of convenience to best align with the bus times. In my opinion we could have improved our logistics through the use of public transport more. Yet I feel as though our diligence in pre-production is what ensured our logistic processes were as effective as could be.
Finance
Working on a full scale production for a thriller film would incur huge costs and my research showed me that I could acquire finance in the following ways ; like fundraising and pitching to a company or benefactor. As we were aiming to work on little to no budget we found that we would need not to pursue funding through the avenues we researched and instead our main expenditure would be transport for group members that lived too far from the filming location. This was successful as we found we did not require funding as we were provided equipment and software from the school, significantly reducing and cutting the amount our film would cost. If we had acquired a budget we would have paid for equipment and software as well as transport; these would be our main losses as well as showings and advertisement to gain a profit. For many group members would likely go unpaid directly as they are reliant on the outcome.
Evaluation on the entire process
Script -
Hi my name is charlie hayward and I will be explaining our creative processes and the route we took when creating our film. As well as this I will be exploring what we did well and what was hindering us.
We worked as a group throughout to create all progress and evidence this would be a strength of our group ensuring workloads were spread evenly and that we all had a degree of creative input. All evidence given will also be apparent and clear when considering the evidence provided through my blog.
To begin with I would like to analyse our pre production processes.
This would involve the process we used in order to come up with our story. It began with the assignment providing some vague parameters that our film must conform to as we were tasked to create a thriller opening. This would provide us with insight into our conventions and potential sub-genres we could explore. We settled on erotic-thriller for our film as we felt it would be insightful to explore this less common avenue. After this we would prepare in multiple ways to best ensure our final product would be professional. We did this specifically through surveying our target audience, considering props, equipment, costume and make up.this would be key when considering our budget and how we could best utilize the tools provided. These included a camera and editing software provided by the school. We would spend some time practicing our editing techniques and the portrayal of our title, subtitles and logo.Location recce and general story parameters would also be vital when considering many aspects in our pre-production such as shot lists and storyboards as it must be considered as a part of our mise en scene. Yet we must also consider legal restrictions and SWOT analysis. Furthermore we would need to consider the restrictions given through time and transport with our filming hours being limited through daylight hours and bus times.On top of this, coping with deadlines and managing time with deadlines in mind would be a vital aspect in our planning process. As time would provide a great deal of pressure on our team as time would he of the essence with each task we undertook. This would result in us putting on stringent limits to the time we could take filming per day and the amount of time spent on watch pre production tasks.
When we couldn't film or were limited in the amount we could film with some would stay back and edit or in free time would prepare editing and titles to ensure our film would be finished. And yet we chose our logo and mascot this time. We decided on a banana slug acting as both mascot and logo that would be underlined with red and titled banana slug productions. We chose this as the red would carry it’s obvious connotations of passion, love and danger (ideal for the erotic thriller). Furthermore the banana slug is unique for its behaviour in eating its own genitals after sex. This could act as an insinuation towards the cyclical and insidious nature of love that is often a key concept in erotic thrillers.
I feel as though this project was insightful not only in the attempted creation of a film but also as insight into what we would do differently in a professional setting. This would involve a larger audience, budget and group size. Furthermore we would be needed to consider the audience input dwelling far longer on pre-production with budget being vital. Despite this it would likely be outsourced to a member of the group more adept with this field as would most tasks. For each part will be separated and roles would remain the same. In this sense the project taught us what we excelled at more than other aspects.
Monitoring progress was perhaps the most important aspect of both filming and pre-production. This would be done through the meticulous inspection of deadlines set by a teacher as well as our own timetables. This monitoring would be needed throughout the entire creative process not just filming but also to ensure all our pre-production was completed in enough time to comfortably film and edit. To ensure that we could monitor progress and meet deadlines we simply worked diligently and rather single mindedly on completing our tasks. This would also tie into time management.
The risk management would consist of us creating plans to minimise risk when filming. This would involve obstacles we could avoid through the proper guidelines or increased caution. This involved environmental risks that we faced when filming in such a rural area we would have to be cautious of falling sick loose footing and risky paths, alas we would prevail through the analysis and assumptions that these risks were merely something to be expected and then acting to minimise impact they would have. On top of this we had to consider uncontrollable factors. Such as the international crisis COVID. Originally we would conform to the guidelines requested by the government and we would continue to do this. However it would hinder the group's progress with limited members collecting footage resulting in less footage than previously planned. However we would persevere with collecting footage in our limited groups. Alas as we neared the end of our filming the country would go into another lockdown. This would be an unforeseen event for our group and would result in the eventual failure to meet standards in the production of our film. This lockdown would halt all progress and result in only some aspects of our plans coming to fruition.
Despite this we did maintain an aire of caution when filming this would include being aware of any physical risks but also the fore sight to collect evidence. This would involve the video evidence of us following a shot list and story board as well as us collecting evidence for location recces. None the less I would consider both the collection of evidence and our filming project a failure for the simple fact we did not meet requirements of the task set.
Finally I will delve into what we did well, what I feel we could improve upon and the obstacles we faced and how we overcame them.
We did well in the pre-production and the initial stages of filming. This would include all evidence collected to help the film progress as well as act as both evidence and insight into what our film was intended to become. In terms of filming I believe we collected footage and even more evidence exceptionally as we were nearing the end of filming with just a handful of filming opportunities.
Despite this I feel as though we could have improved upon being even more prepared for the future. As we neglected to acknowledge the possibility of yet another national lockdown. To improve this we could’ve moved our schedule to be more compact ensuring that we would meet this final deadline. Furthermore we could have improved on home editing. Despite this I feel as though this was one of if not our only main weakness as a group.
Problems we faced while filming included finding advantageous filming positions to find our way around this we would settle with compromises from our shot lists. Despite this the filming would involve many trails and obstacles and the task at hand was as much about creating a film as it was overcoming obstacles. We also had to ensure our story was aptly conveyed despite this being a film opening. To do this we would imply things through many shots such as a frequent use of fore shadowing in the filming process.
Video Evidence and Audio Evidence
In this task I have screen recorded choice evidence that I thought would be vital and prominent as examples of pre-production and finalised evidence. This is done through the video, furthermore I have recorded an audio soundtrack that explores my evaluation on unit 4.