Individual Short Film

Link: 

Storyboard:

Shot list:

Floor Plan:

Script:

Example of Lined script:

2 minute - Silent Black & White project

Link: 

Storyboard: 

Script:

The Colour Purple - Group Project

Link:

Scene 1 storyboard:

Scene 2 storyboard:

Scene 3 storyboard:

Scene 4 storyboard:

Scene 5 storyboard:

Script:

Evaluation

Through out the year, we have been assigned different types of projects to complete. As students it was our jobs to understand the conventions of each project, and use our skillset to make the best pieced material we can. 

The first project was a simple one. We got tasked with making a 1 minute self portrait piece about us. The set requirements were anything other than copyrighted music and no dialogue. This meant that I was making a very visually orientated piece, that still gave simple and concise information about me as an individual. The only down side with the visuals was that none of it was complex, or challenging. They were simoke shots. 

After finding suitable music, I already knew that the only ways to reach any information to my audience were with visual storytelling techniques or on-screen text. So to ensure that my points were getting across, I selected shots that represented my life best at the time (I.e. the sleeping because I was known for my unusual sleep pattern.) Then to reinforce, I used on-screen text just incase the visuals were not enough. This point feeds into other projects later on. The editing style was simple, I used synchronous techniques, it kept the project energetic and predictable (which is large doses is bad, due to it becoming tedious but the piece was only a minute long in duration.)  

The project wasn't perfect. Peers, when asked for feedback, said that the computer shot was slightly under exposed and was overhauled with digital noise due to the ISO sensitivity having to be boosted higher. I agree, this shot was by far the weakest, but I felt like, even with the digital noise, the shot served a big enough purpose to be implemented. The way to get round this would be to use lights for internal environments, but as the year went on, I shot in external conditions anyway. 

Project 2 was a fun one to do. It was completely centralized around visuals. The set task was a black and white silent short film with the set duration of 2 minutes. For this, I created an easy story ark to follow (Homeless man finds an unlocked car, and a wallet. He gets caught by the owner, the homeless guy is immediately sorry and the Owner is sympathetic. Happy ending.) I wanted to completely focus on using visual storytelling techniques to guide the story, so there's no subtitles on this, unlike the self-portrait. Nor is there music either. Using simple techniques, such as Match on action, use of slight ellipse to eradicate useless pieces of movement (such as the Homeless guy walking all the way from the heater to the car which would be a minute in itself) which enabled me to fit a concise and visually filled project into 2 minutes.  

One thing I felt that I improved on, was that the piece felt "seamless" between the cuts in the editing. This is something that I've been working towards for a long time, and takes practice to do so. Half the reason this was achievable for me was because the editing was so easy to do. There was so much flexibility, using a blend of static and dynamic camera techniques enabled me to set pacing in the edit easily, allowing another technique (that weren't sound driven) to guide the story and how the characters are feeling. The only thing that was somewhat challenging was getting the pacing in the cuts from each shot right whilst ensuring the audience doesn't get too disorientated.  

The main thing that I and the class felt I could improve on, was the depth of the narrative itself. It was easy, worked well and everything went the way I intended it too. This feedback came into good use for my final individual project. But depth is difficult to achieve with a 1 minute duration, so I focused on other areas.

First piece of group work was the "The Colour Purple". The groups got given a scene centralized around a topic. Friendship was ours.. Tommy wrote the screenplay, and I took control of the visual direction of the story. The first shot was a wide angle shot which was held for more than half the actual short itself. This was a stylised choice of mine in editing. The shot I thought was satisfying to look at and there was no real need to cut to any other shot. No one mentioned anything negative about the duration of the shot. Only until the actual drama of the dialogue pushed in, was the moment I cut into the close up of the Main character as his friend walked off. I then used the technique of "shot reverse shot" which is typically used for a conversation in any film or medium. Spanning from Film, to TV to some Music videos (if there's a conversation present).  

The biggest and most obvious issue with this piece (other than the very last shot which was heavily underexposed) was the sound. This was the biggest issue people fed back to us as a group. The sound was inconsistent, and the microphone caught too much ambience from the park around us. A good way to progress from this would be to simply refine the sound recorder's settings and simply ensure that the microphone is closer to the actor's mouth. Then after, record separate assets for the sound design later. For example, capturing individual ambience from (birds, cards, slight wind, etc) and then  an individual sound clip dedicate to the fountain. This way none of the sounds conflict too much. 

The final project of the year was an individual short film capped at the duration of 5 minutes. There was no restrictions, it could be any genre, with or without dialogue. No creative limits, with the exception of duration. This short film I wanted to try and stray away from static camera techniques as the Group project was shot almost completely static. Instead, I wanted to focus on dynamic camera movements and how they can emphasis emotion in a shot. For example, when the main character gets the phone call and they mention a package being delivered, the camera snaps to the front door and the camera slowly zooms in towards it. This is a simple dynamic and adds tension to the shot and the piece. I wanted to use the lessons that I've learnt with visual storytelling from the precious projects and combine that with the simple use of story through dialogue.  

Again the only disappointment was the sound. I captured Foley for each movement and object touched in the short (because of what I learnt from the sound from the Colour Purple), and individual ambience for the rooms but the hiss was unbearable meaning that I had to turn down the volume making the short very quiet (which was the main issue for everyone in the class and became the footnote for the feedback given. So from now on, I'm going to find a Sound person, who can record sound and do the sound design also. That way I can concentrate on other things whilst shooting, with the intentions to shift some focus into lighting to enhance future visuals and ensure digital noise is a worry of the past.  

In conclusion, the feedback throughout the year was fairly consistent. It centered around sound with the rare comment about narrative depth and shot exposure. The progress that I've made with being able to tell a story using visual techniques is clear and I am happy with that, hoping that next year I will be able to continue to make the same amount of progress, if not, more. This, along with the progress of editing and use of dialogue, will help me direct viewers through a story easier than this time last year.

Self Portrait - 1 minute film

Self Portrait Link:

Proposal: 

So for this video, I have decided to make a video that reflects my life. There is several different ways you can do it, such as doing a timeline / gallery styled video in which would show pictures and old footage of me growing up and this would be done by displaying each piece is chronological order. Another way, and the way I am choosing to do would be to make a "Week in the life". This is easily achieve by just picking up a camera and somewhat documenting my week (almost like a vlog, except this self-portrait won't have any dialogue).

The Aesthetic I am choosing to do primarily Point of view (P.O.V.) shots. The overall idea is to make a "Week in the Life" where I video my week and then make it into a video. The tone and pacing is going to be fast, energetic and somewhat light hearted.

I have chosen to not use any archive footage as I feel it wouldn't fit the aesthetic and overall idea of the piece. This is mainly because I'm aiming for it to seem like a very fluid and cinematic experience which would be ruined by still images and/or older lesser quality footage.

This would require no actors as I am using myself, but the technique is P.O.V. so you only occasionally see my hands and maybe even feet, you don’t see anything else. Too spice it up, and make it less boring, I might add a wide angle tripod shot as it’s a quick grab and it would make the piece more visually interesting whilst keeping things convenient and easy. But seeing as the video is a maximum of 1 minute in length, I might not have too.

Sound will most likely be the hardest challenge, this is because there will be no script for dialogue, no dialogue as it is and no copyrighted music. This leaves two options; royalty free music and / or self composed music. Personally, I can't read, write or produce music so I won't be composing music, so it leaves me with one option which is royalty free music. The main and ultimate problem which royalty free music is that its either basic or of lesser quality. This can either lower the overall production value or distract the viewers from the video or in some cases bore them.


Storyboard:

FMP

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2nMEYVUcBU&feature=youtu.be

FILM POSTER:

Production Documentation:

The main save I used for my FMP on my external hard drive. Before this, I got through all my shots and choose several of the best types of each shots and then put them into one folder, that way I don't need to spend time naming them as its all there. I also have back ups on One Drive and Google Drive, just in case anything corrupts.

The main sequence. What I did is put each scene into its own sequence, and then put all the sequences into a large sequence. This way, I can manage smaller timelines without having to render my footage thus causing more compression on already low bit-rate footage. 

Heres the other timelines:

Colour correction: 

These are screen shots of the colour work I have been doing - more specifically, just colour correction. Though, I have toyed around with Speed Grade, and got some really nice grades, I just never saved the project as it was a test. 

Pre-production:

So even though there isn't much preproduction, there wasn't much to plan. The shoot was a simple one, it was get the people there and shoot what the schedule and shot list said. I had all the documentation available to me, including script, shot list and a schedule. Even though I pretty much knew what I needed from the shot list anyway, I still referred to it every now and then as a check list to make sure I got everything. 

Script